Chapter VIII: Part 8

“To one who knows and appreciates the great spiritual life of the Roman Catholic Church, the relation between that Church and the mass of the Italians in this country is a source of grief, for it does not hold in the lives of this people the place it should. Reluctantly, the writer has to blame the ignorance and bigotry of the immigrant priests who set themselves against American influence; men who too often lend themselves to the purposes of the ward heeler, the district leader in controlling the people; who too often keep silence when the poor are the victims of the shrewd Italians who have grown rich on the ignorance of their countrymen. One man made eight thousand dollars by supplying one thousand labourers to a railroad. He collected five dollars from each man as railroad fare, though transportation was given by the road, and three dollars from each man for the material to build a house. The men supposed it was to be a home for their families. They found as a home the wretched shelters provided by contractors, with which we are all familiar. This transaction, when known, did not disturb the church or social relations of the offender, but it increased his political power, for it showed what he could do. He is recognized to-day as the Mayor of ---- Street; his influence is met everywhere.

“The claim is made that the parochial school has the advantage that it gives religious as well as secular instruction. Observing and comparing the children living under the same environment who attended the public and parochial schools, I found that they did equally good work in English, but that the public schools did very much better work in arithmetic. The time given in the public schools to the so-called “fads and frills” was apparently given in the parochial school to religious exercises and instruction, with about an equal degree of comprehension and application on the part of the pupils. There was no difference in the appreciation of truth, honesty or peace. They lied, stole and fought without showing distinction in training. The singing voices of the children in the public schools were far better trained than the voices of children in the parochial schools.

“What the Italian needs in New York above all things is his church in the full possession of its great spiritual power; young men born in this country, imbued with a love of and appreciation of its great opportunities, trained for the priesthood, to work and live among the Italians; in the interval before this is accomplished, a novitiate of at least five years for all foreign-born and trained priests before they are put in charge of an American parish; the establishing of music schools in connection with all the Roman Catholic churches in the foreign colonies; the rapid disappearance of the Italian parish because the people have become American. Above all, the immediate suppression of all proselyting among these people. Their Church is in their blood. The veneer, which is all the new church connection is, stifles the vital breath of the soul, and leaves the so-called convert without a Church. The exceptions prove the rule. Remove the temptation of the loaves and fishes in this proselyting endeavour and see how successful the effort is. Let the Catholic Church in America live at her highest among these people, and the political problems they create will disappear.”

I do not fully agree with the author of the above; but I join with her heartily in the desire expressed in her last sentence. I would also add: let the Protestant Church live her highest before these people; let her take her share in the responsibilities which these strangers bring, without a thought of proselyting them; and she will find that her efforts are needed, and are not in vain.

XIX

WHERE GREEK MEETS GREEK

A baggage wagon heavily loaded by bags and trunks, and half lost to view in the muddy street and against the muddier sky of Chicago, stopped in front of the saloon to the Acropolis, on Halstead Street. The baggage man was surrounded by an angry mob, for he demanded four dollars for his trip, and that, the unsuspecting immigrants were unwilling to pay. In this they were supported by their countrymen who had come out of the saloon to welcome them to New Greece, which is unpicturesquely located on the West side of Chicago, between dives and cheap restaurants on one side, and the busy Ghetto on the other. Men of all nationalities, if of no occupation, gathered about the haggling crowd, and the baggage man received the support of the mob, for he wore a Union button, and the war cry: “It’s the Union price” was the Shibboleth by which the Greeks were vanquished and made to pay the four dollars; not of course, without having spent an hour in their national pastime of haggling for the price.

The driver mounted his quickly emptied wagon, with a curse upon the “Dagos,” and the crowd informally discussed for a while the immigration question; its verdict being, that it is time to shut our doors against the Greeks, for they are a poor lot from which to make good American citizens.

The crowd dispersed as quickly as it came and the freshly landed Greeks entered the gates of the “Acropolis,” a Greek saloon and restaurant combination, not unlike (externally at least) its American prototype on the same street, where the saloon is decidedly at its worst.

The newcomers were feasted on black olives, brown bread and goat’s cheese; for the Greek is very loyal to the national appetite,--and they immediately begin to plan their entrance into the busy life of America, through the avenues of barter or of labour.

It is not to be wondered at that the crowd which knows nothing of the Greeks, called them “Dagos,” for it would be hard even for one who knows them only from the classic past, properly to place this group of men, were it not that their speech betrayed the ancient heritage.

We never picture the heroes of Greek epics, undersized, like these moderns; round headed, looking into the world out of small, black, piercing eyes, their complexion sallow and their hair straight and black. We too, would place them nearer modern Palermo than ancient Athens, and judge their blood to have flowed through the veins of rough Albanese mountaineers and crude Slavic plowmen, rather than through the perfect bodies of those Greeks who have dissolved with their myths, and who disappeared when Mt. Olympus was deserted by its divine tenantry.

These modern Greeks have retained much of their past, stored in their memories at least, and scarcely one of those whom I have met but knows the Iliad and the Odyssey, or whose black eyes do not sparkle proudly when he recounts the glory of those Attic days.

They are still eager to know, even more eager to tell what they know, and a brave front is not the least part of the equipment of the modern Greek. A consuming pride which amounts to conceit, shuts his eyes to his own faults as well as to the virtues of other races, and he will long hold himself aloof from the hopper which grinds us all into the same kind of grist.

“Where do these men come from, Mr. B?” I asked the keeper of the classic bar of the “Acropolis.” “They are all Athenians.” Every Greek is, although cradled in some island unrenowned either in the past or the present. “Why do they come to Chicago? To make money?” I answer my own question. “Oh, no!” replies the classic barkeeper, delicately ironical. “They are not poor, no Greek is ever poor, even if he cannot buy five cents’ worth of black olives.” “Do they come here because they have a better chance?” “Chance? why, everyone of these men was on the way to become a Demarch (Mayor). They have come here to learn American ways, and incidentally to enrich American culture by their presence.”

Full of this pride and confidence in themselves, they are nevertheless ready to blacken our boots for ten cents, and they do it remarkably well, displacing negroes and Italians, until later, they open stores and sell American candies to an undiscriminating public, hungry for the cheap sweets. No labour is too hard for them, although they prefer to stand behind the counter. More or less, all the Greeks will finally be in trades of some kind, and monopolists in all of them. At present, their eyes are on bootblacking and confectionery stores, nearly every town of any size in the United States being invaded by them, so that their presence is beginning to be felt.

The modern Greek still has the license of the poet, and he uses the license whether he has the poetry or not. I think he is happiest when he exaggerates to no one’s hurt; albeit, like the rest of us he does not always stop to ask whether it hurts or not. Conceit and deceit are as close relatives as poetry and lying, and to Greeks and Americans they often look strangely alike.

If the modern Greek is a hero, he is a cautious one and recklessness is not one of his faults. He is no “Plunger,” but moves along the “straight and narrow way which leadeth to”--a big bank account. Contented by little, he does not despise the much, and although he is not meek, he will inherit a fair share of this earth’s goods. Born with democratic instincts, he soon feels himself as good as anybody, and when he grows sleek and fat, he selects “the chief seat in the synagogue” or some other lofty height, from which he looks in disdain upon his poorer brothers.

While hospitable, he has become strangely suspicious of strangers, and he is not a good bedfellow for he likes to occupy the whole bed. If it is a settlement which opens its doors to him it becomes all his, and he does not shrink from intimidation as a means of driving the Italian or the Jew from its welcoming gates.

He is industrious and temperate, yet he likes to lounge about the saloons where he sometimes gets too much of his native wine and then he can be a really bad fellow.

In his native village he is as chaste as the women, but in America he has a bad name and the neighbourhood in which he lives is not regarded as the safest for unprotected women. The Chicago police especially, has an eye upon his candy stores which are supposed to be as immoral as they often are uninviting. The fact that in the Chicago colony, 10,000 Greeks live, practically without their wives, explains this situation, and it is just possible that 10,000 Americans under the same conditions would not act differently.

The police in New Greece is not on a good footing with the inhabitants, and occasionally shooting and stabbing occur. At such times it is difficult to know who is more to blame; the police or the supposed culprits.

The modern Greek is still punctiliously pious, his church and priest follow him into every settlement, and he is loyal to the forms of his religion. It is doubtful whether here or in the Old World, it discloses to him the ethical teachings of Jesus; but in this, we are in a poor condition to “cast the first stone” at him. His priest is not servilely revered or feared, and the relation between them is too often that of buyer and seller. The priest has the means of grace, the Greek is in need of them for salvation, and he pays for what he gets,--sometimes reluctantly.

At present it would fare ill with any one who would try to wean him from his Church; for loyalty to it is loyalty to Greece, and the Greek has never been a turn-coat.

No more patriotic people ever came to us than these modern Greeks, and although that patriotism is centred upon their native country, they will ultimately make good citizens, and even before that day, make splendid politicians; for in the craft of politics every Greek is an adept, and he is a “Mighty (place) hunter before the Lord.”

The only trouble with the government of modern Greece is, that it has not enough offices for all the aspirants for them, and this learned proletariat is a fair sized menace in this little country. In governing themselves the modern Greeks have not been a conspicuous success, and the only things we can teach them in this line are, the willingness to acknowledge failure and the eagerness with which we seek the better way.

The New Greece of Chicago, a few blocks in a busy thoroughfare, is not a large world, yet it is more Greek than the Ghetto is Russian or Little Sicily is Italian. Homes in the true sense there are but few, because the women have not yet come; the housing conditions of the Greeks are bad and likely to remain so for a long time. There are grocery stores containing little or no American food; saloons, by far too many, but providing food and drink at the same time as is the custom in Greece; a Greek bank, the front windows of which are covered by the advertisements of steamship transportation companies; clothing and dry-goods stores, whose proprietors are Greeks, although their stock in trade is necessarily American; and the Greek church with a double cross to mark its orthodoxy;--this is New Greece.

Out of it some of our newly arrived immigrants will go in the morning, to the railroad tracks, to do the digging and the ditching. They will be “bossed” by “Big Pete,” whose size is exceeded only by the length of his oaths, and who boasts of being able to handle his countrymen easily, because: “The Greeks can be handled only by a man who can show them that he is a better man, and that I am; and if you don’t believe it, feel my muscle. I pay them $1.50 a day and I treat them like Greeks.”

I watched “Big Pete” treat them like Greeks for half a day, and I did not discover that such treatment saved a man from being geared to the highest notch and made to work incessantly, while “Big Pete” watched and cursed to help the pace.

The same night that they arrived, some of the young boys were looked over by the men of the Greek colony, who had assisted them to come, and whose labour was theirs until the passage money was paid, and paid with interest. The next morning they began their tutelage in blacking boots in so-called parlours, whose walls are covered by chromos depicting Greek wars in which the Greeks are always the victors and the Turks are slaughtered like sheep at the stockyards; there are also one or two pictures of classic ruins.

In such surroundings, and seemingly unconscious of the life about them, these boys will blacken boots for eighteen hours a day, with heart, mind and soul in Greece; and their fingers in America only when they handle our coin. They will attempt no conversation, even after they know our speech, literally obeying the Scriptural injunction to say “Yea, yea and nay, nay,” and not much else if they can help it. They are not nearly so communicative as the Italians, and although a smile sits well on a Greek face, I have rarely seen one there.

The confectionery stores which are outside of New Greece, are open all the time, at least so long as a customer may be expected, and although these customers are nearly all Americans, the Greeks have few friends among them. They all return to New Greece as often as possible, and there their virtues unfold, and “their soul delights itself in fatness.” They are not exceeded even by the Chinese in that loyalty to native food which I call the patriotism of the stomach, and a Greek grocery store is filled from one end to the other with food from the classic isles. There are dried vegetables whose present form does not betray their natural shape, but which taste luscious, because the flavour of the native soil clings to them; fish, dried, pickled and preserved in some form, and cheese made from the milk of goats whose horns butted broken classic vases instead of modern tin cans.

The smells seem ancient, too; but in these the Greek revels, and here he is at home.

New Greece in Chicago is fortunate in having as one of its boundaries, Hull House, one of the numerous activities of which consists in trying to discover the possible point of contact between the home-born and the stranger.

A Greek play given at Hull House opened the eyes of many American people to the fact that the past is alive in the modern Greek, and at a banquet, also at Hull House, where Americans and Greeks vied with each other in extolling the glory of Athens, the wealth of the past was again richly displayed. How near the American and the Greek have come to each other through these two notable events, it is difficult to tell; but I am sure that they have increased the pride of the Greeks, and have given us an added respect for them.

But after all, they will be judged by the way they live to-day and by the measure in which these small, dark-haired traders and workers exemplify in their lives the virtues of those men of old, whose names they have inherited and whose fame they are eager to preserve.

XX

THE NEW AMERICAN AND THE NEW PROBLEM

The miracle of assimilation wrought upon the older type of immigration, gives to many of us, at least the hope, that the Slavs, Jews, Italians, Hungarians and Greeks will blend into our life as easily as did the Germans, the Scandinavians and the Irish.

The new immigrant, or the new American, as I call him, is however in many respects, more of an alien than that older class which was related to the native stock by race, speech, or religious ties. Therefore, I recognize the fact that it is easy to be too optimistic about this assimilation, and to regard the Americanizing of the stranger accomplished, when he discards his picturesque native garb and speech, to disappear in the commonplaceness of our attire; or when he has mastered the intricacies of American idioms.

Outwardly the changes will be the same as those which have taken place among the older immigrants, accomplished with the same dispatch, even where the foreigners are segregated in their own quarters. I have in mind a Polish colony of some six thousand souls in a New England town where there are Polish churches, Polish schools, Polish “butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers”; and yet if you walk through that section of the city you will see the women who a few years ago, when they landed, wore the numberless short skirts and picturesque waists of their own making, now sweeping the dust with long trailing skirts, their ample forms encased in corsets and shirt-waists; while here and there you will hear even the rustle of the silk lining.

The boys who upon landing wore coarse linen trousers and shirts have long ago rebelled against these marks of their Old Country lineage, and their fathers have bought them the short trousers and shirt-waists, which make them look like young Americans.

If you are careful to observe, you will see that the children wear stockings and underwear; luxuries undreamed of in the Old World, where boots and shoes were the signs of manhood or womanhood, and where stockings were unknown to the peasantry, being the marks of a high calling and fine breeding.

Especially on Sunday that quarter of the town looks resplendent in its newness, and the latest American fashions are reflected by the women who are never a season behind in expanding or reducing to proper proportions, their sleeves, which they wear short or long, very nearly as the ladies do, who at that moment have entered the portals of the great meeting house, the bulwark of American ideals in New England. It is true that they all still eat black bread, drink vodka, and say: “Pshas creff” when angry; but in eating, drinking and swearing, the whole colony is on the way to complete Americanization, and one need have no fear that externally the Slav, Italian and Jew will not “eat of the fruit of the tree of the garden and become like one of us.”

The same thing is a fact in the matter of external racial characteristics. The things which seem to us the most ineradicable and written as if by an “iron pen upon the rock” are in most cases but chalk marks on a blackboard, so easily are they washed away.

These things created by long ages of neglect, hunger, persecution and climate, are often lost within one generation. The crowd on Rivington Street in New York looks less Jewish than that in Warsaw, and the Bohemians in Chicago look so like “us,” that in spite of the fact that I have some training in detecting racial marks, I am often puzzled and mistaken.

American, Armenian, Austrian, Bohemian, Cuban, Dane, Dutch, Finlander, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Mexican, Negro, Norwegian, Pole, Roumanian, Russian, Scotch, Slovak, Spanish, Swede, Swiss. Can you tell them apart?]

Give me the immigrant on board of ship, and I will distinguish without hesitation the Bulgarian from the Servian, the Slovak from the Russian, and the Northern Italian from the Sicilian; but as I have said, I often have the greatest difficulty in accomplishing such a feat, two or three years after the men have landed. It is true that in the first generation, the old racial marks still lie in the foreground, and that even in the second generation, the blood will speak out here and there; but it will require a very sharp scrutiny to detect this, and in the most cases there will be no hint of the past.

In Chicago, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, St. Louis and St. Paul I have addressed audiences composed of Slavs and of native Americans; and I have vainly tried to distinguish them one from the other in the mass, although of course when I had a very close and long look, I could make my differentiation. These racial marks are most tenacious among certain Orientals where strange strains of blood have accentuated the difference; but I have seen some Armenians, people bearing the mark of their race most strongly, who after ten years of life in America, had lost the peculiar sharpness of their features and were in that stage of transition where the American image was being imprinted upon them.

Scarcely a foreigner returns home after a long sojourn in America without hearing at every step that he looks different. The Jew on board of ship, to whom I have previously referred, who was warned not to wear an American flag because it might cost him money in Europe, was right when he said: “They will see it in mine face that I am from America.”

I do not wish to be as dogmatic in my assertions as Mr. Prescott F. Hall, the Secretary of the Restriction Immigration League is in his. He believes that we shall be the inheritors of all the disagreeable racial characteristics which the immigrant brings with him. It is still too early to foretell; the new American has not been long enough with us, and moreover the whole question of racial characteristics is still an open one.

Nevertheless in face of the undisputed fact that these outward racial marks disappear, may we not also believe that with them go the peculiar racial qualities which mark and mar the life of the stranger?

Mr. Hall has many figures with which to prove his side of the case; I have but a few facts gathered from rather intimate association with certain groups of foreigners.

Take for instance the Polish peasant. It is a fact that in the Old World he is known for his inability to distinguish between “mine and thine,” and between truth and falsehood. The Polish proverb says: “The peasant will steal anything except millstones and hot iron,” and I know of instances where the only thing untrue about the saying was the last saving clause. In this country I have been in nearly every one of the Polish communities and neither thieving nor lying is laid to their charge. The little town of Marblehead, Ohio, located in a peninsula in Lake Erie is peopled largely by Poles and Slovaks who find employment in the large stone quarries. Around them are prosperous farms, large orchards and vineyards. I took pains to inquire especially what was the attitude of these Slavs towards stock, chickens, and fruit which did not belong to them; and not one of the neighbouring farmers complained of having had anything stolen from his premises, although these Slavs have lived in that neighbourhood nearly twenty years.

In the Old World pigs had to be locked in their sties; they were not safe even after they were butchered. Grain disappeared, even when it was vigilantly guarded from the time it was a blade of grass until it was in the barn. The Polish and Slovak peasants were thievish in the Old Country because they were hungry, and their wage was not sufficient to buy enough bread. In Marblehead they have bread enough and to spare, as well as meat and fruit for little money--they do not have to steal.

In the Old World they lied and stole because they were driven by necessity. When a Polish regiment came to any town in Austria, women had to be especially guarded against their lust; but no such charge has been brought against the regiments of young labourers who have come to American cities, and who are everywhere regarded as chaste as their American brothers. In the matter of intemperance they have so far remained as bad as their reputation; but the average mining camp is rarely in a Prohibition district and the example set by the Americans they meet is not conducive to sobriety.

The Jew is certainly distinctive; his faith and fate alike have guarded his racial qualities; yet he must be blind indeed, who does not see a vast change going on, within as well as without. The Jew is still a sharp bargainer, but in that peculiarity the Yankee is giving him “pointers,” and he will have to grow sharper still if he wishes to keep up in the race. His business talent is likely to increase because he is in a business atmosphere; but his business methods will change and have changed, because his inner being is undergoing a transformation. Subtle as these changes are I have traced them and can detect them even in the crowd which is a far different mass from that of the Jews of Europe, a fact which recently I saw very clearly illustrated.

It was the Jewish anniversary of the death of the great Zionist leader, Theodore Hertzl. In front of the Grand Opera House in Hartford, Conn., were large Yiddish placards announcing the fact, and all the evening crowds of men, women and children passed into the building filling every available space on floor and in galleries. The dignitaries of Hartford’s Jewry sat in the boxes, and young men and women passed through the crowd, securing members for the various Jewish societies. It was an orderly assembly, more orderly than any synagogue meeting I ever attended in Russia. America had toned them down, they were less excited, although even here a policeman had quite a hard task in disposing of one man who insisted upon entering, in spite of the fact that he had lost his ticket.

These people had learned the first lesson in self-government--self-control; or rather, they were in the way of learning it. They still swayed to and fro with the movement of the speaker, a habit acquired in the Talmud schools and practiced at their worship; but one could see the younger element holding the older in check, and the older keeping itself in check for the sake of its children who had learned American ways. There was an indescribable gain in their looks, in those faces where greed, suffering and brutal hate had left their deep traces.

It was a look of hope akin to joy, some such triumphant gladness as the Jew would feel if the portals of his New Jerusalem were to open again to the King of Glory. My own heart throbbed gladly when I beheld them for I saw the gain they had made in manhood and womanhood.

The program was also a hopeful thing. It was long enough for the meeting of one of our learned societies and the men had the habit of stealing one another’s text and time; but whether they were apt learners or had imported the habit I do not know. The first address was by the mayor of the city and he was greeted like a friend and spoke like one. It was not the flattering speech of a politician but a scholarly, sympathetic address, of one who knew Israel’s past and who sympathized with her aspirations. He knew all about the Zionist movement and about Dr. Hertzl and spoke as one who was thoroughly acquainted with his subject. After he had finished speaking the chairman said, “Whenever I hear a Christian speak of Israel as this man has spoken, I feel like saying, ‘Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.’”

On the whole it may be said that these new Americans are in that stage of cultural development or undevelopment, which makes it probable that so strong and virile a people as that among whom their lot is cast, will impress them so forcibly, that those things which we call racial characteristics will after a while disappear.

Whether we shall enrich this New American by our own ideals, whether we shall implant in him the broad culture of our own spiritual and intellectual heritage, is a real problem whose solving may puzzle even future generations.

I do not believe that any of the people who come to us, speaking of races and nationalities as a whole, are degenerate, or so hardened that they are not capable of assimilation and transformation. Although as I have said, this cannot yet be proved by our own experience, we can reason with some assurance from the experience of countries in which these strangers who come to us are also regarded as aliens and subjects; and where their way upward is retarded rather than helped as it is on this side of the great sea.

Let me take as an example the Slovak, one of the crudest Slavic types, who bears all the marks of the Slav in his features and in all his inner being. In his own home he belonged to a subject race; for the Magyar being more powerful and more warlike, was his ruler. In the villages where this Slovak lives he has been in touch with the Magyar and also with the Germanic element, to a greater or less degree. I have noticed this: That wherever he has had a chance, wherever political and economic difficulties were not too great, he grew into the full stature of the man above him; and in the long struggle for racial supremacy in Hungary, the Slav has not yet said the last word. Physically, morally and spiritually, he equals the Magyar or the German; that is, wherever the opportunity is not taken from him by wrong economic and political adjustment.

I hold no brief for the Slovak or for any Slav; there are many things in his nature which are repellent. He is too much of a realist by nature for my taste, and there is a certain kind of crudeness and cruelty in his make up, from both of which I have had occasion to suffer. Yet in spite of these handicaps I believe that, given the proper environment and the proper example, or if you please the proper masters, he will develop into that kind of American which we, the average, are. He usually takes more than he leaves behind; he inherits more than he bequeaths; he is human material in the rough; very, very rough but human material nevertheless. Made of as good clay as any of us, although perhaps not yet fashioned into the best mould. The moulding will be the problem; for the New American is more Slavic than anything else.

The Jews, a subject race everywhere, have suffered so much from friends and foes alike, that to defend or accuse them would be a work of supererogation. It is, however, undeniably true, that Judaism in America faces a greater crisis than it faced in the captivity of Babylon. There Judaism was made, here it is being unmade; there foes tried to make the Jews forget Jerusalem, here their friends have difficulty in making them remember it; there a hope of the Messiah grew up within them, here the term is so strange to them that it needs reiteration and interpretation. The loss to Judaism in America amounts to a catastrophe, and from the present outlook its complete dissolution is merely a matter of time, only retarded by the constant influx of immigrants from Russia and Poland. The average Jew in America has become so American that he does not remember the hole from which he was dug, or that Abraham was his father and that Sarah bore him.

A certain vague racial fealty holds one Jew to the other; but a strong and mighty passion holds him to America, making him so much an American and so little a Jew. It may be true that the leopard does not change his spots; but even the leopard may lose his spots when he does not need them. Many of the racial marks of Jew and Gentile alike will disappear when the need of them passes away; and they will take on readily other marks which fit them for a better environment.

The problem with the Jew is not how to make him less a Jew; but how to make him a better Jew, and consequently a better American; for Judaism properly interpreted has in it all the elements to make of men good citizens, good neighbours and good friends.

At the conclusion of a lecture recently, a rather stupid but zealous man asked me regarding the Jews. “Can we trust them with the Constitution?” It was a stupid question asked by a stupid man. God trusted them with the oracles, the Commandments and the prophecies; the richest spiritual gifts in the keeping of the Deity. To be sure, they broke nearly all the Commandments and killed their prophets; but we have done the same thing; and the Constitution is as safe in the hands of the Jew, as the Bible is in the hands of the Gentile.

Granting that each one of these races will bequeath us something evil, let us take the standpoint of the secretary of the Immigration Restriction League and see to what we shall fall heir. We shall get from the Slav his crudity, from the Jew his sharpness, from the Italian his mobility, from the Armenian his Oriental shrewdness, which is akin to lying, from the Magyar a fiery temper; from each of them something which we call ill. When these disagreeable qualities are properly proportioned and balanced, they may so counteract one another, that in the sum total we may after all be the gainers. It seems absurd to go about this matter mathematically, whether one traces the possible gain or loss.

The truth is, that up to this date, in spite of the fact that already Slav, Jewish and Italian blood flows in the veins of some of us: in spite of the fact that these people fill the cities almost to overflowing, there is no perceptible physical or moral degeneration visible which can be traced to the foreigner.

The quarters of American cities where the foreigners live are not the worst quarters; and I would rather trust myself in the dark, to the mysteries of Hester Street than to certain portions of the West side exclusively populated by a certain type of degenerate Americans. Recently a professor of economics in one of our universities asked me to show him those terrible parts of New York where the foreigners live; where the children are said to be so unhappy, the men so oppressed by poverty; and where the women have not enough to wear. I took him across the Bowery, which has lost its terrors since it became foreign territory, across the streets of the Ghetto and along its avenues. We found the supposed unhappy children, well dressed and well fed, dancing to the notes of the hurdy-gurdy grinder, as happy as children naturally are, who do not have many “manners to mind,” whose playground is the street, and who have music from morning till nightfall. We walked through endless rows of tenements and saw men engaged in lawful pursuits; from the garret to the cellars the Ghetto was a beehive of industry. We saw no street loafers, drunkards or idlers. In “Little Hungary,” where we ate and enjoyed a daintily served dinner, we loitered until evening, when we met a vast army of men and women who came pouring in from Broadway’s stores and shops, walking with that pride and happiness which comes from the consciousness of having done a day’s work, and done it well. My friend was very much disappointed because he saw no horrors, no unhappy children or unhappy men.

Again we passed the Bowery, going on to the American section of New York, the Rialto. Here were horrors enough; whole blocks where there were no children; for both the very wicked and the very rich are not blessed by them. Young and old men, fashionably dressed and properly tipsy, went in to cheap shows, saloons and brothels, to have a “good time.” These young men, rich sons of rich fathers, and these old men, are idlers and perverters of their own passions. They and they alone are the great problem which we have need to fear; for it is a problem which cannot be solved. In the fashionable restaurants of Fifth Avenue and Upper Broadway, we saw the women “who toil not neither do they spin,” and who, with all the Heavenly Father’s care, were not properly clothed. They too, more than the women of the Ghetto, are the problem we need to study; for among them and by them are lost our democracy, our purity and our virtue.

I fear more from a certain type of Jew on Upper Broadway, than I do from the Jew of the Ghetto; even as I fear more from a certain type of over-ripe Americans than I do from this undeveloped peasantry. The question which the American faces is not whether the foreigner can be assimilated, but who will do the assimilating. Not even the question whether the foreigner is the inferior need concern us; for in the race which is now on and at its height, the American just described is left behind; and those of us who are watching the race are not at all amazed.

In nearly all the manufacturing towns of New England, the Swede and the German are forging to the front, while the Pole and the Italian are following closely; but the sons of the shrewd and inventive Yankees are keeping fast company, riding in fast automobiles, and drinking strong cocktails. They will soon be in the rear because of physical, mental and spiritual bankruptcy.

It does not follow that these New Americans do not present a racial problem; but the problem is largely one of assimilating power on our part. The real problem is: Whether the American is virile enough and not so much whether the foreign material is of the proper quality. I have no doubt as to either proposition; I believe that there is still remarkable assimilating power left which increases rather than decreases with the mixture of blood. I also believe that the average New American is like wax, hard wax sometimes,--perhaps more like lead or steel; but he will be moulded into our image and bear the marks of our characteristics whatever they may be.

As I write this I realize that I am saying “us” and “our” as if I were not a New American myself and one of those who make up the racial problem. Yet when I recall to myself the fact that I too belong to an alien race, it comes to me like a shock; when I realize that I was born beneath another flag and that this is but my adopted country, it gives me almost a sense of shame that I have in a great degree, if not altogether, forgotten these facts, and I am so completely and absorbingly an American, that I can write “us” and “our,” speak of my own people as foreigners, and of my own native country as a strange land. Something has so wrought upon me that in spite of the fact that I came to this country in my young manhood, I look upon America as my Fatherland. That same power is still active; still strong enough to repeat the miracle of the yesterday; for I am no better than these millions who are regarded as a menace. I came here with the same blood as theirs and the same heritage of good or ill, bequeathed by my race; yet I feel myself completely one with all which this country possesses, that is worth living for and dying for. With millions of these New Americans I say to-day that which we shall continue to say, whether it fares well or ill with our adopted country: “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

XXI

THE NEW AMERICAN AND OLD PROBLEMS

“Competition is the life of prejudice” is an old truth, in a somewhat new setting. Back of the prejudice against Jew, Italian and Slav, is this fact: they are monopolizing certain departments of labour and trades, and in nearly every activity they are beginning to be felt in competition. The Swede is regarded as treacherous by the man whose place he has taken in the machine shops East and West; the Slovak and Pole are called dirty and unreliable by the miners whom they have supplanted in Pennsylvania, and the Jew is accused of trickery by the American who has a clothing store on the next corner. Under whatever name the feeling against the foreigner hides itself, it usually is in substance the fear of competition; and every law restricting immigration has been with the idea of protecting American labour.

Nevertheless the economic problem presented by the New American is ill-defined, largely formulated by conflicting business interests, and is still only a question of the labour market. As a rule it may be said that the immigrant is willing to work only for the standard rate of wage; and whether that rate has been lowered by the recent influx of immigrants remains an undecided question. There are as reliable figures to prove that it has increased, as that it has decreased. The reports and resolutions of Labour Unions are coloured by self-interest as much as are the reports of Manufacturers’ Associations.

It is an undisputed fact that the New England loom workers have been largely displaced by the Irish and by French Canadians; and that Greeks, Armenians and Syrians are now displacing these in turn. The native New Englander however has not suffered by the process; for the foreman, the forewoman and the man who invents the loom and makes it, are these New Englanders, who do something more and better than merely keep the spindles full. It is true that the Irishman no longer has the supremacy on railroad sections, and that he has been supplanted; but not even by the wildest imagination can we say that this Irishman has suffered in the process; for is he not now policeman, fireman, alderman or some other kind of _man_ where formerly he was only a _hand_ on a section?

A similar change has taken place in all channels of activity; whether this is for good or ill, I am not ready to say. While no doubt exists in any mind that there are foreigners who are willing to work for less than the standard wage, it is because they do not yet know what that standard is; or because the immediate need drives them to take work at any price. Those of us who are acquainted with the immigrant as a labourer are aware that very soon he knows enough to demand his full wage, and that, smarting under a real or fancied wrong he will “strike” as quickly as if he had had twenty-five years of training in a Labour Union.

The history of the labour troubles of the last fifteen years proves conclusively that the foreigner will strike; and that he knows how to use the weapons of the strike, such as picketing and slugging and all that goes with that form of industrial warfare. It is at such a time that he is most denounced for his pernicious activity; while the very Labour Union with which he has made a common cause, will then repudiate him as a “scab” and a menace.

The author who, in his book,[4] which is supposed to be an authentic source of information on immigration, quoted the following, surely must have done so against his better judgment: “The agent[5] stated also that the rising generation of Jews, Italians and Hungarians are likely to live for the most part in the same conditions as their parents, and to remain unskilled labourers.” This is so evidently untrue that it must be known to be false by any man, even although he has examined this subject very superficially. The standard of living rises very perceptibly in the first generation among all classes of immigrants; and in proof of that I have the testimony of merchants in nearly all industrial centres in the United States. The boy who landed in Pennsylvania in homespun will discard it within a week and demand of his father short trousers and shirt waists. He will get them too; and he will get the best the father can afford. The wife will soon grow weary of keeping twenty boarders in one room; and I have seen the dawn of liberty rise upon her face as with flushing cheek she told her husband: “Me boss of this shanty.” When he tried to strike her as he did in the Old World she would remind him of the fact that this is the land of liberty, and I have seen her lift the battle-axe in defiance. Axe in hand she said: “I won’t keep boarders,” and the husband has been long enough in this country to know that when a woman in America says: “I won’t,” she won’t; and the boarders go.

With the going of the boarders comes the demand for a carpet; a cheap cotton carpet with huge design of many colours, the same kind that our forefathers put upon their floors when rag carpets went out of fashion; not very beautiful; but thoroughly and primitively American.

Plush furniture is added and stands stiffly against the wall; not very useful, but somewhat like the article which stands in more pretentious parlours. The “installment plan” agent finds among these people willing victims to plush albums, sewing machines and crayon portraits. Scarcely any of the New Americans I know are miserly or have essentially a different standard of living from our own, except as that standard was forced upon them by economic conditions. All of them in common with our frail humanity will spend money in proportion to their income and often, too often, out of proportion. The Slovak and the Pole who are most complained about on this score of a low standard of living, are fond of fine clothes and good food. In their native village they go about resplendent in glorious apparel, usually twice the value of ours; though we affect a higher standard of living. There are Slovak girls in Pennsylvania now, who have spent a year’s wage on a dress in the old country; and I have known women living in wretched huts who paid ten dollars for the half yard of lace on their caps. Mother vanity has her devotees everywhere and she exacts her tribute on this side of the Atlantic as well as on the other.

Those who know the immigrant and care for his well being, are not concerned by the fact that he does not spend money, but that he does not spend it wisely;--that the girls of the first and second generations follow the fashions too quickly, and buy the things which are useless; even as their mothers will fill the homes with things which are neither comfortable nor beautiful. The Jews who are such a great economic factor in our life may be accused of everything with more show of justice than of this one thing; namely, that, viewed from this standpoint, their standard of living is low. They are proverbially good dressers; and good eating is part of their traditions; it is closely allied to their religion. If it were not for the Jews in New York and in Chicago, the theatres would be half empty and the music halls not less so; one of the stock complaints against the Jews of our large cities is that they want the best seats in these places, that they want to go to the best hotels and live in the finest residence sections. To get along in the world, to get up and out, to be “as good as the best,” is a passion in Israel; a passion which has made the Jew more enemies than he himself knows.

I cannot regard the immigrant as a problem from this narrow economic view: while upon the broader question, of the general effect he has upon the condition of labour in America, I am at present in no position to be dogmatic. I recognize that it is natural for those engaged in the same pursuit to fear the competition which will lower their wage and consequently narrow their whole life. I believe that it is the business of the government to protect them against unjust competition, but first we must have tangible facts; and those we do not yet possess.

Let me quote again, almost verbatim, a labour leader from Ohio, who lifted up his voice in the Immigration Congress which convened in Madison Square Garden, New York, on December 6, 1905. He said: “We don’t want you fellers to let in any more of them yellow crawling worms from Europe; we have them in Ohio. They live on a piece of bread and one beer, and we can’t live like a decent American ought to live.” I happen to know Ohio and the city from which this gentleman comes. I do not know a single foreign colony there, in which men are satisfied by a piece of bread and one beer. Those I know fix no limit as to the beer; and the vats of the Cincinnati brewers would be dry, were it not for the proverbial thirst of the foreigners who live on the classic shores of the “Rhine,”--as a certain muddy stream is called which manages to flow into the Ohio by way of Cincinnati. The discernment(?) of this man and of his kind is not enough to raise a false alarm. Any of us would bow before facts, presented by an unprejudiced observer and would gladly help to cry “Halt” to the invasion of strangers who would lower the standard of living in America.

It takes neither figures nor close investigation to discover that in spite of the constant inflow of foreigners, the standard of living is rising continually; that the luxuries of yesterday are the comforts and necessities of to-day; and that in a larger measure than ever, it is true that the masses, if they have not reached this plane, are constantly at work trying to reach it. To blame the immigrant for the slums and the sweat-shops rests also upon pure assumption. It is indisputably true that the “slum” was always more or less here and that it is found wherever poverty and vice have met each other.

The immigrant moves into wretched houses and narrow streets and alleys because they are here. American citizens draw revenue from death traps and do it without a twinge of conscience; but even then these places are not slums. I venture to assert that in the real slums of American cities, the native Americans, using the word native in its true sense, outnumber these foreigners with whom we always associate the slums, with their grim twins--Poverty and Vice.