Chapter VI: Introduction: 9 (5)

To succeed in this purpose it is, first of all, necessary to study each nationality separately. The very fact that all of them are treated alike is detrimental. It is unfair to class them all alike. They all have their good and bad qualities; and justice demands that the latter be not attributed to those who do not possess them. There is not one nationality that would admit its inferiority to the others, and every one of them considers itself equal to, if not better than, many others. Consequently, to be classed with races looked down upon is a humiliation to which no one with self-respect will submit without protest. This is a fact which must not be lost sight of; it is rooted in human nature. It is further necessary to study the habits, customs, prejudices and inclinations of every nationality separately, so that such as are too deeply rooted may not be violently antagonized.

Take, for example, the matter of language. The Swede or the Spaniard may not object to being forced by law to learn English, because in his mother country this question never arose, it did not enter into his daily life. It is different with the Slovak or the Pole, whose soul was stirred to its very depths because the Magyar or the Prussian wanted by law to force a strange tongue on him. It was a tradition with him to resist such an attempt; he looked upon it as an oppression in his mother country, and he is likely to look upon it in the same light here. The conditions in Europe and here may be different; he may be justified in objecting there and not here; but his mind is habituated to opposing the ruling powers in their efforts to force upon him a strange language. A common workingman is not used to psychological self-analysis or to studying archæology; he is controlled mainly by his impulses. He will note only that he is required to submit here to laws which he considered oppressive and tyrannical in the old country.

The glories and advantages of this country should not be fed to the immigrant in excessive doses, but presented tactfully. He is liable to look upon it as an attempt to humiliate him, as unwarranted boasting. It is not difficult to pick flaws in the armor of American complacency. Every man is a hero-worshipper at heart, and every man has his childhood heroes to whom he clings. Judged by an absolute standard, if there is such a standard, the American heroes may stand on a higher plane; but if rude hands are placed upon the childhood heroes of the alien he is likely to resent it. The skies are just as blue, the fields are carpeted just as beautifully with flowers and the nights are illuminated with the same glorious stars on the Eastern as on the Western Hemisphere. The majority of the aliens enjoyed more of these beauties at home than they do in the mines and smoke-infested atmosphere of the industrial American cities. It is true that they earn more money here in dollars and cents; but they work harder for it and sometimes under the most cruel taskmasters.

Teaching aliens the English language, American customs, ideals, political institutions and history, will, of course, go a great way in making them formal Americans, and, in some cases, it may awaken in them a love for their new home; but it is indispensably necessary that in their daily contact with the older Americans they see that these ideals are put into practice. They have a very high idea of Americanism, and they scrutinize very critically the conduct of the Americans with whom they come into contact, to see whether it squares with these ideals. They watch the manner in which the laws are enforced by the officials, and compare it with the way in which they are enforced in their native land; and, if they find out that the Americans do not practice what they preach, that the administration of public affairs is not essentially different here from what they know it to be at home, their opinion of America is not exalted. They look upon all the loud protestations as bluff and hypocrisy, and no amount of Americanization work will change their views. They are on trial here, but they also put the Americans to a test.

This Americanization work must be looked upon as the molding of human souls. When men’s habits of thought and action have become fixed by age, when they have lost their youthful plasticity, to recast their souls into predetermined molds without subjecting them first to the gentle heat of sympathy is like forging cold steel into new shapes. It can be done, but it requires enormous energy and the results are never as satisfactory as when the steel is first heated into a flux and then cast.

If Americanization is to accomplish its purpose,--the amalgamation of all the races and nationalities that inhabit the United States into one nation, the transformation of the aliens into one hundred per cent. Americans,--if it is to be beneficial and not harmful, it must be looked upon as a spiritual regeneration. Naturalization makes a citizen out of an alien; learning the English language makes him more efficient both for good and evil; conformity to American habits and customs wipes out social differences; knowledge of American institutions and laws enables him to live up to them or to break them consciously; but none of these nor all combined will make him an enthusiastic American unless his heart has been alienated from his mother country and his affections transferred to his adopted home. Not until the alien will love America above all, not until he will boast of it and defend its faults, can he be considered a true American. And he will do neither unless he has placed America above his mother country in his estimation. This means a re-birth in his soul.

ENRICO C. SARTORIO

“The Social and Religious Life of Italians in America,” by Enrico
C. Sartorio, is written from the viewpoint of one who came as a
foreigner to America when he was already a young man. It aims to show
how a foreigner really feels. In the words of Dean George Hodges,
who writes the Introduction to the book, it “is a timely revelation
of the width and depth of a racial gulf which must first be bridged
and then filled. His suggestions as to the accomplishing of this
necessary work are definite and practical inferences from his own
successful experience.”

Mr. Sartorio studied at the Cambridge Episcopal Theological School
and has since been successfully engaged in pastoral work in the city
of Boston.

PATRONIZING THE FOREIGNER

Among certain people there still exists the old prejudice that there must be something the matter with a foreigner. Exclusiveness on one side, loneliness on the other, do not help to interpret American life in the right spirit to the foreigner. If educated Italians thus do not know the real America, you can easily imagine what the immigrant’s conception of America may be. My barber, who has been in this country twenty-eight years, was dumbfounded when I told him the other day that six people out of seven in America are Protestant. The poor fellow had gone about for twenty-eight years tipping his hat to every church, thinking that they were all Roman Catholic churches. I have found over and over again Italian couples living together in the belief that they were husband and wife, because they misunderstood American law. They had been told that in America a civil marriage was as valid as a religious one, so they went to the City Hall, and by going through the process of answering questions in taking out the marriage license, they thought they had been married and went happily home to live together as husband and wife. An Italian tried to explain to me the meaning of Thanksgiving Day. “You see,” he said, “the word explains itself, ‘Tacchins-giving Day’”; “tacchin” meaning turkey in Italian, it was, according to this man, the day on which Americans gave away turkeys.

And what opportunity has an immigrant to know this country when he sees America only at its worst? Through the gum-chewing girls whom he meets in factories, through the hard-drinking and hard-swearing “boss” who orders him about, through the dubious type of youth whom he meets at the saloon and in the dance hall, through the descriptions given in Italian newspapers and by cheap orators he comes to know America. Add to that poor wages, quarters in the slums, policemen, car conductors and ushers who laugh at him when he asks for information, “bosses” who claim a fee for securing him a job, and the sweet names of “Dago” and “Guinea” by which the supposed American thinks himself entitled to call him, and you can imagine what a delightful feeling the average Italian has toward this country.

Where does the fault lie? In prejudice and indifference, and in the spirit of patronage. Americans who judge by appearances, who have not travelled in Italy or studied modern Italian life, scornfully turn away from the Italian immigrant because he is not as clean-shaven or as well-kempt as the American workingman. Other Americans do not concern themselves with foreigners. They have a vague knowledge that there is somewhere, in some God-forsaken corner of the city, a foreign population, and that is all. Still others take a sentimental view of the matter; they have somewhat the feeling that existed in the bosom of an Irishwoman, a neighbor of mine. On Saturday night,--she was always affectionate on that special night,--she would wipe her eyes and say, “Thim poor Eyetalians.” This kind of person means well, but generally has zeal without knowledge.

A lady of refinement, born in a leading city of Italy, married to an Italian Protestant minister who is now at the head of an important religious movement in Italy, one day received the following letter:--

“_Dear Madam_:

“We are going to have a bazaar for the benefit of Italians. Please
come to help us, _dressed in the national costume that you used to
wear in Italy_.”

A son of a leading lawyer of Naples came to this country and was soon holding a fine position and making a good living. He met at church an American lady, who told him that she would be very glad to see him the next day at her house. At the appointed hour our young gentleman went there and handed his card to the servant. “Oh, yes,” she said, “the lady gave me something for you,” and she thrust into his hand a dilapidated suitcase and a note. The note read:--

“_Dear Sir_:

“I have been called away suddenly, but my maid will give you the
article which I intended to present to you in asking you to call. As
I no longer have use for this suitcase, perhaps it would serve you on
your next trip to Italy.

“Trusting to see you at church next Sunday,

“Sincerely yours,
---- ----.”

On another occasion an Italian minister was sent to a new field. A few days after he had settled down he had a telephone call from the wife of a minister of the town, who invited him to call at her house. At the appointed hour he went and was met by the servant, who gave him a newspaper bundle. The young man protested, saying that he had come to call in response to an invitation. The servant went upstairs, but came back, saying there was no mistake, that the lady wished that given to him. On reaching home he found that the contents consisted of cast-off clothing for his children. He bought a handsome edition of an Italian book for children, translated into English, and sent it with his regards to the patronizing lady.

TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP

There should be, in the large foreign colonies, organized lectures, clubs, stereopticon lectures, distribution of information, both in Italian and in English, to explain and to instruct in regard to American history, laws, institutions, and ideals. There should be free courses on a university extension plan for Italian professional men, with a view to preparing them to expound to their people in the right way the principles and standards of American life. A regular and carefully carried out campaign should be started in the Italian newspapers, with well-written articles by leading men on the subject of American life; and a careful censorship of Italian newspapers should be established to challenge every article that is unduly depreciatory of America.

Churches should be centres where American volunteers of the best kind can in deed and word represent their country to the foreigner. Churches furnish a good means to bring about Americanization. Italians are apt to move from place to place, and those who become attached to Evangelical churches, besides the good which they eventually get in their own churches, are also brought into contact with American congregations, who by their example initiate them into the ways of American life.

A campaign to enlighten the immigrant as to his duties towards his new country should be started on a somewhat different basis from those already tried. The immigrant is often made to feel how great the material advantage is for him in becoming an American citizen, and thus is trained to enter into American public and political life in a mercenary spirit. When I applied for citizenship papers, I received this letter from the Bureau of Naturalization, Washington, D.C.:--

“_Dear Sir_:

“You have just filed your petition for naturalization to become a
citizen of the United States, and because of this the United States
Bureau of Naturalization is sending this letter to you, as it desires
to show you how you can become an American citizen. It also wants to
help you to get a better position that pays you more money for your
work. In order to help you better yourself it has sent your name to
the public schools in your city, and the superintendent of those
schools has promised to teach you the things which you should know
to help you to get a better position. If you will go to the public
school building nearest where you live the teacher will tell you what
nights you can go to school and the best school for you to go to.
You will not be put in a class with boys and girls, but with grown
people. It will not cost you anything for the teaching which you will
receive in the school, and it will help you get a better job and also
make you able to pass the examination in court when you come to get
your citizen’s papers.

“You should call at the schoolhouse as soon as you receive this
letter so that you may start to learn and be able to get a better job
as soon as possible.

“Very truly yours,
N. N.”

As you see, four times there occurs in this letter the exhortation to become a citizen and to learn the English language in order to get “a better job.” The letter contains not a single appeal to higher motives nor a reference to the duties and responsibilities of American citizenship, yet it is sent to every foreigner who applies for citizenship. I think a letter of this kind is demoralizing. I wonder whether America is better off for exhorting foreigners to become citizens from such motives, or whether it would not be more desirable to instruct immigrants carefully on the altruistic side as to the duty of sharing the responsibilities of American life.

It may be worth mentioning that thirty years of residence in the city of Rome is required of any man, even of Italian birth, in order to become a Roman citizen.

Human nature, fortunately, is always longing for an appeal to its best side. I accompanied a friend when the American citizenship was granted to him. The judge, a man with a fine, clean-cut face, turned toward the candidates--there were about a hundred in the room--and told the story of the Pilgrim Fathers who, although starved and in great distress, refused the opportunity of going back to England, where religious and political freedom was denied them. The words were to me an inspiration, and in glancing around I saw the faces of those present light up and show signs of emotion. Big Irishmen, heavy-faced Slavs, small, dried-up Jews, dark Italians, small-headed Greeks, I could see in the eyes of them all the light of men who were seeing a vision. The appeal to the best there is in man should be the leading thought in educating immigrants to a desire for American citizenship.

OTTO HERMANN KAHN

Otto H. Kahn was born at Mannheim, Germany, February 21, 1867. His
father had emigrated to the United States in 1848, where he became a
naturalized citizen, returning to Germany ten years later. The son
was educated in Germany and served one year in the German army. He
then learned banking, and for five years was with the London branch
of the Deutsche Bank. In 1893 he came to the United States, where he
became connected with the banking house of Speyer & Co., and later
with the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

During the Great War Mr. Kahn delivered several patriotic speeches
which were collected under the title, “Right Above Race.”

The following excerpt is part of an address given at Carnegie
Institute, Pittsburgh, April 24, 1919.

CAPITAL AND LABOR--A FAIR DEAL

We have often heard it said recently--it has become rather the fashion to say it--that the rulership of the world will henceforth belong to labor. I yield to no one in my respect and sympathy for labor, or in my cordial and sincere support of its just claims. The structure of our institutions cannot stand unless the masses of workmen, farmers, indeed all large strata of society, feel that under and by these institutions they are being given a square deal within the limits, not of Utopia, but of what is sane, right and practicable.

But the rulership of the world will and ought to belong to no one class. It will and ought to belong neither to labor nor to capital, nor to any other class. It will, of right and in fact, belong to those of all classes who acquire title to it by talent, hard work, self-discipline, character and service.

He is no genuine friend or sound counselor of the people nor a true patriot who recklessly, calculatingly or ignorantly raises or encourages expectations which cannot or which ought not to be fulfilled.

We must deal with all these things with common sense, mutual trust, with respect for all, and with the aim of guiding our conduct by the standard of liberty, justice and human sympathy. But we must rightly understand liberty. We must resolutely oppose those who in their impatient grasping for unattainable perfection would make of liberty a raging and destructive torrent instead of a majestic and fertilizing stream.

Liberty is not fool-proof. For its beneficent working it demands self-restraint, a sane and clear recognition of the reality of things, of the practicable and attainable, and a realization of the fact that there are laws of nature and of economies which are immutable and beyond our power to change.

Nothing in history is more pathetic than the record of the instances when one or the other of the peoples of the world rejoicingly followed a new lead which it was promised and fondly believed would bring it to freedom and happiness, and then suddenly found itself, instead, on the old and only too well-trodden lane which goes through suffering and turmoil to disillusionment and reaction.

I suppose most of us when we were twenty knew of a short cut to the millennium, and were impatient, resentful and rather contemptuous of those whose fossilized prejudices or selfishness, as we regarded them, prevented that short cut from becoming the high road of humanity.

Now that we are older, though we know that our eyes will not behold the millennium, we should still like the nearest possible approach to it; but we have learned that no short cut leads there, and that anybody who claims to have found one is either an impostor or self-deceived.

Among those wandering signposts to Utopia we find and recognize certain recurrent types:--

There are those who, in the fervor of their world-improving mission, discover and proclaim certain cure-alls for the ills of humanity, which they fondly and honestly believe to be new and unfailing remedies, but which, as a matter of fact, are hoary with age, having been tried on this old globe of ours at one time or another, in one of its parts or another, long ago,--tried and found wanting and discarded after sad disillusionment.

There are the spokesmen of sophomorism rampant, strutting about in the cloak of superior knowledge, mischievously and noisily, to the disturbance of quiet and orderly mental processes and sane progress.

There are the sentimental, unseasoned, intolerant and cocksure “advanced thinkers,” claiming leave to set the world by the ears, and with their strident and ceaseless voices to drown the views of those who are too busy to indulge in much talking.

There are the self-seeking demagogues and various related types, and finally there are the preachers and devotees of liberty run amuck, who in fanatical obsession would place a visionary and narrow class interest and a sloppy internationalism above patriotism, and with whom class hatred and envy have become a ruling passion. They are perniciously, ceaselessly and vociferously active, though constituting but a small minority of the people, and though every election and other test has proved, fortunately, that they are not representative of labor, either organized or unorganized.

Among these agitators and disturbers who dare clamorously to assail the majestic and beneficent structure of American traditions, doctrines and institutions there are some, far too many, indeed--I say it with deep regret, being myself of foreign birth--who are of foreign parentage or descent. With many hundreds of thousands they or their parents came to our free shores from lands of oppression and persecution. The great republic generously gave them asylum and opened wide to them the portals of her freedom and her opportunities.

The great bulk of these newcomers have become loyal and enthusiastic Americans. Most of them have proved themselves useful and valuable elements in our many-rooted population. Some of them have accomplished eminent achievements in science, industry and the arts. Certain of the qualities and talents which they contribute to the common stock are of great worth and promise.

When the great test of the war came, the overwhelming majority of them rang wholly and finely true. The casualty lists are eloquent testimony to the patriotic devotion of “the children of the crucible,” doubly eloquent because many of them fought against their own kith and kin.

But some there are who have been blinded by the glare of liberty as a man is blinded who, after long confinement in darkness, comes suddenly into the strong sunlight. Blinded, they dare to aspire to force their guidance upon Americans who for generations have walked in the light of liberty.

They have become drunk with the strong wine of freedom, these men who until they landed on America’s coasts had tasted little but the bitter water of tyranny. Drunk, they presume to impose their reeling gait upon Americans to whom freedom has been a pure and refreshing fountain for a century and a half.

Brooding in the gloom of age-long oppression, they have evolved a fantastic and distorted image of free government. In fatuous effrontery they seek to graft the growth of their stunted vision upon the splendid and ancient tree of American institutions.

Admitted in generous trust to the hospitality of America, they grossly violate not only the dictates of common gratitude, but of those elementary rules of respect and consideration which immemorial custom imposes upon the newcomer or guest. They seek, indeed, to uproot the foundations of the very house which gave them shelter.

We will not have it so, we who are Americans by birth or by adoption. We reject these impudent pretentions. By all means, let us move forward and upward, but let us proceed by the chart of reason, experience and tested American principles and doctrines, and let us not entrust our ship to demagogues, visionaries or shallow sentimentalists who most assuredly would steer it on the rocks.

When you once leave the level road of Americanism to set foot upon the incline of Socialism, it is no longer in your power to determine where you will stop. It is an axiom only too well attested by the experience of the past, that the principal elements of the established order of civilization (of which the institution of private property is one) are closely interrelated. If you tolerate grave infringement upon any of these elements, all history shows that you will have laid open to assault the foundations of personal liberty, of orderly processes of government, of justice and tolerance, as well as the institution of marriage, the sanctity of the home, and the principles and practices of religion.

The strident voices of the fomenters of unrest do not cause me any serious apprehension, but we must not sit silently by, we must not look on inactively. Where there are grievances to redress, where there are wrongs existing, we must all aid in trying to right them to the best of our conscience and ability.

To the extent that social and economic institutions, however deep and ancient their roots, may be found to stand in the way of the highest achievable level of social justice and the widest attainable extension of opportunity, welfare and contentment, they will have to submit to change. And the less obstructive and stubborn, the more broad-minded, co-operative, sympathetic and disinterested those who pre-eminently prospered under the old conditions will prove themselves in meeting the spirit of the new day and the reforms which it may justly call for, the better it will be both for them and for the community at large.

But to the false teaching and the various pernicious “isms” with which un-Americans, fifty per cent. Americans or anti-Americans are flooding the country, we must give battle through an organized, persistent, patient, nationwide campaign of education, of information, of sane and sound doctrine. The masses of the American people want what is right and fair, but they “want to be shown.” They will not simply take our word for it that because a thing is so and has always been so, therefore it should remain so. They do not mean to stand still. They want progress. They have no use for the standpatter and reactionary.

Even before the war a great stirring and ferment was going on in the land. The people were groping, seeking for a new and better condition of things. The war has intensified that movement. It has torn great fissures in the ancient structure of our civilization. To restore it will require the co-operation of all patriotic men of sane and temperate views, whatever may be their occupation or calling or political affiliations.

It cannot be restored just as it was before. The building must be rendered more habitable and attractive to those whose claim for adequate houseroom cannot be left unheeded, either justly or safely. Some changes, essential changes, must be made. I have no fear of the outcome and of the readjustment which must come. I have no fear of the forces of freedom unless they be ignored, repressed or falsely or selfishly led.

Changes the American people will make as their needs become apparent, improvements they welcome, the greatest attainable well-being for all those under our national roof-tree is their aim. They will strive to realize what formerly were considered unattainable ideals. But they will do all that in the American way of sane and orderly progress--and in no other.

Whatever betide in European countries, this nation will not be torn from its ancient moorings. Against foes within, no less than against enemies without, the American people will ever know how to preserve and protect the splendid structure of light and order, which is the treasured inheritance of all those who rightfully bear the name Americans, whatever their race and origin.

MARCUS ELI RAVAGE

The story of the Rumanian immigrant, Marcus E. Ravage, was published
in 1917 under the title, “An American in the Making.” The most
significant steps in his transformation from alien to American seem
to have been his experiences as a sweat-shop worker and as a student
at the University of Missouri. It has sometimes been thought that the
immigrant who wishes to find the real America should go West. At any
rate Ravage is not the only one who has felt the stimulus of the free
and democratic spirit among the people of the Great Plains. We have
heard much in times past of an exchange of professors between the
United States and Europe. One wonders whether a more liberal exchange
both of professors and students between our larger and smaller, our
Eastern and Western and Northern and Southern, and our metropolitan
and our rural institutions of higher learning might not be beneficial
to the intellectual life of the colleges and universities and also,
by helping to eradicate provincialism and sectionalism, to greater
and more abiding national unity.

THE NEW IMMIGRATION

Oh, if I could show you America as we of the oppressed peoples see it! If I could bring home to you even the smallest fraction of this sacrifice and this upheaval, the dreaming and the strife, the agony and the heartache, the endless disappointments, the yearning and the despair,--all of which must be ours before we can make a home for our battered spirits in this land of yours. Perhaps if we be young we dream of riches and adventure, and if we be grown men we may merely seek a haven for our outraged human souls and a safe retreat for our hungry wives and children. Yet however aggrieved we may feel toward our native home, we cannot but regard our leaving it as a violent severing of the ties of our life, and look beyond toward our new home as a sort of glorified exile. So, whether we be young or old, something of ourselves we always leave behind in our hapless, cherished birthplaces. And the heaviest share of our burden inevitably falls on the loved ones that remain when we are gone. We make no illusions for ourselves. Though we may expect wealth, we have no thought of returning. It is farewell forever. We are not setting out on a trip; we are emigrating. Yes, we are emigrating, and there is our experience, our ordeal, in a nutshell. It is the one-way passport for us every time. For we have glimpsed a vision of America, and we start out resolved that, whatever the cost, we shall make her our own. In our heavy-laden hearts we are already Americans. In our own dumb way we have grasped her message to us.

Yes, we immigrants have a real claim on America. Every one of us who did not grow faint-hearted at the start of the battle, and has stuck it out, has earned a share in America by the ancient right of conquest. We have had to subdue this new home of ours to make it habitable, and in conquering it we have conquered ourselves. We are not what we were when you saw us landing from the Ellis Island ferry. Our own kinsfolk do not know us when they come over. We sometimes hardly know ourselves.

WHAT COLLEGE LIFE IN THE WEST DID FOR AN IMMIGRANT

ACQUIRING A SENSE OF HUMOR

On the whole, then, it looked as if I might yet work out my salvation if only those barbarians would leave me to myself. But it was not in them to do that. They seemed determined on disturbing my peace of mind. They were devoting, I honestly believe, all their spare thoughts and all their inventive genius to thinking up ways of making me uncomfortable. One young gentleman, still reminiscent of my ignorance of rural things, made up a tale of how I went to get a job on a farm, and proceeded to relate it at the table. “The farmer gave Max a pail and a stool and sent him out to milk the cow. About an hour later, when the old boy failed to show up with the stuff, Reuben went out to see what was the trouble. He found his new assistant in a fierce pickle. His clothes were torn and his hands and face were bleeding horribly. ‘What in heck is the matter?’ asked the farmer. ‘Oh, curse the old cow!’ said Max, ‘I can’t make her sit on that stool.’” A burst of merriment greeted the climactic ending, although the yarn was a trifle musty; and the most painful part of it was that I must laugh at the silly thing myself.

It was not at all true, as one of my numerous room-mates tried to intimate, that I shunned baths. I was merely conservative in the matter. One day, however, he had the indelicacy to ask me the somewhat personal question whether I ever took a bath; and I told him rather sullenly, that I did once in a while. Some time later I overheard him repeat the dialogue to the other men in the house and provoking shouts of laughter. It puzzled me to see where the joke was, until I learned that these fellows were taking a shower-bath at the gymnasium every day. It seemed to me that that was running a good thing into the ground. Again, I noticed that my room-mates were making a great show of their toothbrushes. They used them after every meal and before retiring--as the advertisements say--and always with an unnecessary amount of splash and clatter. At home I had been taught to keep my mouth and teeth clean without all this fuss. Nevertheless, I thought that I would get a brush and join in the drill. After that the other brushes became noticeably quiet.

And then, of course, there was the institution of the practical joke. On April 1st there was soap in the pie. If you got in late to a meal, it was wise to brush your chair and “pick your bites,” if any bites were left. If not, there was no telling what you might swallow or sit on. More than once I tasted salt in my water and pepper in my biscuits. I seemed to have been marked from the first as a fit subject for these pranks.

On Hallowe’en a squad of cadets commanded by a corporal entered my room and ordered me to get into my uniform, shoulder my gun, and proceed to the gymnasium, which, according to the order read, the commandant assigned me to guard against stragglers. I guarded through a whole uneventful night. Toward morning the captain of the football team, who had a room in the gymnasium, returned from a party. I ordered him to halt and give the password. He smiled and tried to enter. I made a lunge for him, and would have run my bayonet through him if he had not begun to laugh. “Go on home, you poor boy,” he said. “They pull that stunt off every year. Poor joke, I think.” The next day my table-mates tried to jolly me about it. They said I would be court-martialed as a deserter from duty. I got angry, and that made them all the more hilarious. Then a great, strapping fellow named Harvey spoke up. “Be still, you galoots,” he said to them; and then to me, “For gosh sake, fellow, be human!” I tried a long time to figure out what he meant by “human,” and for the rest of my college career I strove to follow his advice. It was the first real hint I had got on what America, through her representatives in Missouri, was expecting of me. Harvey became my first American friend.

THE ROMANCE OF READJUSTMENT

So to New York I went, and lived through the last and the bitterest episode in the romance of readjustment. During that whole strenuous year, while I was fighting my battle for America, I had never for a moment stopped to figure the price it was costing me. I had not dreamed that my mere going to Missouri had opened up a gulf between me and the world I had come from, and that every step I was taking toward my ultimate goal was a stride away from everything that had once been mine, that had once been myself. Now, no sooner had I alighted from the train than it came upon me with a pang that that one year out there had loosened ties that I had imagined were eternal.

There was Paul faithfully at the ferry, and as I came off he rushed up to me and threw his arms around me and kissed me affectionately. Did I kiss him back? I am afraid not. He took the grip out of my hand and carried it to the Brooklyn Bridge. Then we boarded a car. I asked him where we were going, and he said, mysteriously, “To Harry’s.” A surprise was awaiting me, apparently. As we entered the little alley of a store in the Italian quarter, I looked about me and saw no one. But suddenly there was a burst of laughter from a dozen voices, a door or two opened violently, and my whole family was upon me,--brothers, a new sister-in-law, cousins of various degrees, some old people, a few children. They rushed me into the apartment behind the store, pelting me with endearments and with questions. The table was set as for a Purim feast. There was an odor of pot-roasted chicken, and my eye caught a glimpse of chopped eggplant. As the meal progressed, my heart was touched by their loving thoughtfulness. Nothing had been omitted,--not even the red wine and the Turkish peas and rice. Harry and every one else kept on urging me to eat. “It’s a long time since you have had a real meal,” said my sister-in-law. How true it was! But I felt constrained, and ate very little. Here were the people and the things I had so longed to be with; but I caught myself regarding them with the eyes of a Western American. Suddenly--at one glance, as it were--I grasped the answer to the problem that had puzzled me so long; for here in the persons of those dear to me I was seeing myself as those others had seen me.

I went about revisiting old scenes, and found that everything had changed in my brief absence. My friends were not the same; the East Side was not the same. They never would be the same. What had come over them? My kinsfolk and my old companions looked me over and declared that it was I who had become transformed. I had become soberer. I carried myself differently. There was an unfamiliar reserve, something mingled of coldness and melancholy, in my eye. My very speech had a new intonation. It was more incisive, but, less fluent, less cordial, they thought. Perhaps so. At any rate, while my people were still dear to me, and always would be dear to me, the atmosphere about them repelled me. If it _was_ I who had changed, then, as I took in the little world I had emerged from, I could not help telling myself that the change was a salutary one.

While calling at the old basement bookshop on East Broadway I suddenly heard a horrible wailing and lamenting on the street. A funeral procession was hurrying by, followed by several women in an open carriage. Their hair was flying, their faces were red with weeping, their bodies were swaying grotesquely to the rhythm of their violent cries. The oldest in the group continued mechanically to address the body in the hearse: “Husband dear, upon whom have you left us? Upon whom, husband dear?” A young girl facing her in the vehicle looked about in a terrified manner, seized every now and then the hand of her afflicted mother, and tried to quiet her. The frightful scene, with its tragic display, its abysmal ludicrousness, its barbarous noise, revolted me. I had seen the like of it before, but that was in another life. I had once been part of such a performance myself, and the grief of it still lingered somewhere in my motley soul. But now I could only think of the affecting simplicity, the quiet, unobtrusive solemnity of a burial I had witnessed the previous spring in the West.

The afternoon following my arrival I flew uptown to see Esther. She waved to me and smiled as I approached--she had been waiting on the “stoop.” As she shook my hand in her somewhat masculine fashion, she took me in with a glance, and the first thing she said was: “What a genteel person you have become! You have changed astonishingly.” “Do you think so?” I asked her. “I am afraid I haven’t. At least they do not think so in Missouri.” Then she told me that she had got only ten points, but that she was expecting three more in the fall. She was almost resigned to wait another year before entering college. That would enable her to make her total requirements, save up a little more money, and get her breath. “A woman is not a man, you know,” she added. “I am beginning to feel the effects of it all. I am really exhausted. Geometry has nearly finished me. And mother has added her share. She is no longer young, and this winter she was ill. I have worried and I have had to send money. But let us not talk about my troubles. You are full of things to tell me, I know.”

Yes, I had lots I wanted to say, but I did not know where to begin; and the one thing that was uppermost in my mind I was afraid to utter lest she should misunderstand and feel injured and reproach me. I did not want her to reproach me on first meeting. I wanted to give myself time as well as her. And so we fell into one of those customary long silences, and for a while I felt at home again, and reflected that perhaps I had been hasty in letting the first poignant reactions mislead me. Toward evening Esther remarked that it was fortunate I had got to town the day before. If I had no other plans, she would take me to a meeting at Clinton Hall where Michailoff was to speak on “The Coming Storm in America.” It would be exciting, she said, and enlightening. Michailoff had just come out of prison. He was full of new impressions of America and “the system” generally, and one could rely on him to tear things open.

Of course we went, and the assemblage was noisy and quarrelsome and intolerant, and the hall was stuffy and smelly, and the speaker was honest and fiery and ill-informed. He thundered passionately, and as if he were detailing a personal grievance against American individualism and the benighted Americans who allowed a medieval religion and an oppressive capitalistic system to mulct and exploit them, and referred to a recent article in the _Zukunft_ where the writer had weakly admitted the need of being fair even to Christianity, and insisted that to be fair to an enemy of humanity was to be a traitor to humanity. I listened to it all with an alien ear. Soon I caught myself defending the enemy out there. What did these folk know of Americans, anyhow? Michailoff was, after all, to radicalism what Higgins and Moore were to Christianity. His idea of being liberal was to tolerate anarchism if you were a socialist and communism if you were an individualist. And, as we left the hall, I told Esther what I had hesitated to tell her earlier in the evening.

“Save yourself, my dear friend. Run as fast as you can. You will find a bigger and freer world than this. Promise me that you will follow me to the West this fall. You will thank me for it. Those big, genuine people out in Missouri are the salt of the earth. Whatever they may think about the problem of universal brotherhood, they have already solved it for their next-door neighbors. There is no need of the social revolution in Missouri; they have a generous slice of the kingdom of heaven.”

Maybe I was exaggerating, but that was how I felt. From this distance and from these surroundings Missouri and the new world she meant to me was enchanting and heroic. The loneliness I had endured, the snubbing, the ridicule, the inner struggles--all the dreariness and the sadness of my life in exile--had faded out of the picture, and what remained was only an idealized vision of the clean manhood, the large human dignity, the wholesome, bracing atmosphere of it, which contrasted so strikingly with the things around me.

No, there was no sense in deceiving myself, the East Side had somehow ceased to be my world. I had thought a few days ago that I was going home. I had yelled to Harvey from the train, as it was pulling out of the station at Columbia, “I am going home, old man!” But I had merely come to another strange land. In the fall I would return to that other exile. I was, indeed, a man without a country.

During that entire summer, while I opened gates on an Elevated train in Brooklyn, I tussled with my problem. It was quite apparent to me from the first what its solution must be. I knew that now there was no going back for me; that my only hope lay in continuing in the direction I had taken, however painful it may be to my loved ones and to myself. But for a long time I could not admit it to myself. A host of voices and sights and memories had awakened within me that clutched me to my people and to my past.

As long as I remained in New York I kept up the tragic farce of making Sunday calls on brother Harry and pretending that all was as before, that America and education had changed nothing, that I was still one of them. I had taken a room in a remote quarter of Brooklyn, where there were few immigrants, under the pretense that it was nearer to the railway barns. But I was deceiving no one but myself. Most of my relatives, who had received me so heartily when I arrived, seemed to be avoiding Harry’s house on Sundays, and on those rare occasions when I ran into one of them he seemed frigid and ill at ease. Once Paul said to me: “You are very funny. It looks as if you were ashamed of the family. You aren’t really, are you? You know they said you would be when you went away. There is a lot of foolish talk about it. Everybody speaks of Harry and me as the doctor’s brothers. Can’t you warm up?”

I poured out my heart in a letter to Harvey. If a year ago I had been told that I would be laying my sorrows and my disappointments in my own kindred before any one out there, I would have laughed at the idea. But that barbarian in Missouri was the only human being, strangely enough, in whom I could now confide with any hope of being understood. I tried to convey to him some idea of the agonizing moral experience I was going through. I told him that I was aching to get back to Columbia (how apt the name was!), to take up again where I had left off the process of my transformation, and to get through with it as soon as might be.

And in the fall I went back--this time a week _before_ college opened--and was met by Harvey at the station, just as those rural-looking boys had been met by their friends the year before. When I reached the campus, I was surprised to see how many people knew me. Scores of them came up and slapped me on the back and shook hands in their hearty, boisterous fashion, and hoped that I had had a jolly summer. I was asked to join boarding-clubs, to become a member in debating societies, to come and see this fellow or that in his room. It took me off my feet, this sudden geniality of my fellows toward me. I had not been aware how, throughout the previous year, the barriers between us had been gradually and steadily breaking down. It came upon me all at once. I felt my heart going out to my new friends. I had become one of them. I was not a man without a country. I was an American.

ELIZABETH G. STERN

The pathos of the readjustment of the foreign-born to the new life in
America has nowhere been more touchingly presented than in the story,
“My Mother and I,” by Mrs. E. G. Stern, who was born in Russian
Poland.

Anyone who has gone on a long journey to make his home far from
friends and relatives knows something of the pain of separating from
loved ones; but the pain of such a separation cannot compare with
the travail of taking a far spiritual journey. That one may still
have deep reverence for the past, though breaking away from it, is
the conviction of the author, who says: “And I shall always remember
that, though my life is now part of my land’s, yet, if I am truly
part of America, it was mother, she who does not understand America,
who made me so. I wonder if, as the American mother I strive to be, I
can find a finer example than my own mother!”

THE PATHOS OF READJUSTMENT

AUTHOR’S PURPOSE IN WRITING

The mere writing of this account is a chain, slight, but never to be broken; one that will always bind me to that from which I had thought myself forever cut off. For I am writing not only of myself. In myself I see one hundred thousand young men and women with dark eyes aflame with enthusiasm, or blue eyes alight with hope. In myself, as I write this record, I see the young girl whose father plucked oranges in Italian gardens, the maiden whose mother worked on still mornings in the wide fields of Poland, the young man whose grandmother toiled in the peat bogs of Ireland. I am writing this for myself and for those who, like me, are America’s foster children, to remind us of them, through whose pioneer courage the bright gates of this beautiful land of freedom were opened to us, and upon whose tumuli of gray and weary years of struggle we, their children, rose to our opportunities. I am writing to those sons and daughters of immigrant fathers and mothers who are now in America, and to those who will come after this devastating war to America, and to those who will receive them.

MARRIAGE AND AFTER

My friends are now my husband’s friends. My home is that kind of a home in which he has always lived. With my marriage I entered into a new avenue. We have traveled. We have worked at tasks we believed in and loved. We have our little son. I have not written much to mother about my life. My letters have been--just letters. Her own letters have been growing briefer these last years. She never came to see me in my home.

It was our little son who was the real cause of her coming finally. I thought of his birth as the tearing down of that barrier that had come between us. Mother was intoxicated with the delight of her first grandchild, the first child of her first child. “Now we understand each other better, now that we both are mothers, my daughter,” she wrote to me, not knowing how much more than she meant to say her letters told. I, too, felt that in my own motherhood I saw the explanation now for mother’s unquestioning, unceasing striving and toiling and hoping and planning and achieving for her children. “Now I can find the joy of all mothers again. I can find my lost young motherhood in your child,” she wrote. “I am coming to my grandson.”