Chapter IX: Part 9

At Chicago also I received a letter from Andray Dubovoy, a young Russian farmer, whose acquaintance I made by chance in the Russian quarter of New York. He was rich enough to come travelling from North Dakota to New York to see the sights of America, a wonderfully keen and happy Russian, full of ideas about the future and stories of the settlement where he lived. He gave me a most interesting account of the Russian pioneers in North Dakota. In the towns where he lived every one spoke Russian, and few spoke English. If you went into a shop and asked for something in English the shopkeeper would shrug her shoulders and send for a little child to interpret. The children went to school and knew English, but the old folks could not master it, and had long given up attempts to learn the language. The town was called Kief, and was named after the province of Russia from which they originally came.

He told me the history of two villages in Kiefsky Government in Russia. They had heard of America, but thought it was a place in a fairy-tale--not a real place at all. They were even incredulous when the Jews began to depart for America in numbers. But they were destined to understand.

The villagers were people who asked themselves serious questions and searched their hearts. They ceased going to monasteries and making pilgrimages and kissing relics, and instead gathered together and read the Gospel.

Many were arrested for going to illegal meetings. Those who were sent to prison or to Siberia went gladly, as on the Lord's business, to be missionaries to those who sat in darkness.

But there was so much persecution that a great number of the villagers thought of following the example of the Jews and emigrating to America. It was in 1894 that they resolved to go; but at that time a large party of Stundists, who had gone out to Virginia the year before, came back with tidings of bad life and poor wages, and damped the enthusiasm. Ten families, however, were tempted by what the Stundists said, and they took tickets to go to the very district of Virginia that the Stundists had abandoned.

On their way out they fell in with a party of German colonists going back, after a holiday, to North Dakota. Such tales they told that five of the families changed their minds and determined to throw in their lot with the Germans.

The five families received land free, homesteads, they were given credit to purchase horses and cattle and carts and agricultural implements, and they liked the new country and wrote glowingly to the others in Virginia and in the two villages of Kiefsky Government. As a result, twenty-five new families came at once, and in a few years there were 200 families installed.

Each man brought 20 to 30 dollars but no more, and each became indebted to companies for 1000 to 1500 dollars, a debt which they hoped to pay, but which hung on their necks like the instalments their ancestors had to pay to the Land Banks of Russia for the land they had been granted.

However, they ploughed and sowed and hoped for harvests, built log cabins and even American houses. They had hard times, and were on the verge of starvation--famine and death staring at them from the barren fields. They were forced to make an appeal through the newspapers of Eastern America, and as a result truck-loads of provisions were sent to them, and "clothes to last five years."

Succeeding years made up for their sufferings. There was a plentiful flax harvest; and though in 1909 hail destroyed the wheat and in 1910 and 1911 there was drought, the Russians bore up. And 1912 was a most fruitful year, some farmers garnering as many as 25,000 bushels of wheat.

Each year they were able to add to their stock, to build a little more, and to do various things. As a result of good harvests Andray Dubovoy himself was able to go a-travelling, and to meet me and tell me his story. He had himself come to America when a little child, and did not know of his native land except by repute. He had not, however, had the advantage of education in an American school as a child, and so was as yet more Russian than American; but he was unlike the Russian type, he was clean of limb, clear of eye and of skin, calm--almost a Quaker in faith and morals. No one drank spirits or smoked tobacco in Kief, North Dakota, he told me with pride. The Russians there were living in a new way.

"Are the people as religious now as they were in Russia?" I asked.

"Not quite," said he, "they feel they don't need religion so much in America. At first the struggle for life was so hard, we had little thought for religion. It was only as we gained a footing on the land that we began to think of our religion seriously, and we built a chapel. We have a chapel of our own now."

"I suppose when you were no longer persecuted you did not need to affirm your way of religion so emphatically," I hazarded.

Andray did not know.

"Have you any bosses in Kief?" I asked.

Andray smiled.

"Our sheriff is a cabman."

"You feel no tyranny at all now?"

He was glad to say they never had need of a policeman; there were no robberies, every one lived in mutual love and kindness. Only, of course, they were heavily in debt to the companies, and felt they were never solvent.

"Perhaps, when you have improved your land and made it really valuable you will be sold up by the companies and you will lose your property," said I.

He did not think that possible.

"And what is the cost of living with you?"

"Cheap," said my friend; "beef is 2½ cents a pound, eggs 10 cents the dozen, butter 12 cents the pound, potatoes 35 cents the bushel; but the things we import, such as boots, clothes, fruits, are very dear, much too dear for our pockets."

"Food is cheaper than in the country in Russia, then?"

"Meat and butter and milk are cheaper, but other things are more than twice as dear. Still we do not complain. It is a good life out there; our children are growing up stalwart, happy, earnest. God's own blessing is upon our enterprise."

"Are you ever going back to Russia with its persecutions, its sins, its crimes, its pilgrimages, the secret police, the hermits who live in forest huts, its moujiks and babas, who think that America is a place in a fairy-tale, at the other side of endless forests?"

The farmer smiled in a peculiar way. He would like to go to see it.

Was he quite sure he was going to be an American and not a Russian?

"We have Russian classes in the summer," said he. "We must never forget Russia, evil as she is."

* * * * * * *

It must not be forgotten that this little settlement of which I write here is only one of many in North Dakota. There are already thirty thousand Russians living in that state, and there are many people of other nationalities living in the same way--Swedes, Germans, Danes. The story of the young colonies is marvellously touching; when you read one of the excellent novels of to-day, such as Miss Cather's _O Pioneers_, which tells of the growth of a Swedish colony in the Middle West, you are obliged to admit that it is no wonder the Americans find their own such an exclusively interesting country.

* * * * * * *

I returned to New York by train, and on the way saw the Niagara Falls, one morning at dawn; the procession of white-headed rapids, the vapour and mist rising in volumes veiling the sun, darkening it. A sight of holiness and wonder that left me breathless. I was glad to be alone, and just close the picture into the heart, in silence!

Late one Saturday night I arrived in New York and stepped out of the Grand Central Station, pack on back, and searched for a hotel. The grand "Knickerbocker," with sky-sign the length of the Great Bear, was not for me. I wandered into a queer-looking little palace, all mirrors, deep carpets, white paint, and niggers. My room faced the street, and opposite me was a pleasure-resort, a cabaret, a dancehall, a pool-house, with three stories of billiard-rooms, through whose open windows I saw many white-sleeved billiard-players leaning over green tables.

The weather was so hot that all the windows in the city were wide open. I heard the throbbing of music and dancing, even in my dreams.

Some days later I booked my passage back to England. But I was in America till the last moment. The American who was so kind to me, and who was in herself a little America, "fed to me" daily the facts of American life, and the hope of all those who were working with her. We visited Patterson, where half a dozen "Jim Larkins" had been fighting for fighting's sake, and leading the well-paid silk-workers to strike for the sun and moon, and accept no compromise. We visited the President of the City College and saw the wonderful modern equipment of that institution. We called on J. Cotton Dana, the librarian of Newark. I was enabled to visit a maternity hospital, heavily endowed by Pierpont Morgan, and to see all the provision made for the happy birth of the emerging Americans. One vision remains in my memory of a dozen babies on a tray, each baby having its mother's name written on a piece of paper pinned to its swaddling-bands.

We visited five or six settlements, and invitations were given me to visit several thousand establishments in the United States, and miss nothing. I would have liked to go farther afield and have a thousand more conversations, but perhaps, since brevity is the soul of wit, I have done enough. As it is, I have only made a small selection of instances and adventures and thoughts from the immense amount of material which I carried back to England and to Russia. I think America has been brought to the touch-stone of my own intelligence, experience, and personality.

* * * * * * *

My friend took me to the charming play, _Peg-o'-my-Heart_.

"Isn't it delicious?"

"The thrilling thing is that the fifth act is not played out here, but on the _Campania_, and I have to play that part myself," said I.

We got out of the theatre at eleven. I saw her home. As midnight was striking I claimed my luggage at the cloak-room at Christopher Street Ferry. At 12.15 I entered the Cunard Dock and saw the great, washed-over, shadowy, twenty-year-old Atlantic Liner. Crowds of drunkards were gesticulating and waving flags--Stars and Stripes and Union Jacks--singing songs, embracing one another. Heavily laden dock-porters, carrying sacks, moved in procession along the gangways. Portly Chief Steward Macrady, with mutton-chop whiskers, weather-beaten face, and wordless lips, sat in his little kiosk and motioned to me to pass on when I showed my ticket. I got aboard.

I returned with the home-going tide of immigrants; with flocks of Irish who were going boisterously back to the Green Isle to spend small fortunes; with Russians returning to Russia because their time was up and they were due to serve in the army; with British rolling-stones, grumbling at all countries; with people going home because they were ill; with men and women returning to see aged fathers or mothers; with a whole American family going from Butte, Montana, to settle in Newcastle, England.

It was a placid six-day voyage; six days of merriment, relaxation, and happiness. The atmosphere was entirely a holiday one--not one of hope and anxiety and faith, as that of going out had been. Every one had money, almost every one was a person who had succeeded, who had tall tales to tell when he got home to his native village in his native hollow.

Thousands of opinions were expressed about America. I heard few of disillusion. Most people who go to America are disillusioned sooner or later, but they re-catch their dreams and illusions, and gild their memories when they set sail upon the Atlantic once more. They have become Americans, and have a stake in America, and are ready to back the New World against anything in the Old.

"Do you like the Yankees?"

"They're all right--on the level," answers an Irish boy.

"Do you like America? Would you like to live there and settle down there?" asks a friend of me, the wanderer.

A smile answers that question.

We stood, my friend and I, looking over the placid ocean as the moon just pierced the clouds and glimmered on the waters.

Evening splendours were upon the surface of the sea, the delicate light of the moon just showing the waves, most beautiful and alluring.

"It is like first acquaintance with one's beloved," said I; "like the first smile that life gives you, bidding you follow her and woo her. Later on, in the rich splendour, when the golden road is clear and certain and ours, we do not care for the quest. We look back to those first enchanting glances, those promising reconnaissances. The promise of love is more precious than love itself, for it promises more than itself; it promises the unearthly; it touches a note of a song that we heard once, and have been all our lives aching to remember and sing again."

America is too happy and certain and prosperous a place for some. It is a place where the soul falls into a happy sleep. The more America improves, the more will it prove a place of success, of material well-being, of physical health, and sound, eugenically established men and women. But to me, personally, success is a reproach; and failure, danger, calamity, incertitude is a glory. For this world is not a satisfying home, and there are those who confess themselves strangers and pilgrims upon the earth.

* * * * * * *

Back to Russia! From the most forward country to the most backward country in the world; from the place where "time is money" to where the trains run at eighteen miles an hour; from the land of Edison to the land of Tolstoy; from the religion of philanthropy to the religion of suffering--home once more.

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