Eleven hundred of us, perhaps twelve hundred, were booked steerage
from Liverpool to New York. We had been brought to the dock at noon,
away from our friends, though we heard the vessel was not to leave
till five. On the other side of a stone pier rose the huge
_Lusitania_ with her four funnels. Everyone on our tender moved
expectantly forward. There was an official cry: “Britishers first!”
The chosen of the Lord! But the horde of ignorant foreigners came
surging ahead. Miscellaneously we crowded up the gangway. Another
gangway sloped for us on to the _Lusitania_. Several British policemen
and stewards faced us to keep us in line. At so many guardian angels
we began to feel depressed.
Medical inspection. The instant we put foot on the deck of the
_Lusitania_, this was our first business.
“Have your Inspection Tickets ready.” Before we could inquire what was
going to happen, it was happening. We were passed in a slow trickle
between two officials. “Take off your hat.” “Take off your glasses.” I
stood blinking while the doctor deftly plucked up my eyelids. He waved
me ahead, my ungranulated eyelids made harsh by the handling. Hundreds
were before us on the deck, and those from behind began to press on
our heels with the inevitable “myself first” impulse of human beings.
We were a medley of races, Swedes, Greek, English and Welsh, Irish,
Russian Jews, Poles, mute Lithuanian peasants, and men from a Northern
race who turned out to be Finns. It was almost as cosmopolitan as the
Third Avenue Elevated. We advanced with repeated hesitations and
conscious slowness. A woman turned white in the crush and had to be
helped to a seat near an open porthole. In front of me, a 12-year-old
boy, dead beat, leaned against his big brother—and under his arm, if
you please, wearily hugged a camp stool. “Why doesn’t he sit on the
stool?” The mother, a thin, strained, admirable creature, whose face
showed the fine wrinkles of a life too intent, allowed me to open the
stool for him. From his low seat he rewarded me more than once with a
look of confidence and smiling good-nature. They had travelled by rail
all night, the mother volunteered, from a town in Wales. They were on
their way at last to join the father in California. “I have two more
in California”—the mother pointed to her children, who cheerfully
smiled.
Women and children. During that weary wait I observed them here and
there, standing submissively for three-quarters of an hour. At length,
after the long halt, the tension was relieved, and we moved again,
this time past another doctor. “Take off your hat.” The doctor had
apparently to inspect the unnaturalized polls on which that morning we
had paid a four dollar tax. He was a man of great perception, the
doctor, and the actual examination was an affair of split seconds. On
completing the circuit of the deck our yellow Inspection Tickets
(given to us at the office in the morning when we had paid our $37.50
for the passage) received their first stamp. The Cunard Line accepted
us as healthy live stock.
My Inspection Ticket said Room H 22, and a steward took me there.
There were seven other occupants. Most of them were taking their ease
in their berths and smoking. They were all English or American. I
responded to their cheery hello, but their carbonic gas was strong,
and the portholes proved to be immovable. I sat down on a lower berth,
bumped my head against the top one, and had hardly room for my knees
in the aisle. My carbonic gas did not improve the air. I felt
discouraged, and went out. Nearby I saw a most capacious 4-berth room,
and there was a vacancy in it. Henri Bergson says that “life proceeds
by insinuation.” I felt less gloomy. I found the bedroom steward and
asked him whether I could be changed. He was amicable but not quite
concrete, a bit of a Jesuit. About this time word flashed by that we
were back at the Landing Stage for the cabin passengers: deferring the
affairs of moment, I went on deck.
We all pushed aft for a good view, only to find a rope stretched
across the deck, and a grim sailor guarding it. “That’s all the scope
you get.” We flattened back against one another. And they let down a
beautiful canopied gangway for the upper classes.
Braided officers stood in a row to receive, on a nice clear deck. All
the stewards were lined up in fresh white coats. Against the sky line
we studied the new angles of hat plumes. On they stepped with leisured
gait, with an air of distinguished fatigue. “The daughters of Zion are
haughty and walk with stretched forth necks, walking and mincing as
they go.” Indifferently they handed their light burdens to the now
demure stewards. I looked around at my comrades back of the rope. A
child in arms next to me chortled as he bandaged his mother’s eyes.
She gently removed the bandage, only to be blinded again. Behind me, a
buxom Swede looked open-eyed at her feathered sisters abaft.
Everywhere the interest was intense and simple. I turned again to
envisage the daughters of Zion. As in another world they moved—a
world where policemen are unnecessary, where stewards are
spring-heeled, where officers stand in line, where eyelids are not
officially scrutinized nor polls inspected, where the gangway has a
canopy and weariness is consoled. I admired “the bravery of their
anklets, and the cauls and the crescents; the pendants, and the
bracelets and the mufflers.” Must it not be delightful, said I to
myself, to merit so much attention from everyone, and to be so
prettily arrayed? Must it not be pleasant to have eyelids so immune,
and to have a quite uninspected poll?
The last piece of first-class baggage rolled aboard. Giant hawsers
strained, and were released. It was departure. From my coign at a deck
porthole the Landing Stage came into focus. I confess I exclaimed. As
far as the eye could reach, on the water and street levels, the glance
of thousands on thousands was rivetted on the vessel as she cautiously
edged away. It was a beautiful afternoon, the sky innocently blue. All
indifferent to us in the background stood the massive city of
Liverpool, concentrated on affairs, but no less indifferent to the
city itself ranged this childlike, almost awestruck, army of
curiosity, silently intent on us as we receded into the river. From
our porthole (I was joined by a Syrian) we could not help a glow of
pride. My companion was not able to vent his feelings in English, but
he was quite moved. His was an Indian-like head—high cheekbones, thin
lips, hard, beady eyes. He dwelt on the vast crowd, ejaculating
“ah-ye-ye-ye,” and clucking his tongue. I smiled at his solid wonderment.
Then he craned out of the porthole to view the water far, far below. I
followed suit. He pointed down, and gave a significant, cheerfully
reckless laugh. I laughed, too. We were in for it, and no mistake.
The steamer’s first evening was spent, doing nothing, out in the
Mersey. The tide was in some way blameworthy. It seemed inefficient of
nature, but as we lay opposite Liverpool the night-lights came out,
definite and serene and friendly, and I took out my mental clutch.
Time came for supper. I reserved for the morning the mysteries of the
cuisine. I had earlier gone below to the pantry, after some talk with
a humane steward, and to my surprise I had been allowed to help myself
to a cup of tea.
The first evening was one of extraordinary activity. Still in their
best clothes, around our half of the entire deck poured streams and
streams of passengers. It was almost impossible to tread one’s way.
And in several places these streams turned themselves into dancing
whorls, where volunteers with a concertina had appeared. I happen to
like the concertina, and I enjoyed it during five entire days, though
not so much the concertina as the movement of life which it promoted.
There were never any deck sports, nor games, nor organized
distraction. But, except for one awful seasick period, there was
endless dancing and singing. On this first evening I stood in the
rings that framed the waltzers, and my blood raced with their
pleasure. The Swedes in particular took part much and well. They
occasionally ventured on those new forms, but only for dancing
reasons. When Swedes really want to hug each other, they do it openly
and for its own sake.
To increase the friendliness of the evening, everyone was willing to
talk a little. I chatted with a Russian, a Greek, an Englishwoman and
an Englishman. He was a young and unhappy Englishman, and in disgust
at the ignorant foreigner. I later learned that he made up the
difference and was allowed to go second class.
At 9 p.m., tired of repeated searches for my bedroom steward (he was
dishing out in the pantry most of the time), I went to the assistant
chief steward of the third class to see if I could be transferred to
the 4-berth room. He’d see, he said in a serious bass voice, he’d let
me know. At 9.30 p.m. he again told me he’d see. Whether he has yet
seen or not I have no means of discovering. At 10 p.m. I took the
berth, with the consent of the other men in the cabin. I gave my tip
to the bedroom steward, as I guessed he was the less Tammanyized. The
assistant chief steward was a strong character, free from numerical
superstition. He asked 13 cents for five penny stamps.
In my room the bedding proved simple—a coarse white bag of straw for
mattress, and one dark blue horse blanket for clothing. A small pouch
of straw served as pillow. No linen, of course, and no frills of any
kind. There was an iron spring frame. I found it ascetic but clean.
The single blanket was not enough. I used my rug, and my fellow
passengers used overcoats and rugs, too. The mattresses, I was told,
serve just one trip. They are dumped overboard as soon as the steamer
is out to sea on the return voyage. In my bed I was the only living
creature present.
Those who rose early had advantages. They had first use of the tin
basin in their own room, or of the bowls in the general washing room.
They had a bid for the solitary bath tub in male steerage. They were
up in time to be allowed to walk all the way aft, and look down the
wide lane of jade and white in the wake of the _Lusitania_. And they
were in time for the first sitting.
Those who did not rise early had to listen to the tramplings that
began long before sunrise. Despite this, I got up late. Fifty of us
waited over half an hour outside an iron grill at the head of the
dining room stairs. The dining room is quite inadequate, so there had
to be four sittings—first come, first served. When we reached below
we took seats where we could. There was an understanding, however, by
which Britishers were grouped together. This was made effectual by
stewards who stood where the ways parted, and thrust Jews and Poles
and mid-Europeans to one side, and Britishers and Scandinavians to the
other.
On the whole, the food during the trip was edible. I could not eat the
bacon or the beef. I did not try the eggs. The tea was vile and
usually not very hot. The coffee was vile. But the bread, served in
individual loaves, was most palatable. The Swedish bread was excellent.
The oatmeal was edible, even with the wretchedly thin condensed or
dried milk. We had herrings and at another time sausages, and both
were fair. The potatoes were always excellently boiled and good of
their kind, but the browned potatoes were invariably overcooked and
not fit to serve. The cold meats for supper could be eaten. The boiled
rice was insipid. The stewed prunes and stewed apricots were
palatable. I had very good baked beans and navy beans, good pea soup
and fair broth. I had no complaints to make of the food. I never
decided whether it was butter or margarine, but I ate it willingly. It
certainly had not that callously metallic taste that margarine used to
have.
The service was on bold, wholesale lines. Twenty sat at each table,
and there were two equipments of bread and butter, sugar, salt, pepper
and vinegar. A disconsolate plant decorated each table. One steward
took charge of each ten people. I sat at a different table practically
every time, and most of my companions were delightfully obliging and
unaggressive. Only those who so wished had to stand up and harpoon
their bread roll. There were a few tiresome people who damned the food
and failed to pass the salt. The stewards were elusive, or rather that
one-tenth part of a steward who was your share. I regretted on one
occasion to discover egg shells in my dessert, and the next day I was
pained to find a knob of beef in my stewed apples. My sympathetic
steward remarked: “Puts you a bit off, don’t it?” It do.
From about five in the morning till eleven at night these stewards are
working. Work is a good thing. It is strange that the stewards look
unhealthy and fatigued. It is due to the inherent inferiority of
stewards.
Queenstown was the distraction for several hours on the first day out.
The Cunard and White Star Lines have just discerned that the harbor is
unsafe for big boats. At what point of profit, I wondered, would
Queenstown harbor suddenly and miraculously become safe again?
As we left the coast of Ireland there came an unctuous swell upon the
sea. You would not think it could upset anyone, but when I ascended
after dinner I was horrified. Rows of passengers lay where they were
stricken, all too evidently ill, ghosts of their braver selves. The
stewards were in the dining room and could not come, and did not come,
for well over an hour. For well over an hour no effort at all was made
to clean the decks. I now understood this grave disadvantage of third
class, to which the company itself contributes. But there was much
kindness to the decimated, and much tolerance. Later I admired
immensely the work of the matrons. I seldom met three more splendid,
capable, sympathetic women. There were superior passengers who
despised the childishness with which simpler people gave in. I myself
laughed when I saw a girl lying with complete abandon plumb on top of
another girl. The grim sailor heard me and muttered: “Only an ignorant
person’d laugh at anyone was seasick.”
During this distressing hour a Russian came flying to the master at
arms. “The doctor! the doctor!” “You can’t have the doctor,” said the
man in blue, not unkindly. “We can’t help seasickness. It’s got to be
expected.” “The doctor! Not seaseek! dead!” He made a ghastly face.
“Oh, all right,” said the master-at-arms, and we went straight below.
Terrific pleading calls shook the cabin. “Sonya! Sonya!” The
master-at-arms walked right in, and emerged supporting a sack-like
girl, very white and inert. “You could cut the air with a knife,”
murmured the weary master-at-arms. He assisted her on deck, and she
was wooed to consciousness.
At this time, on the enclosed deck, there was much commotion. A
striking red-haired Jewess, clad in green, had fainted and was put
sitting on a bench. A venerable Jew appealed to her excitedly while an
earnest young soul at the other side cried for water. It made me
furious to see the limp woman propped up, but they were evidently
playing according to the rules of a different league. The water at
last came and much to my surprise the earnest soul put it to her own
lips. But not to drink it. In her the Chinese laundryman had an
efficient rival. She was the most active geyser I ever saw. After a
time there was a feeble motion of protest, to the regret of the
delighted spectators.
On the open deck during this weather the Jews monopolized one corner.
I counted thirty of them huddled inseparably together in their misery,
like snakes coiled in the cold. As they began to recover, a leg would
wiggle from under one blanket, and a head be thrust out from under
another. Later they sat up and drank their tea out of glasses,
nibbling the sugar. They soon littered the place with apple peels and
orange peels. After generations of inhibition they probably needed to
be told that they were permitted by a merciful dispensation to use the
sea as a waste basket.
As the sea fell slumberously still, life recovered its audacity. Again
the decks became clamorous, multitudinous. People thronged the
promenade, or swarmed on the benches that do duty for deck chairs.
They began smoking everywhere again, and out came the stewards and the
Black Crowd to enjoy a sociable cigarette. There was little to do but
talk, until the dancing began. The grim sailor looked pityingly on
Babel, as he patrolled the Second Class partition. He was for smaller
ships. “On a smaller ship,” he deigned to remark, “you can come up and
throw your weight around.”
Differences in manners obtruded. The third day out a youth emerged
whom I took to be a swineherd from the beech forests of Croatia. He
was not handsome. His fringe encroached upon his little eyes. His chin
was unformed. Up over his trousers, as if he had just waded through
the piggery, his socks were drawn. There he stood, plastic youth, a
hand in his pocket, pivotting a heel, surveying the world through his
own hirsute thatch. Suddenly, deliberately, he blew his nose
Adam-like. A Swedish woman next me turned livid. “De dirty pig.” I
felt myself the brother of a Swede. The Croatian saw us but beheld us
not. His mouth ajar, he ruminated afresh on the fleshpots of Croatia.
Raw material, simple even to the verge of our ancestral slime. I
prayed “God be with thee,” and looked elsewhere.
That evening amid the throng which waited for admittance to the dining
room appeared a Greek. The glaring electric light concentrated on that
swart face, flung-out chest, and bared neck. He was incredibly
blasphemous and incredibly self-important. “Seventy-five dollars, see.
American money!” He showed his money to us, and gave a chuckle. His
lip curled. “They only Hunkies,” indicating his companions who
connected themselves with him by slavish eyes. “I in America before,
Christ, yes!” His eye roved boldly, and he showed his white teeth.
“I got more money still, you bet your life. When I get over I marry no
Hunkie. I marry Henglish girl. Yeh, Christ, you bet!” He antagonized
us, and yet we watched him eagerly. He lapped up our interest.
Overcome with the savor of attention, he incontinently spat. I drew
away. “It’s a’ right,” he said half-obsequiously, “I know what I do. I
no’ spit on American.” He felt too much kinship to spit on an
American.
So things happen, but only in the steerage. At the door of the café
below, you will not find a Polish count informing the steward: “I
marry a Henglish girl. No penniless Hunkie for me.” Nor will the
first-class steward answer: “Who cares? Who’ll buy a beer?”
In all these days, among all these peoples, there was no friction.
Some youths did start to make boisterous fun of two barefooted Italian
women, walking up and down in bright petticoat and kerchief. But the
Italians smiled and skipped back and sat down, and there was no more
“fun.” Between congruous people intercourse was easy and frank. The
fresh-hued Scandinavians were exceptionally lively. A little English
group revolved quietly together, with a private afternoon teapot for
central sun. Another little group, including two girls in service, a
cotton spinner and a grocery clerk, often sat in the prow and talked
amiably about anything from the food on board to their notion of a
God. They say that “sociability proceeds from weakness.” Steerage, at
any rate, is highly sociable. In some cases it was also frankly
amatory. The attractive girls, so soon well known, seemed to have no
fear of the predatory males. They took each other lightly. But at 9.30
p.m., all the feminine kind, even the rebellious, had to leave their
conquests and go below. This rule was enforced to the letter.
Two days before landing we had another medical experience. We learned
that American citizens in the third class were immune from smallpox
and need not be troubled on that score, but that aliens in the third
class must all be vaccinated. It was said there were ways of evading
this, but I found none. For several hours we were assembled while the
women filed in. After an hour in line, our turn came to enter the
surgery improvised in the companionway. On a table flamed a number of
small spirit lamps, over which the stewards sterilized the metal
scrapers. I bared my arm, as per orders from a pasty youth. The doctor
answered my queries by taking my arm, scraping it gently and applying
the lymph. “It is not our law,” he said politely. “Take this chap,”
motioned a bullet-headed assistant, and I was shoved to another group.
“Rub it off,” whispered a friendly scullion, but I let it stay, out of
curiosity. The new group crowded around another big table. An
additional hour’s standing brought up my turn to answer the clerk’s
questions. He recorded on the manifesto that I was destined for
Brooklyn and had friends. This was added to the facts I had provided
when I engaged passage. I was now catalogued for Ellis Island.
The day before landing there was, I believe, another medical
inspection. We got in line for it, but the crowd simply disregarded
the stewards, and I never even saw the doctor. On that evening the
barriers were partly down, and the Goths and Huns invaded two decks.
It was Friday morning before we came into the yellow waters of the
harbor, and passed under the cliffs of Manhattan. Already a fissure
had appeared in the steerage. On one side, separated from us more and
more, went the naturalized citizens, each armed with his papers. On
the other, we aliens congregated, to be shipped in due time to Ellis
Island.
It was an inhuman morning, a morning of harrowing strain and
confusion. Though the inspection of baggage amounted to nothing in
itself, especially as there had been no preliminary declaration, there
was the uncertainty, and the three hours’ delay. Searching for
baggage, waiting for inspectors, hectored and shouted at, the poorer
immigrants reminded one of Laocoön. And then we had to wait for the
boat to Ellis Island, and we had to lug our hand baggage with us for
the hours that were to come. This fact alone made the day an ordeal
for all except the strongest, a brute ordeal to which wealthier folk
would not submit for two successive days.
On the Ellis Island boat we were crammed like cattle. “Move up, I say,
move up. God! move UP, you damned kike!” So spoke our burly exemplar
of American citizenship. We “moved up” until the last square foot of
floor was shut off from sight by close-packed bodies. We coöperated
with the U. S. Government as well as we could to provide conditions
for another Slocum disaster. When such a disaster does occur on one of
these old boats, every editor in the country will demand with
magnificent emphasis: “Fix the responsibility!” Let us by all means
wait till the steed is stolen.
Ellis Island basked in the sun. It was handsome and trim and restful,
after the swarming pier. We entered the fine examination building
single file, always lugging our suitcases and bundles and bags and
wraps and boxes and babies.
Medical inspection, a real inspection this time. We passed through a
cleverly arranged aisle, and at each angle a new doctor in khaki
sought for blemishes. I finally impinged on a man who asked me if I
could see well without my glasses. I answered: “Not at all.” He leaned
over, and made two crosses in blue chalk on my raincoat. At the exit
from this trap an attendant wrote another little piece on my raincoat,
“Vis.,” short for vision. I was allowed to lay down my bags, and sit
and wait for half an hour.
When the special examiners were ready, we were led up a corridor and
shown into a bright room. Around the walls were men and boys in all
stages of dress and undress, as at a bathing beach.
“Ken you read English?” I said yes. “Read that over there.” A familiar
oculist test card hung on the wall. Being already so tired that I
would have welcomed deportation, I resentfully choked out: “B, T B R,
F E B D,” and so on. “All right, doc.,” said the attendant, and a
civil man at a high desk silently handed me an initialled slip.
Outside this was taken, and my dilapidated Inspection Ticket was
stamped “Specially Examined.” I had passed the test, and went back for
my baggage to the ante-room. A woman there, flushed and petulant,
commented on her being examined. The attendant turned away
contemptuously. “Aw, she’s ben hittin’ the pipe, or somethin’.”
Up the steps into the great hall I proceeded. It resembled a big
waiting room, where to my delight benches ran the length of the room.
It was now nearly three, and I had neglected to eat anything all day.
In the particular bench decided by my Inspection Ticket, I
emphatically sat down.
At the far end of these benches ran a long screen at right angles. In
that screen were a number of gates. Each gate was guarded by a seated
official with our manifestoes on the desk before him. Through those
gates we immigrants were being sieved into the United States.
At last I was in the sieve. The guardian of the gate was kind of
voice. “You have a brother in Brooklyn, eh?” “How much money have you
got?” I was not asked to show it. “All right, pass on. No, there is
nothing further. You can go as far as you like now!” Two of us from
the _Lusitania_ whipped down the steps, bags and all, and delivered up
our Inspection Tickets at a last, final door. The sun shone outside.
The air was fresh. The light danced on the sea. There were no more
policemen, stewards, masters-at-arms, doctors, baggage examiners,
attendants, inspectors. I drew a deep breath, and tried to forget the
benefits of civilization.
On the ferry to New York there mingled future Americans from the
Anchor Line and the Red Star Line, as well as from the Cunard. Already
I could find only a few of my former companions. Some had gone before.
Some were still on the Island. In the present crowd they were
absorbed, obliterated. The little world of the _Lusitania_ was already
annexed by America, as a little meteor is annexed by the burning star.
I regretted this absorption, this obliteration. For six days I had
belonged to them, and they had belonged to me. I thought of their
geniality, their simplicity, their naturalness, their long-suffering.
I was sorry to say good-bye.