generally an excellent cook, in addition to her other good qualities. To
mention Slavic cooking and leave out garlic would be “Hamlet with the
Prince left out,” and I feel sure that travellers in Slavic countries
will readily testify to the excessive presence of this fragrant bulb,
although they may never have seen it.
The literature of the Slav is abundant, and some of it is no doubt
great. That of Bohemia is the oldest, that of Poland the most finished,
and that of Russia in modern times the most abundant. The folklorist has
here much virgin territory in which to gather material, but it remains
to be seen whether it is worth gathering and preserving. Both folk-lore
and literature are strongly realistic, being a reflection of the Slavic
character, and not a protest or reaction, as with the Germanic people.
The Slav speaks and sings about plain things plainly, but naturally, and
not offensively when one understands the source of his song. It never
makes sin attractive, and consequently is wholesome. The lyric love-song
is made in the hearts of the people, travels from lip to lip, and is
simple and beautiful in the original; thus the Czech sings:
If I see thee, kneeling, praying
In the church, my dear,
I am far from God and heaven,
But to thee am near;
If I’d love my God in heaven
As I now love thee,
I would saint or very angel
In His presence be.
The Slovak sings thus of love:
Whence getteth everybody
Love in his very breast?
It grows not on the bushes,
It’s hatched not in the nest;
And were this love abiding
On rocks as heaven high,
We’d send our hearts to find it,
Yes, even if we die.
More poetically, the Croatian sings:
Oh, what is love? a zephyr mild,
As gentle as a new-born child,
To kiss each blossoming flower.
Oh, what is love? a wild storm-cloud,
A roaring, maddening tempest loud,
A weeping, drenching shower.
Oh, what is love? a scattered gloom,
A thousand glorious flowers in bloom,
A glowing, burning fireball,
A giant held by chains in thrall,
A joyful, chiming wedding bell,
A dreadful chasm, a burning hell.
Oh, may thy love, thou dearest child,
Like spring winds be, so sweet, so mild!
Oh, reach to me thine angel hand,
And lead me to that heavenly land!
One of the marked characteristics of the Slav is his deep religious
feeling. If you wander through Moscow, you will see at every step
evidences of this in the many churches, chapels, and wayside icons
before which the faithful cross themselves or lie prostrate in the dust.
Everywhere the Russian manifests his deep allegiance to the Church, and
every action of his life is in some way influenced by its teaching. He
obeys implicitly all its rules, especially in regard to the many fast or
feast days. He venerates the churches and cloisters, has implicit faith
in the intercession of the saints, and every year out of every village
go forth pious pilgrims over barren wastes and through dense forests to
some sacred tomb in some faraway cloister. The height of ambition of
every pious mujik is to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and a whole
lifetime is spent in self-denying struggle to accumulate money enough
for that purpose.
Common to all the Slavs is the tendency to superstition; remnants of the
old heathenism remain everywhere, startling one by stories and usages
which during centuries of winters’ nights have grown to grotesque
proportions in the dark, uncomfortable izbas of the peasants, and have
curiously blended with their Christian faith, so that it is difficult
for them to distinguish one from the other. The Slav is usually
charitable to the poor, although not always generous to the weak, and he
cannot be praised for excessive hospitality. He is too often clannish,
is apt to be jealous, and consequently not always faithful or honest.
The Polish and Russian peasants are proverbially thievish; as one of
their current sayings has it, “the only things which they will not carry
away are hot iron and millstones,” a characteristic which they lose
completely under better economic conditions.
The Slav is humanity still in the rough, and to that fact are due his
faults, his virtues, his weakness, and also his strength.
XIII
THE SLAVIC INVASION
The Slovak and the Pole, or the “Hunkies” as they are often
contemptuously called, are among the most industrious and patient people
who come to our shores. I know this because time after time I have
followed them from their native villages, across the sea and into the
coal mines of Pennsylvania, or the steel mills, coke ovens and lime
stone quarries along the lakes, to which they were called because their
virtues as labourers were known. Even on board ship they are the most
patient passengers, for hardships are not new to them, and the bill of
fare, meagre though it is, contains not a few luxuries to which their
palates are strangers; if it were not for the seasickness, they would
consider their ocean trip as much of a pleasure as do those of us who
cross the sea for a wedding trip or a vacation. I have crossed the ocean
with them ten times at least, and have never heard a word of complaint,
although their more refined travelling companions say much about their
untidiness, rudeness, and other marks of semi-civilization. I have never
seen one of them read a newspaper; only one man do I remember who read a
book, and that was a prayer-book of the Greek Church. They leave their
picturesque garb at home, and lie on the deck in all sorts of weather in
all kinds of dress and undress, the women being barefooted even in
winter. In conversation with the men I can never go beyond the facts
that they are going to work, earn money, pay off a mortgage on a piece
of land at home, or save enough money to send for Katchka or Anka to be
their wedded wife. If the Slovak feels any great emotions when he
reaches New York, he never expresses them; he is usually dumb from
wonder and half frightened, as he faces this new and busy world in which
he will be but an atom or just so much horse-power. In spite of the
contract labour law, he is billed to an agent in New York or taken to
Pennsylvania, where his new life begins and too often ends in a
coal-mine.
The home which he will make for himself is one of many, and all alike
are painted green or red,--shells of buildings into which crowd from
fifteen to twenty people who are taken care of by one woman whose
husband may be the foreman of a gang and the chief beneficiary of its
labour.
In the town of Verbocz, in Hungary, I recently met a man who had
returned from America with $2,000 in his pocket, and whose career here
is typical of a large number. He came to America fifteen years ago and
worked in a mine in Pennsylvania near Pittsburg. He had stayed long
enough to learn English, to be able to receive and give orders and have
them carried out, so he became a foreman. His wife and children then
came, and moved into one of the houses previously described, bringing
with them twenty men, boarders. Through much industry and frugality they
saved these $2,000 and now in their old age they had returned to spend
that money at their pleasure. The wife has permanently put off the
peasant garb and has retained in her vocabulary such bits of English as
“come on,” “go on” and “how much,” which she displays on every occasion.
The children are still in America, one of the sons being in the saloon
business, and on the road to greater wealth than that which his father
accumulated.
Their competitors in the field of labour accuse them of filthiness, yet,
after having walked through hundreds of these shanties, I can say that
the report of untidiness among them is exaggerated; for the majority of
homes are cleaner than their crowded condition would warrant, while
there are not a few in which the floors are scrubbed daily, and fairly
shine from cleanliness. Just as uncomplainingly as into the life on
board ship, the Slovak fits into the new work, whatever it may be, and
no animal ever took its burden more patiently than he does his, as he
faces unflinchingly the hot blasts of a furnace or the dark depths of
mines. He can be worked only in gangs directed by one of his number who
has gathered a few crumbs of English, and who seasons them freely by
those words which are usually printed in dashes. Such a thing as
rebellion he does not know, as his whole past history testifies; in our
strikes he is a very convenient scapegoat and not seldom a sheep, led to
deeds whose consequences he has not measured. In nearly every case of
violence which I could trace and in which he took an active part, he was
inflamed by drink which interested persons had given him.
He is considered by the tradesmen of his town to be their most honest
customer, and one merchant who has dealt with the Slovaks for twelve
years, who has carried them from pay-day to pay-day, and through strikes
and lay-offs, told me that he had not lost one cent through them, while
his losses from the other miners were from fifteen to thirty-five per
cent.; and, with but slight variations, this is the testimony of all the
merchants.
In no small measure this is due to their fear of law, for in Hungary
every debt is collectible, and not even the homestead is exempt from the
executioner. There is also no petty thieving in communities where they
have lived for twenty years, and they have never been accused or even
suspected of theft. As one common accusation against them is that they
spend very little in this country and send most of their earnings
abroad, I examined this matter very carefully, interviewing every
merchant and every class of merchants, the postmasters, and even the
saloon-keepers, and they all agree that these people are fairly good
customers.
In visiting their homes I found that usually they are not lavish as to
house-furnishings; the front room, which in the American household would
answer for the parlour, is filled by the trunks of the boarders, and in
a few cases has that beginning of American civilization, the
rocking-chair. A stand with a white cloth cover holding a few
knickknacks is a rarity, but exists in about five per cent. of the
houses I have visited; carpets I have seen only twice, but the
lace-curtain fashion has not a few imitators. Upon his bed the Slovak
lavishes a great deal of money, making it his costliest piece of
furniture, while his imported feather-beds keep out entirely the more
sanitary mattress and blankets. He does not stint himself in his food,
as is commonly supposed, for he eats a good deal, although his steak,
being cut from the shoulder, is cheap, and is always called “Polak
steak.” He eats quantities of beans, cabbage, and potatoes, and about
eight dollars a month covers the board bill of an adult. He drinks too
much, but drinks economically, preferring a barrel of beer for the
crowd to the more expensive glass, and he carries a bottle in his hip
pocket as invariably as the cowboy is supposed to carry a pistol.
Instead of whiskey he sometimes takes alcohol and water, which may,
after all, be the same rose by another name. In buying clothing I am
told that he buys the best which is fitted for his work and for his
station, and to see him after working hours, cleanly washed and dressed
in American fashion from the boots up to the choking collar, one would
not suspect him of miserliness. He does save money, for out of an
average earning of forty dollars a month he will send at least fifteen
dollars to Hungary, and on pay-day the money-order window in the little
post-office is crowded by these industrious toilers who have not
forgotten wife, children, old parents, and old debts.
Many of them claim that they would buy houses in this country if they
were assured of steady work, and in many places they plead that they
cannot buy property because the company owns all the real estate and
prefers to rent all the houses falsely called homes.
Unfortunately they have imported into this country their racial
prejudices which are keenest towards their closest kin, and each mining
camp becomes the battle-ground on which ancient wrongs are made new
issues by repeated quarrels and fights which become bloody at times,
although premeditated murder is rather infrequent. In a large number of
cases these unfortunate divisions are intermingled by religious
differences, although the Slovak and the Pole do not speak well of one
another even if they belong to the same church. The Pole regards himself
as the especial guardian of the Roman Catholic Church, and while a
majority of the Slovaks are of the same Church, Protestantism has made
some inroads and the Greek Church claims many loyal adherents. Many of
the Catholics belong to the Greek Catholic Church which is that portion
of the Greek Church in Austria which united with Rome after the division
of Poland, and which was permitted to use its own Slavonic ritual and
retain its married clergy. Only a portion of the Greek Church entered
this union so that nearly every large Slovak community has a number of
Russian Greeks, who look upon the Roman Greeks with a great deal of
scorn. In Marblehead, on Lake Erie, where these Slovaks are engaged in
the limestone quarries, this division was discovered after all the
Greeks had built one church, that of the Roman Greeks. A few of the
wiser ones who arrived in this country later were dreadfully shocked
when they saw this, and in Peter Shigalinsky’s saloon plans were made to
gain possession of the church for the only true Greeks, the Russian;
many pitched battles were fought, a long and fruitless litigation
followed, and finally Peter Shigalinsky built next to his saloon a new
church, whose orthodoxy is emphasized by one of the horizontal pieces of
the cross slanting at a more acute angle than that of the Roman Greek
church, in which of course there can be no salvation.
Where they have no church of their own they are usually found
worshipping with the English or Germans, if they are Romanists, but in
many cases the priests told me that they are not wanted and must keep to
one corner of the building. There are not priests enough to shepherd
them, and those they have are in many cases unfitted for the task. It is
asserted that the Lutheran pastors are no better, and count for little
or nothing in making these people Christians and citizens. They are
naturally suspicious of strangers, but grateful for every kindness, and
once a door is opened to their hearts it is never closed again.
Unfortunately, their speech shuts them out from the touch with American
people of the same community, but there are avenues of approach in which
only one language is spoken--the language of love and kindness; one
noble American woman whom I know ministers to them by nursing them and
suggesting simple remedies when they are ill, and has thus become no
small factor in their social and religious redemption.
Of literature little or nothing enters the mining villages, although
among the Poles the hunger for it grows and many papers and magazines
are coming into existence. The Slovak lives an isolated life, sublimely
ignorant of “wars and rumours of wars”; his breakfast is not spoiled by
the glaring head-lines of the daily paper, nor does the magazine or
novel press upon him the problems of human society. He knows his camp,
his mine, his shop, and though he lives in America and in the most busy
States in the Union, his world now is not much bigger than it was when
its horizon touched his village pastures.
As yet he is not a factor politically, though the political “boss” finds
him the best kind of material, for he is bought and sold without knowing
it, and votes for he knows not whom. At Braddock, Pa., it was told me
that he is sold first to the Democrats and then to the Republicans, and
afterwards is naïve enough to come back to the Democrats and tell of his
bargain, willing to be bought back into his political family. Like
almost all foreigners, he is a Democrat by instinct or by association,
one scarcely knows which, although he is usually anything that a drink
of liquor makes him. I asked one his political faith, “Are you a
Democrat?” “No, me Catholic--Greek, not Russian,” was the reply. “What
are your politics?” I asked a number. “Slovak,” was the invariable
answer. Not twenty per cent. of those I interviewed knew the name of
our President, not two per cent. the name of the Governor of the State
in which they were residing. The Slovak does not know the meaning of the
word citizen, and the limited franchise in Hungary is exercised for him
by those shrewder than himself; he is just force and muscle, with all
the roots of his heart in the little village across the sea, and with
his brain wherever the stronger brain leads him.
At a recent election in Hungary, a district where the Slovaks were in a
large majority, they were, nevertheless, defeated by the Magyar element
which knew how to manage them; so that they may be said to have had just
enough political training to fit them into the political life of the
average American community.
Although the Slovak is a quiet and peaceful citizen, on feast day he
does not consider his religious nature sufficiently stirred without a
fight, which is usually a crude, bungling affair, devoid of the science
which accompanies such an episode among the Irish, and also without the
deadly results of an Italian fracas.
On the wedding day of Yanko and Katshka, the silence of the camp is
broken by the sound of a screeching violin, followed by the wailing of a
clarinet and the grunting of a bass viol. Above the discord of noise
made by these instruments is heard the voice of the bridegroom, who
leads the dances with the song: “I am so glad I have you, I have you,
and I wouldn’t sell you to any one.” If you enter the house of the
bride, you will find it full of sweltering humanity, all of it dancing
up and down, down and up, while the fiddlers play and the bridegroom
sings about “The sweetheart he is glad to have and wouldn’t sell to any
one.”
Usually the Slav dancers provide the notes and the bank notes also; for
at the end of the piece half a dozen stalwart men will throw themselves
in front of the musicians, each one of them demanding in exchange for
the money tossed upon the table, his favourite tune to which he sings
his native song. The result is, half a dozen men, each singing or trying
to sing, a different song, all of them pushing, crowding, and at last
fighting, until in the middle of the room you will find an entanglement
of human beings which beats itself into an unrecognizable mass. The
wedding lasts three days, the ceremony often taking place after the
first day’s festivities. The order of proceedings and the length of the
feast vary, according to imported traditions which among the Slavs are
different in every district.
[Illustration: WITHOUT THE PALE.
Not always is the adverse decision of the Commissioner so easy as in the
case of some Servian gypsies who, deported from New York, found their
way to Canada and quickly made police records.]
Of course the whole mining camp is an interested spectator and guests
usually do not wait for a formal invitation. The ceremony over, the
wedding dinner is served, and never in all the Carpathian Mountains was
there such feasting as there is in the Alleghanies. “Polak” steak,
cabbage with raisins, beets, slices of bacon, links of sausages, sweet
potatoes, and, “last but not least,” the great American dish, conqueror
of all foreign tastes--pie; huge, luscious and full of unheard-of
delicacies. Beer flows as freely as milk and honey flowed in the
promised land; again the musicians play and if the bridegroom has voice
enough left he will sing the song of “The sweetheart he is so glad to
have and wouldn’t sell to any one, no, not to any one.” Barrel after
barrel is emptied until the pyramids of Egypt have small rivals in those
built entirely of beer barrels in the little mining town in
Pennsylvania. Many of the drinkers fall asleep as soundly as Rameses
ever did before he was embalmed, while others are making ready for the
end of the feast--the fight, for “no fight, no feast” is the proverb.
Somebody calls a Slovak a Polak, or vice versa; some young man casts
glances at some young maiden otherwise engaged--and the fight is on. I
have never discovered just the reason for the fight, and one might as
well search for the cause of a cyclone, but the results are nearly the
same: furniture, heads, and glasses all in the same condition--broken;
everybody on the ground like twisted forest trees, while one hears
between long black curses the peaceful snores of the unconscious drunk.
The next day and the next the programme is repeated, and this is the
Slovak’s only diversion, unless it be a saint’s day, when history
repeats itself and he once more practices his two vices, drinking and
fighting.
As a rule the Slav is virtuous although this depends largely upon local
conditions in the village or district from which he comes. One could
prove him in certain regions the most virtuous of men while in others he
is just the reverse. Almost without exception where one woman cooks for
fifteen or twenty men as is often the case in mining camps, they respect
her as the wife of one man, while she respects her own virtue and would
fight if necessary to remain loyal to her husband. There is much coarse,
indelicate talk and much crudeness, for the Slav is a realist in speech
and action; therefore that which would seem to us immoral, is simply his
way of expressing himself, accustomed as he is to call “a spade a
spade.”
The Pole who emigrates to this country comes from nearly the same region
as the Slovak, and lives very much the same life, although in many
things he is his superior. He has greater self-assertion, is not so
submissive to the church, chafes more under restraint, has a greater
racial and national consciousness, and is by virtue of his historic
development both better and worse than the Slovak. He becomes more
identified with American life and will remain an important part of it
whether for good or evil, while a large portion of the Slovaks will
return to the villages and the peaceful acres from which they came. The
Polish community is consequently more of an entity and looks towards
permanence. The centralizing power is usually the church; around it, and
stimulated by it, grows the Polish town which not unfrequently occupies
the best location to be had, with its agencies well organized and
controlled.
Perhaps the best example of such a Polish town completely governed and
controlled by the church is in New Britain, Conn., where the population
is engaged in manufacturing hardware. With rare foresight the best
situation in the city was bought, and facing the still undeveloped part
of this real estate holding, the church, a magnificent white stone
structure, was built; a church which might well be the pride of any
community. Their priest, who is both Czar and Pope, is a strong, wise
monarch who holds in his keeping the destinies of thousands who trust
and obey him implicitly. The houses built are rather rude tenements,
evidently built to bring large and quick results; but the sanitary
condition must be good if it can be judged by the cleanliness and
wholesomeness of the children. Indeed, this part of the city of New
Britain is as clean and orderly as one might reasonably expect among a
population imported to do the roughest kind of labour.
One is likely to be apprehensive as to the future when one realizes that
nearly all the children go to a parochial school, in which only a
minimum of the English language is taught; that the men are all
organized into patriotic and religious brotherhoods which march armed
through the streets. One cannot yet determine how much these things will
do to prevent Americanization and assimilation, two things which are
exceedingly desirable and which these and other agencies seem to
prevent.
Besides Slavs and Poles, lesser groups of Crainers from the Austrian
Alps, Croatians and Servians, have gathered in the larger Slav centres
and around them, and while in a great measure they live the same life as
do their more numerous kindred, there are minor differences which are
somewhat accentuated by the abnormal conditions under which they all
live.
XIV
DRIFTING WITH THE “HUNKIES”