Slav, Jewish and Italian blood flows in the veins of some of us: in
spite of the fact that these people fill the cities almost to
overflowing, there is no perceptible physical or moral degeneration
visible which can be traced to the foreigner.
The quarters of American cities where the foreigners live are not the
worst quarters; and I would rather trust myself in the dark, to the
mysteries of Hester Street than to certain portions of the West side
exclusively populated by a certain type of degenerate Americans.
Recently a professor of economics in one of our universities asked me to
show him those terrible parts of New York where the foreigners live;
where the children are said to be so unhappy, the men so oppressed by
poverty; and where the women have not enough to wear. I took him across
the Bowery, which has lost its terrors since it became foreign
territory, across the streets of the Ghetto and along its avenues. We
found the supposed unhappy children, well dressed and well fed, dancing
to the notes of the hurdy-gurdy grinder, as happy as children naturally
are, who do not have many “manners to mind,” whose playground is the
street, and who have music from morning till nightfall. We walked
through endless rows of tenements and saw men engaged in lawful
pursuits; from the garret to the cellars the Ghetto was a beehive of
industry. We saw no street loafers, drunkards or idlers. In “Little
Hungary,” where we ate and enjoyed a daintily served dinner, we loitered
until evening, when we met a vast army of men and women who came pouring
in from Broadway’s stores and shops, walking with that pride and
happiness which comes from the consciousness of having done a day’s
work, and done it well. My friend was very much disappointed because he
saw no horrors, no unhappy children or unhappy men.
Again we passed the Bowery, going on to the American section of New
York, the Rialto. Here were horrors enough; whole blocks where there
were no children; for both the very wicked and the very rich are not
blessed by them. Young and old men, fashionably dressed and properly
tipsy, went in to cheap shows, saloons and brothels, to have a “good
time.” These young men, rich sons of rich fathers, and these old men,
are idlers and perverters of their own passions. They and they alone are
the great problem which we have need to fear; for it is a problem which
cannot be solved. In the fashionable restaurants of Fifth Avenue and
Upper Broadway, we saw the women “who toil not neither do they spin,”
and who, with all the Heavenly Father’s care, were not properly clothed.
They too, more than the women of the Ghetto, are the problem we need to
study; for among them and by them are lost our democracy, our purity and
our virtue.
I fear more from a certain type of Jew on Upper Broadway, than I do from
the Jew of the Ghetto; even as I fear more from a certain type of
over-ripe Americans than I do from this undeveloped peasantry. The
question which the American faces is not whether the foreigner can be
assimilated, but who will do the assimilating. Not even the question
whether the foreigner is the inferior need concern us; for in the race
which is now on and at its height, the American just described is left
behind; and those of us who are watching the race are not at all amazed.
In nearly all the manufacturing towns of New England, the Swede and the
German are forging to the front, while the Pole and the Italian are
following closely; but the sons of the shrewd and inventive Yankees are
keeping fast company, riding in fast automobiles, and drinking strong
cocktails. They will soon be in the rear because of physical, mental and
spiritual bankruptcy.
It does not follow that these New Americans do not present a racial
problem; but the problem is largely one of assimilating power on our
part. The real problem is: Whether the American is virile enough and not
so much whether the foreign material is of the proper quality. I have no
doubt as to either proposition; I believe that there is still remarkable
assimilating power left which increases rather than decreases with the
mixture of blood. I also believe that the average New American is like
wax, hard wax sometimes,--perhaps more like lead or steel; but he will
be moulded into our image and bear the marks of our characteristics
whatever they may be.
As I write this I realize that I am saying “us” and “our” as if I were
not a New American myself and one of those who make up the racial
problem. Yet when I recall to myself the fact that I too belong to an
alien race, it comes to me like a shock; when I realize that I was born
beneath another flag and that this is but my adopted country, it gives
me almost a sense of shame that I have in a great degree, if not
altogether, forgotten these facts, and I am so completely and
absorbingly an American, that I can write “us” and “our,” speak of my
own people as foreigners, and of my own native country as a strange
land. Something has so wrought upon me that in spite of the fact that I
came to this country in my young manhood, I look upon America as my
Fatherland. That same power is still active; still strong enough to
repeat the miracle of the yesterday; for I am no better than these
millions who are regarded as a menace. I came here with the same blood
as theirs and the same heritage of good or ill, bequeathed by my race;
yet I feel myself completely one with all which this country possesses,
that is worth living for and dying for. With millions of these New
Americans I say to-day that which we shall continue to say, whether it
fares well or ill with our adopted country: “Thy people shall be my
people, and thy God my God.”
XXI
THE NEW AMERICAN AND OLD PROBLEMS
“Competition is the life of prejudice” is an old truth, in a somewhat
new setting. Back of the prejudice against Jew, Italian and Slav, is
this fact: they are monopolizing certain departments of labour and
trades, and in nearly every activity they are beginning to be felt in
competition. The Swede is regarded as treacherous by the man whose place
he has taken in the machine shops East and West; the Slovak and Pole are
called dirty and unreliable by the miners whom they have supplanted in
Pennsylvania, and the Jew is accused of trickery by the American who has
a clothing store on the next corner. Under whatever name the feeling
against the foreigner hides itself, it usually is in substance the fear
of competition; and every law restricting immigration has been with the
idea of protecting American labour.
Nevertheless the economic problem presented by the New American is
ill-defined, largely formulated by conflicting business interests, and
is still only a question of the labour market. As a rule it may be said
that the immigrant is willing to work only for the standard rate of
wage; and whether that rate has been lowered by the recent influx of
immigrants remains an undecided question. There are as reliable figures
to prove that it has increased, as that it has decreased. The reports
and resolutions of Labour Unions are coloured by self-interest as much
as are the reports of Manufacturers’ Associations.
It is an undisputed fact that the New England loom workers have been
largely displaced by the Irish and by French Canadians; and that Greeks,
Armenians and Syrians are now displacing these in turn. The native New
Englander however has not suffered by the process; for the foreman, the
forewoman and the man who invents the loom and makes it, are these New
Englanders, who do something more and better than merely keep the
spindles full. It is true that the Irishman no longer has the supremacy
on railroad sections, and that he has been supplanted; but not even by
the wildest imagination can we say that this Irishman has suffered in
the process; for is he not now policeman, fireman, alderman or some
other kind of _man_ where formerly he was only a _hand_ on a section?
A similar change has taken place in all channels of activity; whether
this is for good or ill, I am not ready to say. While no doubt exists in
any mind that there are foreigners who are willing to work for less than
the standard wage, it is because they do not yet know what that
standard is; or because the immediate need drives them to take work at
any price. Those of us who are acquainted with the immigrant as a
labourer are aware that very soon he knows enough to demand his full
wage, and that, smarting under a real or fancied wrong he will “strike”
as quickly as if he had had twenty-five years of training in a Labour
Union.
The history of the labour troubles of the last fifteen years proves
conclusively that the foreigner will strike; and that he knows how to
use the weapons of the strike, such as picketing and slugging and all
that goes with that form of industrial warfare. It is at such a time
that he is most denounced for his pernicious activity; while the very
Labour Union with which he has made a common cause, will then repudiate
him as a “scab” and a menace.
The author who, in his book,[4] which is supposed to be an authentic
source of information on immigration, quoted the following, surely must
have done so against his better judgment: “The agent[5] stated also that
the rising generation of Jews, Italians and Hungarians are likely to
live for the most part in the same conditions as their parents, and to
remain unskilled labourers.” This is so evidently untrue that it must be
known to be false by any man, even although he has examined this
subject very superficially. The standard of living rises very
perceptibly in the first generation among all classes of immigrants; and
in proof of that I have the testimony of merchants in nearly all
industrial centres in the United States. The boy who landed in
Pennsylvania in homespun will discard it within a week and demand of his
father short trousers and shirt waists. He will get them too; and he
will get the best the father can afford. The wife will soon grow weary
of keeping twenty boarders in one room; and I have seen the dawn of
liberty rise upon her face as with flushing cheek she told her husband:
“Me boss of this shanty.” When he tried to strike her as he did in the
Old World she would remind him of the fact that this is the land of
liberty, and I have seen her lift the battle-axe in defiance. Axe in
hand she said: “I won’t keep boarders,” and the husband has been long
enough in this country to know that when a woman in America says: “I
won’t,” she won’t; and the boarders go.
With the going of the boarders comes the demand for a carpet; a cheap
cotton carpet with huge design of many colours, the same kind that our
forefathers put upon their floors when rag carpets went out of fashion;
not very beautiful; but thoroughly and primitively American.
Plush furniture is added and stands stiffly against the wall; not very
useful, but somewhat like the article which stands in more pretentious
parlours. The “installment plan” agent finds among these people willing
victims to plush albums, sewing machines and crayon portraits. Scarcely
any of the New Americans I know are miserly or have essentially a
different standard of living from our own, except as that standard was
forced upon them by economic conditions. All of them in common with our
frail humanity will spend money in proportion to their income and often,
too often, out of proportion. The Slovak and the Pole who are most
complained about on this score of a low standard of living, are fond of
fine clothes and good food. In their native village they go about
resplendent in glorious apparel, usually twice the value of ours; though
we affect a higher standard of living. There are Slovak girls in
Pennsylvania now, who have spent a year’s wage on a dress in the old
country; and I have known women living in wretched huts who paid ten
dollars for the half yard of lace on their caps. Mother vanity has her
devotees everywhere and she exacts her tribute on this side of the
Atlantic as well as on the other.
Those who know the immigrant and care for his well being, are not
concerned by the fact that he does not spend money, but that he does not
spend it wisely;--that the girls of the first and second generations
follow the fashions too quickly, and buy the things which are useless;
even as their mothers will fill the homes with things which are neither
comfortable nor beautiful. The Jews who are such a great economic factor
in our life may be accused of everything with more show of justice than
of this one thing; namely, that, viewed from this standpoint, their
standard of living is low. They are proverbially good dressers; and good
eating is part of their traditions; it is closely allied to their
religion. If it were not for the Jews in New York and in Chicago, the
theatres would be half empty and the music halls not less so; one of the
stock complaints against the Jews of our large cities is that they want
the best seats in these places, that they want to go to the best hotels
and live in the finest residence sections. To get along in the world, to
get up and out, to be “as good as the best,” is a passion in Israel; a
passion which has made the Jew more enemies than he himself knows.
I cannot regard the immigrant as a problem from this narrow economic
view: while upon the broader question, of the general effect he has upon
the condition of labour in America, I am at present in no position to be
dogmatic. I recognize that it is natural for those engaged in the same
pursuit to fear the competition which will lower their wage and
consequently narrow their whole life. I believe that it is the business
of the government to protect them against unjust competition, but first
we must have tangible facts; and those we do not yet possess.
Let me quote again, almost verbatim, a labour leader from Ohio, who
lifted up his voice in the Immigration Congress which convened in
Madison Square Garden, New York, on December 6, 1905. He said: “We don’t
want you fellers to let in any more of them yellow crawling worms from
Europe; we have them in Ohio. They live on a piece of bread and one
beer, and we can’t live like a decent American ought to live.” I happen
to know Ohio and the city from which this gentleman comes. I do not know
a single foreign colony there, in which men are satisfied by a piece of
bread and one beer. Those I know fix no limit as to the beer; and the
vats of the Cincinnati brewers would be dry, were it not for the
proverbial thirst of the foreigners who live on the classic shores of
the “Rhine,”--as a certain muddy stream is called which manages to flow
into the Ohio by way of Cincinnati. The discernment(?) of this man and
of his kind is not enough to raise a false alarm. Any of us would bow
before facts, presented by an unprejudiced observer and would gladly
help to cry “Halt” to the invasion of strangers who would lower the
standard of living in America.
It takes neither figures nor close investigation to discover that in
spite of the constant inflow of foreigners, the standard of living is
rising continually; that the luxuries of yesterday are the comforts and
necessities of to-day; and that in a larger measure than ever, it is
true that the masses, if they have not reached this plane, are
constantly at work trying to reach it. To blame the immigrant for the
slums and the sweat-shops rests also upon pure assumption. It is
indisputably true that the “slum” was always more or less here and that
it is found wherever poverty and vice have met each other.
The immigrant moves into wretched houses and narrow streets and alleys
because they are here. American citizens draw revenue from death traps
and do it without a twinge of conscience; but even then these places are
not slums. I venture to assert that in the real slums of American
cities, the native Americans, using the word native in its true sense,
outnumber these foreigners with whom we always associate the slums, with
their grim twins--Poverty and Vice.
Only degenerate people sink into slums; and these foreigners have helped
to regenerate them. In Chicago the first Ghetto developed in a quarter
which could truly be called slums; full of dives in which the foulest
vice flourished. Nearly all the women in those dens, and there must have
been hundreds of them, were native Americans, or came from what we call
the better immigrant stock, Germans and Scandinavians. On one side of
this Ghetto was the most congested railroad district in the United
States; on the other side as foul a slum as ever disgraced any city; but
the Jew did not sink into the mire. He lifted that district out of it,
so that to-day it is practically empty of that kind of vice.
There is no doubt that in the last few years, the army of unfortunate
women and gamblers has received recruits from among recent immigrants,
and there is also no doubt that the number will still increase; but the
stock, the root, the peculiar kind of decayed house and people which we
call slum, is a native product. Most of the Slavs who come here do not
know anything about the business of prostitution or gambling; and until
a few years ago this was true among the Jews also. I am willing to
assert that the people who are making these peculiar crimes their
business, are ninety per cent. native Americans. This does not
necessarily cast any aspersion upon the American people; for I can
truthfully say that as a whole their standard of morality is higher than
that of any other people I know. Yet it is true that the class of
immigrants who come, peasants and labourers, do not import the slum, the
brothel and the gambling house.
If I were sent out to-day to find the people best fitted to replenish
our physical stock, to help in winning the wealth of forest and mine, I
should not go to Paris, to Vienna, to Berlin and London; or even to
Glasgow or Edinburgh. I should go to the very villages in the
Carpathians and Alps, on the broad Danubian plains, from which our
recent immigration comes. Whether we are in need of replenishing this
stock, whether the wealth of forest and mines should be harvested as
quickly as it is now, is another question of those many with which I
cannot deal here. Taking conditions as I see them, granting that we need
muscle and brawn, I can say very dogmatically that we are getting
exactly what we need. The sweat-shop it is true flourishes because of
this recent immigration; but gradually its domain is losing ground and
the fighters at the front against both slums and sweat-shops are the New
Americans, who are helping to solve some old problems and to heal some
old diseases.
The claim that every able bodied foreigner who comes here is worth so
many dollars to this country has been ridiculed. Count Aponyi, of
Hungary, who claims that his country loses money by the withdrawal of
this able bodied army of men and women, puts the height of our gain at
five thousand dollars for every man. However that may be, this is true:
immigration has had a direct economic influence upon the countries from
which the immigrants come, an influence which is both for good and bad.
In certain regions wages have increased nearly fifty per cent. The
relation between servant and master has changed, and a note of
independence rings from the guttural throats of Slovaks and Poles; while
“strike” and “meeting” are two English words which have entered
permanently into their vocabularies. The removal of so many able bodied
men has left whole villages with but women and children; and while the
moral tone of such regions has not improved, one cannot as yet perceive
any economic loss. This is due to the fact that money comes pouring in
which offsets the loss sustained by the removal of so large a
population.
Nevertheless it is a fact that the governments of Europe most concerned
still regard themselves as losers, and are taking steps to restrict the
emigration of desirable classes.
It has been claimed by a certain member of congress, that the withdrawal
of this money from America is an economic loss and that the American
people should stop it; because the money goes to support foreign
governments. The argument is both narrow and false. First of all it is
true, that the immigrant has earned this money in the most honest way,
and that consequently he has a right to send it home if he pleases to do
so.
Secondly, this money no more goes for the support of foreign governments
than does the money that the politician paid for the imported cloth of
which the evening suit was made which he wore when he delivered that
criticism.
Thirdly, the money sent home each year by the men who have earned it, is
only a small fraction of the large sums which are spent annually by
Americans abroad; money which in a great number of cases has not been
earned by those who spent it, or has not been earned so honestly as it
has been by those “hewers of wood.”
Fourth, the money which is spent by Americans in Paris, Dresden, Nice
and Carlsbad, does not so immediately return to the United States as
does the money which is spent in Kottowin or Breczowa or in Oswicczim.
That flows into the trade channels whose golden stream runs directly
back to the United States; for more money in those villages means more
money for Southern cotton, Chicago lard, and Connecticut clocks and
sewing machines.
I doubt that even the minutest investigation will prove that the money
sent annually to Italy or Hungary means a loss to the United States, or
that as yet the immigrant is a serious economic menace.
XXII
RELIGION AND POLITICS
On a recent trip through Germany there fell into my hands a little book
about America which bears the modest title, “Americana.” It was written
by Professor Karl Lamprecht of the University of Leipzig, and is a
note-book in which he records his impressions about us. Being a
Professor of History and especially conversant with that part of it
which deals with our country, his conclusions have large value.
That which impressed him most about our life was the prevalence of the
religious atmosphere and the genuineness of our piety. The sentence
which seemed to me to stand out above every other which he has written
is this: “My conviction that this people is destined to great things
bases itself above all else upon the fact, that it is capable of
religious impressions.” I have felt this by virtue of a sort of vague
faith, and have always regarded the religious problem which the
immigrant presents, as the crucial one. We shall soon be of one
blood--sooner yet of one speech; but how soon we shall have one faith,
and common religious ideals, or how long we shall be able to preserve
those religious ideals which are the guarantee of our greatness, as
well as of our permanence as a republic, are very large and very serious
questions.
It is not easy to deny that certain phases of our religious life in
America are to a great degree unknown in Southern and Eastern Europe,
and cannot be readily understood by the average immigrant:--the entire
separation of Church and State, yet the complete union of religion and
national life; the large place of the individual as a religious
functionary, and yet the absolute equality of priest and people; the
prevalence of forms and the permanence of the ethical and spiritual.
The immigrant comes to us, largely from countries in which the Church
and the State, the cross and the sword, are one. In fact to the large
majority of those who come, nationality or race, and the Church, are one
and the same. The Russian and the Southern Slav who are not _pravo_
Slavs, adherents of the Greek Church, are regarded very much in the
light of traitors to their nations. The Pole is a Catholic by national
instinct; Poland and Roman Catholicism are to him one and the same;
while the Jew is a Jew by race and faith, regarding as a profligate, him
who betrays his people by becoming a Christian.