THE BOHEMIANS--TENEMENT-HOUSE CIGARMAKING.
Evil as the part is which the tenement plays in Jewtown as the pretext
for circumventing the law that was made to benefit and relieve the
tenant, we have not far to go to find it in even a worse rôle. If
the tenement is here continually dragged into the eye of public
condemnation and scorn, it is because in one way or another it is found
directly responsible for, or intimately associated with, three-fourths
of the miseries of the poor. In the Bohemian quarter it is made the
vehicle for enforcing upon a proud race a slavery as real as any that
ever disgraced the South. Not content with simply robbing the tenant,
the owner, in the dual capacity of landlord and employer, reduces him
to virtual serfdom by making his becoming _his_ tenant, on such terms
as he sees fit to make, the condition of employment at wages likewise
of his own making. It does not help the case that this landlord
employer, almost always a Jew, is frequently of the thrifty Polish race
just described.
Perhaps the Bohemian quarter is hardly the proper name to give to the
colony, for though it has distinct boundaries it is scattered over a
wide area on the East Side, in wedge-like streaks that relieve the
monotony of the solid German population by their strong contrasts.
The two races mingle no more on this side of the Atlantic than on the
rugged slopes of the Bohemian mountains; the echoes of the thirty
years' war ring in New York, after two centuries and a half, with
as fierce a hatred as the gigantic combat bred among the vanquished
Czechs. A chief reason for this is doubtless the complete isolation of
the Bohemian immigrant. Several causes operate to bring this about: his
singularly harsh and unattractive language, which he can neither easily
himself unlearn nor impart to others, his stubborn pride of race, and
a popular prejudice which has forced upon him the unjust stigma of
a disturber of the public peace and an enemy of organized labor. I
greatly mistrust that the Bohemian on our shores is a much-abused man.
To his traducer, who casts up anarchism against him, he replies that
the last census (1880) shows his people to have the fewest criminals of
all in proportion to numbers. In New York a Bohemian criminal is such a
rarity that the case of two firebugs of several years ago is remembered
with damaging distinctness. The accusation that he lives like the "rat"
he is, cutting down wages by his underpaid labor, he throws back in the
teeth of the trades unions with the counter-charge that they are the
first cause of his attitude to the labor question.
A little way above Houston Street the first of his colonies is
encountered, in Fifth Street and thereabouts. Then for a mile and a
half scarce a Bohemian is to be found, until Thirty-eighth Street is
reached. Fifty-fourth and Seventy-third Streets in their turn are the
centres of populous Bohemian settlements. The location of the cigar
factories, upon which he depends for a living, determines his choice
of home, though there is less choice about it than with any other
class in the community, save perhaps the colored people. Probably more
than half of all the Bohemians in this city are cigarmakers, and it
is the herding of these in great numbers in the so-called tenement
factories, where the cheapest grade of work is done at the lowest
wages, that constitutes at once their greatest hardship and the chief
grudge of other workmen against them. The manufacturer who owns, say,
from three or four, to a dozen or more tenements contiguous to his
shop, fills them up with these people, charging them outrageous rents,
and demanding often even a preliminary deposit of five dollars "key
money;" deals them out tobacco by the week, and devotes the rest of
his energies to the paring down of wages to within a peg or two of the
point where the tenant rebels in desperation. When he does rebel, he
is given the alternative of submission, or eviction with entire loss
of employment. His needs determine the issue. Usually he is not in a
position to hesitate long. Unlike the Polish Jew, whose example of
untiring industry he emulates, he has seldom much laid up against a
rainy day. He is fond of a glass of beer, and likes to live as well as
his means will permit. The shop triumphs, and fetters more galling than
ever are forged for the tenant. In the opposite case, the newspapers
have to record the throwing upon the street of a small army of people,
with pitiful cases of destitution and family misery.
Men, women and children work together seven days in the week in these
cheerless tenements to make a living for the family, from the break of
day till far into the night. Often the wife is the original cigarmaker
from the old home, the husband having adopted her trade here as a
matter of necessity, because, knowing no word of English, he could
get no other work. As they state the cause of the bitter hostility
of the trades unions, she was the primary bone of contention in the
day of the early Bohemian immigration. The unions refused to admit
the women, and, as the support of the family depended upon her to
a large extent, such terms as were offered had to be accepted. The
manufacturer has ever since industriously fanned the antagonism between
the unions and his hands, for his own advantage. The victory rests with
him, since the Court of Appeals decided that the law, passed a few
years ago, to prohibit cigarmaking in tenements was unconstitutional,
and thus put an end to the struggle. While it lasted, all sorts of
frightful stories were told of the shocking conditions under which
people lived and worked in these tenements, from a sanitary point of
view especially, and a general impression survives to this day that
they are particularly desperate. The Board of Health, after a careful
canvass, did not find them so then. I am satisfied from personal
inspection, at a much later day, guided in a number of instances by the
union cigarmakers themselves to the tenements which they considered
the worst, that the accounts were greatly exaggerated. Doubtless the
people are poor, in many cases very poor; but they are not uncleanly,
rather the reverse; they live much better than the clothing-makers
in the Tenth Ward, and in spite of their sallow look, that may be
due to the all-pervading smell of tobacco, they do not appear to
be less healthy than other in-door workers. I found on my tours of
investigation several cases of consumption, of which one at least was
said by the doctor to be due to the constant inhalation of tobacco
fumes. But an examination of the death records in the Health Department
does not support the claim that the Bohemian cigarmakers are peculiarly
prone to that disease. On the contrary, the Bohemian percentage of
deaths from consumption appears quite low. This, however, is a line of
scientific inquiry which I leave others to pursue, along with the more
involved problem whether the falling off in the number of children,
sometimes quite noticeable in the Bohemian settlements, is, as has been
suggested, dependent upon the character of the parents' work. The sore
grievances I found were the miserable wages and the enormous rents
exacted for the minimum of accommodation. And surely these stand for
enough of suffering.
Take a row of houses in East Tenth Street as an instance. They
contained thirty-five families of cigarmakers, with probably not half
a dozen persons in the whole lot of them, outside of the children, who
could speak a word of English, though many had been in the country half
a lifetime. This room with two windows giving on the street, and a rear
attachment without windows, called a bedroom by courtesy, is rented at
$12.25 a month. In the front room man and wife work at the bench from
six in the morning till nine at night. They make a team, stripping the
tobacco leaves together; then he makes the filler, and she rolls the
wrapper on and finishes the cigar. For a thousand they receive $3.75,
and can turn out together three thousand cigars a week. The point has
been reached where the rebellion comes in, and the workers in these
tenements are just now on a strike, demanding $5.00 and $5.50 for their
work. The manufacturer having refused, they are expecting hourly to be
served with notice to quit their homes, and the going of a stranger
among them excites their resentment, until his errand is explained.
While we are in the house, the ultimatum of the "boss" is received.
He will give $3.75 a thousand, not another cent. Our host is a man of
seeming intelligence, yet he has been nine years in New York and knows
neither English nor German. Three bright little children play about the
floor.
His neighbor on the same floor has been here fifteen years, but shakes
his head when asked if he can speak English. He answers in a few broken
syllables when addressed in German. With $11.75 rent to pay for like
accommodation, he has the advantage of his oldest boy's work besides
his wife's at the bench. Three properly make a team, and these three
can turn out four thousand cigars a week, at $3.75. This Bohemian has a
large family; there are four children, too small to work, to be cared
for. A comparison of the domestic bill of fare between Tenth and Ludlow
Streets result, in the discovery that this Bohemian's butcher's bill
for the week, with meat at twelve cents a pound as in Ludlow Street,
is from two dollars and a half to three dollars. The Polish Jew fed as
big a family on one pound of meat a day. The difference proves to be
typical. Here is a suit of three rooms, two dark, three flights up.
The ceiling is partly down in one of the rooms. "It is three months
since we asked the landlord to fix it," says the oldest son, a very
intelligent lad who has learned English in the evening school. His
father has not had that advantage, and has sat at his bench, deaf and
dumb to the world about him except his own, for six years. He has
improved his time and become an expert at his trade. Father, mother,
and son together, a full team, make from fifteen to sixteen dollars a
week.
A man with venerable beard and keen eyes answers our questions through
an interpreter, in the next house. Very few brighter faces would be
met in a day's walk among American mechanics, yet he has in nine years
learned no syllable of English. German he probably does not want to
learn. His story supplies the explanation, as did the stories of the
others. In all that time he has been at work grubbing to earn bread.
Wife and he by constant labor make three thousand cigars a week,
earning $11.25 when there is no lack of material; when in winter they
receive from the manufacturer tobacco for only two thousand, the
rent of $10 for two rooms, practically one with a dark alcove, has
nevertheless to be paid in full, and six mouths to be fed. He was
a blacksmith in the old country, but cannot work at his trade here
because he does not understand "Engliska." If he could, he says, with a
bright look, he could do better work than he sees done here. It would
seem happiness to him to knock off at 6 o'clock instead of working, as
he now often has to do, till midnight. But how? He knows of no Bohemian
blacksmith who can understand him; he should starve. Here, with his
wife, he can make a living at least. "Aye," says she, turning, from
listening, to her household duties, "it would be nice for sure to have
father work at his trade." Then what a home she could make for them,
and how happy they would be. Here is an unattainable ideal, indeed, of
a workman in the most prosperous city in the world! There is genuine,
if unspoken, pathos in the soft tap she gives her husband's hand as she
goes about her work with a half-suppressed little sigh.
[Illustration: BOHEMIAN CIGARMAKERS AT WORK IN THEIR TENEMENT.]
The very ash-barrels that stand in front of the big rows of tenements
in Seventy-first and Seventy-third Streets advertise the business
that is carried on within. They are filled to the brim with the stems
of stripped tobacco leaves. The rank smell that waited for us on the
corner of the block follows us into the hallways, penetrates every
nook and cranny of the houses. As in the settlement farther down
town, every room here has its work-bench with its stumpy knife and
queer pouch of bed-tick, worn brown and greasy, fastened in front
the whole length of the bench to receive the scraps of waste. This
landlord-employer at all events gives three rooms for $12.50, if two
be dark, one wholly and the other getting some light from the front
room. The mother of the three bare-footed little children we met on
the stairs was taken to the hospital the other day when she could no
longer work. She will never come out alive. There is no waste in these
tenements. Lives, like clothes, are worn through and out before put
aside. Her place at the bench is taken already by another who divides
with the head of the household his earnings of $15.50 a week. He has
just come out successful of a strike that brought the pay of these
tenements up to $4.50 per thousand cigars. Notice to quit had already
been served on them, when the employer decided to give in, frightened
by the prospective loss of rent. Asked how long he works, the man
says: "from they can see till bed-time." Bed-time proves to be eleven
o'clock. Seventeen hours a day, seven days in the week, at thirteen
cents an hour for the two, six cents and a half for each! Good average
earnings for a tenement-house cigarmaker in summer. In winter it is
at least one-fourth less. In spite of it all, the rooms are cleanly
kept. From the bedroom farthest back the woman brings out a pile of
moist tobacco-leaves to be stripped. They are kept there, under cover
lest they dry and crack, from Friday to Friday, when an accounting is
made and fresh supplies given out. The people sleep there too, but the
smell, offensive to the unfamiliar nose, does not bother them. They are
used to it.
In a house around the corner that is not a factory-tenement, lives
now the cigarmaker I spoke of as suffering from consumption which the
doctor said was due to the tobacco-fumes. Perhaps the lack of healthy
exercise had as much to do with it. His case is interesting from its
own stand-point. He too is one with a--for a Bohemian--large family.
Six children sit at his table. By trade a shoemaker, for thirteen
years he helped his wife make cigars in the manufacturer's tenement.
She was a very good hand, and until his health gave out two years ago
they were able to make from $17 to $25 a week, by lengthening the day
at both ends. Now that he can work no more, and the family under the
doctor's orders has moved away from the smell of tobacco, the burden
of its support has fallen upon her alone, for none of the children
are old enough to help. She has work in the shop at eight dollars a
week, and this must go round; it is all there is. Happily, this being
a tenement for revenue only, unmixed with cigars, the rent is cheaper:
seven dollars for two bright rooms on the top floor. No housekeeping
is attempted. A woman in Seventy-second Street supplies their cooking,
which the wife and mother fetches in a basket, her husband being too
weak. Breakfast of coffee and hard-tack, or black bread, at twenty
cents for the whole eight; a good many, the little woman says with a
brave, patient smile, and there is seldom anything to spare, but----.
The invalid is listening, and the sentence remains unfinished. What of
dinner? One of the children brings it from the cook. Oh! it is a good
dinner, meat, soup, greens and bread, all for thirty cents. It is the
principal family meal. Does she come home for dinner? No; she cannot
leave the shop, but gets a bite at her bench. The question: A bite of
what? seems as merciless as the surgeon's knife, and she winces under
it as one shrinks from physical pain. Bread, then. But at night they
all have supper together--sausage and bread. For ten cents they can eat
all they want. Can they not? she says, stroking the hair of the little
boy at her knee; his eyes glisten hungrily at the thought, as he nods
stoutly in support of his mother. Only, she adds, the week the rent is
due, they have to shorten rations to pay the landlord.
But what of his being an Anarchist, this Bohemian--an infidel--I hear
somebody say. Almost one might be persuaded by such facts as these--and
they are everyday facts, not fancy--to retort: what more natural? With
every hand raised against him in the old land and the new, in the land
of his hoped-for freedom, what more logical than that his should be
turned against society that seems to exist only for his oppression?
But the charge is not half true. Naturally the Bohemian loves peace,
as he loves music and song. As someone has said: He does not seek war,
but when attacked knows better how to die than how to surrender. The
Czech is the Irishman of Central Europe, with all his genius and his
strong passions, with the same bitter traditions of landlord-robbery,
perpetuated here where he thought to forget them; like him ever and on
principle in the opposition, "agin the government" wherever he goes.
Among such a people, ground by poverty until their songs have died in
curses upon their oppressors, hopelessly isolated and ignorant of our
language and our laws, it would not be hard for bad men at any time
to lead a few astray. And this is what has been done. Yet, even with
the occasional noise made by the few, the criminal statistics already
alluded to quite dispose of the charge that they incline to turbulence
and riot. So it is with the infidel propaganda, the legacy perhaps of
the fierce contention through hundreds of years between Catholics and
Protestants on Bohemia's soil, of bad faith and savage persecutions
in the name of the Christians' God that disgrace its history. The
Bohemian clergyman, who spoke for his people at the Christian
Conference held in Chickering Hall two years ago, took even stronger
ground. "They are Roman Catholics by birth, infidels by necessity, and
Protestants by history and inclination," he said. Yet he added his
testimony in the same breath to the fact that, though the Freethinkers
had started two schools in the immediate neighborhood of his church
to counteract its influence, his flock had grown in a few years from
a mere handful at the start to proportions far beyond his hopes,
gathering in both Anarchists and Freethinkers, and making good church
members of them.
Thus the whole matter resolves itself once more into a question of
education, all the more urgent because these people are poor, miserably
poor almost to a man. "There is not," said one of them, who knew
thoroughly what he was speaking of, "there is not one of them all, who,
if he were to sell all he was worth to-morrow, would have money enough
to buy a house and lot in the country."