PART II

With the Incoming Tide

XIII

PROBLEMS OF THE TIDE

The 1,200 steerage passengers who sailed for the United States early in

November, 1908, on the steamship _America_, of the Hamburg-American

Line, were the advance guard of the vast armies of men which were

waiting for the election of Mr. Taft to the presidency.

That to them, was synonymous with the return of good times; but before

those good times had a chance to prove themselves identical with those

which took sudden flight over a year ago, the steamers of all lines were

assured their full number of steerage passengers.

When the first shipload of them sailed into New York harbour, its humble

passengers were hailed as the harbingers of the prosperity which was

being anxiously awaited by rich and poor; by native and foreign born; by

the citizens of New York and Budapest and by the people of Chicago and

Spalato.

We, in the United States, have alternated between fear because so many

immigrants came, and regret because so many went away; but the recent

influx brought joy to all, because the coming again of so many,

indicated the return of good times.

For our good or ill, for what is better than mere good times, and for

worse than financial depression or economic problems, these strangers of

all races and nations come and go, helping to make our history and shape

our destiny.

From the beginning, our history has in a large degree been determined by

the migratory movements of larger or smaller groups from the Old World,

and unless we have idealized these movements overmuch, those groups

which came, unconscious of the gold and the iron slumbering in our

hills--which came for "conscience' sake"--those groups have affected our

history most fundamentally if not most permanently.

Pilgrims, Puritans, Huguenots, Quakers and German Pietists certainly

made history. They sailed the treacherous seas and marched into the

pathless wilderness, driven by something higher than the mere necessity

to sustain life.

Subsequently came other Germans, the Irish, Scotch and Scandinavians.

They came primarily because of economic distress in the home-land; yet

even among those were many groups which came because they were dreamers

of dreams, and sought "a city whose builder and maker is God."

In one of our Western states are two large communities, one from Holland

and one from Germany; both are late comers to this Western world. One

of them has built itself into a rather typical Western town and the

other is the one successful example of a religious community in this

country. Both these groups left prosperous homes in the Old World to

seek a place where they might worship God according to the dictates of

their conscience; and all this happened in the latter part of the

nineteenth century, at the very zenith of our material development.

Large and influential groups of these seekers after God may be found

throughout the length and breadth of our country; although they may now

come out of the heart of Russia, like the Molicani in Los Angeles,

California, they come moved by the same impulses which drew the Pilgrims

to Plymouth and the Germans to Pennsylvania, and they exhibit the same

characteristics.

In these days most people believe that when the last Irishman has

arrived from Dublin, the Old World will be drained of her best people,

and we look upon a certain boundary line in Europe as the division

between good people and bad; yet from beyond that line come pilgrim

bands in much larger numbers than the casual observer knows, and they

are bent upon the same holy errand as that which brought those who came

generations ago. In fact the Reformation with its religious and

political consequences is making itself felt at this late day in these

migratory movements. Large groups driven to the plains of the Volga or

the Danube are now coming to the United States; with narrow doctrines,

it is true, but with deep convictions, and the churches of the

Reformation feel this current in the measure in which they have kept

themselves spiritually alert. Yet one must admit that the vast majority

of those who come is driven by no higher motive than the economic

pressure. Yet it is not always poverty which drives them from their

village homes to our cities or from their quiet fields to our noisy

shops.

They are no poorer to-day than they were fifty years ago when no one

thought of moving even a league from the village in which he was born.

They are simply obeying an impulse which is extending to the very edges

of civilization; an impulse created by discontent. Everywhere men are

beginning to believe that God meant them to enjoy the good things of

life _now_, and that all men, not merely a privileged class, should be

able to enjoy them.

Nothing ever quite so rudely shattered the idea of the stability of

wealth as the discovery of America and the subsequent migrations there

of different groups from different portions of Europe.

Wealth had been in a measure entailed, the possession of a class; and

poverty was meekly accepted as the divine apportionment to the mass of

men. When it was rumoured that gold lay hidden in the mountains across

the sea, that no key was needed to gain access to its hiding-place, and

that it would belong to any one who dared, the myth was quickly

dissolved. Poor men came and got their share of gold--not so often by

finding it as by toiling for it.

Further and further the truth travelled; slowly, as is the way of truth;

until to-day, scarcely anywhere is the prevailing social order or

economic status accepted as fixed. The greater the number of men

returning from America, even with very moderate wealth, the more the

discontent spreads, and men seek the place where this change may soonest

be effected.

They will continue to come until the economic opportunities at home are

appreciably nearer those they find in this strange land. Although at

present there is no European country or province from which there has

not been some emigration, there are people who have only begun to seek

this adjustment; therefore, the force of the tide towards America is

destined to increase rather than decrease, and an annual influx of

2,000,000, more, rather than less, may be expected during the next

decade.

No matter from where the groups come, they will present an economic

problem to those who, in a measure at least, have risen to a higher

standard of living. Each group will fear that the younger and often

cruder body may lessen its chances of maintaining that standard. The

Germans, the Irish and the Norse people were not received with open arms

by those who preceded them, even those of related race or nationality.

This was especially true during the years when war, famine and

persecution brought them in large numbers.

Now, in turn, all these look askance at the Jew, the Slav and the

Italian; while they, like the rest, are ready to close the doors to the

vast hordes about to move onward, and, as they believe, upward. It is

also interesting to note, that among these late comers, there are

decided ideas as to who are desirable immigrants, and who are not.

The Slav, if he is a Pole, would exclude his cousin, the Slovak, and

both are united in thinking that the Ruthenian is a rather inferior

being; while the Ruthenian would debar the Jews, Servians and Croatians

from the economic benefits of the land of his adoption.

Until now there has been room for all, and they have not presented a

serious economic menace, except as they have intensified the general

problem of labour. Each group, driven from the lower and coarser tasks,

has risen from mine to shop, from shop to store, and from the store into

every avenue of business and professional life.

Thus far all have been crowded up and not many have been crowded out. No

considerable groups of native Americans are bewailing the fact that

they cannot find work in the mines; nor would large numbers desire to go

back to them from their safer toiling places.

The Irish are not mourning because they are not working on sections, nor

would they be willing to leave their beats and office chairs from which

they are ruling, not only those of us who came after them, but a fair

share of those who came before them. They do not care to go back to the

track, the pickax and the shovel.

Without the Slav, the Italian and the Magyar, that which we call our

industrial development would have been impossible. This development does

not lessen the economic problem, it intensifies it; but it cannot be

proved that no economic problem would exist if, instead of Slav and

Latin, the Teutonic races were dominant in this movement. In that case I

believe the problem would be more difficult of solution.

Let me again frankly admit that I do not regard most immigrant groups of

the present type as a serious menace to the other groups, or to the

whole economic life, provided they are needed to do the work for which

they seem best fitted. At present this is still a matter of proper

distribution and presents no such serious difficulty as is commonly

supposed; for the immigrant will go wherever he is wanted and a fair

wage is assured him. Nor is he quite so eager to herd in cities as we

imagine, and no community need be without an adequate supply of

labourers, if they are needed for hard, crude labour. There is no work

so hard or so dangerous that the immigrant will not attempt it.

Like their forerunners in the migratory movement of European races, the

present immigrants respond quickly to the American higher standards of

living, and in many cases much more quickly than some of the older

groups responded.

When we speak of the horrors of the East Side of New York, the crowded

Ghetto and Mulberry Street with its Italian filth, we forget the days

when the Irish possessed the land, "squatting" wherever they could, and

living in wretched huts; when the American used to sing:

"The pig was in the parlour, and that was Irish too."

The pig and the goat have gone, and instead, the Irish have pianos and

phonographs in their parlours; but in one generation, many Slavs and

Italians, under less favourable conditions, have achieved the same

results, minus the pig and goat period.

To-day, the merchants in Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Connelsville and

Pittsburg regard the Slav as a great "spender"; and if the Italian is

not now like his predecessors, he soon will become so imbued by the

American spirit, that, like us, he will live up to his income and beyond

it.

That phase of the problem so much complained of, which relates to the

immigrants' sending the bulk of their earnings to Europe, would not be

half so serious if we provided a safe banking system; preferably, Postal

Savings Banks. Both the Austrian and Italian governments thus safeguard

every penny which is sent abroad, and one cannot blame the toiler who

prefers to trust his money to a government in whose financial soundness

he has absolute confidence, rather than place it in our own savings

institutions, in which we ourselves have but little confidence.

The economic problem as presented by the effect of immigration upon the

labour market is made less serious by the fact that large numbers of

those who come, go back and forth, according to the demand for the

commodity which they supply.

During our last financial crisis, the sudden withdrawal from competition

of half a million toilers, certainly rendered conditions less difficult

than they would have been had we drawn for our supply upon those sources

in Northern and Central Europe, which have always sent us their surplus

population for permanent settlement. Those aspects of the present

immigrant population, which are usually pointed out as its defects, have

in a large measure helped to make the economic problem less acute;

although they have aggravated some phases of it. Foremost among these

is the ethnic problem.

Possibly because of the bitterness of the race question in the South,

the American people have become very sensitive to ethnic differences.

All those primitive instincts which were at work in the childhood of the

race have risen to the surface and threaten to become permanent factors

in our national character.

A little more or less pigment in the skin, the shape of a nose or the

slant of the eyes, produce in the average American that most primitive

of antagonisms--race prejudice.

Being a primitive instinct, it defies reason, the commandments of

religion and the dictates of humanity. In fact, it often becomes

irrational, irreligious and inhuman.

During the recent agitation of the Japanese question on the Coast, I

discovered that no matter how far removed the ordinary American may be

from the seat of the difficulty, the very agitation of the question acts

contagiously upon the people of the East as well as of the West. As a

result, their feelings towards the Japanese have unconsciously changed

for the worse, so that the question has assumed in their minds the

qualities and proportions of the Negro problem.

To justify its existence, this instinct, if such it is, overemphasizes

ethnic differences and minimizes the superior qualities of the race or

group involved. It always applies the categoric judgment when the

judgment is adverse, and admits grudgingly that in each group or race

there are certain individuals who possess good qualities.

In visiting nearly every city of the United States where there are

groups of Italians, I have everywhere heard it said by those who had

dealings with them: "We have no bad Italians, ours are good, the bad

ones are elsewhere." In Trenton, N. J., you are told that the bad

Italians are in Patterson; but when you are there, nearly every one

denies the fact and consigns all the bad Italians to New York.

The truth is, that wherever men have had a chance to know the individual

Italian, they have discovered that there are good Italians even as there

are good Jews and good Slavs, and that there are good and bad in every

race.

Naturally, when men apply the warped categoric judgment to another race,

particularly when that race is in political or economic competition with

them, they are likely to magnify the evil in the character of the race,

and rarely even admit the good. That this categoric judgment is seldom

just, that it leads to antagonisms which actualize themselves in race

riots and wars, is certainly very evident.

I have watched the development of this prejudice against the Japanese,

even as I am most anxiously watching it grow against certain European

groups which are ethnically more or less differentiated from the native

population, and I am not over confident that we shall solve the ethnic

problem without much struggle and stress and strain. Indeed, the ethnic

problem can be solved only if we have patience, a measure of sympathy

and the sense of justice.

There is a subtle force at work, which, to a degree at least, is

settling this matter for us--a force which, if we allow it full play,

will complete the task whose result will be the miracle of the age.

I call it a miracle, advisedly; for the things which seemed fixed,

unchangeable, deeply graven in the nature of certain European races, the

products of long ages, vanish in a generation.

Race characteristics which were regarded as biological are found to be

sociological; on the outside of the race, if we might so express it, and

not on the inside.

The children of the Neapolitans and the Sicilians lose somewhat of their

swarthiness; the features lose their sharpness, and as a rule the

children grow over the heads of their parents. Indeed, the last named

process takes place among natives and aliens alike.

The ethnic differences of even the most strongly marked European races

will ultimately disappear; that is, if we have patience and sympathy,

and, above all, if we mete out that justice which gives every man a

chance, regardless of his nationality or race.

As a nation we do not possess in an abundant degree these qualities;

therefore the ethnic problem is one which may yet postpone its solution

until that time when indeed there shall be "Peace on Earth and Good Will

to Men."

Thus far I have touched upon two problems presented by the return of the

immigrant tide: the economic and the ethnic.

Another problem presented by this influx of aliens is in that rather

indefinable realm called culture.

The question is: Will these people be able to appreciate the cultural

ideals of America, and make them their own?

It would be an insult to my readers to try to make clear to them that

the people who come to us are not barbarians or semi-barbarians;

although as a rule they are uncultured and not yet in harmony with many

of our ideals. I would not even attempt to mention this, were it not for

the fact that it is the commonly accepted idea, that we are dealing with

the offscouring of Europe. Let me illustrate. Not very long ago, I heard

a home missionary secretary of a certain denomination say before an

audience of intelligent, Christian people, that "We are landing annually

a million paupers and criminals"; and I venture to say that nearly every

one who heard that statement believed it. Let us see who these people

are who come to us.

Slavs, Latins and other Aryan groups, such as Lithuanians, Albanians,

and Greeks; of whom the first two have fairly earned the right to be

called the oldest inhabitants of the continent of Europe. Next in order

are Finns and Magyars, from among the Ugru-Altaic races, Jews and some

smaller Semitic groups. The bulk is made up of Slavs, Latins and Semitic

peoples.

Need I question whether the Latin has in him the qualities which will

enable him to appreciate our culture? The Italian who built Florence,

whose sons built St. Peter's, painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

and carved out of Carrara marble the "Pieta" and the statue of Moses?

Need I mention Giotto, the builder, Raphael, the painter, a Dante, a

Petrarch, a Savonarola--a hundred masters of the chisel and the brush,

of rhythmic rhyme and stately prose, all reared in that Garden of

Europe, Italy?

Will the Jew learn to appreciate that culture, the best of which was

created by his sires? For the glory of our American culture lies in the

quality of its manhood and womanhood and that at its best is patterned

after men and women whose names would debar them from certain clubs and

hotels to-day. Moses, Amos and Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and in all

reverence I mention Jesus and Mary, John, Paul and Peter. Strange to

say, it is sometimes necessary to call the attention of intelligent

people to the fact that these men and women were not Methodists or

Presbyterians or even Episcopalians; and that neither their sires nor

their sons came over in the _Mayflower_.

Perhaps we need to realize that as Americans we have neither invented

nor discovered education, liberty or religion. What we have accomplished

is, that we have made gifts to the many, of some of those blessings

which in the immigrants' country are the possession only of the few; and

that is no small achievement.

The problem, the real problem, is: how to feed these people on truly

vital knowledge, how to make common to all, the beautiful, the

harmonious, the ethical; how to bring to all, the knowledge of that

religion which indeed makes free from tribal pride and racial hate and

leads men into the freedom of the sons of God.

Perhaps the greatest problem still to be solved is, how to interpret to

these people the one supreme gift of all these gifts which most of them

never possessed--the right of citizenship.

Herein lies our real peril; not because the immigrant cannot be made to

understand how to exercise this right; but because here we are least

efficient, and here we, the earlier comers and their children, have most

signally failed.

The Scotch-Irish of Pittsburg are not a conspicuous example of good

citizenship for the Italians; the Germans of Reading and Lancaster have

no overplus of civic righteousness to give the Slavs; the Quakers of

Philadelphia have not been moved by the Spirit to teach the Jews how to

govern a city righteously; the Yankees of Connecticut and Rhode Island

have not ruled their states in such a manner that the crude Lithuanian

or the Greek could in all cases follow their example; nor are the Irish

of New York in a position to throw stones at the other races.

I do not know of a single case where the newer groups have failed to

respond to sane, vigorous leadership in the struggle for civic

righteousness; while in every large city there are conspicuous examples

of many a battle won, because the immigrants have aided the cause.

In Scranton, Pa., in the fight for a clean city, the mayor's private

secretary, a Russian Jew, did valiant service; while Pittsburg's

"cleaning up" has been accomplished because a vigorous attorney of the

same race was one of the captains in a campaign which may have vast

consequences for the entire state.

It ought to be a matter of no little pride to the Jews of Pittsburg,

that among its non-corruptible councilmen there was at least one of

their race.

Prof. Graham Taylor of Chicago, whose worth and work that city does not

fully appreciate, has found the Poles of his ward ready to share in the

struggle for civic betterment. One of the first "clean" councilmen of

the city came from that ward and was a member of the Slavic race.

The problem of citizenship is not a problem created by the immigrant,

and his presence makes it more difficult of solution, only because we

have not provided him with safe leaders and have not ourselves been very

good examples. Indeed the primary corrupting influence in every city

with which I am acquainted is either of native stock or belongs to the

first or second generation of those immigrants whose coming does not

disturb us and whose presence we regard as a blessing. These are either

German or Irish, and largely of the latter nationality.

That phase of the struggle which is directed against the saloon, the

newcomer does not understand, and as yet no one has taken pains to

enlighten him. We are astonished when we find him opposing our efforts

to deprive him of his liquor; but to the Slav, at least, whiskey means

life and strength. He would regard being deprived of meat as more

reasonable than having his _vodka_ or _palenka_ taken from him.

The immigrant needs leaders in whom he can have absolute confidence;

leaders who possess the genius of democracy and the spirit of

brotherhood; who will have patience with his slow ways.

Those of us who are not born to lead ought to realize that a good

example is very contagious, and that the love of righteousness and

justice is not so foreign to these strangers as some of us imagine.

It is in the hope of stimulating both leadership and good example that I

have written the following chapters. In that hope I have pointed out how

contagiously our example acts upon these groups and how the processes of

assimilation are retarded by injustice and prejudice.

I have given special attention to the religious life of these newer

groups whose interpretation I have attempted, because not only does

religion play a large part in their lives; but because I believe that in

the field of religion lie the largest possibilities for that kind of

assimilation which can make of all these "tribes and tongues and

nations" "fellow citizens with the saints"; and of all the "strangers

and sojourners," members of the "household of God."

XIV

THE SLAV IN THE IMMIGRANT PROBLEM

In the three groups which form the bulk of our immigrant population, the

Slav is now the strongest and the most interesting factor, and is

destined to be for some time to come.

In spite of his being from the least densely populated regions, he is

numerically the greatest and will long maintain his supremacy. There are

more than 100,000,000 Slavs, and the territory they occupy is vast,

covering half the European continent and reaching far into Asia.

These people are scattered in villages, but rarely concentrated in

cities; nevertheless, social and political conditions among all of them

are now such as to force this most immovable of European races into the

great outgoing tide.

The majority of Slavic people is of peasant type, and scarcely anywhere

has it developed a middle class strong enough to form a bridge upon

which to cross the age-long chasm between it and the upper class. This

means that poverty and contempt have been accepted as the reward for

hard labour, and as the divinely appointed lot of the peasant, who in

but few Slavic countries has escaped serfdom, a condition of

semi-slavery from which he emerged with insufficient land, or none, with

many limitations as to individual ownership and with practically no

limitations as to his share of the burden of government support.

The masses of the peoples of the Slavic countries have never been above

economic want, and have been but slowly awakened to the more expensive

demands of our civilization.

To the peasant, bread and cabbage to eat, a straw thatched _isba_ to

shelter his family, and an occasional pull at the _vodka_ bottle, meant

comfort; while to have feather beds, a crowing cock in the barn-yard and

a pig killing once a year, was the realization of his wildest dreams.

Fully two-thirds of these more than 100,000,000 people do not know what

it means to have enough bread to eat, and with the exception of Hungary,

many of the countries in which they live do not produce enough

foodstuffs to allow every man the ordinary military rations.

Nevertheless, they are forced to export a fair share of their crops, in

order to bring sufficient money into the country for the support of the

government.

To people living under such economic conditions, emigrating to America

will, for some years at least, be a going from Egypt to the Promised

Land; although manna and meat have to be supplied without supernatural

intervention and at the constant peril of life and limb.

As the Slav has not yet developed a compact middle class, this has had

to be supplied by foreigners. Germans, Jews, Tartars, Armenians and

Greeks are his merchants and mechanics, his bankers and manufacturers.

This condition has fixed the social status of the peasant, placed him

under exceptionally burdensome laws and marked him an inferior.

His picturesque clothing became his prison garb, and rarely did he have

opportunity to exchange it for the commonplace clothing of our

civilization.

To be a peasant means to be addressed by a personal pronoun which is a

mark of inferiority; it means to be bound by customs which are as

irksome as an "iron shirt"; it means to be the butt of the ridicule of

stage fools, who, after all, only mimic the fools in real life.

Military service offered the only escape from this cast, and bravery in

battle the only avenue to distinction.

Into some regions the industrial life came with its rude call to

freedom, with its trumpet notes of revolution, and the half awakened

Slav struck; then went to sleep again, murmuring something like a curse,

before he closed his eyes.

This social disability of the Slavic peasant is being partially overcome

by immigration; for the immigrant who has tasted a little of even our

crude freedom with its mixed blessings, who wears our sombre clothing,

whose feet are shod with our shoes--he it is of whom it might again be

said, poetically and prophetically: "How beautiful are the feet of him

that bringeth glad tidings of good things."

These glad tidings will, for a long time, bring us these millions, in

the hope that they too may earn the right to escape their bondage with

its attendant limitations and contumely.

Economically, always at the edge of want and in the shadow of

starvation, and socially always at a disadvantage, the Slavic peasant is

also living under galling political conditions which he is only now

beginning to feel in all their severity.

With but few exceptions, the Slav is an oppressed man; oppressed by

alien rulers, who, by force, are trying to wipe out of his consciousness

his national memories, and steal from his lips his mother tongue.

Where it is not the German or the Magyar who puts him under the yoke, it

is some close Slav relative who is practicing on him the Golden Rule in

its perverted form. When these conditions do not exist, the Slav bears

the yoke of his own making, in the form of Autocracy.

It is the distinction of the Slavs that they are the only Europeans who,

although not unanimously, believe that Autocracy is the form

[Illustration: TWO TYPES OF POLES]

of government best suited to their national character.

This is certainly true of many Russians, who see in the Czar a divinely

appointed autocrat; while many other Slavs of different nationalities

dream of the day when they shall bear this same yoke. The Russians also

rule, and most severely, their close kinsmen, the Poles, and are not

noticeably liberal to the Malo Russ, the Little Russians of the South.

Every cruel, political expedient has been used by Russia to subjugate or

assimilate these people, who are flesh of her flesh and bone of her

bone.

One might imagine that the Poles would have learned enough in the school

of political adversity to treat their own kinsmen, at least, as they

would wish to be treated; but the trials the Ruthenians have endured at

their hands are equalled only by what they themselves have endured at

the hands of the Russians.

That the Poles suffer from the Germans, the Slovaks from the Magyars,

the Slovenes and Servians from the Austrians, is only additional

evidence that everywhere the Slavic peasant suffers politically, and

that there is sufficient cause for the insecurity of his foothold. He

realizes this the more, in the measure in which he feels the breath of

welcoming freedom from across the seas, which lures him to our

turbulent training school in citizenship, and no doubt will continue to

lure him.

The economic, social and political conditions among the Slavs are such

as will for some time in the future make their coming to America in

large numbers, a certainty, and it is not out of the question that they

will be the determining factor in our civilization. The Slav fits

admirably into the place usually assigned the late comers among the

immigrants: the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Of rugged physique

and docile temper, he is regarded a valuable workman, performing the

hardest tasks uncomplainingly, facing attendant dangers courageously,

and enduring hardships and sufferings stolidly and without a murmur.

Economically, he is never so much of a problem as the immigrant who

comes to make his living by his wits; for that is a sphere likely to be

crowded by the earlier, or what we might call the more advanced groups.

The Slav is docile and patient and need not be regarded as a serious

economic menace by those who think that our workmen should demand a

decent wage and maintain a fair standard of living. He is not temperate

in his habits of either eating or drinking, his tastes in regard to

clothing are crude, but not necessarily inexpensive and he squanders too

much money for "that which satisfieth not." He spends over thirty per

cent. more for drink than the native workman, pays more, according to

his wage, for rent, and falls behind only in that mysterious column

which the social observer calls "miscellaneous." In the Slavic groups

which have been here longest and which contain households, the wife has

lifted this mysterious column to a normal figure; for "Mother Vanity"

has many daughters among the Slavic women.

The Slavic standard of cleanliness suffers by comparison with that of

the older groups; although they are widely different in this respect and

it is not safe to generalize on that point.

In judging the Slav we must take into consideration the housing

conditions in America as he finds them, the fact that the men among the

Slavs never do woman's work, that many of them come without their wives

and that the woman in her native environment has very little time for

the finer household duties. She is her husband's partner in all his

heavy labour; but must do all her household work unaided.

Many of the Slavic groups will be slow to understand and appreciate the

higher ideals of our civilization, but our civilization is not so

foreign to their genius as we are apt to think. Wherever they have had

the slightest opportunity, they have made valuable contribution to it.

We must not forget that the Slav gave the world a Copernicus before we

gave it a Newton; that he gave it a John Huss before the Germans gave

it a Luther; that Comenius, one of the greatest pedagogues, lived and

laboured before Froebel and Pestalozzi; and that Turgenieff, Tolstoy,

Dostoyevsky, Pushkin and Sienkiewicz stand fairly well beside our makers

of literature.

I am not blind to some of the defects in the character of the Slavic

peoples, in fact I know them so well that I know their source and I

realize that they are not rooted in the race, but are the results of

_tyranny_. These faults which seem so deeply fixed in the lives of the

people can and will be wiped out; although the task may not be an easy

one.

There is in the Slav a certain passivity of temper, a lack in sustained

effort and enthusiasms, an unwillingness to take the consequences of

telling the truth, a failure to confide in one another and in those who

would do them good, a rather gross attitude towards sexual morality and

an undeniable tendency towards Anarchy and intemperance.

They have but little collective wisdom, even as they have no genius for

leadership, scant courtesy towards women, and other human weaknesses to

which the whole human race is heir. To balance these failings, however,

they have a deeply religious nature, a willingness to suffer hardship, a

genius for self-expression in all forms of art, are usually honest in

their business dealings and hospitable to strangers.

The danger is, that, in his new environment, the idealistic Slav will

grow materialistic, that his phlegmatic temper will not take seriously

the burdens of self-government, that in an individualistic atmosphere

where "help yourself" is the watchword, latent tendencies towards

Anarchy may develop, and that in our social organization which demands

both the power of leadership and that of cohesion, he will be a brittle

element, incapable of either.

Yet I do not fear that Slavic social or religious ideals or even racial

characteristics will become dominant among us, even if the Slavs should

constitute the bulk of our immigrant population. My reasons are: First:

Because these ideals and characteristics are embodied in a peasant

population which has little or no influence over its second generation,

for it has found a higher social level. To this second generation,

neither the speech nor the customs of its parents is attractive.

Second: Because the Slav is environed by city life and no matter how

compact his neighbourhood may be, elements which make up the urban

spirit penetrate into the most densely populated alley, make themselves

felt, and become dominant.

Third: Because in his native environment the Slav has taken on the

ideals of his neighbours more often than he has imposed his upon

others.

In Asia, he has been influenced by his Mongol neighbours, but has

himself not left any visible traces.

In Europe, the numerically weak Finn has resisted the force of the

Autocratic State and the Orthodox Church; but has left the impress of

his genius upon his Slavic neighbours.

After centuries of close contact with Slavic government, the Germans in

the Baltic provinces of Russia are still more German than Russian.

The Czechs of Bohemia, the most virile of all the Slavic peoples, in

spite of their stubborn struggle, have not metamorphosed their Germanic

fellow citizens into Czechs; although they cannot easily deny the strong

influence of their Teutonic neighbours upon themselves.

A mere handful of Magyars, almost at the centre of the sphere of Slavic

influence, have imposed upon millions of Slavs their language and their

ideals.

Whatever the causes for these conditions may be, and there are good

causes, the truth is, that the Slav has nowhere become a dominant factor

in the environment in which he has been placed; and we need neither hope

nor fear that his ideals or his characteristics will become ours for

good or ill.

Again it is true that in America this Slavic peasant population is

awakened to its racial and historic heritage, and that feeling may be so

artificially fostered by patriotism and religious organizations as to

hinder a normal process of assimilation.

The Slav, by virtue of being among the most numerous of our new

citizens, has a right to demand that the rest of us should know him; for

by knowing him, we shall learn to respect him, appreciate the good

qualities of his race and help him to overcome tendencies which hinder

his full development.

We must give the Slav a full chance to know us, the best of us and the

best in us--he usually knows the worst.

He must have our best interpreted to him in rational terms and ways, and

not have it forced upon him by law or by a custom to which he yields but

which he cannot understand.

I have described the Slav's quality as brittle; perhaps stubborn would

be better. You can lead him to the water and can also compel him to

drink; but he will stop drinking when you are not looking, and "kick"

besides.

On the other hand, once he understands and endorses an ideal, he will be

loyal to it; stubbornly loyal.

Inasmuch as I believe that America's best possessions are those ideals

which spring from its religious convictions, ideals inherited from its

Judaic and Christian ancestry, I also believe that its effort should be

to interpret them to the Slav in practical terms of fellowship and

service.

How far from these ideals or how near to them the Slav is, I have

attempted to show in the next chapter; and to make the task of

interpretation easier, I have put the more important Slavic groups with

which we have to deal, in their own historic setting.

This will, I trust, stimulate in the further study of these people who

are worth knowing for what they have suffered, for what they have done

and for what they are.

XV

THE SLAV IN HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY

When the sword of Rome, the ideals of Athens and the faith of Judea

strove for the mastery of the world, the Slavs were still unknown to

history. Upon the middle European plain, along the Don, the Dnieper and

the Vistula they lived a semi-nomadic life, at war only with bear, elk

and boar, and at peace with the dominant races in the west of Europe

which scarcely knew of their existence.

Very early in the Christian era, the transition from nomadic to

agricultural life took place, and they became so identified with the

soil that some of the agricultural terms they used have been embodied in

other European languages.

The facts that the Slavs inhabited the eastern portions of Europe to its

very edge, that Christian civilization was imposed upon them by

Byzantine and Roman influences, when both were struggling for the

mastery of the Christian world, and that the territory they inhabited

became their battle-ground--had great and lasting effect, not only upon

their political history but upon their religious life and their national

character.

The Slavs then are a late product of Christian civilization; an

unfinished and inharmonious product which is at its worst, where later

Greek and Roman influences touched it, most turbulent where modern

Western ideas have suddenly affected it, and at its best and rarest

where the Slav's own talents and resources have had a chance for

rational development and adjustment.

That which complicates the problem presented to us by the Slav is the

fact that in spite of his occupying practically contiguous territory,

the close family bond was early broken by conquering armies, by rival

missionary groups, by invading aliens who came to pillage, barter and

trade, and by the influx of his neighbours, who varied all the way from

Tartar and Turk to German and Magyar; from Finn and Armenian to Greek

and Albanian.

When we speak of Slavs to-day we refer to Aryan people, whatever that

may mean beyond the fact that they are Europeans, presenting no great

ethnic variations; although there is no doubt that Mongol and Finnish

blood has found its way into the veins of the Eastern Slavs. We also

mean that they speak a closely related language, the Slavic; but which

has become so differentiated in time that there are now literatures in

Russian, Polish, Czechish, Servian and Bulgarian; each a distinct

language, differing in alphabet, grammar, accent or sentence

construction.

Besides these, there are other dialects, vital enough and varied enough

to have created their own literature, and zealously guarded as their

mother tongue by the people who speak them.

These linguistic differences have aided in complicating the religious

and political problems among them. Thus, the Russians and the Poles have

been made hereditary enemies, largely, because one received its

Christian doctrines from Rome and the other from Constantinople;

Ruthenians and Poles in Austria have been pitted against each other in

an age-long struggle, by a difference in liturgies; Slovaks and Czechs,

almost twin brothers, are little better than strangers to one another,

because of a few hooks in the alphabet and a few variations in

pronunciation.

The whole Southern Slavic group remains politically ineffective because

of the dissimilarities of the Cyrilian and Latin alphabets and all that

their difference is made to imply.

Even when transplanted to America, these contentions are magnified by

the churches and governments concerned, which thus are effective in the

continued separation of related groups.

If the Slavs may be called one race, they certainly present a

kaleidoscopic conglomerate out of which emerge three groups: the

Western, Eastern and Southern Slavs.

Besides their common racial bond, each group is related by language,

economic environment, determined by climatic and political conditions,

and above all, by religion, which is a stronger bond than even ties of

racial kinship.

The entire Slavic world is living under the dominion of religion more or

less clearly interpreted and understood. This manifests itself in

conversation with the people. "God help you on your way!" "Go with God."

"Praised be the Lord Jesus Christ!" are common greetings as one journeys

along Slavic highways and byways.

The names of the Deity and of the Saviour or the Virgin are never

uttered without lifting the hat, accompanied by the words: "Slava i cast

nyim budi!" Honour and praise to them!

The highways among the Western Slavs, who are largely Roman Catholic,

are lined by crosses, chapels and shrines; and no matter how wretched

the village, its church is well appointed and its peasants are not quite

happy at the end of the year, unless its monotony was broken by a

pilgrimage to some shrine where the Virgin waits, ready to bestow her

blessing of good health or other rich favours supposed to be in her

special keeping.

Feast days and fast days follow one another in quick succession and no

season of the year or event in life is left unhallowed by religious

observances.

All this is equally true of the Eastern and Southern Slavs who, with but

few exceptions, belong to the Greek Orthodox church, and are cast in a

religious mold as fixed as the form of the Byzantine _icon_, the symbol

of that church.

To the Russians, the largest body among the Eastern Slavs, religion is

an atmosphere in which they "live and move and have their being." Among

them also, church feasts and fasts regulate the days, while either the

pleasure or the pain they bring is willingly accepted.

Sacrifices of candles and oil are freely offered and no pilgrimage is

too wearisome to be undertaken. Visiting the tombs of saints and the

dwelling places of hermits is a national mania, and religious

ceremonies, which in their origin and meaning are wholly Pagan, take

place in hut and palace alike; for no class of Russian society is quite

free from gross superstitions. The peasant coachman, who drives his

miserable beast over the cobblestone pavement, crosses himself before

every chapel and _icon_; while his passenger, be he a general, a

university professor or one of the common people, will do the same, with

perhaps only a little less unction.

Yet, in spite of the fact that religious forms dominate the life of the

masses of the Slavs, there are no people in Europe who less understand

the real value of religion, whose conduct towards each other is so

little affected by it or to whom it is so entirely a mere belief in the

mysterious forces of Heaven and Hell which can be appeased by prayers,

formulas, sacrifices and pilgrimages. Religion with them has seemingly

nothing to do with sobriety, chastity, conquering the will, or the

cultivation of the inner virtues.

The blame for this lies largely with the clergy, which, whether it is in

Russia, Bulgaria or the countries inhabited by the different Servian

nationalities, stimulates the superstition of the people and does but

little to enlighten or ennoble them.

The priests nowhere occupy or deserve the place which they hold among

the Western Slavs, and where the Roman Catholic minority has any

fighting ground among the Southern Slavs, as in Servia,--there the

Franciscans and Trappists tower above the Greek clergy as benefactors of

their people and often as true saints and martyrs.

My assertion that the Slav is by nature truly religious, and that the

clergy is in a great measure to blame for his hopelessly low standards,

is proved by the remarkable phenomenon of the sects, which especially in

Russia flourish, in spite of persecution. They grew up from within; some

of them, supposedly before the Reformation, and still they are being

formed and developed.

These sects range all the way from the most fanatical, whose members

seek salvation in voluntary death or in some revolting form of

mortification of the flesh, to large and influential bodies, kinsmen to

our Quakers, Baptists and Methodists.

It is this hunger for religion which is the most hopeful characteristic

of the Slavs, and one which ought to make contact with them less

difficult than we usually imagine it to be.

The problem is, how to purge these movements from fanaticism when

transferred to America; although in our soberer, freer and more

practical atmosphere the dangerous elements are apt to be spontaneously

corrected.

Protestantism, as a manifestation of historic Christianity, antedates

among them the German Reformation and was contemporaneous with the

earliest movements in England. History clearly shows that the Protestant

spirit found kinship among the Slavs and that it is still alive.

Evidences of this are the sect of the Bogumils early in the fourteenth

century, which has left its traces among the Southern Slavs as far as

Bosnia; the Hussite movement so vitally effective in preparing the way

for Martin Luther and still a force in the national life of Bohemia--and

the various sects among the Russians.

This Protestant spirit in its conventional form, as found in Bohemia, in

Poland to some extent and among the Slovaks of Hungary, is unfortunately

no more a factor than the Mother Church in the shaping of character, in

inducing right social relations, or in determining the future of the

Slavic race.

There are, however, various Protestant forces at work among these

people; forces which emphasize spiritual and ethical ideals; such as the

missions of the American Board, in Bohemia; the devoted and enthusiastic

members of the "Gemeinschaft" in Kattowitz in Silesia, strategically

situated where three great empires meet; the Baptist missions in Russia,

and above all, the returned immigrant, who comes home, often

enthusiastically but sanely, practically and devotedly religious, and

with whom rests largely the religious and political future of at least

two Slavic nationalities, the Slovaks and the Ruthenians, the latest to

be awakened to the economic possibilities in America.

The Slovaks for nearly a thousand years have retained their national

consciousness, in spite of the fact that long ago they were conquered by

the Magyars, who have used every possible means to wean them from their

language, the one strong link binding them to their historic past.

Patiently they have endured a national martyrdom; although the world at

large knows nothing of their sufferings.

Whenever they have tried to speak, prison doors have enforced silence.

In the struggle between race and race, the Magyars, who themselves were

persecuted for freedom's sake, have, in their treatment of the Slovaks,

violated every principle of political liberty.

In a little village called Hluboka, in the midst of their well tilled

acres, lives a group of Slovaks whose Lutheran pastor, John Hurban, was

a man who helped to keep alive this national spirit, for which he

endured imprisonment and even faced the gallows. In 1892 the people

erected a modest monument over his grave, and at its unveiling they were

driven from the cemetery at the muzzle of the gun.

The son of the dead pastor wrote an article in the public press

protesting against this, and he was sent to prison for twelve months. An

editor, Ambrosius Pietor, was incarcerated for eighteen months, for

writing two articles complaining of the treatment his people received.

When he returned home at the expiration of his term, his admirers met

him at the railroad station and some young girls presented him with

bouquets of flowers.

Twenty-one persons who took part in this reception were sent to prison

for an average of a month each, and the three young girls, who betrayed

their native country by handing this man bouquets of flowers, had to pay

fines, aggregating 400 kronen.

In 1906, 245 Slovaks were sent to prison, and from 1906 to the present

time the number is not far from 500. I have already cited the nature of

the offenses for which they are punished.

I have mentioned these facts, not because I wish to throw discredit upon

the Magyars, for government and people are usually two different

things; but because I wish to throw light upon these Slovaks who come to

us to do our most menial work and whose worth is obscured by our not

knowing them. Their clannishness, the tenacity with which they cling to

their native speech, and their attitude towards our Christian and

national institutions, find some explanation in the miseries they have

endured for the sake of preserving some kind of national or racial

entity.

I consider these Slovaks among the most unspoiled of all the Slavic

peoples; low in the scale of culture, it is true, but of such innate

goodness and possessing so many virtues, as to make them most desirable

immigrants and splendid material upon which to graft the best of our

Christian civilization.

Like all Western Slavs they are largely Roman Catholic, but with enough

of the Protestant element mixed with it to have given evangelical faith

a grappling place.

This broader vision with its ethical element has been transferred from

America to the Slovaks in Hungary and is now manifesting itself in a

company of people, which, though small, is so thoroughly in earnest and

ethical as to prove that they can be brought into harmony with the most

vital religious ideals.

Ruthenians, or Ukranians, as they call themselves, who belong to the

Eastern Slavic group,

[Illustration: RUTHENIANS

The most backward and oppressed of the Slavic people, whose destiny is

worked out in America.]

are a most unhappy people; degraded by adverse economic and religious

conditions, worse if possible than those of the most debased Russians

whose closest kinsmen they are. In Austria a majority belongs to the

Greek Catholic church, which is a union of the Greek Orthodox and the

Roman Catholic churches, maintaining distinct Byzantine dogmas and

acknowledging the supremacy of the Pope.

There are about 34,000,000 of these people, numerically more important

than the Poles, by whom a portion is governed or ill governed and

persecuted. Neither have they any chance for full development in Russia

where the largest number lives; nor in Hungary, where they make their

home on the eastern slopes of the Carpathians. They are now struggling

for the maintenance of their national consciousness and are bearing all

the unfortunate consequences.

In the United States their protest has taken form politically, in a

National Ukranian Society, and religiously, in a Ruthenian Free Church,

and both deserve sympathetic aid from those who believe in political and

religious freedom.

The great task of religion in its ministry to the Slav, and that no

matter what its ancient form or symbol, will be to make clear to him the

difference between God and Cæsar; for religion and nationality, Heaven

and the throne, are confused in his mind.

It must also teach him that besides its sacramental value it has service

value, whose obligations rest upon priest and people alike.

Religion must wean him from his ancient enemies, intemperance and

superstition, and when it has done this, it has rendered a service which

may again make of the Slavs a homogeneous race; great, vital, virile and

well prepared to play a leading part in the future history of Europe as

well as America, where they are now, numerically at least, the most

important element in the great immigrant tide.

XVI

FROM EPHRATA TO WHISKEY HILL

That portion of our history, which began with the inflow of Germans from

the Palatinate, seems to most of us a closed chapter; yet in the very

heart of the Keystone State, where more than 200 years ago the German

pietist began to build its cities, since grown to greatness, the German

is still a foreigner.

Indeed, he is almost as complete a foreigner as the Slav who lives in

the mining patches along the Wyoming arid Susquehanna Rivers. Germanic

speech, habits and types survive, and it was in a crowded trolley car in

Reading, Pa., just after I had finished a wearisome investigation among

the Slavs, that a woman of generously Teutonic proportions said to me:

"Setz dich a mahl zu mir her."

Let me add that although I had never seen the lady before, I obeyed the

summons. First, because there was no other seat vacant, and, second,

because I have been long enough in America to obey implicitly when a

lady commands.

"Du acts wie ein stranger," the good woman continued, taking my hand;

and then, discovering that I had a right to act like a stranger, she

apologized profusely. She had mistaken me for her family physician. In

spite of her evident embarrassment, we began a conversation, and my

ears, accustomed as they now are to our rather monotonous and uneuphonic

English, refreshed themselves by listening to this new speech--Pennsylvania

Dutch. It required thinking in two languages, and that in their most

archaic forms.

Four generations had passed since my neighbour's ancestors came to this

country; yet her English, whenever she attempted it, smacked strongly of

the Fatherland, and in an unguarded moment, when my sentences seemed to

her rather involved, she said, "Du talkst a bissel zu fast."

The trolley took us through the manufacturing centre of Reading and out

into the fruitful fields of Lancaster County, and the further I

travelled in that state the more I realized the difference between the

old and the new Pennsylvania, even in the names called into my ears by

the prosaic conductor. Philadelphia does not now suggest Bible times so

much as it might; but there are Bethlehem, Nazareth, Emmaus, and

Ephrata, each name suggesting at once a sacred atmosphere. Then for the

new Pennsylvania are the names of Johnstown, Coalton, Scranton, and

Steelton, besides those yet unplaced on the map--names like Hunkeytown,

Guinea Hill, Dago Roost, and Whiskey Hill, squatted close to the mines,

flanked by culm heaps and huge breakers, and cut through and through by

ravines and dirt-clogged rivers. All these towns are destined to

disappear long before the last lumps of coal dug there, are burned.

The trolley stopped at Ephrata, and my neighbour, who had been in

Reading, "bargains zu kaufe im grosse schtore," left the car; but not

without admonishing me to be sure to see the cloister of the German

Baptist Brothers, which, she said, "is a grosse sight." I needed no

admonition, for I was there on a pilgrimage. I had come, to stand face

to face with a great past, to visit the old haunts of these German

mystics, to lose myself in the all-pervading peace of Ephrata, after

having been in the thick of the great industrial war, whose presence was

attested even here by the cloud of smoke on the western horizon. This

cloud of smoke, although changing into a pillar of fire by night, does

not seem to be the guide out of captivity. I suppose one easily reads

something into the atmosphere of a place; but I am sure that, even

without the pilgrim spirit which brought me there, I should have

recognized Ephrata as one of the places in which dreamers have built air

castles; and these are castles which have foundations. The archæologist

does not see them in the dust; but the sociologist, if he has a

sensitive spirit, feels them, especially if he has come from a week's

study of Whiskey Hill.

One of the men who has written of Ephrata before me says: "There is

nothing peculiar about the village itself, or its people." He evidently

had no "inner sense," and, moreover, he had never been at Whiskey Hill.

Not only is the air of Ephrata "salubrious and the outlook delightful,"

the street is full of gabled houses one close upon the other. Some of

them are commonplace indeed; but many of them are quaint and clean, with

deep-set windows full of flower-pots, the green foliage shining through

latticed panes, in rich contrast to the white snow almost up to the

window-sills. And the people one sees--"commonplace"? People who for

nearly two hundred years have clung tenaciously to a strange garb, in

the midst of a "perverse and crooked generation," bent upon changing the

cut of its coats with every passing season? Women who wear brown bonnets

and look as modest as thrushes, whom one sees in single file following

the men; women who have resisted the allurements of pokes and toques and

picture hats for two hundred years--such women commonplace? Such women

are as remarkable as they are rare, and such there are in Ephrata.

As I watched them they were going to the modest meeting-house at the

edge of the village. I did not follow them, for my way led straight down

the main street which ends in the turnpike, over which a toll-gate still

hangs. The gatekeeper sits in a little hut among his cronies, smoking

the native weed and talking politics--and he who is acquainted with the

quality of either ought to know that they are strangely alike.

"The cloisters are across the meadow," the toll-keeper informed me. And,

pointing to one of his companions, a man of uncertain age and a rather

doubtful degree of cleanliness, he said: "And he lives in one of them."

"I am not a member," the man volunteered, apologetically. "My wife is."

This alone proved him a modern and commonplace. I left him disgustedly,

and, stepping over the stile, walked through the snow-covered meadow and

along the shores of the Cocalico towards a group of rather ill-shaped,

weather-beaten buildings which suggested a deserted farm more than a

cloister. The momentary disappointment vanishes, however, as soon as one

has a clear view of the peaked-roof buildings in which no outer beauty

is visible, but which, with their low doors, narrow cells, and roped

stairway, recall to him who knows, the "Chronicon Ephratense," the

groping of this Brotherhood after the blessed life here below, seeking

communion with God in self-denial, in good works and pious songs. These

Brothers fell into all the errors of Christendom and practiced many of

its virtues in a single generation. Conrad Beisel, a German mystic, came

here to live as an anchorite. His pious life drew others to him, and

they progressed to monasticism.

When women found them, they all became celibates. They were close to

every heresy which threatened the early Church, and were not far from

worshipping Conrad Beisel as a reincarnation of Christ; while in the

mystic Sophia they came close to the adoration of the Virgin. They

practiced communism successfully for over half a century, and branded

property as sin long before Proudhon declared it to be theft. They

printed Bibles, wrote ecstatic hymns, developed to a remarkable degree

the art of illuminating letters, and organized a Sunday-school in which

they used some of the so-called modern methods, such as promotion cards,

long before the thought came into the mind of Robert Raikes, the founder

of the Sunday-school of to-day. They were chaste, frugal, and

non-resistant. One of them, Peter Miller, the successor of Conrad

Beisel, went to George Washington to plead for the remittance of the

death penalty of a man, Michael Wildman, accused of treason. The General

told Peter Miller that the severest penalty must be dealt out at a time

like that.

"If it were not so, I would gladly release your friend."

"Friend!" replied Miller; "he is the only enemy I have."

This, it is said, made such an impression on General Washington that the

pardon was granted.

I lingered in the "Saal," the place of worship. Simple and small it is,

with plain pine pews, the beamed ceiling hanging far into the room. The

walls are covered by charts on which, in exquisite ornamental lettering,

Scripture verses and some of the mystic poetry of the Brothers are

written. There are also allegorical pictures, naively drawn by the pen,

suggesting the thought that in time a new school of religious art might

have been developed here.

Scarcely half a dozen worshippers, I was told by the cronies at the

toll-gate, gather here on Saturday; for the sect is that of the Seventh

Day Dunkards, or German Baptists, and it cannot be very long before this

sanctuary will be empty and forsaken and its ruin complete.

I braved the snow-banks and waded through an unmarked path towards the

cemetery where they shall all soon lie. I wandered among the graves,

among those who long ago went to their rest and their reward. Here among

others are the Sisters Iphigenia and Anastasia and the Brothers Daniel

and Gabriel, the headstones of their graves quite covered by the snow.

In the centre of the cemetery a stone sarcophagus rises above the snow.

It seems to have withstood the ravaging tooth of time, for it stands

squarely upon the ground. I brushed aside as best I could the snow which

covered the tablet, and read: "Here rests an outgrowth of the love of

God, a solitary brother, afterwards a leader, ruler, teacher of the

solitary and the congregation of Christ in and around Ephrata. Born in

Eberbach, in the Palatinate. Called by his worldly name, Conrad Beisel;

but according to his spiritual name, 'Friedsam,' the peaceful one."

The snow and the frost clung closely. I could not read it all, but I saw

plainly the beautiful German letters cut deep into the stone.

"Friedsam"--it was this word which took me back to Whiskey Hill.

"Friedsam." No one could be called that on Whiskey Hill. Weather-beaten

wooden buildings there are, scaffolded structures, shaken by the

vibration of coal-crushing machinery within. From their third or fourth

stories down, young boys sit before troughs, along which the coal rushes

and rumbles and tumbles. Nine hours a day, in an atmosphere black as

night from coal dust, sitting in a cramped and unnatural position, the

breaker-boys pick slate from the falling coal by the light of smoky oil

lamps directly under their nostrils. Nine hours of this, and many of

these boys, mere children, although sworn to be the legal age, which is

fourteen, walk homeward like old men. They look so weary, so old, so

wizened! They surely are not "Friedsam."

An old man climbs down the breaker. He, too, is now a breaker "boy."

Only about fifty-six years of age, unfit for the harder work in the

mine, he picks slate from the larger lumps. He clings to a bit of broken

fence as soon as the fresh air strikes him and coughs so violently that

his paroxysm shakes the fence. The boys stand about, jeering; but when a

clot of blood comes from the old man's mouth, and another followed by a

stream, the boys take to their heels.

"_Prach_, dust, got into my lungs," the Slovak miner says. "It can't

last much longer." Looking after the boys, and then pointing to himself,

he adds, "The beginning and the end of the breaker-boy."

I shall never forget the pain written on that man's face as he told me

that he came to this country, a young Slovak boy from a village by the

river Waag, strong and full of health. He is giving his life-blood drop

by drop, drop by drop, for our enrichment. He is unable to walk home; so

I lead him. Home! This is his home. A gray, weather-beaten hut, one of

thirty, standing on a slant of the hillside, surrounded by culm piles,

black and forbidding. There is a street, deeply sunk in mire; for there

is no sewerage, and a sickening green scum has gathered in front of

every house. I say there is no sewerage--there is not even a decent

ditch which might carry the foul stuff away.

The hut has three stories, the lowest one built into the hillside, with

windows only to the front; the rest of the rooms are damp and cold, not

even fit for the storing of vegetables. In one of these holes lives the

old, consumptive breaker-boy. Surely this suggests nothing "Friedsam."

There are thousands and tens of thousands such "homes" in Pennsylvania,

all the way from Pittsburg to Whiskey Hill. Each one of them brings rich

revenue to somebody, and all of them reap a rich harvest of death. Six,

eight, and ten dollars' rent a month is paid by these miners for a place

in which they often die by inches.

The battle against filth is not everywhere zealously prosecuted; but I

challenge any American woman to do better than some of these Slovak

women on Whiskey Hill. Let me take you into one such home--and I came

upon it more often than you may think. The room is freshly papered, the

work done by the miner's wife, and not ill done. The floor is

scrupulously clean; gorgeous pictures of the saints hang on the wall;

there is a sewing-machine, and a woman busy at her task of making shirts

for her miner husband.

There are two rooms, occupied by a family of

[Illustration: THE SLAVIC HOME IN HUNGARY

A peaceful, little village surrounded by fields of poppies and maize.]

[Illustration: THE SLAVIC HOME ON WHISKEY HILL

Flanked by culm piles, breakers and mines.]

five, and four boarders. I know the home of this woman in Hungary, and

the very village from which she comes. I know the clean, straw-thatched

cottage, the broad, dusty street, and the waving poppy-field back of the

house; and I ask, "How are you getting along on Whiskey Hill?" This is

the woman's reply: "Chvala Bohu dobre." Thank God, very well. I have

never seen a more beautiful and grateful smile pass over a face, and

have never heard a sentence which more fully suggested "Friedsam"; but

suddenly her face grows dark; she hears the noise of hurrying horses and

the beating of wheels against the rocky street. "The ambulance! O Virgin

Mother, protect me!" she cries; for the ambulance stops at her door, and

they bring in the mangled body of her husband.

He went out a few hours ago and she was "Naomi"--now he is brought home,

and she is "Marah." Bitter, very bitter.

What happens next on Whiskey Hill? Do people grow excited? Do the

neighbours come rushing in? Do the newspapers in the town at the foot of

Whiskey Hill take notice how this "Hunkey" came to his death? No,

indeed. Nothing happens. The woman laments alone, even as another Marah

laments alone in a similar row on another ridge. There are ten women

anything but "Friedsam"; for on a neighbouring hill their husbands were

slain together, by the fall of one huge rock or the same powder blast.

"And nothing happens?" Yes, something happens. The coroner's jury is

summoned, and brings in the verdict; the same verdict always, with

slight variations, rendered ever since the great companies absorbed the

anthracite industry. This is it:

"Martin Horvat, aged forty-two, came to his death by a fall of rock in

Mine No. 2 on Whiskey Hill, January 30, 1908. The jury finds that the

company should have provided the deceased a safe place to work in. It

was not the duty of the deceased to pass on the safety of the roof. The

deceased is not to blame." (What a comfort!) "We further find that the

place in which the deceased worked should have been properly timbered"

(which it was not when the accident occurred), "but we do not find that

the company was to blame."

Who was to blame? The deceased was not, the company was not. I have

it--the rock was to blame. Somebody in Wilkes-Barre said, in answer to

my query; "These Hungarians are so ignorant." I see now--ignorance was

to blame.

Every day there are funerals on Whiskey Hill, and after the funeral a

feast, and after the feast a glorious spree. Whiskey Hill has earned its

name, although it might be called Beer Hill just as appropriately. The

saloons not only outnumber the churches; they outnumber the stores,

schools, churches, undertakers' shops, and culm hills combined, and a

man might make a living by picking up the empty beer barrels that lie in

the ravines. There are enough empty bottles lying in the runs, to clog

the flow of the creek in the spring, when the current becomes strong

enough to make its way through the ooze and slime.

Ignorance and beer are to blame--and avarice, especially avarice. For

the first two the miner is to blame, but only in part. This ignorance is

an inheritance, often a condition arising from the fact that he is in a

strange country, to whose language he is deaf and dumb. The drinking,

too, is an inheritance, and often also a condition arising from the

circumstances under which he must live and work.

Granting, however, that he is ignorant and intemperate, up here on

Whiskey Hill and on hundreds of other hills no attempt is being made by

any one to dispel this ignorance. Neither his masters nor his priests

are doing it. His priests, perhaps, are more content with his ignorance

than his masters, for to the master he might be worth more if he knew

more. The priest is sure of the opposite result as far as he is

concerned. No one on Whiskey Hill tries to curb intemperance by teaching

the "Hunkey" the hurt of it to his bank account, to his body, to his

chances of coming alive out of the mine. His priest usually drinks

freely, and many a saloon license in Pennsylvania bears the signature of

the priest as one of the petitioners.

Even those people who are eager to make laws to curb or prohibit the

sale of liquor, ignore entirely the education of the "Hunkey," although

he is now, and more and more will be, a great factor in the political

and social life of the state.

Avarice is to my mind the basic fault in all the history of accidents in

the mines of Pennsylvania. It is an avarice which thinks human life

cheaper than timber, and considers it easier to pay funeral expenses

than to support schools and pay teachers. It corrupts politicians to the

degree that there is seemingly nothing more to corrupt; and if half the

charges are true that are made openly by the newspapers in the coal

regions, against the mine inspectors, they certainly are hopelessly

debased.

Of the one thousand people slain annually in the anthracite coal region,

two-thirds are chargeable to one of three causes: ignorance,

intemperance, and avarice. Inasmuch as these causes could in a large

degree be removed by the people of Pennsylvania, it follows that the

people are to blame.

Twenty-three thousand lives have been sacrificed in the coal-mining

industry in the United States in about ten years! Read it again!

Twenty-three thousand people had to give up their lives for the light

and heat and speed which we enjoyed in the last ten years. Twenty-three

thousand men! Almost I envy the Brothers Daniel and Gabriel and the

Sisters Iphigenia and Anastasia the time in which they lived, when the

waters of the Cocalico turned their wheels, when they printed books and

illumined letters, when they could do their share in pushing this world

forward without sacrificing the lives of an army of men to what we call

progress.

That time will never return, in spite of Rousseau and Ruskin and

Tolstoy; but we must have a time, and have it soon, when we shall be

able to do all that we are doing without such slaughter. Nothing is

worth doing and nothing is worth having unless, like Conrad Beisel, we

have a "new name in the Lord." For myself, if I lived in Pennsylvania,

it should not be "Friedsam" but "Streitsam"--not the peaceful one, but

the fighter.

XVII

FROM THE LOVCZIN TO GUINEA HILL

According to ordinary railway standards the car was only half full, for

each passenger was the fortunate possessor of an entire seat.

Reluctantly enough, one or the other of my fellow travellers gave to

some newcomer the space which allowed him some freedom for the movements

of his body; but when a dozen foreigners entered the car at a wayside

station, every man and woman moved defiantly to the outer edge of the

seat, determined that not one of the intruders should share it.

Ordinarily the conductor sees to it that such monopoly of privilege is

properly rebuked; but this time he apologized for the presence of the

immigrants by saying that the smoking-car was "jam full of Dagos

already."

Meekly enough, the men stood in the aisle, glad of the privilege of

standing in the car, which carried them from the scene of their labours

to the distant city where the signora and the bambini awaited them. I

made room for one of the men, and for a time employed all my senses to

discover if possible the reason for their receiving such treatment. I

smelled neither garlic nor whiskey, although I was soon engaged in

conversation with my neighbour and thus had a good chance to detect

either.

He wore blue jeans overalls, which, while not stylish garments, are

certainly honest clothing. There was no crease down the middle, but they

had creases all over. His hands were not unclean; although the soil of

honest labour was upon them.

In no way was he different from the American working man of the same

class, except that he did not chew tobacco and therefore did not indulge

in the practice which usually accompanies that accomplishment.

In order to ascertain what chances there were for English conversation,

I addressed him in that language, and his answers in broken English were

certainly more entertaining than the abrupt "yes" or "no" which one

often receives from the native fellow traveller, to whom it is usually a

matter of indifference whether or not the time hangs heavily on one's

hands.

At the next station the smoking-car was relieved of its surplus

passengers, and my neighbour with all his countrymen was driven into it

with rough gestures. I am very proud of the courage I displayed by

turning in my seat and addressing the man who sat behind me.

"Won't you please tell me," I said, hesitatingly, "why you wouldn't

share your seat with one of those men?" I fully expected him to say,

"It's none of your business," but his stern face relaxed for a moment as

he replied, with a rising inflection, "Dagos," and then looked as stern

as before.

I was not satisfied by that answer and said so. This opened the way for

an argument, and conversation was soon in full swing.

"What right have those Dagos to come to this country, anyway?" he

retorted, when I pleaded that those men had paid their fares and had the

same right that he had, to a seat. I soon discovered that neither logic

nor ethics was his strong point; so I thought I would try him on

history.

"Do you know," I asked, "who was the first 'Dago' that came to this

country?" For a moment he put his thinking apparatus to work; then he

said, and I am quoting his words exactly:

"I suppose it was somebody by the name of Macaroni, who sold bananas

when he landed in New York, and talked an outlandish gibberish."

"No," I replied, "his name was Christopher Columbus, and if it had not

been for that 'Dago' you would still be undiscovered."

I had great difficulty in making my fellow traveller believe that there

are cities in Italy more beautiful than Pittsburg; but when I told him

that a "Dago" built the largest church in the world, his materialistic

sense was touched and he began to listen respectfully to what I said.

"The same 'Dago' who built that church carved statuary so beautiful that

whenever any man wishes to free the 'imprisoned splendour of the stone'

(I did not quote Michael Angelo to him, however), he has to go to see

what that 'Dago' has done.

"And that same man," I continued, "painted a ceiling which is one of the

great art wonders of the world. His name is Michael Angelo."

"I never heard of him."

"I know of another 'Dago'" I continued, emphasizing "Dago," "who painted

a picture for which even _you_ might be willing to pay $500."

"I'd like to see it!"

When I mentioned Raphael and the Sistine Madonna, he did have some vague

idea of what I was trying to convey to him; for these were fairly

familiar names.

Then he fell upon me savagely. "But you don't mean to say that these

'Dagos' that come over here are anything like Michael Angelo or

Raphael!" To which I replied: "No, they are not; but neither are you

anything like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln." Then I returned to

the perusal of my newspaper.

That man was an average American of the middle class, a representative

of the bulk of our population, and he, in common with many of his

countrymen, is criminally ignorant of the people who will soon have his

weal and woe in their hands.

The Italian, the Greek, and the Syrian are usually called by the classic

names "Dago," "Roundhead," or "Guinea," and the Slavs, be they Poles,

Servians, Slovaks, or Montenegrins, are called "Hunyaks," "Hunkies," and

"Slabs"; and I once heard the owner of a great industrial establishment

call them "Bohunks." It was not an ignorant or malicious friend of mine

who said of a Jew, a man of scholarly attainment and a common

acquaintance, "He is a pretty decent Sheeny."

I have no quarrel with the fact that the average American is ignorant of

the historic place which these people hold among the nations, and of the

great age-long struggle through which some of them have passed and are

still passing, that they may preserve their identity as a people. I am

thoroughly incensed, however, that nearly every one of the names applied

to them is an expression of contempt, an offhand judgment of

inferiority. After all, it is not even that which makes me take up the

cudgel for them, because they must and will prove for themselves that

they are perfectly human like the rest of us, and that in all essential

things they will grow like us as soon as they have the same privileges

which we have had, who came after the first "Dago" had discovered the

way to this land of opportunity.

What really _does_ burden me and make me cry out is the consequences

which result from such ignorance as I have cited, and because of which I

was on that train travelling to Guinea Hill.

Guinea Hill differs from Whiskey Hill in that it bears many other

fantastic names and in that there are fewer saloons. The beer-kegs do

not lie about in such unpicturesque confusion, and the Slavs who live

there come from the shores of the Adriatic and the bleak mountains of

Montenegro. The huts in which they live on Guinea Hill are even worse

than those of the earlier comers from the north of the Slavic world. I

am told that they were built some thirty years ago, and no sacrilegious

hand has touched them since, to paint them or to change their original

primitive, dry-goods-box architecture. They seem to have sunk into the

refuse of the mines, and the sociological investigators, who know the

housing conditions in Pennsylvania, declare them to be "the worst in the

state," which phrase would be eloquent from meaning were it not so

common as to lose its force.

Living in these wretched huts among stunted trees, the leaves of which

are shrivelled and blackened by coal dust, I found young men with whom

I had walked among the olive groves near Spalato. These young men had

rowed me across the Boche de Cattero, easily the most magnificent bay in

Southern Europe, and had shared with me the luscious figs which they

carried in their shirt bosoms. I saw many a man whom I first knew

beneath the deep shadow of the Lovozin, the historic mountain of

Montenegro, whence the spirits of departed heroes still call to fight

against Christianity's hereditary foe--the Turk.

When last I saw these youths they wore garments of red and white cloth,

richly embroidered, with their belts full of costly weapons of ancient

pattern, and their fierce mustachios stretching out defiantly like long,

double-pointed daggers. Here on Guinea Hill they all wear the sober garb

of miners, their mustachios are shorn of their fierceness, their weapons

have disappeared, their shooting is done in the darkness of the mine,

and they rarely shed any blood but their own.

I went to Guinea Hill because I am partly responsible for the presence

there of some of these Southern Slavs. Many years ago, when I visited

their mountain fastness, numbers of them were at the verge of

starvation. The crops on their scant fields had failed; fighting the

Turk had grown to be a fruitless and profitless occupation; Russia,

their ally and the godmother of their little principality, who in the

past sent thither what surplus of foodstuffs she possessed, was herself

living on borrowed money and charity, so that nothing remained for these

warriors except to starve or seek for work.

I suggested to Prince Nicolas that he permit them to go to the "land of

the free and the home of the brave." Not one of them, however, was then

willing to leave his rocky cradle home for the unknown fabled land so

far away, and they remained on their bleak mountains to take

half-rations or none, waiting for the realization of Russia's Asiatic

dream in which lay wrapped their own future. The Japanese war and the

subsequent Russian revolution were like the eagles' stirring the nest,

and the young eagles began to flutter in the exaltation of their first

flight, as they sought the shores of our far-away country. Four or five

thousand of these braves exchanged the hilt of the sword and the butt of

the gun for the shovel and the pickax, and the shadow of the towering

Lovczin for the shadeless Pennsylvania hills. There I found them digging

coal as bravely as they had fought the Turk, but known to their American

masters only as "Hunkies" or "Guineas"--no one discovering in their

open, honest faces a superior race--every one scenting in them

drunkards, brawlers, and incendiaries.

The usual results of such ignorance followed, in that they have been

treated with an injustice which makes them quite unconscious of the fact

that they have found the land of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." I

have verified nearly every complaint which they have made to me, for I

know how easy it is for sensitive men to exaggerate their wrongs; but I

found that they knew only about half of what they suffered, the other

half being mercifully hidden from them by their ignorance of the

language and the customs of our country.

After pay-days and feast-days the magistrates of the towns around seek

them to arrest them, and the fine they must pay is always twice, three

times, and in some cases ten times as great as that imposed upon the

American offenders. After trials which make a Russian military court

seem fairly decent, they are railroaded into jails and workhouses, and I

now soberly confess that as a stranger I would rather fall into the

hands of the police of Moscow or St. Petersburg than into those of the

protectors of the law in most of our industrial centres in Pennsylvania

and out of it.

The citizens of Pennsylvania may be comforted by knowing that Indiana,

Ohio, and Illinois, in their lower courts, are as unjust to the stranger

as their own state. In one town in Ohio there is, or was, a mayor who is

reputed to have made $9,000 a year out of the fines imposed upon

foreigners for petty offenses, usually for drunkenness or brawling.

This ingenious official arrested alien drunkards under the statute of

the state which allowed him to fine them as high as thirty dollars,

while the native was arrested under the statute of the town and fined

three dollars for his spree.

The Indianapolis police arrested a Slovak woman for the heinous crime of

picking up coal on the tracks. On the coldest day of the year she was

taken from her home and children and driven to the workhouse, in spite

of the fact that she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. The terrible

results of this inhuman treatment were, of course, what might be

expected. Such facts have led the citizens to organize an Immigrant

Protection League, which makes it its business to see that the immigrant

is not exploited by the courts.

On Guinea Hill every "Roundhead," as he is commonly called, despises the

court for its undignified procedures and its perspicuous dishonesty. The

judges' contempt for the immigrant, as well as that of other executive

officers, rankles and hurts beyond the telling, causing people who might

become stanch, loyal, and heroic citizens, to hate and despise our

institutions. If in time of turmoil and economic distress they become

lawless, as I firmly believe they will, we shall reap only what we have

sown. In our present hysteria about Anarchy it is well to remember that

it feeds on injustice, that it cannot grow--in sane minds at least--if a

nation deals out justice impartially, and that it would die out

completely if as a people we would live somewhere within hailing

distance of Mount Sinai.

I do not ask any sentimental consideration in our law courts for the

Slavic or the Italian offender. Deal with him firmly; punish him if

punish we must; but let the man who steals a coal mine be not dealt with

more leniently than the woman who picks up coal on the track. Let the

Jewish thief suffer, if he has stolen the railway's old iron; but let

him who steals a whole railway also suffer in proportion to the

magnitude of his crime.

I have asked for the aliens, and shall not cease asking until I am

heard: First, that we learn to know them. The people of Montenegro,

Poland, Hungary, and Italy are worth the knowing. If struggle for

liberty means anything in the character of a nation, then these people

have character; for their fields are drenched in martyrs' blood. Where

in Hungary the poppy grows reddest, or in Italy the figs are most

luscious, there the common people have shed their blood heroically.

Besides that knowledge, which, if it did no more for us, would at least

enlarge our mental horizon, I ask for common, fundamental justice; not

only for the sake of the alien but for our own sake. I ask and shall

continue to ask for justice--justice, which is the least if not the most

that we are capable of giving them. At present I do not ask, for I

cannot expect it, that enlightened justice which is love, the divinest

human gift. I ask for just plain, common, every-day justice.

"As ye would that" your own offenders should be done by, so do ye even

unto the alien. This is as far from the Golden Rule as Guinea Hill is

from the Lovczin; but it is the most we may expect, although not the

most for which we ought to ask.

Not a hundred miles away from Guinea Hill, at the Hazleton Young Men's

Christian Association, I want to show you what enlightened justice can

do for the "Roundhead." I came down from the Hill disheartened and sad,

and, stepping into the office of that rather remarkable Young Men's

Christian Association building, I saw a man, with dust-cloth and broom,

walking about with the peculiarly graceful stride of the mountaineer.

"That's Gabriel--not the archangel; but an angel, anyway," Mr. Hill, the

secretary, told me. "Go from garret to cellar and you will find no dust

or disorder. The small boy, that bane of the Young Men's Christian

Association, fears him and loves him in turn. I don't see how we could

get along without Gabriel."

"Kiss my cheek, Gabriel, and wish me well." And Gabriel kissed my cheek

and wished me well, just as he used to in his Montenegrin home, when

kinsman met kinsman upon the war-path as they fought their ancient

enemy, the Turk. Now, no weapons bulged from Gabriel's belt, his

clothing was faultlessly American, his once furious mustachios had

fallen beneath an American barber's shears, and his battle-field was

this splendidly equipped building. Officially, he was the janitor; but

he was also the self-appointed and beneficent dictator, feared by all

evil-doers and breakers of rules, and beloved by all who could

appreciate a faultlessly kept building.

"You must see his room," the genial secretary said, with a twinkle in

his eyes, and we followed Gabriel to the topmost story. He opened the

door of his room with pardonable pride, for Prince Nicolas, the ruler of

his country, whose bedroom I have seen and in whose throne-room I have

had audience, cannot boast of an apartment so neat and clean or so

gorgeously decorated. Besides the comfortable furniture, unrivalled in

Gabriel's home-land, the walls were hung with pictures which reflected

prevailing American tastes. Celluloid toilet articles lay upon the

bureau, while many books and newspapers betrayed how this janitor spent

his spare time.

Gabriel's face was radiant from pride, and so was mine; while added to

my pride was a pleasurable feeling to which I could give no other

expression than to ask for another fraternal kiss, which he gave me

with a resounding smack. When we returned to the lobby, I looked over

the group of men gathered there to meet me, and my wits were tested to

place each man according to his nationality. I looked into the face of

one young man, a veritable giant, and before he opened his lips I said,

"You are a Dalmatian." "Yes, yes," he replied, "from Ragusa."

Again I looked into his deep eyes and finely chiselled features. Yes, it

was the type one sees beneath the half-ruined porticoes of ancient

palaces, where young men play the _tambouritza_ and young maidens listen

behind latticed windows; where old men dream dreams of the Ragusan

Republic and its vanished glory, when it vied with Venice in maritime

power, although it never gained her ascendency. Now it is dying a slow

and a forgotten death, beneath shading palm trees, while its warrior

sons, the bluest blood of Dalmatia, are sent to dig coal in

Pennsylvania, and its _guslar_ minstrels make music for the merry-makers

at Coney Island.

What a fine specimen this is which Ragusa has sent us! Ask the secretary

about him and he will tell you that he is intelligent, cleanly,

temperate, and frugal; yet in Pennsylvania he is just a "Hunky." Other

members of the Young Men's Christian Association are loth to see him on

the gymnasium floor with them, and to most Americans he is only an

undesirable immigrant from Southern Europe--something to be dreaded.

"I am an Italian," very proudly says the next man who grasps my hand,

and, looking into his face, I ask doubtfully, "From Italy?" for his face

shows Slavic lines. "From Triest," he adds.

Ah! now I understand. That is where Italian, Slav, and German meet--and

fight, as is the custom of all good Austrians; for each race claims

superiority over the others, and in most of them flows the blood of all

three races.

"You must come to see my kindergarten and my church." I promise; for he

is quite an important factor in the redemption of Little Italy. The next

man is a Slovene from the neighbourhood of Agram, the next a Slovak,

then a Pole, and "last but not least," a Bohemian. All these are

gathered here beneath the sheltering wing of this archangel Gabriel,

janitor of the Young Men's Christian Association and self-appointed,

beneficent dictator and preserver of the peace. He preserves the peace

by carrying out, bodily, offending or offensive visitors--a task for

which he is well fitted. One of his ancestors plunged into the thick of

Turkish foes, dragged a magnificent Pasha from his horse and carried him

across the intervening space in the face of a rain of bullets, one of

which struck him. He fell with his burden; but, quickly recovering his

footing, held the Pasha safe by the throat with one hand, pulled a

pistol with the other, and in a moment argued the distinguished prisoner

into taking him upon his shoulders. Carried thus by the Turkish officer,

he came riding into camp and presented his trophy to his commander,

saying, "This is a fine horse I have brought to you, my captain;" and

then fell swooning to the ground.

The building over which his descendant, Gabriel, watches, is as safe as

a fortress. There are only two things which this brave fears. One is the

steam boiler which provides the building with heat. Steam is an unknown

force in his native land, which even the fiery horse has not yet

invaded; so, no matter how often Gabriel is instructed, no matter how

often he is reassured, when the steam bubbles and hisses he flees for

safety; and to this day, valves, screws, wheels, and radiators are

terrifying mysteries to him.

Gabriel's other dread is--women. Not that he dislikes them; on the

contrary, you should see his face all aglow from pleasure when a woman

looks at him, and yet "trembling takes hold upon him as upon the

inhabitants of Philistia," and he returns to his task as if beaten by an

enemy, all discouraged and distraught.

Rightly used and wisely directed, men like Gabriel can become a power

among us. Over the various nationalities of Southern Europe now coming

here in great numbers, such men can wield an influence more potent,

perhaps, for the peace of the world than the Hague Tribunal.

Nine men of nine nationalities grasped hands in that Young Men's

Christian Association lobby at Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and formed a

circular chain like unto the chain formed by the ancient Slavic heroes

when they swore fealty to old "Duchan." Thus did we pledge our faith to

this new country as we exhorted one another to patience, to justice, and

to love.

In leaving Hazleton I was asked by one of its citizens, "What will these

foreigners do to America when they get the power?"

My answer was, "They will help you save it, or they will aid you in

destroying it. It is very much in your own power whether they shall be

'leaven' or 'dynamite.'"

P. S. Gabriel has left Hazleton. He is now in New York, a valuable

member of the Immigrant Department of the Presbyterian church, and they

say that this Montenegrin is "leaven" and not "dynamite."

XVIII

THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN

Of all animals, man is the most brutal. Naturalists still disagree as to

the reason for his cruelty, but whatever it be, he has not often stopped

to ask himself the cause. He hates and smites and slays, simply because

he hates.

It is true that man's historic brutalities are hidden under the gloss of

what he calls patriotism or preservation of the race; but if the average

man were asked the cause for his own unbridled hate of other races, he

could give no intelligent answer.

That race hatred is a primitive passion is no doubt true, that it is

seemingly ineffaceable is also true; for neither education nor religion

has obliterated it; indeed both, strange to say, seem to have

intensified it. Even the religion of Jesus Christ, whose main endeavour

was to break down the tribal prejudices and hate of races, has not only

failed to accomplish its object, but in its historic manifestation has

in many cases aggravated it.

Whatever the cause, be it the old tribal spirit, the ethnic motive or

the opposing religious dogmas; whatever has been endured by one or

other of the races and for whatever cause, the Jewish race has suffered

for all causes, has suffered everywhere, has suffered long, and has not

yet seen the end of its sufferings anywhere.

There is no country in which the Jews have been in any large numbers,

where they have not endured and are not now enduring persecution. There

is no country to-day of which we can say that the causes which led to

their persecutions have been removed.

This is as true of Germany as it is of Russia, and as true of the United

States as it is of Austro-Hungary.

Every fair minded Jew knows this, and because he knows it he would

rather not talk about it or hear it talked about.

Every fair minded Gentile knows it, although perhaps he would not be

willing to acknowledge it, even to himself.

Undoubtedly, there must be reasons for an attitude so universal, and

before we can apply any remedy, it is necessary to analyze the disease.

First: The Jews have been able to maintain the tribal spirit during

periods when it was breaking down all around them. The tenacity

necessary for this and the extremely exclusive methods used, blocked

every avenue of social approach and aroused the suspicion of their

neighbours. Whether these neighbours were Egyptians, Assyrians, Romans,

Greeks, Slavs or Teutons, they hated the Jews because they kept

themselves separate.

The feeling of superiority which the Jew felt, soon degenerated into

contempt for the Gentile and was fostered by the fact that the mass of

the people with whom he came in contact was beneath him culturally,

using the word in its broadest sense.

The Jew could read and write when his Gentile neighbours did not know

the alphabet.

The Gentile bowed down to stocks and stones, to priests and Pope, while

the Jew held his head erect and covered, even in the presence of

Jehovah.

The people who thus voluntarily excluded themselves from Gentile society

were finally kept aloof by law, and when their masters became their

equals, and in some respects their superiors, the way of approach was

effectually blocked; until now, the aversion of the Gentile for the Jew

is fixed, and seems almost ineradicable, much as the Jew may wish to

free himself from it.

Second: Religious prejudice is another vital factor leading to this

antipathy between Jew and Gentile; although it is not the only one. It

manifested itself early in some of the New Testament writings, grew more

intense as the church began to overshadow the synagogue, reached its

height during the crusades and is still a compelling force among the

common people all over the world.

The myth that Jews used the blood of Gentile children for their Passover

feast very early gained currency, and this, coupled with the fact that

it is the anniversary period of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection,

has always made Easter time a season of brutal outrages against the

Jews.

In reality, the Church has never been quite blameless in these fanatical

outbreaks; although it is also true that Church dignitaries at all times

have tried to shield the Jewish victims. In most cases, however, they

have made no effort to put out the fire until after it was well started,

and consequently were too late.

Yet I firmly believe that religious prejudice alone does not account for

this feeling, because it exists in irreligious and religious people

alike; among those who are quite indifferent to the fact that Jesus

lived and who have but a vague and distant interest in His crucifixion.

The late Prof. Nathaniel S. Shaler of Harvard, one of the most

broad-minded observers, after an exhaustive study of the subject, comes

to these conclusions.[1]

"The greater number of those who have helped me in this inquiry note

that there is, on contact with those who are characteristic Jews, a

distinct and peculiar state of mind aroused by the intercourse. They are

conscious that the feeling is other than that which they experience when

they meet those of their own race; but there is, as might be expected,

no clear agreement as to the precise nature of the impression.

"So far as I have been able to gather, the state is emotional and

instinctive, being in effect the same as that which is always excited by

contact of racially different men. To support and explain this primitive

emotion, there is a natural effort to find some peculiarities of aspect

or demeanour in the neighbour. As to what these idiosyncrasies are,

there is a considerable difference of opinion. The greater number of the

observers agree that there is a failure on the part of the Jews to

respond in like temper to the greeting which they send them; they agree

further that there is generally a sense of avidity, a sense of the

presence of the seeking, in the Jew, for immediate profit, a desire to

win at once some advantage from the situation, such as is not

immediately disclosed, however clear it might be to an interlocutor of

his own race. Several have stated that the offense came from a feeling

that the Jew neighbour was smarter than themselves, having keener wits

and a mind more intent on gainful ends. Others state that the Israelite

spirit makes a much swifter response to the greeting the stranger gives

them than the Aryan, and that the acquaintance is forced to such a

degree as to breed dislike.

"This last noted feature in the contact phenomena of Israelites and

Aryans appears to me a matter of much importance, especially as it

accords with my own experiences and with observations formed long before

I began to devise and criticise theories on this subject. As one of the

Deans of Harvard University, I have been for ten years in a position

where I have to meet from year to year a number of young Hebrews. It has

been evident to me from the first that these youths normally respond

more quickly to my greeting than those of my own race, and that they

divine and act on my state of mind with far greater celerity. They are

in fact so quick that they are often where I am, in my slower way, about

to be, before I am really there. This would make them at times seem

irritating, indeed, presumptious, were it not interesting to me from a

racial point of view. To those who are in nowise concerned with such

questions, this alacrity is naturally exasperating, especially when the

movement is not only one of wits but one of sympathies.

"We all know how disagreeable it is to have the neighbour call on us for

some kind of affectionate response, before we are ready to be moved, and

how certain is such a summons to dry the springs which else might have

yielded abundantly. In our slow, Aryan way, we demand an introductory

process on the part of the fellow man who would successfully appeal to

our emotions. Our orators know this, and provide ample exordiums for

their moving passages; none ventures in the manner of the Hebrew prophet

to assume that his hearers will awaken at a cry.

"In observations made for me by young men, students in Harvard College,

and thus under my own eyes, so to speak, I have confirmation of the

hypothesis that an important part of the difficulty of social contact

between these diverse people is due to the difference in the way their

minds work when they come together. It is an unhappy fact that the last

wave of anti-Semiticism, that which led to the semblance of persecution

in Germany and to the abomination of the Dreyfus incident in France,

swept across the Atlantic and affected to a considerable extent the

social position of the Jews in the United States. They became unwelcome

in clubs, and in hotels; their daughters were not admitted to certain

private schools; and in various ways the unhappy people were made to

feel the ancient burden as in this country it had not come upon them

before.

"Of this resurgence of dislike, the Hebrew students had some, though not

a serious share. Thirty years ago, when the Jews began to be an

appreciable element among the students of this university, there was no

evidence whatever of dislike to them. They took their places among

their mates with no reference to their race; that indeed seemed, so far

as I could discern, to be quite unnoted. Following on the last European

epidemic of hatred to the Israelites, there has developed among this

body of students an evident dislike for their fellows of that race. The

feeling is by no means universal or intense; it is condemned by the

greater part of the leaders of opinion among these young men; yet it is

sufficient to be noticeable and to awaken keen regret in all those who

love the catholic and human motive which so long has inspired that

school. One of my helpers in the effort to find the reason for this

state of mind summed up his acute observations in the statement that

when one spoke to the Jew kindly, 'the fellow climbed all over you.'"

I agree with nearly all Professor Shaler says; but I am sure that there

are two facts which he does not sufficiently emphasize. First: The

anti-Semitic feeling was carried to Harvard on the wave which came from

France during the Dreyfus trial. This is important; for it proves my

point that race antipathies are contagious, and that it does not matter

whether the contagion springs from an ethical or unethical source.

The psychological law for this lies in the now fairly well explored

field of the "mob" and is a common phenomenon from which many races have

to suffer.

The second point made by Professor Shaler is that which refers to the

Jewish mind. That quick response which the Jews give, which is so

obnoxious to the Gentile, was certainly not disagreeable to Jehovah; for

if we trust Holy Writ, He often held converse with them and made the

quick Jewish mind the vehicle of His thought.

This quality of the Jewish mind made an Amos hear the roaring of the

Lord's voice in the lonely wilderness; it made an Isaiah hear the call

of Jehovah amid the din of the traffic of Jerusalem, and brought to the

ears of a Paul the heavenly voice, on the road to Damascus.

This quality of the Jewish mind also betrays his "seeking for immediate

profit" and explains the repulsion felt by Professor Shaler's friends,

and felt by American people in academic circles and out of them.

In my judgment the difference between the Jew and other commercial

people lies largely in the fact that the Jew cannot so well conceal his

desire to make profit. It is written upon his mobile face and conveys

itself in the shrug of his shoulders and the upturned palms of his

hands.

For that reason the Jew is not successful in those forms of business

which demand that their commercial features be hidden. He does not make

a good life insurance agent, for here one must assume the rôle of a

benefactor; nor does he make a good book agent; for in that work one

must seem disinterestedly interested in the entire family or sell the

book as a great favour to a few cultured people in the community.

Although the Jew, especially in America, becomes a fairly clever

gambler, he is a poor match for the Gentile in the game of poker, and

for a long time to come he will have to keep out of games in which the

mask one assumes determines their success; even as he will have to

continue to do business in scrap iron and not in railroads, in

pawn-shops and not in politics.

In my experience with Jewish tradespeople in America, I am convinced

that the sense of immediate profit is no less present in the Gentile

mind than it is in that of the Jew, and that the Gentile does not always

completely conceal it.

There is at least one sphere out of which the Jew keeps his business

more carefully than does his Gentile competitor, and that is the sphere

of religion.

I have yet to see Jewish hymnals invaded by advertisements, as are those

of some Gentile congregations, and although the Jew is a direct

descendant of those traffickers whom Jesus drove out of the temple, he

has managed to keep his synagogue much more free from commercialism than

his critics have their churches.

In the great and solemn moments of life, he is not nearly so practical

as the funny papers would have us believe. At the birth of a child, at

the marriage feast and at the death-bed, he shows his natural idealism

and gives, forgives and forgets.

All this is not quite so true of other commercial peoples, notably the

Americans. The following instance may not be typical nor may it prove

the rule, and would no doubt be attributed to a Jew, had it not occurred

in the college town in which I live and where all the clothing dealers

are Gentiles, if not Christians.

One of them was suddenly taken to a distant city to be operated on for

appendicitis, and the next day a local paper contained the following

advertisement:

"I have gone to Rochester, Minn., to have my appendix cut out. This will

be a great cut, but it will not compare with the cut I am making in

clothing at my store on the corner of X and Y Streets."

After the operation, while the man hovered between the unknown places, a

second advertisement appeared.

"I am having a hot time holding down a bed in this hospital; but it does

not compare with the hot time my competitors will have in meeting my

prices in clothing at my store, on the corner of X and Y Streets."

My readers will agree with me that this "beats the Jews."

The question of business standards is a very different matter, and that

I wish to discuss in another chapter.

I have not set myself the task of playing the apologist for the Jew or

for any of the groups of which I treat. I freely acknowledge that there

are disagreeable qualities in the Jew which explain in a measure, at

least, the prejudice aroused by him.

Foremost, I suppose, is the type which, when it is most pronounced, is

apt to be unpleasant and unsympathetic.

The offenses against good taste in dress are marked in many of them; but

that lies more in the air with which the clothes are worn than in the

clothes themselves. They are usually such as fashion dictates, and not

in all cases more extreme than those worn by many Gentiles. The love of

display is to some degree common to both Jew and Gentile; but is more

noticeable among Jewish women, because they cannot conceal their

feelings as well as the Gentile woman can.

The Jewish woman who has "arrived" and knows it, wants the whole world

to know it also; while the Gentile woman, especially the Gentile

American woman, wears her first imported gown and diamonds as if her

swaddling clothes had been made in Paris and her original baby pins

encrusted with jewels.

Still more apparent is a certain arrogance, a most annoying

characteristic, especially in a people which ought to have the quality

of humility in a large degree. The Jew recognizes this in his fellow Jew

if not in himself, and no one more deplores it.

He calls it Jewish _chuzpa_, Jewish "cheek," and it is, perhaps, one of

the greatest causes for the social barriers raised against him. It is

found in the Jewish beggar and in the Jewish millionaire.

It is an ancient fault; for long ago, "Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked."

It is a quality which leads many eminent Jews to acts of unwisdom, such

as protests against Christmas exercises in the public schools; the

resolution passed by a recent conference of Jewish Rabbis, that America

is not a Christian country, and other acts equally unadvised.

This, also, has its causes, which are found among many peoples suddenly

released from disabilities and given social and political rights.

In order to introduce my main theme, the relation of the Jew to the

Christian, I have tried conscientiously to analyze the causes which

obstruct the social contact between Jew and Gentile.

There are real antagonisms arising from the Jewish mind and habits,

which are historic inheritances and cannot be easily overcome; but which

have made it often a hard task for the Christian to be a real Christian

towards his Jewish neighbour.

There are other barriers, however, and they exist first, in the historic

development of Judaism and second, in the nature and content of historic

Christianity.

The Jew is heterogeneous in cultural development. There are Orthodox

Jews, wrapped in cabalistic mysticism, who have never moved an inch

along the pathway of progress; to whom not only each word written in the

law of Moses has divine origin and divine meaning, but to whom each word

has as many meanings, as it has letters and dots and dashes. Upon these

Jews, all the fetters of legalism are still rivetted, and to them,

tradition and revelation are one and the same.

There are less Orthodox Jews who have progressed as far as the

philosopher Mendelssohn led them a century ago.

There are nationalistic Jews to whom Zion is beckoning, and who hear the

voice of the prophet bidding them "possess the land" and promising that

"the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion, with songs and

everlasting joy upon their heads" and that then, "sorrow and sighing

shall flee away."

There are modern Jews, who have forsaken the law and the ordinances, the

Sabbath and the full moons, to whom the reformed synagogue is merely a

connecting link with the historic past.

There are rationalistic Jews to whom Karl Marx is the Messiah, and the

Socialistic commonwealth, Jerusalem; and there are just Jews, who eat

Kosher food because they like it, to whom Mammon is the Messiah and

their business the Holy of Holies.

To none of these does Christianity in its historic development appeal

very strongly: First, because becoming a Christian means separation from

the race; for heterogeneous as the Jews are in cultural development, so

homogeneous are they in their racial consciousness. This is something

which baffles analysis; it is the strongest example of race cohesion

which we have. People who have lost national unity, who have diverged

widely in religious beliefs and ceremonial observances, who are as far

apart in culture as Greek and Barbarian, are still one as a race, and

the man is _Anathema_ who breaks the racial tie. It matters not whether

he does it to escape persecution, to gain preferment, or from deep

conviction; to his fellow Jews it is always apostasy.

That the broad-minded Jew may have a race consciousness which breaks

through the ties of blood, they admit; but he must not become a

Christian, even if to him Christianity is the only escape from the

narrow tribal idea and from his own outgrown race consciousness, into

the broader realm where he can say that he is a member of the human

race, and as such is under the obligations of brotherhood to all men.

In the second place, Christianity in its ceremonies, its ecclesiastical

practices and its theology, is repellent to all these Jews, from the

extreme radical to the extremest Orthodox.

Anything which has even a semblance of idolatry, the slightest suspicion

of Polytheism, must be obnoxious to the Jew; for he has been smitten by

hail, drought and pestilence, and has been led into captivity because

his unregenerate nature delighted in the worship of Baalim, and because

he forsook Jehovah who dwelt between the Cherubim and the Seraphim.

Then, too, the methods used to win the Jew to Christianity have aroused

his opposition. In the Old World, until comparatively recently, he was

forced once a year to attend church and listen to a sermon preached with

the avowed object of his conversion. Needless to say, it rarely, if

ever, converted him.

The modern method as it manifests itself in Jewish Missions is no less

repellent to him; although he is not forced to listen to the

missionaries' sermons. Naturally, the converted Jew, who is an official

converter, is usually under suspicion, although that suspicion is not

always justified.

With this question of race consciousness and habits, the Jew alone can

deal, and he, unfortunately, is not always in the frame of mind required

to adjust himself to the feelings of the Gentiles. He will therefore

have to bear the consequences which lie in the social realm and may soon

reach into the economic.

The task of historic Christianity in its relation to the Jew is not an

easy one. It cannot unmake itself or readily adjust itself to his likes

and dislikes in theology; nor can it recede from its endeavour to make

propaganda for the faith which it believes should be universal.

I have the conviction that when Christ comes fully to His own in the

church, He will also come to His own in the synagogue; certainly no

sooner, and perhaps not much later.

When He emerges from the tangle of Greek philosophy, Roman legalism and

Byzantine traditionalism--when "in deed and in truth" He becomes the

Gentile's Messiah, He will also become the Messiah of the Jew.

As a working basis for the right relation between Jew and Gentile, I

wish to quote Rabbi Sonnenschein, formerly of Des Moines, Iowa, in words

spoken by him to a colleague in the Christian ministry.

"I want to live so, that when you see me, you will say: 'There goes

Rabbi Sonnenschein, who is a Jew; yet he is a better Christian than I

am.' And I want you to live so, that when I see you, I will say: 'That

man is a Christian; but he is a better Jew than I am.'"

XIX

THE JEW IN THE IMMIGRANT PROBLEM

The Jew has nearly always been an immigrant and a problem. Nowhere is he

accepted as indigenous; neither in Russia, where he has lived for

centuries, nor in New York, where he will soon represent the bulk of

population. He is as much a stranger on his home soil in Palestine as

upon the rawest bit of ground staked into a city, in Wyoming or the

Dakotas. His going is nowhere regretted at the time and his coming is

not welcomed; while his remaining in a place leads to the development of

prejudice, which has its root in various causes, already discussed. In a

peculiar sense, his coming in large numbers is felt by the toiler and

the trader; by the most antagonistic Gentile groups and by those Jews

who came earlier, from some more favoured spot in the culture centres of

Europe.

The religious development of the Anglo-Saxon people, influenced more

often by the Old Testament than by the New, as well as their familiarity

with the Bible, has kept the Jew who lives among them immune from the

grosser consequences of Anti-Semitism.

[Illustration: A JEW OF THE POORER TYPE

A product of persecution and orthodoxy.]

[Illustration: A JEW OF THE FINER TYPE

A Russian Jew; cultured, artistic and cosmopolitan.]

Jehovah's chosen people have often been regarded with peculiar interest

by the Anglo-Saxons, if not always treated with marked favour; yet even

among them, this feeling has gradually undergone a change, until, their

coming has become a cause for special inquiry by the English Parliament

and one of the chief difficulties of the whole immigrant problem, as it

affects our cities.

I have had peculiar opportunities to note the development of these

changes, and believe that the Jew has been too optimistic regarding his

future in the United States; while the Gentile is too pessimistic as to

the gravity of the Jewish problem.

A clergyman in the city of New York whose fame is international, who is

in constant contact with the best type of Jews, startled me not long ago

by saying that the Jewish problem in the city of New York was in a most

acute stage. In analysing his own feelings, he said: "No matter what you

do, you're up against it; no matter how you prepare yourself to act the

brother towards them, they won't let you succeed. You can't love them

and you don't dare hate them."

Mr. Robert Watchorn, the ex-commissioner of immigration, told me that

after an address in which he minimized the problem of immigration, a

well-known citizen of New York came to him and said that in twenty years

Kisheneff will have its counterpart on the East Side.

One of the most liberal Jewish rabbis in this country, whose addresses

teem from the most extreme optimism as to the future of his race in

America, will be amazed to hear that because he was invited to preach

the baccalaureate sermon in a Western state institution of learning, a

large number of the class absented itself from that service. In

commenting upon it, I heard one of the number say to another, in

unacademic, campus language: "Tough luck, boy. They've invited a Sheeny

to preach our baccalaureate. It's an insult to the class!"

The fact that twenty per cent. of the students at Columbia University

are Jews, has led a number of Western boys to say to me: "We won't go to

Columbia. There are too many Jews there."

No less brutally frank expressions I have heard in the shops in which I

have worked, and in hotel lobbies where I have loitered; so that while I

may not regard the Jewish problem as the most serious in the general one

of immigration, I certainly regard it as one of the most sensitive to

approach and one of the most difficult to solve.

I usually ask four questions regarding every immigrant group, and the

answer determines, in my own mind at least, the desirability of its

coming to the United States. The four questions are:

First, Do we need them? By that, I mean, will they perform some useful

function which is necessary and which the earlier comers cannot or will

not perform? This is entirely an industrial question and can be safely

answered only by the economist, who knows the field in all its bearings.

My conviction, based upon no such accurate knowledge, is that we most

need those groups which live by their muscle, rather than by their wits;

the toiler, rather than the trader. If my theory is correct, this would

exclude many Jews; although I am sure that they have performed many

important functions in the industrial sphere, both in the realm of

manual labour and out of it. Some such discrimination seems to me fair,

for it would bar classes, rather than races, and would affect equally

other commercial people, such as the Greeks, Armenians and Syrians.

Whether or not this first question is fundamentally sound, of one thing

I am sure. Half the ill feeling against the Jews would vanish if they

would give themselves in any large numbers to the mechanical trades and

to agriculture.

Second, Does the group which seeks admission have the same economic

ideals which characterized the earlier groups?

This refers to standards of living as well as to standards of making the

living.

The Jew answers well to the first part of the question; in fact, better

than the Latin or the Slav. Although he may be compelled to eat plain

and coarse food, he craves the richer and daintier fare; if he has to

live in a tenement on the East Side, he does it with an eye to a flat

in Harlem; for the Jew has never ceased looking for the "land flowing

with milk and honey," or longing for the "flesh-pots of Egypt." His

standard of living is not low, but as some one has said: "elastic." He

may eat red herring to-day, but to-morrow he will eat carp with garlic

sauce; that is, if he can afford it.

He will control his historic appetite in order to "get on," and it is

the subordination of health and decency to this desire which often makes

him an economic problem, if not a menace.

But when he has attained, he is no miser. His children must have the

best education, and his wife the most expensive clothing; he will save

his children from the sweat shop if he can, and his wife whether he can

or not. He is not willing to live off his children or on the town;

although he is not always above living on his more fortunate brethren,

whom he thus gives a chance to earn the divine favour by bestowing alms;

he rarely sinks into pauperism.

The agencies which minister to pleasure, the theatre, the concert hall

and vaudeville, would lose a fair share of their patronage if Jews were

excluded from them.

The Jew is neither a total abstainer, nor is he intemperate, and his

expenditure for alcohol, compared with that of the Irish, is about as

one to a hundred. None dreads the coming of Jews into a neighbourhood

more than the saloon-keeper, and some of the vilest localities in New

York have been made fairly decent by the expansion of the Ghetto.

One of the most difficult questions to answer is, whether Jewish ideals

of making a living accord with those which characterize the older

groups. The popular judgment is that they do not. It is commonly charged

that the Jew degrades the industries upon which he enters; that as a

competitor he is unscrupulous and as an advertiser, dishonest. "Jewing

down" is a phrase too well known in commercial life to need

interpretation.

Whether it is the "quality of the Jewish mind" which has created this

judgment, as Professor Shaler indicates, or whether it is the quality of

his moral nature, I am not in a position to determine. All I can say

with a sense of assurance is, first, that the business morality of the

Jew not only compares favourably with other commercial groups which are

coming to the United States, but is generally admitted to be higher than

that of the Greeks and Armenians.

Second, That the so-called Jewish business ethics, which in reality are

Oriental and not essentially Jewish, and are also prevalent on the

continent of Europe, do not compare favourably with the straightforward

business methods traditional in America.

Third, That the Jew has adopted these American standards in the lines of

business which he controls, and that in every city he is counted among

its most substantial and reliable business men.

Fourth, That although the methods used by large numbers of Jews in

business are often questionable, as is often the business itself, they

have a remarkably clear record in the sphere of high finance, and that

it is most fortunate for the well-being of the Jews in America that the

so-called "Captains of Industry" are a native product.

Roughly speaking, then, the charges that the Jew is an unfair competitor

in the industries and in business may be true; yet if the case were put

to a jury which could to some degree free itself from prejudice, the

result would probably be a disagreement. What could not be easily denied

is, that the sense of truth in the Jew from the east of Europe, notably

from Poland, is low.

I quote Mr. H. S. Lewis of London, a Jew, and an unprejudiced

authority.[2] "One is sometimes tempted to conclude in despair that the

bulk of the Polish immigrants have no sense of truth whatever. No more

painful spectacle can be witnessed than the hearing of a summons at an

East-End police court, where the parties concerned are foreign Jews.

Obvious perjury on the slightest provocation is committed in case after

case. The comments of Judge Bacon at the Whitechapel County Court on

this fact have been at times severely criticised by the Jewish press.

His generalizations may have been too sweeping, being based on his

experience of petty litigation, where the seamy side of life is

necessarily prominent. At the same time, his remarks have been based on

a substantial substratum of truth. It is the experience of most visitors

among the foreign poor for charitable societies, that although absolute

imposture is exceptional, falsehoods with regard to the details of cases

are constantly met with.

"It is to this taint of untruthfulness that most of the other defects of

the foreign Jews are to be traced. I fear that it cannot be denied that

their standard of business morality is often defective. A statement of

this kind may be regarded as unfair, and it is, of course, difficult to

put it to any exact test. An illustration is, however, afforded by a

return of convictions, periodically issued in the minutes of the London

County Council, for the use of false weights and measures and kindred

offenses. Judging by the names of the offenders, an altogether undue

proportion of them appear to be foreign Jews.

"We meet also in East London with far too many cases where the

Bankruptcy laws are evaded by persons who pass through the courts and

reappear in business with suspicious celerity and without apparent

loss."

The testimony of Rev. Max Wertheim of Ada, Ohio, ought to have some

weight--it concerns the Americanized Jew. He was a rabbi at Dayton,

Ohio, and after passing through various religious crises, became a

Baptist, and is now doing devoted work on a small salary. Naturally, he

has not received the most generous treatment from his former

co-religionists, and would hardly flatter them. In answer to my question

whether he found any difference in business standards between his Jewish

and his Christian flocks, he unhesitatingly said that there was no

difference.

More weighty is the testimony which Prof. Graham Taylor gave recently

before a Christian Brotherhood. "I know as good Christians among the

Jews as among the churches."

I am quite sure that basically there is no difference; although I should

characterize some Jewish methods as mean, and those of some Gentiles as

dangerous. In making this distinction, however, I realize that "wooden

nutmegs," high-bottomed fruit boxes, sun-kissed apples at the top of the

barrel and gnarled ones at the bottom, as well as other tricks of the

native trade, are mean enough; while the methods of the theatrical

trust, the adulteration of foods and drugs, the white slave trade and

other questionable forms of business engaged in by both Jew and

Gentile, may be called both mean and dangerous.

It is also interesting to note that in the great industrial struggle the

Jew is represented largely on the capitalistic side; but on the other

hand, some of the strongest leaders in the labour unions and many of the

Socialists of the rank and file are Jews; consequently the _vox populi_

may condemn them for being both.

The third question is: Does the group possess ethnic qualities that will

prevent normal assimilation, and therefore will increase race friction

already dangerously strong?

Disagreeable as is the Jewish type when very pronounced, it is

undergoing such rapid changes where the environment is favourable, that

it does not present a serious barrier to assimilation. The issues of

intermarriage are exceptionally good and the resultant types normal. Yet

in spite of the vanishing type, the Jews are a peculiar people and will

long remain so. Their historic inheritance and their religious

traditions, no less than their attitude towards the Gentiles and the

attitude of the Gentiles towards them, will naturally keep them a group

apart. The hostile attitude on both sides ought not to be strengthened,

and I believe that for a period at least, Jewish emigration from the

east of Europe should cease. Not because I believe the Russian Jew

inferior, but merely because he is numerous and the ethnic and cultural

difference between him and the native is so marked as to aggravate an

antipathy already intense; this the Jews themselves feel.

A Jewish merchant, who lives in a certain town in the Middle West, told

me that strong Anti-Semitic feelings were aroused in the community by

the arrival there of Russian Jews, and that as soon as they moved away

the feeling vanished.

Another Jewish merchant told me that in visiting various places with a

view to locating his business, his first inquiry was: "Are there any

Russian Jews in the town?" He said that business for the Jew is better

where there are no Russian Jews.

The feeling of the Americanized Jew towards this new immigrant was thus

expressed by one of them: "We have to stand by them, but we wish they

hadn't come."

My fourth question refers to the attitude of the groups towards our

social and political ideals.

If the family ideal is the basis of our social and political life, it is

certainly safe in the keeping of the Jew, who, if he errs at all in that

direction, errs in making the well-being of the community or state,

secondary to the well-being of his family.

In spite of the fact that divorce, according to the rabbinic law, is

easily obtained, almost as easily as in some of our Western states, it

is rarely resorted to. Sexual immorality, wife desertion and divorce,

become more common among the Jews only under stress of changed economic

and religious environment.

The criminal record of the Jew is still good; although he is under

suspicion of merely being too shrewd to be caught.

In the so-called lesser and meaner crimes, such as receiving stolen

goods and pocket-picking, he has almost a monopoly; while in burglary

and murder his record is fairly clean.

At present there are no reliable statistics on this point, and there is

much chance of juggling with figures, for friend and foe alike.

The report of the Commission of Immigration of the state of New York

presents a table of foreign born white offenders in the state's prisons

in 1904, but unfortunately does not classify the Jews as such. However,

if one took the entire number of criminals tabulated under the countries

from which the Jews come, namely: Austria, Hungary, Russia and Poland,

and counted all as Jews--a procedure manifestly unfair, even then the

prison population of the state of New York contains over twelve per

cent. more Irish than all the natives from these four countries, who of

course are not all Jews, but represent different faiths.

In lieu of reliable statistics, therefore, I must trust to my own

experience. I have found that grosser criminality among the Jews is a

more abnormal phenomenon than among most of the newer immigrant groups.

In my intimate acquaintance with a number of Jewish communities in

Europe, I know some as large as 10,000 souls, where such crimes as

theft, robbery and murder are never committed; yet where cheating,

fraudulent bankruptcy and receiving stolen goods are not uncommon.

The Jew has done himself almost irreparable injury by his protest

against the reading of the Bible, and Christmas exercises in the public

schools and in his attitude towards Sunday laws. In both cases he has

shown himself intolerant, and has alienated staunch friends whose help

and sympathy he may need in the day of tribulation. As a citizen and

patriot, he is everywhere giving evidence of his devotion; while in the

struggle for the coming of a better day in the government of our cities

and of the state, he has done his full share; indeed, among the newer

immigrant groups, he has furnished to that cause by far the largest

quota.

There are several points at which the Jew does not satisfactorily answer

the questions I ask. He provides far too large a number of those, who,

as a class, seem unnecessary at the present stage of our economic

development; he presents too solid a differentiated group, will retard

proper adjustment and increase existing race antagonisms. His attitude

towards the manifestation of the religious spirit in our public

schools, his intolerance towards certain religious practices which are

fundamentally ethical and social, but not necessarily sectarian, will

more and more alienate those Americans who have been most hospitable

towards him and upon whose good will he is dependent, economically and

socially, if not politically.

These, I think, are the sore spots of the problem; and if the Jew is as

shrewd as he is painted, he will look to their healing; while if the

American is as charitable as I think him to be, he will give the Jew

full time for reconvalescence.

XX

FROM FIFTH AVENUE TO THE GHETTO

It has always been dangerous for the common mortal who was the spokesman

of his kind to eat at the king's table; for the tyrant at close range

proved an admirable host and pleasant gentleman, whose tender meats and

delicate wines covered a "multitude of sins."

When, after having eaten _lunch_ on the East Side for a week, one

receives an invitation to _luncheon_ on Fifth Avenue, even the most

scrupulous may temporize, and I confess that, feeling highly flattered,

I tossed my scruples to the winds and accepted the invitation.

The feast began for me, when my eyes rested on the splendid architecture

of the palatial residence, its furnishings, marbles and pictures, which

appealed to my artistic sense and almost reproduced the atmosphere of

the refinement and culture of those lands in which they had their birth.

In the winter garden where fountains played, and rare flowers nodded

their bedewed heads, filling the air with fragrance, I forgot the

squalor of the East Side and the darkness and dampness of that raw,

February day.

With the luncheon I was less pleased; for frankly, I prefer noodle soup

and _Gulyas_ to French snails and terrapin.

To my plebeian palate the snails tasted like mucilage flavoured with

garlic, and the terrapin like fricasseed Turkish towels.

Of more importance than the menu was my host, whose every word betrayed

the consciousness of his power and his ignorance of those lesser folk,

as whose champion he had invited me to be his guest.

"What can be done to stay the power of Socialism?"

"How can we keep out Black Hands and Anarchists?"

To him, immigrants, Socialists and Anarchists were synonymous terms. My

speech was not yet dulled by the luncheon or my brain clouded by the

smoke of his Havana cigars, and I gave him such plain answers as I might

have given after lunching on noodle soup and _Gulyas_.

My words were as unpalatable to him as his snails and terrapin were to

me; for I told him that Anarchists live in brown stone houses and that

Socialism is being fed and nourished on Fifth Avenue. Our views were as

far apart as our bank accounts, and to argue with him seriously would

have been as useless as it would have been poor taste. He became more

human as the luncheon progressed from its airy and aristocratic entrées

to the more democratic and substantial roast beef and potatoes.

When we reached pumpkin pie, one of the few connecting links with his

humble past, he had quite lost his critical sternness, and asked my

advice upon so delicate a matter as how to give his wayward sons a

grappling place for the upbuilding of character.