[ Transcriber's Notes:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully
as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation.
Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They
are listed at the end of the text.
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
]
By Mary Antin
THEY WHO KNOCK AT OUR GATES. Illustrated.
THE PROMISED LAND. Illustrated.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Boston and New York
THEY WHO KNOCK AT OUR GATES
[Illustration: THE SINEW AND BONE OF ALL THE NATIONS]
THEY WHO KNOCK
AT OUR GATES
A COMPLETE
GOSPEL OF IMMIGRATION
BY
MARY ANTIN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
JOSEPH STELLA
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1914
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published May 1914
CONTENTS
Introduction ix
I. The Law of the Fathers 1
II. Judges in the Gate 31
III. The Fiery Furnace 99
ILLUSTRATIONS
The sinew and bone of all the nations (page 63) Frontispiece
Rough work and low wages for the immigrant 64
The ungroomed mother of the East Side 72
A fresh infusion of pioneer blood 108
INTRODUCTION
Three main questions may be asked with reference to immigration--
_First:_ A question of principle: Have we any right to regulate
immigration?
_Second:_ A question of fact: What is the nature of our present
immigration?
_Third:_ A question of interpretation: Is immigration good for us?
The difficulty with the first question is to get its existence
recognized. In a matter that has such obvious material aspects as
the immigration problem the abstract principles involved are likely
to be overlooked. But as there can be no sound conclusions without a
foundation in underlying principles, this discussion must begin by
seeking an answer to the ethical question involved.
The second question is not easy to answer for the reason that men are
always poor judges of their contemporaries, especially of those whose
interests appear to clash with their own. We suffer here, too, from
a bewildering multiplicity of testimony. Every sort of expert whose
specialty in any way touches the immigrant has diagnosed the subject
according to the formulæ of his own special science--and our doctors
disagree! One is forced to give up the luxury of a second-hand opinion
on this subject, and to attempt a little investigation of one's own,
checking off the dicta of the specialists as well as an amateur may.
The third question, while not wholly separable from the second, is
nevertheless an inquiry of another sort. Whether immigration is good for
us depends partly on the intrinsic nature of the immigrant and partly
on our reactions to his presence. The effects of immigration, produced
by the immigrant in partnership with ourselves, some men will approve
and some deplore, according to their notions of good and bad. That thing
is good for me which leads to my ultimate happiness; and we do not all
delight in the same things. The third question, therefore, more than
either of the others, each man has to answer for himself.
THEY WHO KNOCK AT OUR GATES
I
THE LAW OF THE FATHERS
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children. . . . And
thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
Deut. vi, 6, 7, 9.
If I ask an American what is the fundamental American law, and he does
not answer me promptly, "That which is contained in the Declaration of
Independence," I put him down for a poor citizen. He who is ignorant of
the law is likely to disobey it. And there cannot be two minds about
the position of the Declaration among our documents of state. What the
Mosaic Law is to the Jews, the Declaration is to the American people. It
affords us a starting-point in history and defines our mission among the
nations. Without it, we should not differ greatly from other nations who
have achieved a constitutional form of government and various democratic
institutions. What marks us out from other advanced nations is the
origin of our liberties in one supreme act of political innovation,
prompted by a conscious sense of the dignity of manhood. In other
countries advances have been made by favor of hereditary rulers and
aristocratic parliaments, each successive reform being grudgingly handed
down to the people from above. Not so in America. At one bold stroke we
shattered the monarchical tradition, and installed the people in the
seats of government, substituting the gospel of the sovereignty of the
masses for the superstition of the divine right of kings.
And even more notable than the boldness of the act was the dignity with
which it was entered upon. In terms befitting a philosophical discourse,
we gave notice to the world that what we were about to do, we would do
in the name of humanity, in the conviction that as justice is the end of
government so should manhood be its source.
It is this insistence on the philosophic sanction of our revolt that
gives the sublime touch to our political performance. Up to the moment
of our declaration of independence, our struggle with our English
rulers did not differ from other popular struggles against despotic
governments. Again and again we respectfully petitioned for redress
of specific grievances, as the governed, from time immemorial, have
petitioned their governors. But one day we abandoned our suit for
petty damages, and instituted a suit for the recovery of our entire
human heritage of freedom; and by basing our claim on the fundamental
principles of the brotherhood of man and the sovereignty of the masses,
we assumed the championship of the oppressed against their oppressors,
wherever found.
It was thus, by sinking our particular quarrel with George of England
in the universal quarrel of humanity with injustice, that we emerged a
distinct nation, with a unique mission in the world. And we revealed
ourselves to the world in the Declaration of Independence, even as
the Israelites revealed themselves in the Law of Moses. From the
Declaration flows our race consciousness, our sense of what is and
what is not American. Our laws, our policies, the successive steps of
our progress--all must conform to the spirit of the Declaration of
Independence, the source of our national being.
The American confession of faith, therefore, is a recital of the
doctrines of liberty and equality. A faithful American is one who
understands these doctrines and applies them in his life.
It should be easy to pick out the true Americans--the spiritual heirs
of the founders of our Republic--by this simple test of loyalty to
the principles of the Declaration. To such a test we are put, both as
a nation and as individuals, every time we are asked to define our
attitude on immigration. Having set up a government on a declaration
of the rights of man, it should be our first business to reaffirm that
declaration every time we meet a case involving human rights. Now
every immigrant who emerges from the steerage presents such a case.
For the alien, whatever ethnic or geographic label he carries, in a
primary classification of the creatures of the earth, falls in the human
family. The fundamental fact of his humanity established, we need only
rehearse the articles of our political faith to know what to do with the
immigrant. It is written in our basic law that he is entitled to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There is nothing left for us to
do but to open wide our gates and set him on his way to happiness.
That is what we did for a while, when our simple law was fresh in our
minds, and the habit of applying it instinctive. Then there arose
a fashion of spelling immigration with a capital initial, which
so confused the national eye that we began to see a PROBLEM where
formerly we had seen a familiar phenomenon of American life; and as a
problem requires skillful handling, we called an army of experts in
consultation, and the din of their elaborate discussions has filled our
ears ever since.
The effect on the nation has been disastrous. In a matter involving
our faith as Americans, we have ceased to consult our fundamental
law, and have suffered ourselves to be guided by the conflicting
reports of commissions and committees, anthropologists, economists, and
statisticians, policy-mongers, calamity-howlers, and self-announced
prophets. Matters irrelevant to the interests of liberty have taken the
first place in the discussion; lobbyists, not patriots, have had the
last word. Our American sensibility has become dulled, so that sometimes
the cries of the oppressed have not reached our ears unless carried by
formal deputations. In a department of government which brings us into
daily touch with the nations of the world, we have failed to live up to
our national gospel and have not been aware of our backsliding.
What have the experts and statisticians done so to pervert our minds?
They have filled volumes with facts and figures, comparing the
immigrants of to-day with the immigrants of other days, classifying them
as to race, nationality, and culture, tabulating their occupations,
analyzing their savings, probing their motives, prophesying their
ultimate destiny. But what is there in all this that bears on the right
of free men to choose their place of residence? Granted that Sicilians
are not Scotchmen, how does that affect the right of a Sicilian to
travel in pursuit of happiness? Strip the alien down to his anatomy,
you still find a _man_, a creature made in the image of God; and
concerning such a one we have definite instructions from the founders
of the Republic. And what purpose was served by the bloody tide of the
Civil War if it did not wash away the last lingering doubts as to the
brotherhood of men of different races?
There is no impropriety in gathering together a mass of scientific and
sociological data concerning the newcomers, as long as we understand
that the knowledge so gained is merely the technical answer to a number
of technical questions. Where we have gone wrong is in applying the
testimony of our experts to the moral side of the question. By all means
register the cephalic index of the alien,--the anthropologist will make
something of it at his leisure,--but do not let it determine his right
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I do not ask that we remove all restrictions and let the flood of
immigration sweep in unchecked. I do ask that such restrictions as we
impose shall accord with the loftiest interpretation of our duty as
Americans. Now our first duty is to live up to the gospel of liberty,
through the political practices devised by our forefathers and modified
by their successors, as democratic ideas developed. But political
practices require a territory wherein to operate--democracy must have
standing-room--so it becomes our next duty to guard our frontiers. For
that purpose we maintain two forms of defense: the barbaric devices
of army and navy, to ward off hostile mass invasions; and the humane
devices of the immigration service, to regulate the influx of peaceable
individuals.
We have plenty of examples to copy in our military defenses, but when
it comes to the civil branch of our national guard, we dare not borrow
foreign models. What our neighbors are doing in the matter of regulating
immigration may or may not be right for us. Other nations may be guided
chiefly by economic considerations, while we are under spiritual bonds
to give first consideration to the moral principles involved. For
this, our peculiar American problem, we must seek a characteristically
American solution.
What terms of entry may we impose on the immigrant without infringing on
his inalienable rights, as defined in our national charter? Just such
as we would impose on our own citizens if they proposed to move about
the country in companies numbering thousands, with their families and
portable belongings. And what would these conditions be? They would be
such as are required by public safety, public health, public order.
Whatever limits to our personal liberty we are ourselves willing to
endure for the sake of the public welfare, we have a right to impose on
the stranger from abroad; these, and no others.
Has, then, the newest arrival the same rights as the established
citizen? According to the Declaration, yes; the same right to live, to
move, to try his luck. More than this he does not claim at the gate of
entrance; with less than this we are not authorized to put him off.
We do not question the right of an individual foreigner to enter our
country on any peaceable errand; why, then, question the rights of a
shipload of foreigners? Lumping a thousand men together under the title
of immigrants does not deprive them of their humanity and the rights
inherent in humanity; or can it be demonstrated that the sum of the
rights of a million men is less than the rights of one individual?
The Declaration of Independence, like the Ten Commandments, must be
taken literally and applied universally. What would have been the
civilizing power of the Mosaic Code if the Children of Israel had
repudiated it after a few generations? As little virtue is there in
the Declaration of Independence if we limit its operation to any
geographical sphere or historical period or material situation. How do
we belittle the works of our Fathers when we talk as though they wrought
for their contemporaries only! It was no great matter to shake off the
rule of an absent tyrant, if that is all that the War of the Revolution
did. So much had been done many times over, long before the first tree
fell under the axe of a New England settler. Emmaus was fought before
Yorktown, and Thermopylæ before Emmaus. It is only as we dwell on the
words of Jefferson and Franklin that the deeds of Washington shine out
among the deeds of heroes. In the chronicles of the Jews, Moses has a
far higher place than the Maccabæan brothers. And notice that Moses
owes his immortality to the unbroken succession of generations who
were willing to rule their lives by the Law that fell from his lips.
The glory of the Jews is not that they received the Law, but that they
kept the Law. The glory of the American people must be that the vision
vouchsafed to their fathers they in their turn hold up undimmed to the
eyes of successive generations.
To maintain our own independence is only to hug that vision to our own
bosoms. If we sincerely believe in the elevating power of liberty, we
should hasten to extend the reign of liberty over all mankind. The
disciples of Jesus did not sit down in Jerusalem and congratulate each
other on having found the Saviour. They scattered over the world to
spread the tidings far and wide. We Americans, disciples of the goddess
Liberty, are saved the trouble of carrying our gospel to the nations,
because the nations come to us.
Right royally have we welcomed them, and lavishly entertained them at
the feast of freedom, whenever our genuine national impulses have shaped
our immigration policy. But from time to time the national impulse has
been clogged by selfish fears and foolish alarms parading under the
guise of civic prudence. Ignoring entirely the _rights_ of the case,
the immigration debate has raged about questions of expediency, as if
convenience and not justice were our first concern. At times the debate
has been led by men on whom the responsibilities of American citizenship
sat lightly, who treated immigration as a question of the division of
spoils.
A little attention to the principles involved would have convinced us
long ago that an American citizen who preaches wholesale restriction
of immigration is guilty of political heresy. The Declaration of
Independence accords to _all_ men an equal share in the inherent rights
of humanity. When we go contrary to that principle, we are not acting
as Americans; for, by definition, an American is one who lives by the
principles of the Declaration. And we surely violate the Declaration
when we attempt to exclude aliens on account of race, nationality, or
economic status. "All men" means yellow men as well as white men, men
from the South of Europe as well as men from the North of Europe, men
who hold kingdoms in pawn, and men who owe for their dinner. We shall
have to recall officially the Declaration of Independence before we can
lawfully limit the application of its principles to this or that group
of men.
Americans of refined civic conscience have always accepted our
national gospel in its literal sense. "What becomes of the rights of
the excluded?" demanded the younger Garrison, in a noble scolding
administered to the restrictionists in 1896.
If a nation has a right to keep out aliens, tell us how many people
constitute a nation, and what geographical area they have a right
to claim. In the United States, where a thousand millions can live
in peace and plenty under just conditions, who gives to seventy
millions the right to monopolize the territory? How few can justly
own the earth, and deprive those who are landless of the right to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? And what becomes of the
rights of the excluded?
If we took our mission seriously,--as seriously, say, as the Jews take
theirs,--we should live with a copy of our law at our side, and oblige
every man who opened his mouth to teach us, to square his doctrine with
the gospel of liberty; and him should we follow to the end who spoke to
us in the name of our duties, rather than in the name of our privileges.
The sins we have been guilty of in our conduct of the immigration debate
have had their roots in a misconception of our own position in the
land. We have argued the matter as though we owned the land, and were,
therefore, at liberty to receive or reject the unbidden guests who came
to us by thousands. Let any man who lays claim to any portion of the
territory of the United States produce his title deed. Are not most of
us squatters here, and squatters of recent date at that? The rights of
a squatter are limited to the plot he actually occupies and cultivates.
The portion of the United States territory that is covered by squatters'
claims is only a fraction, albeit a respectable fraction, of the land we
govern. In the name of what moral law do we wield a watchman's club over
the vast regions that are still waiting to be staked out? The number of
American citizens who can boast of ancestral acres is not sufficient
to swing a presidential election. For that matter, those whose claims
are founded on ancestral tenure should be the very ones to dread an
examination of titles. For it would be shown that these few got their
lands by stepping into dead men's shoes, while the majority wrenched
their estates from the wilderness by the labor of their own hands. In
the face of the sturdy American preference for an aristocracy of brain
and brawn, the wisest thing the man with a pedigree can do is to scrape
the lichens off his family tree. Think of having it shown that he owes
the ancestral farmhouse to the deathbed favoritism of some grouchy
uncle! Or, worse still, think of tracing the family title to some canny
deal with a band of unsophisticated Indians!
No, it will not do to lay claim to the land on the ground of priority
of occupation, as long as there is a red man left on the Indian
reservations. If it comes to calling names, usurper is an uglier name
than alien. And a squatter is a tenant who doesn't pay any rent,
while an immigrant who occupies a tenement in the slums pays his rent
regularly or gets out.
We may soothe our pride with the reflection that our title to the land
does not depend on the moral validity of individual claims, but on the
collective right of the nation to control the land we govern. We came
into our land as other nations came into theirs: we took it as a prize
of war. Until humanity has devised a less brutal method of political
acquisition, we must pass our national claim as entirely sound. We own
the land because we were strong enough to take it from England. But
the moment we hark back to the War of the Revolution, our sense of
possession is profoundly modified. We did not quarrel with the English
about the possession of the colonies, but about their treatment of the
colonists. It was not a land-grab that was plotted in Independence
Hall in 1776, but a pattern of human freedom. We entered upon the war
in pursuit of ideals, not in pursuit of homesteads. We had to take the
homesteads, too, because, as we have already noted, a political ideal
has to have territory wherein to operate. But we must never forget that
the shining prize of that war was an immaterial thing,--the triumph of
an idea. Not the Treaty of Paris, but the Declaration of Independence,
converted the thirteen colonies into a nation.
Having taken half a continent in the name of humanity, shall we hold it
in the name of a few millions? Not as jealous lords of a rich domain,
but as priests of a noble cult shall we best acquit ourselves of the
task our Fathers set us. And it is the duty of a priest to minister to
as many souls as he can reach. The most revered of our living teachers
has passed this word:--
It is the mission of the United States to spread freedom throughout
the world by teaching as many men and women as possible in freedom's
largest home how to use freedom rightly through practice in liberty
under law.
And our ardor shall not be dampened by the reflection that perhaps
the Fathers builded better than they knew. "Do you really think they
looked so far ahead?" it is often asked. "Did the founders of the
Republic foresee the time when foreign hordes would alight on our
shores, demanding a share in this goodly land that was ransomed with the
blood of heroes?" Fearful questions, these, to make us pause in the work
of redeeming mankind! If our Fathers did not foresee the whole future,
shall we therefore be blind to the light of our own day? If they had
left us a mere sketch of their idea, could we do less than fill in the
outlines? Since they left us not a sketch, but a finished model, the
least we can do is to go on copying it on an ever larger scale. Neither
shall we falter because the execution of the enlarged copy entails much
labor on us and on our children. When Moses told the Egyptian exiles
that they should have no god but the One God, he may not have guessed
that their children would be brought to the stake for refusing other
gods; and yet nineteen centuries of Jewish martyrdom go to show that
the followers of Moses did not make his lack of foresight an excuse for
abandoning his Law.
Let the children be brought up to know that we are a people with a
mission, and that mission, in the words of Dr. Eliot, to teach the uses
of freedom to as many men as possible "in freedom's largest home."
Let it be taught in the public schools that the most precious piece
of real estate in the whole United States is that which supports the
pedestal of the Statue of Liberty; that we need not greatly care how
the three million square miles remaining is divided among the people of
the earth, as long as we retain that little island. Let it further be
repeated in the schools that the Liberty at our gates is the handiwork
of a Frenchman; that the mountain-weight of copper in her sides and the
granite mass beneath her feet were bought with the pennies of the poor;
that the verses graven on a tablet within the base are the inspiration
of a poetess descended from Portuguese Jews; and all these things shall
be interpreted to mean that the love of liberty unites all races and
all classes of men into one close brotherhood, and that we Americans,
therefore, who have the utmost of liberty that has yet been attained,
owe the alien a brother's share.
* * * * *
To this position we are brought by a construction of the Declaration of
Independence which makes of it the law of the land, binding on American
citizens individually and collectively, and in all circumstances
whatever. Out of this position there is one avenue of escape, and only
one. We may refuse to read in the Declaration a sincere expression of
the faith of 1776, and construe it instead as a bombastic political
manifesto, advanced by the leaders of the rebellion as an excuse for a
gigantic land-grab.
Let the descendants of the Puritans take their choice of these two
interpretations. For my part, I have chosen. I have chosen to read the
story of '76 as a chapter in sacred history; to set Thomas Jefferson in
a class with Moses, and Washington with Joshua; to regard the American
nation as the custodian of a sacred trust, and American citizenship as a
holy order, with laws and duties derived from the Declaration.
For very pride in my country I must choose thus, for the alternate
view takes the meaning out of American history, reduces the War of
Independence to a war of plunder, and the Colonial heroes to a band of
pious hypocrites. What, indeed, shall we teach our children to be proud
of if we reject the higher interpretation of the deeds of the Fathers?
The American Revolution as a campaign of conquest is not unique in
history; on the contrary, it has been more than once surpassed, both in
respect to the prowess of the conquerors and to the magnificence of the
prize. Outside the physical realm, where our inventions and discoveries
and the material development of a continent belong, this country has
contributed nothing of moment to the world's progress, unless it is
that political adaptation of the Golden Rule which is indicated in
the Declaration and elaborated in the Constitution. In the arts and
sciences we sit, for the most part, at the feet of foreign masters;
in jurisprudence we have borrowed from the Romans, and the elements
of liberal government we have from our next of kin, the English. The
notion of the dignity of man, which is the foundation of the gospel
of democracy, is derived from Hebrew sources, as the Psalm-singing
founders of New England would be the first to acknowledge. It was
not entirely due to accident nor to the exigencies of pioneer life
that the meeting-house and the town hall were one in the New England
settlements. The influence of the Bible is plainly stamped on the works
of the Puritans. What, then, shall we claim as the great American
achievement, our peculiar treasure in the midst of so much borrowed
glory? A magnificent espousal of humanity--that or nothing can we call
our own.
Seeing that they brought nothing into the world that was all their
own, our glorious dead are not glorious unless we make them so, by
imputing to them the noblest motives that their case will permit, and
rating their works at not less than face value. Pride demands it, and,
fortunately for our country's honor, justice supports the claims of
pride. Neither the cynics nor the enthusiasts shall have the last word
in the matter. In the writings of their contemporaries, in the casual
sayings of their intimates, in the critical comments of those who
came next after them, we find convincing evidence that in the minds
of the leaders of '76 the most advanced political thought of the age
crystallized into a mighty conviction--the conviction of the inherent
nobility of humankind, which makes it treason for any man to enslave his
neighbor.
That is the thought that was sent out into the world on July 4, 1776,
and because that thought has shaped our history, we call it the
basic law of our land, and the Declaration of Independence our final
authority. If under that authority the immigrant appears to have rights
in our land parallel to our own rights, we shall not lightly deny his
claims, lest we forfeit our only title to national glory.
II
JUDGES IN THE GATE
Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates . . . and
they shall judge the people with just judgment.
Deut. xvi, 18.
There is nothing so potent in a public debate as the picturesque
catchwords in which leaders of thought sum up their convictions. Logic
makes fewer converts in a year than a taking phrase makes in a week.
For catchwords are the popular substitute for logic, and the man in the
street is reduced to silence by a good round phrase of the kind that
sticks.
Two classes of citizens are especially prone to fall under the tyranny
of phrases: those whose horizon, through no fault of their own, is
limited by the rim of an empty dinner-pail; and those whose view of
the universe is obstructed by the kitchen-middens of too many dinners.
There is no clear thinking on an empty stomach, and equally muddled are
the thoughts of the over-full. When I hear of a public measure that is
largely supported by these two classes of citizens, I know at once that
the measure appeals to human prejudices rather than to divine reason.
Thus I became suspicious of the restrictionist movement when I realized
that it was in greatest favor among the thoughtless poor and the
thoughtless rich. I am well aware that the high-priests of the cult
include some of the most conscientious thinkers that ever helped to make
history, and their earnestness is attested by a considerable body of
doctrine, in support of which they quote statistics and special studies
and scientific investigations. But I notice that the rank and file of
restrictionists do not know as much as the titles of these documents.
They have not followed the argument at all; they have only caught the
catchwords of restrictionism. And these catchwords are the sort that
appeal to the mean spots in human nature,--the distrust of the stranger,
the jealousy of possession, the cowardice of the stomach. Nothing else
is expressed by such phrases as "the scum of Europe," "the exploitation
of America's wealth," or "taking the bread from the mouth of the
American workingman."
Even the least venomous formula of restrictionism, "immigration isn't
what it used to be," raises such a familiar echo of foolish human nature
that I am bound to challenge its veracity. Does not every generation cry
that the weather isn't what it used to be, children are not what they
used to be, society is not what it used to be? "The good old times" and
"the old immigration" may be twin illusions of limited human vision.
If it is true that immigration is not what it used to be, the fact
will appear from a detailed comparison of the "old" and the "new"
immigration. But which of the immigrant stocks of the good old times
shall be taken as a standard? Woman's wisdom urges me to go right back
to the original pattern, just as I would do if I went to the shops to
match samples. And the original pattern was brought to this country in
the year 1620. Surely comparison with the Mayflower stock is the most
searching test of the quality of our immigration that any one could
propose.
The predominant virtue of the Pilgrims was idealism. The things of the
spirit were more to them than the things of the flesh. May we say the
like of our present immigrants? Of very many of them, yes; a thousand
times yes. Of the 8,213,000 foreigners landed between the years 1899
and 1909, 990,000 were of that race which for nineteen centuries has
sacrificed its flesh in the service of the spirit. It takes a hundred
times as much steadfastness and endurance for a Russian Jew of to-day
to remain a Jew as it took for an English Protestant in the seventeenth
century to defy the established Church.
Those who think that with the Spanish Inquisition Jewish martyrdom came
to an end are asked to remember that the Kishinieff affair is only
eight years behind us, and that Bielostock has been heard from since
Kishinieff, and Mohileff since Bielostock. And more terrible than the
recurrent _pogrom_, which hacks and burns and tortures a few hundreds
now and then, is the continuous bloodless martyrdom of the six million
Jews in Russia through the operation of the anti-Semitic laws of that
country. Thirty minutes spent in looking over a summary of these laws
recently compiled by an English historian(1) will convince any reader
with a spark of imagination that every Russian Jewish immigrant to-day
is a fugitive from religious persecution, even as were the English
immigrants of 1620.
(1) Lucien Wolf, _Legal Sufferings of the Jews in Russia_.
But while nobody questions the idealism of the Jew in religion, the
world has been very slow to credit him with any degree of civic
devotion. The world did not stop to think that a man has to have a
country before he can prove himself a good citizen. But happily in
recent times he has been put to the test of civic opportunity, notably
in America; with the result that he was found to possess a fair share of
the civic virtues, from the generosity displayed in the town meeting,
when citizens vote away their substance to support a public cause, to
the brute heroism of the battle-field, where mangled flesh gives proof
of valiant spirit.(2) And what the Jews of West European stock proved
in the American wars for freedom the Jews of Eastern Europe have proved
more recently, by their forwardness in the Russian revolution of 1905.
(2) See _The Jews in America_, by Rev. Madison C. Peters.
No group of people of all the heterogeneous mass that constitutes the
Russian nation were half so prominent as the Jews in that abortive
attempt at freedom. Witness the police records of the revolutionary
period, which show that sixty-five out of every hundred political
offenders were Jews, in districts where the population was fifteen parts
Jewish and eighty-five parts Gentile. When I visited my native town in
the Pale, several years after the revolution, it was hard to find, among
the young men and women I talked with, one in a dozen who had not shared
in the dangers of 1905. If we really want to know how heartily the
Jews played their part in the revolution, we need only ask the Russian
Government why the anti-Semitic laws have been so vengefully enforced
since a certain crimson year within the present decade. And the whole
significance of these things, in the present study, lies in the fact
that precisely that spirit which prompts to rebellion in despotic Russia
rallies in free America to the support of existing institutions.
If it was a merit in 1620 to flee from religious persecution, and in
1776 to fight against political oppression, then many of the Russian
refugees of to-day are a little ahead of the Mayflower troop, because
they have in their own lifetime sustained the double ordeal of fight and
flight, with all their attendant risks and shocks.
To obtain a nice balance between the relative merits of these two
groups of rebels, we remind ourselves that, for sheer adventurousness,
migration to America to-day is not to be mentioned on the same page with
the magnificent exploit of 1620, and we reflect that the moral glory of
the revolution of 1776 is infinitely greater than that of any subsequent
revolt; because that, too, was a path-finding adventure, with no compass
but faith, no chart but philosophical invention. On the other hand, it
is plain that the Russian revolutionists moved against greater odds
than the American colonists had to face. The Russians had to plot in
secret, assemble in the dark, and strike with bare fists; all this under
the very nose of the Czar, with the benighted condition of the Russian
masses hanging like a cloud over their enterprise. The colonists were
able to lay the train of revolution in the most public manner, they had
the local government in their hands, a considerable militia obedient
to their own captains, and the advantage of distance from the enemy's
resources, with a populace advanced in civic experience promising
support to the leaders.
And what a test of heroism was that which the harsh nature of the
Russian Government afforded! The American rebels risked their charters
and their property; for some of them dungeons waited, and for the
leaders dangled a rope, no doubt. But confiscation is not so bitter as
Siberian exile, and a halter is less painful than the barbed whip of the
Cossacks. The Minutemen at Concord Bridge defied a bully; the rioters
in St. Petersburg challenged a tiger. And first of all to be thrust
into the cage would be the rebels of Jewish faith, and nobody knew that
better than the Jews themselves.
The superior zeal and high degree of self-sacrifice displayed by the
Jewish revolutionists would naturally be explained by the fact that,
of all the peoples held in chains by the Russian Government, the Jews
are the ones who have suffered the cruelest oppression. But there is
proof, proof that will go down with the stream of history, that the
Jewish participants in the Russian revolution of 1905 were actuated by
the highest patriotism, their peculiar grievances being forgotten in the
grievances of the nation as a whole. The sinking of the Jewish question
in the national question was an important article of the revolutionary
propaganda among the Jews; so much so, that when a prominent Jewish
leader attempted to demonstrate, on philosophical grounds, that that was
a false position to take, he was hotly repudiated, although up to that
time he had stood high in the councils of the leaders.(3)
(3) See Article by Achad Ha'am, _American Hebrew_, June 21, 1907.
If we find such a high degree of civic responsiveness in what we have
been trained to think the most unlikely quarter, shall we not look
hopefully in other corners of our world of immigrants? If the Jewish
spirit of freedom leaps from the grave of Barkochla to the hovels of
the Russian ghetto, half across the world and half across the civilized
era, shall we not look for similar prodigies from the more recent graves
of Kosciuszko and Garibaldi? If the hook-nosed tailor can turn hero on
occasion, why not the grinning organ-grinder, and the surly miner, and
the husky lumber-jack? We experienced a shock of surprise, a little
while ago, when troops of our Greek immigrants deserted the bootblacking
parlors and fruit-stands and tumbled aboard anything that happened to
sail for the Mediterranean, in their eagerness--it's hard to bring it
out, in connection with a "Dago" bootblack!--in their eagerness to
strike a blow for their country in her need.
But that's the worst of calling names: it deceives those who do so.
The little bootblacks would not have fooled us as they did if we
had not recklessly summed up the Greek character in a contemptuous
epithet. It is quite proper for street urchins to invent nicknames for
everybody--that is what street urchins are for; but let us not hand down
the judgment of the gutter where the judgment of the senate is called
for. Between Leonidas at the pass and little Metro under the saloon
window, fawning for our nickels, is indeed a dismal gap; and yet Metro,
when occasion demanded, reached out his grimy hand and touched the tunic
of the Spartan hero.
From these unexpected exploits of the craven Jew and the degenerate
Greek, it would seem as if the different elements of the despised "new"
immigration only await a spectacular opportunity to prove themselves
equal to the "old" in civic valor. But if contemporary history fails
to provide a war or revolution for each of our foreign nationalities,
we are still not without the means of gauging the idealistic capacity
of the aliens. Next after liberty, the Puritans loved education; and
to-day, if you examine the registers of the schools and colleges they
founded, you will find the names of recent immigrants thickly sprinkled
from A to Z, and topping the honor ranks nine times out of ten. All
readers of newspapers know the bare facts,--each commencement season,
the prize-winners are announced in a string of unpronounceable foreign
names; and every school-teacher in the immigrant section of the larger
cities has a collection of picturesque anecdotes to contribute: of
heroic sacrifices for the sake of a little reading and writing; of young
girls stitching away their youth to keep a brother in college; of whole
families cheerfully starving together to save one gifted child from the
factory.
Go from the public school to the public library, from the library to
the social settlement, and you will carry away the same story in a
hundred different forms. The good people behind the desks in these
public places are fond of repeating that they can hardly keep up with
the intellectual demands of their immigrant neighbors. In the experience
of the librarians it is the veriest commonplace that the classics have
the greatest circulation in the immigrant quarters of the city; and
the most touching proof of reverence for learning often comes from the
illiterate among the aliens. On the East Side of New York, "Teacher"
is a being adored. Said a bedraggled Jewish mother to her little boy
who had affronted his teacher, "Don't you know that teachers is holy?"
Perhaps these are the things the teachers have in mind when they speak
with a tremor of the immense reward of work in the public schools.
That way of speaking is the fashion among workers of all sorts in the
educational institutions where foreigners attend in numbers. Get a
group of settlement people swapping anecdotes about their immigrant
neighbors, and there is apt to develop an epidemic of moist eyes. Out
of the fullness of their knowledge these social missionaries pay the
tribute of respect and affection to the strangers among whom they toil.
For they know them as we know our brothers and sisters, from living and
working and rejoicing and sorrowing together.
The testimony of everyday experience is borne out by the sudden
revelations of catastrophic circumstances, as reported by a librarian
from Dayton, Ohio. In Dayton they had branch libraries located in
different parts of the city, not in separate library buildings, but
in convenient shops or dwelling-houses, where they were left in the
care of some responsible person in the neighborhood. After the recent
flood,(4) when the panic was over and the people began to dig for their
belongings underneath the accumulated slime and wreckage, the librarian
tried to collect at the central library whatever was recovered of the
scattered collection. Crumpled, mutilated, slimy with the filth of the
disemboweled city, the books came back--all but one collection, which
had been housed in the midst of the Hungarian quarter. These came back
neatly packed, scraped clean of mud, their leaves smoothed, dried,--as
presentable as loving care could make them.
(4) March, 1913.
If that was not a manifestation of pure idealism, then is human conduct
void of symbolism, and our public squares are cumbered in vain with
monuments erected in commemoration of human deeds. But we read men's
souls in their actions, and we know that they who flock to the schools
are the spiritual kindred of those who founded them; they who cherish
a book are passing along the torch kindled by him who wrote it. They
pay the highest tribute to an inventor who show the most eagerness to
adopt his invention. The great New England invention of compulsory
education is more eagerly appropriated by the majority of our immigrants
than by native Americans of the corresponding level. That is what the
school-teachers say, and I suppose they know. They also say,--they and
all public educators in chorus,--that while one foreign nationality
excels in the love of letters, another excels in the love of music, and
a third in the love of science; and all of them together constitute an
army whose feet keep time with the noble rhythms of culture.
Let a New Yorker on Friday night watch the crowd pushing out of a
concert hall after one of Ysaye's recitals, and on Saturday afternoon
let him take the subway uptown, and get out where the crowd gets out,
and buy a ticket for the baseball game. If he can keep cool enough for
a little study, let him compare the distorted faces in the bleachers
with the shining faces of the crowd of the night before; and let him
say which crowd responded to the nobler inspiration, and then let him
declare in which group the foreigners outnumbered the Americans.
The American devotion to sport is no reproach to the descendants of the
Puritans, since it can be demonstrated from various angles that the
baseball diamond may supplement the schoolroom and the pulpit in the
training of American citizens. Indeed, it is not difficult to accept
that interpretation of the national sport which reduces a good game of
baseball to an epitome of all that is best in the lives of the best
Americans. At the same time we need to remember that the love of art
is more generally accepted as a mark of grace than the love of sport.
Thus, when we speak of the glory of old Athens we have in mind not the
Olympian games, noble as they were, but the poets and sculptors and
philosophers who uttered her thoughts. The original of the Discobolus
must have been a winner,--I can imagine Athenian mothers lifting up
their beautiful bare babies to see the hero over the heads of the
throng,--but who can tell me his name to-day? Meanwhile the name of
Myron has been guarded as a talisman of civilization.
We shall not look in the sporting columns, then, for the names of
contemporary Americans who are likely to secure us a place of honor
on the scrolls of history. We look under the current book reviews,
in theatre programmes, in the announcements of art galleries. As
a by-product of such a search we announce the discovery that the
prizefighters seem to be near cousins of certain Americans of turbulent
notoriety in politics, themselves derived from one of the approved
immigrant stocks of the "old" dispensation; while the singer and painter
and writer folk very often hail from those parts of Europe at present
labeled "undesirable" as a source of immigration. Nay, is it not a good
joke on the restrictionists that an American singer who aspires to be
a prima donna must trick herself out with a name borrowed from the
steerage lists of recent arrivals at Ellis Island?
If it is the scum of Europe that we are getting in our present
immigration, it seems to be a scum rich in pearls. Pearl-fishing, of
course, is accompanied by labor and danger and expense, but it is
reckoned a paying industry, or practical men would not invest their
capital in it. The brunt of the business falls on the divers, however.
Have we divers willing to go down into our human sea and risk an
encounter with sharks and grope in the ooze at the bottom? We have our
school teachers and librarians and social missionaries, whose zest
for their work should shame us out of counting the cost of our human
fishery. As to the accumulations of empty shells, we are told that in
the pearl fisheries of South America about one oyster in a thousand
yields a pearl; and yet the industry goes on.
The lesson of the oyster bank goes further still. We know that the
nine hundred and ninety-nine empty shells have a lining, at least,
of mother-of-pearl. We are thus encouraged to look for the generic
opalescence of humanity in the undistinguished mass of our immigrants.
What do the aliens show of the specific traits of manhood that go to
the making of good citizens? Immersed in the tide of American life, do
their spiritual secretions give off that fine lustre of manhood that
distinguished the noble Pilgrims of the first immigration? The genius of
the few is obvious; the group virtue of the mass on exalted occasions,
such as popular uprisings, has been sufficiently demonstrated. What
we want to know now is whether the ordinary immigrant under ordinary
circumstances comes anywhere near the type we have taken as a model.
There can be no effective comparison between the makers of history
of a most romantic epoch and the venders of bananas on our own
thrice-commonplace streets. But the Pilgrims were not always engaged
in signing momentous compacts or in effecting a historic landing. In a
secondary capacity they were immigrants--strangers come to establish
themselves in a strange land--and as such they may profitably be used as
a model by which to measure other immigrants.