A PEST-HOUSE?
In a preceding chapter I stated my conviction that in the district I
covered as inspector of dog licenses there were representatives from
every nationality on the globe. Now there are a considerable number of
nationalities on the globe. Start to count and one will find the fingers
of both hands used up hardly before the enumeration is well begun.
In spite of the self-evidence of this fact, persons proclaiming
themselves as interested in “our immigration problem” are continually
asking me:
“What do _you_ think about our immigration problem? You’ve lived in the
tenements and seen things first-hand. _Which_ nationality do you think
we should let in, and which shut out?” They speak so eagerly, are so
confident of my ability to answer intelligently such simple questions.
Simple questions! Though I consider my district a fair slice of New
York, I know that New York now contains only a small portion of the
foreign riffraff that has been deluging the country for the past forty
years. As I saw conditions in the slums of New York, the United States
has no immigration problem.
Its immigration problem ceased to exist twenty years ago—it became an
emergency. It is all very well to talk about the United States as an
asylum for the oppressed peoples of the earth. That is a beautiful
thought. But the asylum that admits every applicant, regardless of his
or her mental or physical condition, soon becomes a pest-house.
Pest-house is what our country is rapidly becoming. Indeed I am not
entirely sure that it does not already deserve that name. If it does
not, at least it is so infested with the germs of virulent diseases that
its doors should be closed until every suspected inmate is thoroughly
fumigated. And that operation will consume several years.
The evening before leaving New York, while at dinner in the Woman’s City
Club, I talked over the subject with a woman lawyer.
“You wouldn’t even let in the relatives of those immigrants already in
this country?” she questioned disapprovingly.
“I would not,” I replied, and my tone was emphatic.
“Well, I don’t see just how you could do that,” she protested, and her
disapproval had become near to indignation.
“Just three hows: I’m an American and believe in America first; I’m not
a sentimentalist; I’m not an employer of cheap labor.”
“But it’s not sentimentality—allowing an immigrant to bring in his wife
and children, or his mother and father,” she assured me.
“Isn’t it? How about a smallpox epidemic? I’ve been pretty near two or
three. I never heard of an uninfested community begging that near
relatives be allowed to pass through the quarantine for the sake of
coming to them.”
“But that’s different—smallpox,” she contradicted, as resting her elbows
on the table she brought the tips of her perfectly manicured
finger-nails together that she might admire them at her leisure. “You’re
an alarmist, my dear. I’ve been practising in New York for—for a good
many years now. I’m sure if conditions were so bad I would have known
about it before this.”
In my diary I recorded the history of one hundred and thirty-seven
children—cases investigated for Bellevue social service department—every
one of them the children of foreign parents—both parents. In only three
cases the parents could not be classed as paupers.
Those three—one was a Finn, a printer; his wife died and he was ill with
flu. So soon as he got on his feet he took his baby and offered to pay
for what had been done for it. The second was an Italian bootblack,
father of five children, whose wife died in Bellevue. He not only
willingly assumed the responsibility of his children as soon as they
were able to leave the hospital, but politely declined both financial
assistance and advice from the social service department.
In the third case the father was a Spaniard and the mother an Italian.
Their flat was practically stripped of every piece of salable furniture
before they could be induced to allow themselves or any one of their
children to be taken to Bellevue. On my first visit not one of them had
a change of clothes. There was one bed, and two mattresses on the floor.
Two ragged sheets, spotlessly clean, were all they had in the way of
covers, though it was then the middle of a cold winter. There was a
table, two chairs, a wood-stove, and about a half-dozen pieces of
crockery—every one of these articles was broken. The pot and saucepan,
though old, were whole.
The committee allowed me twenty-five dollars to spend for that family.
Every penny of it went for household furnishings. Later, when I got my
fingers on a few extra dollars, I called at the flat and offered to
spend it for clothing. Courteously but firmly the mother told me that
her husband had said they had taken enough; she must not accept any more
help.
The parents of every one of those one hundred and thirty-seven children
were defective, either mentally or physically, sometimes both. Even in
the three non-pauper families, the bootblack was a cripple, the Finn
tubercular, and the Italian wife of the Spaniard had had both breasts
removed because of cancer.
I did not record the histories of those cases because they were in any
way unusual. They are a fair sample of the cases given to any and every
social worker on the staff of a hospital where the patients come from
the slums of New York City. Of all the cases I investigated—nearly three
hundred—as a social worker, there was not one child of American
parentage—all of them the children of immigrants.
For thirty days during the summer of 1920 I kept a record of the
nationality of the families on whom I called in the capacity of license
inspector. Of the one thousand and six families talked with, eighteen
had both parents American. In twenty-one, one parent was American.
Be it understood that when a family claimed to be Irish-American I rated
them as Irish. There were a lot of such scum in my district. To my way
of thinking the propaganda carried on by such individuals is much more
dangerous to American institutions and ideals than that spouted by the
few I met who claimed to be Bolsheviki.
Some of the most dangerous persons met during my four years in the
underbrush, to American ideals and institutions, had entered the country
after the declaration of peace. Four of them were prostitutes of that
class known as street-walkers, for the time being or until, as they
expressed it:
“I meek von reech haul.”
The fifth, having already made a rich haul, chanced to be visiting her
pals when I called. All of these women were attractive to look at, all
claimed to have come to this country to join relatives, and all were
preaching the downfall of constitutional government. They were here to
get money, and they didn’t care how they got it.
They all belonged to one of the oppressed peoples of the earth. They
were all Poles, or claimed to be.
But I do not blame the immigrants, neither for coming nor for what they
do after they get here. The present condition of the country is the
fault of persons like myself—Americans born and bred, the descendants of
the men and women who planted our colonies, fought and won the
Revolution, and founded our government.
Proud in our own conceit, we have allowed the control of the country,
handed over to our keeping by our fathers, to slip out of our hands.
Like a pack of second-rate shop-keepers we have lost all initiative, and
assuming an air of lofty indifference, pretend to be unconscious that
the parvenu establishment across the street has taken all the trade that
used to belong to us.
Why, there was a time when we got so exclusive, the whole pack of us,
that we boasted:
“No gentleman will go into politics—such low associates.”
Then Theodore Roosevelt came. Being President of the United States
became almost as aristocratic as tooling a coach or breeding dogs. And
in a government of the people, by the people, for the people. To see the
result of that un-American snobbishness one needs only to read a list of
the men holding the highest political offices in our largest cities.
The descendants of the men and women who settled the country and founded
the government are as scarce as hens’ teeth.
It is also the fault of us original Americans that immigrants have not
become Americanized more rapidly. How could any one, you or I, become
familiar with the ideals and aims of a Bedouin Arab if we had never come
in speaking distance with a Bedouin Arab, could neither speak nor read
his language, and only caught a glimpse of him careening by on his
camel?
Take the residential districts of New York City, for instance. As soon
as an immigrant moves in, what is known as “fashion” moves out. It is
that habit of running hot-footed from the immigrant that was the
beginning of New York slums. And not alone in New York, it’s all over
the country.
In the small city in which I am now writing, the most beautiful, the
best-drained, and healthiest section is being deserted. Wonderful homes
with orange and grape-fruit trees in full bearing are being given up,
their owners moving to a newly settled and less desirable quarter. All
because of “the Latins”—Cubans, Spaniards, French, and Italians.
“But what is the matter with the Latins?” I asked a woman who had
complained to me that her husband had refused to break up his home and
move to Hyde Park.
“Oh, they’re disgusting,” she assured me, her face as expressive as her
words. “The women do all their own housework, and they have so many
children.”
Two great crimes—doing housework and having children.
Small wonder that the mother of George Washington lay for a hundred
years in an unmarked grave before any one ever thought it worth while to
write her life. She not only bore and brought up a houseful of sons and
daughters, but she did housework—she ground and stuffed sausages for
family consumption, and she wore an apron.
When told by a pompous courier that His Excellency the
Commander-in-Chief of the American and French Armies was on his way to
pay her a visit, she replied:
“Tell George I’ll be glad to see him. Sukie, go bring me a clean apron.”
Now we’ve gotten so snobbish, we the descendants of that sturdy old
stock, that the sight of a woman next door wearing an apron makes us run
away. Having run as far as possible, we turn around and find fault with
that woman and her children for not imbibing American ideals.
It is our fault that in our country the immigration question has
developed into an emergency—if from an asylum for the oppressed peoples
of the earth the United States has become a pest-house.
After stating that I consider stopping immigration at least for a term
of years an urgent necessity to the health of our country, it may seem
useless to answer the second of the two questions propounded at the
beginning of this chapter. But I would like to write briefly of a few of
the nationalities with whom I came in close contact during my four years
in the underbrush.
Jews and Italians are very attractive when met in their homes. Among my
fellow workers I often heard Jews spoken of as “dirty Tykes.” Now I
never succeeded in learning just what “Tyke” means. I never found any
one who was sure about the spelling of the word. They would assure me
that it meant a Jew, but why a Jew they could give no explanation.
So far as my observation went, the Jews of the tenements are not a dirty
people, far from it. Some of the cleanest, best-kept homes that I
entered were those of Jews—German Jews, Russian Jews, Polish Jews, and
Jews the country of whose birth I never learned.
Never, in all my four years, did I receive a rude word, not even a rude
glance, from a Jew. I never heard a Jewish man speak roughly to a woman
or a child. I never had a Jew lie to me about having a dog, or claim a
license when he had none.
In my work I met many Jews, some mere children, who seemed to me marvels
of quick, straight thinking. At first this was a source of
surprise—persons so humbly placed, having had so few advantages, could
think and decide so wisely.
As a rule they met a crisis bravely, and I never knew one to flop over,
a spineless, helpless, human jelly-fish. That is the supreme difference
between the Jew and the other nationalities met in the tenements. For
months that difference was the chiefest of my puzzles—why did the Jew
always come up with his wits about him?
During the influenza epidemic I saw the remaining remnant of many
families, on learning their condition, lose the power to think or plan
for a future—fathers, with a lapful of young children, would become as
helpless as the youngest of their brood, an older child left with one or
more younger sisters or brothers. Even when they returned to work and
were earning the money that supported their dependents, they needed and
begged for the counsel and advice of the social worker.
It was never so with a Jew. Being a Jew means knowing how and attending
to his own affairs. That is the way I came to look at it. And after
months of observation and much thinking I found what I still believe to
be the reason for that supreme difference.
The Jew has always thought for himself, acted for himself, depended on
himself. So far as I could learn there is no book a Jew is forbidden to
read, there is no thought he may not entertain. He has no one on whom to
cast his burdens, he can gain absolution for his sins from no source.
Whether he wins or loses is up to him, to his own character. He stands
face to face with his God.
The Italians—my other favorite tenement-dwellers, for I became sincerely
fond of many of them—are a laughter-loving, destructive race. Many of
them are far from neat—coming from the slums of their own country and
landing in the slums of New York, their standard of living is low.
Seen in their homes, among their family, they are charming. They meet
their visitors on that visitor’s ground. However gruff was my reception,
once I spoke, explained my visit, my reception was invariably cordial.
However dirty and disordered her flat, however many children might be
holding her skirts or squirming over the floor, the Italian woman would
always insist on my coming in.
Even though she could not speak a word of American, she would throw open
her door and try, bowing and waving, to induce me to enter. Often I did
enter, waiting for some one, a neighbor or a child, to act as
interpreter. To prevent time from hanging heavy on my hands she would
show me her family album, birth, marriage, or death certificates, or
some other such treasures.
Unfortunately, the Italians as met in the tenements have too many mental
or physical defects. I cannot recall ever talking with an Italian woman
who did not mention some relative in some philanthropic institution.
Having always been poor, they struggle out of poverty as they can; but
when they do not succeed they accept their condition gracefully.
To the Italian, poverty does not possess a sting. I believe it stings a
Jew—being poor.
During the congestion in the tenements I got my best views of the
national characteristics of the various peoples among whom I worked.
Though a horribly uncomfortable period for the tenement-dweller, it was
intensely interesting to me. It was as though after hearing a piece of
music correctly played you again listened to it with both pedals down.