THE EMIGRANT SPIRIT
That fall the boy passed his entrance examinations and entered the
finest school in the state--the city high school. If he had been worth
a million he couldn't have had better advantages. I was told that the
graduates of this school entered college with a higher average than
the graduates of most of the big preparatory schools. Certainly they
had just as good instruction and if anything better discipline. There
was more competition here and a real competition. Many of the pupils
were foreign born and a much larger per cent of them children of
foreign born. Their parents had been over here long enough to realize
what an advantage an education was and the children went at their work
with the feeling that their future depended upon their application
here.
The boy's associates might have been more carefully selected at some
fashionable school but I was already beginning to realize that
selected associates aren't always select associates and that even if
they are this is more of a disadvantage than an advantage. The fact
that the boy's fellows were all of a kind was what had disturbed me
even in the little suburban grammar school. For that matter I can see
now that even for Ruth and me this sameness was a handicap for both us
and our neighbors. There was no clash. There was a dead level. I don't
believe that's good for either boys or men or for women.
Supposing this open door policy did admit a few worthless youngsters
into the school and supposing again that the private school didn't
admit such of a different order (which I very much doubt)--along with
these Dick was going to find here the men--the past had proved this
and the present was proving it--who eventually would become our
statesmen, our progressive business men, our lawyers and doctors--if
not our conservative bankers. For one graduate of such a school as my
former surroundings had made me think essential for the boy, I could
count now a dozen graduates of this very high school who were
distinguishing themselves in the city. The boy was going to meet here
the same spirit I was getting in touch with among my emigrant
friends--a zeal for life, a belief in the possibilities of life, an
optimistic determination to use these possibilities, which somehow the
blue-blooded Americans were losing. It seemed to me that life was
getting stale for the fourth and fifth generation. I tried to make the
boy see this point of view. I went back again with him to the pioneer
idea.
"Dick," I said in substance, "your great-great-grandfather pulled up
stakes and came over to this country when there was nothing here but
trees, rocks and Indians. It was a hard fight but a good fight and he
left a son to carry on the fight. So generation after generation they
fought but somehow they grew a bit weaker as they fought. Now," I
said, "you and I are going to try to recover that lost ground. Let's
think of ourselves as like our great-great-grandfathers. We've just
come over here. So have about a million others. The fight is a
different fight to-day but it's no less a fight and we're going to
win. We have a good many advantages that these newcomers haven't. You
see them making good on every side of you but I'll bet they can't lick
a good American--when he isn't asleep. You and I are going to make
good too."
"You bet we are, Dad," he said, with his eyes grown bright.
"Then," I said, "you must work the way the newcomers work. I don't
want you to think you're any better than they are. You aren't. But
you're just as good and these two hundred years we've lived here ought
to count for something."
The boy lifted his head at this.
"You make me feel as though we'd just landed with the Pilgrims," he
said.
"So we have," I said. "June seventh of this very year we landed on
Plymouth Rock just as our ancestors did two centuries ago. They've
been all this time paving the way for you and me. They've built roads
and schools and factories and it's up to us now to use them. You and I
have just landed from England. Let's see what we can do as pioneers."
I wanted to get at the young American in him. I wanted him to realize
that he was something more than the son of his parents; something more
than just an average English-speaking boy. I wanted him to feel the
impetus of the big history back of him and the big history yet to be
made ahead of him. He had known nothing of that before. The word
American had no meaning to him except when a regiment of soldiers was
marching by. I wanted him to feel all the time as he did when his
throat grew lumpy with the band playing and the stars and stripes
flying on Fourth of July or Decoration Day.
I urged him to study hard as the first essential towards success but I
also told him to get into the school life. I didn't want him to stand
back as his tendency was and watch the other fellows. I didn't want
him to sit in the bleachers--at least not until he had proved that
this was the place for him. Even then I wanted him to lead the
cheering. I wanted him to test himself in the literary societies, the
dramatic clubs, on the athletic field. In other words, instead of
remaining passive I wanted him to take an aggressive attitude towards
life. In still other words instead of being a middle-classer I wanted
him to get something of the emigrant spirit. And I had the
satisfaction of seeing him begin his work with the germ of that idea
in his brain.
In the meanwhile with the approach of cold weather I saw a new item of
expense loom up in the form of coal. We had used kerosene all summer
but now it became necessary for the sake of heat to get a stove. For a
week I took what time I could spare and wandered around among the junk
shops looking for a second hand stove and finally found just what I
wanted. I paid three dollars for it and it cost me another dollar to
have some small repairs made. I set it up myself in the living room
which we decided to use as a kitchen for the winter. But when I came
to look into the matter of getting coal down here I found I was facing
a pretty serious problem. Coal had been a big item in the suburbs but
the way people around me were buying it, made it a still bigger one.
No cellar accommodations came with the tenement and so each one was
forced to buy his coal by the basket or bag. A basket of anthracite
was costing them at this time about forty cents. This was for about
eighty pounds of coal, which made the total cost per ton eleven
dollars--at least three dollars and a half over the regular price.
Even with economy a person would use at least a bag a week. This, to
leave a liberal margin, would amount to about a ton and a half of coal
during the winter months. I didn't like the idea of absorbing the
half dollar or so a week that Ruth was squeezing out towards what few
clothes we had to buy, in this way--at least the over-charge part of
it. With the first basket I brought home, I said, "I see where you'll
have to dig down into the ginger jar this winter, little woman."
She looked as startled as though I had told her someone had stolen the
savings.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
I pointed to the basket.
"Coal costs about eleven dollars a ton, down here."
When she found out that this was all that caused my remark, she didn't
seem to be disturbed.
"Billy," she said, "before we touch the ginger jar it will have to
cost twenty dollars a ton. We'll live on pea soup and rice three times
a day before I touch that."
"All right," I said, "but it does seem a pity that the burden of such
prices as these should fall on the poor."
"Why do they?" she asked.
"Because in this case," I said, "the dealers seem to have us where the
wool is short."
"How have they?" she insisted.
"We can't buy coal by the ton because we haven't any place to put it."
She thought a moment and then she said:
"We could take care of a fifth of a ton, Billy. That's only five
baskets."
"They won't sell five any cheaper than one."
"And every family in this house could take care of five," she went on.
"That would make a ton."
I began to see what she meant and as I thought of it I didn't see why
it wasn't a practical scheme.
"I believe that's a good idea," I said. "And if there were more women
like you in the world I don't believe there'd be any trusts at all."
"Nonsense," she said. "You leave it to me now and I'll see the other
women in the house. They are the ones who'll appreciate a good saving
like that."
She saw them and after a good deal of talk they agreed, so I told Ruth
to tell them to save out of next Saturday night's pay a dollar and a
half apiece. I was a bit afraid that if I didn't get the cash when the
coal was delivered I might get stuck on the deal. The next Monday I
ordered the coal and asked to have it delivered late in the day. When
I came home I found the wagon waiting and it created about as much
excitement on the street as an ambulance. I guess it was the first
time in the history of Little Italy that a coal team had ever stopped
before a tenement. The driver had brought baskets with him and I
filled up one and took it to a store nearby and weighed into it eighty
pounds of coal. With that for my guide I gathered the other men of the
families about me and made them carry the coal in while I measured it
out. The driver who at first was inclined to object to the whole
proceeding was content to let things go on when he found himself
relieved of all the carrying. We emptied the wagon in no time and the
other men insisted upon carrying up my coal for me. I collected every
cent of my money and incidentally established myself on a firm footing
with every family in the house. Several other tenements later adopted
the plan but the idea didn't take hold the way you'd have thought it
would. I guess it was because there weren't any more Ruths around
there to oversee the job. Then, too, while these people are
far-sighted in a good many ways, they are short-sighted in others.
Neither the wholesale nor co-operative plans appeal to them. For one
thing they are suspicious and for another they don't like to spend any
more than they have to day by day. Later on through Ruth's influence
we carried our scheme a little farther with just the people in the
house and bought flour and sugar that way but it was made possible
only through their absolute trust in her. We always insisted on
carrying out every such little operation on a cash basis and they
never failed us.
Ruth's influence had been gradually spreading through the
neighborhood. She had found time to meet the other families in the
house and through them had met a dozen more. The first floor was
occupied by Michele, an Italian laborer, his wife, his wife's sister
and two children. On the second floor there was Giuseppe, the young
sculptor, and his father and mother. The father was an invalid and the
lad supported the three. On the third floor lived a fruit peddler, his
wife and his wife's mother--rather a commonplace family, while the
fourth floor was occupied by Pietro, a young fellow who sold cut
flowers on the street and hoped some day to have a garden of his own.
He had two children and a grandmother to care for.
It certainly afforded a contrast to visit those other flats and then
Ruth's. Right here is where her superior intelligence came in, of
course. The foreign-born women do not so quickly adapt themselves to
the standards of this country as the men do. Most of them as I
learned, come from the country districts of Italy where they live very
rudely. Once here they make their new quarters little better than
their old. The younger ones however who are going to school are doing
better. But taken by and large it was difficult to persuade them that
cleanliness offered any especial advantages. It wasn't as though they
minded the dirt and were chained to it by circumstances from which
they couldn't escape--as I used to think. They simply didn't object to
it. So long as they were warm and had food enough they were content.
They didn't suffer in any way that they themselves could see.
But when Ruth first went into their quarters she was horrified. She
thought that at length she was face to face with all the misery and
squalor of the slums of which she had read. I remember her chalk-white
face as she met me at the door upon my return home one night. She
nearly drove the color out of my own cheeks for I thought surely that
something had happened to the boy. But it wasn't that; she had heard
that the baby on the first floor was ill and had gone down there to
see if there was anything she might do for it. Until then she had seen
nothing but the outside of the other doors from the hall and they
looked no different from our own. But once inside--well I guess that's
where the two hundred years if not the four hundred years back of us
native Americans counts.
"Why, Billy," she cried, "it was awful. I'll never get that picture
out of mind if I live to be a hundred."
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Why the poor little thing--"
"What poor little thing?" I interrupted.
"Michele's baby. It lay there in dirty rags with its pinched white
face staring up at me as though just begging for a clean bed."
"What's the matter with it?"
"Matter with it? It's a wonder it isn't dead and buried. The district
nurse came in while I was there and told me,"--she shuddered--"that
they'd been feeding it on macaroni cooked in greasy gravy. And it
isn't six months old yet."
"No wonder it looked white," I said, remembering how we had discussed
for a week the wisdom of giving Dick the coddled white of an egg at
that age.
"Why the conditions down there are terrible," cried Ruth. "Michele
must be very, very poor. The floor wasn't washed, you couldn't see out
of the windows, and the clothes--"
She held up her hands unable to find words.
"That _does_ sound bad," I said.
"It's criminal. Billy--we can't allow a family in the same house with
us to suffer like that, can we?"
I shook my head.
"Then go down and see what you can do. I guess we can squeeze out
fifty cents for them, can't we, Billy?"
"I guess you could squeeze fifty cents out of a stone for a sick
baby," I said.
The upshot of it was that I went down and saw Michele. As Ruth had
said his quarters were anything but clean but they didn't impress me
as being in so bad a condition as she had described them. Perhaps my
work in the ditch had made me a little more used to dirt. I found
Michele a healthy, temperate, able-bodied man and I learned that he
was earning as much as I. Not only that but the women took in
garments to finish and picked up the matter of two or three dollars a
week extra. There were five in the family but they were far from being
in want. In fact Michele had a good bank account. They had all they
wanted to eat, were warm and really prosperous. There was absolutely
no need of the dirt. It was there because they didn't mind it. A five
cent cake of soap would have made the rooms clean as a whistle and
there were two women to do the scrubbing. I didn't leave my fifty
cents but I came back upstairs with a better appreciation, if that
were possible, of what such a woman as Ruth means to a man. Even the
baby began to get better as soon as the district nurse drove into the
parent's head a few facts about sensible infant feeding.
I don't want to make out that life is all beer and skittles for the
tenement dwellers. It isn't. But I ran across any number of such cases
as this where conditions were not nearly so bad as they appeared on
the surface. Taking into account the number of people who were
gathered together here in a small area I didn't see among the
temperate and able-bodied any worse examples of hard luck than I saw
among my former associates. In fact of sheer abstract hard luck I
didn't see as much. In seventy-five per cent of the cases the
conditions were of their own making--either the man was a drunkard or
the women slovenly or the whole family was just naturally vicious.
Ignorance may excuse some of this but not all of it. Perhaps I'm not
what you'd call sympathetic but I've heard a lot of men talk about
these people in a way that sounds to me like twaddle. I never ran
across a family down here in such misery as that which Steve
Bonnington's wife endured for years without a whimper.
Bonnington was a clerk with a big insurance company. He lived four
houses below us on our street. I suppose he was earning about eighteen
hundred dollars a year when he died. He left five children and he
never had money enough even to insure in his own company. He didn't
leave a cent. When Helen Bonnington came back from the grave it was to
face the problem of supporting unaided, either by experience or
relatives, five children ranging from twelve to one. She was a shy,
retiring little body who had sapped her strength in just bringing the
children into the world and caring for them in the privacy of her
home. She had neither the temperament nor the training to face the
world. But she bucked up to it. She sold out of the house what things
she could spare, secured cheap rooms on the outskirts of the
neighborhood and announced that she would do sewing. What it cost her
to come back among her old friends and do that is a particularly
choice type of agony that it would be impossible for a tenement widow
to appreciate. And this same self-respect which both Helen's education
and her environment forced her to maintain, handicapped her in other
ways. You couldn't give Mrs. Bonnington scraps from your table; you
couldn't give her old clothes or old shoes or money. It wasn't her
fault because this was so; it wasn't your fault.
When her children were sick she couldn't send them off to the public
wards of the hospitals. In the first place half the hospitals wouldn't
take them as charity patients simply because she maintained a certain
dignity, and in the second place the idea, by education, was so
repugnant to her that it never entered her head to try. So she stayed
at home and sewed from daylight until she couldn't hold open her eyes
at night. That's where you get your true "Song of the Shirt." She not
only sewed her fingers to the bone but while doing it she suffered a
very fine kind of torture wondering what would happen to the five if
she broke down. Asylums and homes and hospitals don't imply any great
disgrace to most of the tenement dwellers but to a woman of that type
they mean Hell. God knows how she did it but she kept the five alive
and clothed and in school until the boy was about fifteen and went to
work. When I hear of the lone widows of the tenements, who are apt to
be very husky, and who work out with no great mental struggle and who
have clothes and food given them and who set the children to work as
soon as they are able to walk, I feel like getting up in my seat and
telling about Helen Bonnington--a plain middle-classer. And she was no
exception either.
I seem to have rambled off a bit here but this was only one of many
contrasts which I made in these years which seemed to me to be all in
favor of my new neighbors. The point is that at the bottom you not
only see advantages you didn't see before but you're in a position to
use them. You aren't shackled by conventions; you aren't cramped by
caste. The world stands ready to help the under dog but before it will
lift a finger it wants to see the dog stretched out on its back with
all four legs sticking up in prayer. Of the middle-class dog who
fights on and on, even after he's wobbly and can't see, it doesn't
seem to take much notice.
However Ruth started in with a few reforms of her own. She made it a
point to go down and see young Michele every day and watch that he
didn't get any more macaroni and gravy. The youngster himself resented
this interference but the parents took it in good part. Then in time
she ventured further and suggested that the baby would be better off
if the windows were washed to let in the sunshine and the floor
scrubbed a bit. Finally she became bold enough to hint that it might
be well to wash some of the bed clothing.
The district nurse appreciated the change, if Michele himself didn't
and I found that it wasn't long before Miss Colver was making use of
this new influence in the house. She made a call on Ruth and discussed
her cases with her until in the end she made of her a sort of first
assistant. This was the beginning of a new field of activity for Ruth
which finally won for her the name of Little Mother. It was wonderful
how quickly these people discovered the sweet qualities in Ruth that
had passed all unnoticed in the old life.
It made me very proud.