THE LESSER IMMIGRANT GROUPS
The immigration question is a live wire and whoever handles it may
look for tingling surprises. One is a bit startled on realizing that
through the "Bravas" from the Cape Verde Islands we are getting a
new dash of black from the Senegambian tar-brush. How few are aware
that a third of Sicily, from which so many immigrants come, is
chiefly Saracen in stock, so that the heredity of the Bedouin tribes
of Mohamet's time is to be blent with the heredity of our pioneering
breed! Who reflects that, with Chinese and Japanese, Finns and
Magyars, Bulgars and Turks, about a half a million more or less
Mongolian in blood have cast in their lot with us and will leave
their race stamp upon the American people of the future?
THE FINNS
Our 130,000 immigrants from Finland should be counted to the
Finno-Tartar branch of the Mongolian race, although since the dawn
of history the western Finns have intermingled with the Swedes until
their blondness and cast of countenance bespeak the North European.
Nevertheless, here and there among the Finns one notices that
inward and downward slant of the eyes which proclaims the Asiatic.
Ever since the heavy paw of the Russian bear descended on Finland,
these people have been seeping into the United States. They come for
liberty's sake, bring their families and expect to remain. Lovers
of wood and water, they keep to the North and the Northwest and are
willing to tackle the roughest land in order to become independent.
As farmers they are thrifty but, if left to themselves, not
particularly skillful or progressive. Among them survive Old-World
ways, such as reaping by handfuls with a sickle and hauling hay
from the field on a sleigh. With a sharp ax in his hand the Finn
turns artist and will hew out a log house so beautiful as to put an
American pioneer to the blush. One of the first things he builds is
an air-tight bath-house in which he may steam himself by dashing
water on hot stones.
Practically all these immigrants are literate and they are eager
patrons of night schools. In acquiring English they are rather
slow. Their native ability is good, but is not considered to be
equal to that of the Swedes. They are quiet and law-abiding, but
litigious. With his grim intensity of character the Finn cannot bear
to compromise his wrongs, but insists on all he thinks is due him.
It is needless to add that a man with so much iron in his blood is
honest.
Like the drunken Magyar or Lithuanian the "loaded" Finn is a
terrible fellow. Liquor seems to let loose in him fell and
destructive impulses which had been held in the leash by moral
ideas. The immigrants realize their danger and the total abstinence
movement is very strong amongst them. A rival current is Socialism
for, strange to say, thousands of Finns, since coming to this
country, have utterly lost faith in the existing social order. The
mining company praises the "temperance" Finns but makes haste to
get rid of the Socialists, although they are earnest people of a
peaceable temper.
Such movements reveal a thinking mood. Thanks to the long struggle
with Russia, the Finnish mind is awake and open to ideas. Our Finns
have a real thirst for education and, besides supporting the best
of public schools, they maintain near Duluth a college of their own
of 1,200 students. In all their discussions the women take an equal
share with the men and, when the Northwest adopts equal suffrage,
the wives of the Finns will be among the first to vote. The Finns
are prompt to acquire citizenship and they do not abuse the ballot.
They will not vote for a fellow countryman unless he is the fittest
candidate for the office.
Their civic attitude is revealed by an incident that occurred at the
outbreak of the Spanish-American war. A community of agricultural
Finns near Carlton, Minnesota, who had settled there in the
eighties, came together after the call for volunteers and considered
what they ought to do. After deliberation they concluded that in
token of their gratitude for their good fortune under the stars
and stripes they ought to send one of their number to the war. So
they picked out as their representative a stalwart, comely farm lad
of twenty-three and he served through the Cuban campaign as Finnish
champion of American institutions!
[Illustration: Magyar]
[Illustration: Roumanian]
[Illustration: Croatian]
THE MAGYARS
In the school of Western civilization the Finns and the Magyars
sit nearer the front than any other people of Mongol speech and
blood. In progressiveness the quarter of a million Magyars in our
midst are as American as any immigrants we receive. A thousand
years ago the Magyars, invading from Asia, conquered the Slavs in
Hungary and settled down as a dominant race. Although a minority in
the land, they have remained masters and rulers. Hence the Magyar
immigrant, however poverty-pinched, feels the constant prick of
the spur of race pride. His sense of honor is high. He will not
seek charity unless he really needs it. In a Magyar quarter squalor
and degeneration are not to be seen. The grass and flowers about
the cottages, the clean yard and the clean children proclaim the
presence of a race that cannot bear to be looked down on.
While the Magyars have been political and military leaders in
Hungary, the masses are familiar with the struggle for existence.
They are exploited in many ways by the Jews, who in Hungary have
been treated more liberally than anywhere else in Europe. It is not
surprising, then, that few immigrants land here with so little
money as the Magyars. Lacking the means to acquire land, they are
little known in agriculture. They go straight into the industries
and four-fifths of them are to be found in the workplaces of
Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and New Jersey. They constitute a
floating labor supply shifting constantly back and forth between
Fiume and New York. In recent years four Magyars have departed for
every five that arrived.
Their illiteracy is 11.4 per cent., a better showing than is made by
any immigrants from eastern or southern Europe, save their cousins
the Finns. They bring more industrial skill than the average Slav
and their earning power is greater than that of most of the Slavic
nationalities. They are loth to remain renters and in their endeavor
to acquire a home they will assume burdens heavier than they can
carry. Their race pride plays into the hands of the hurry-up
American bosses with the result that, more than other immigrants,
the Magyars injure themselves by overwork.
In the Magyar stream the men are nearly three times as numerous as
the women and two out of five of the men have left wives in the old
country. This means boarding-house life, shocking congestion and
a rich harvest for saloon and bawdy house. The Pittsburgh Magyar
who earns $1.80 a day will spend ten cents of it for lodging,
forty cents for food, and thirty cents for beer. The Magyars are a
wine-drinking people and the immigrants come from the farms and know
nothing of the corrosion of cities. Being high-spirited, however,
they want to become American quickly, with the result that often
they acquire our vices before they acquire our virtues. In the mill
towns they learn to guzzle beer, carouse and leave their earnings
with the caterers to appetite.
Their crime record is bad. No alien is more dreaded by the police
than a vengeful or drink-maddened Magyar. The proportion of alien
Magyar prisoners who have been committed for murder is 35.6 per
cent., higher than of any other nationality save the Russians. Their
hot-headed and quarrelsome disposition causes personal violence to
bulk very large in their crime. In offenses against chastity their
showing is bad, but their bent for gainful crime is slight.
Most Magyars come to America with the expectation of returning
eventually to Hungary to live. For this reason few have acquired
citizenship and scarcely any immigrants from southeastern Europe
show less interest in the ballot. After a trip or two home and a
vain effort to settle down to life in the old country, many return
to America reconciled, to the prospect of ending their days here.
THE PORTUGUESE
Mongrelism and social decay have hurt the southwest of Europe even
more than the Turk has hurt the southeast. This is why the 60,000
Portuguese in the United States are, in point of culture, behind
even the Servians and the Macedonians. In the growing army of
foreign born illiterates they constitute the van. Not even the
Turks, Syrians or East Indians can vie with them. On arrival not
a third are able to read and write. As we find them in the cotton
mills 55 per cent. of them cannot speak English. Even after ten
years or more in our midst two Portuguese out of five cannot manage
the speech of the country.
There are two centers of Portuguese distribution--southeastern New
England and central California. California has 23,000 Portuguese
immigrants, Massachusetts 26,000, Rhode Island 6,000. In Boston
are 1,225, in Cambridge 2,000, in Providence 2,200, in Lowell
2,200, in New Bedford 4,000, in Fall River 14,000. We understand
why Portuguese should settle in California but what brings these
olive-skinned people to chilly New England? The answer takes us into
the realm of Chance. In the beginning of a stream of immigration
there is often romance. Then, if ever, accident counts and the
venturesome individual. Just as a fallen tree on the Continental
Divide may turn certain snow waters from the Pacific to the Gulf, so
a practice of New Bedford whalers a lifetime ago caused the crowded
Azores to overflow into Massachusetts instead of Brazil. In the old
days the whalers, after a summer cruise, touched at the Azores and
took on each from 25 to 35 natives. When after two or three years
of whaling they returned to New Bedford, some of these Azoreans
remained and a settlement grew up. To-day their quarter of New
Bedford, known as "Fayal," is very prosperous.
[Illustration: Courtesy of The Survey
Croatians Celebrating their Going Home to the "Old Country"]
[Illustration: Roumanian Couple in Gala Attire, Youngstown, O.]
All down Cape Cod these fishermen have well nigh replaced the
sea-faring Yankees. Provincetown, the spot where the Pilgrims first
landed and which was settled by the purest English, seems to-day a
South European town. Handsome dark-skinned Azoreans man the fishing
boats, Correa, Silva, Cabral, and Manta are the names on the shops
and the Roman Catholics outnumber those of any other denomination.
When the bottom fell out of whaling the New Bedford Portuguese went
into the cotton mills and their countrymen began coming in larger
numbers. Besides the "White Portuguese" have come in multitudes of
"Black Portuguese" from the Cape Verde islands. Three thousand of
them work during the season in the cranberry bogs of Massachusetts
and all other pickers flee before them. They are obviously negroid,
lack foresight and are so stupid they cannot follow a straight line.
The real Portuguese immigrate in families and show very little
money on landing. At home 70 per cent. of them were farmers or farm
laborers. They know sea and soil but bring no industrial skill.
If they cannot farm or fish they become day laborers, mill hands,
dockers, teamsters, draymen, stationary engineers or firemen. Many
of their women are in the needle trades.
In the mills the Portuguese do not shine. The men earn $8.00 a week,
while the rest of the foreign born average $12.00. Their sons
and daughters earn $9.50, whereas the second generation of other
immigrants average $14.00. They put wife and daughters into the mill
and stay out of labor unions. In eight cases out of nine they sleep
three or more in a room. In Lowell, according to the government
investigator, "The standard of living of the Portuguese, as judged
by the number of persons per apartment, room and sleeping room, is
much lower than that of any other race."
In Boston, "Among the Portuguese poverty is greater and more
hopeless than it is among the Jews and Italians, although there are
no Portuguese in the almshouses. Few of the Portuguese are really
well to do while many are partially dependent because the labor
of the women, who are often obliged to support the family, is too
unremunerative to ensure their independence. Portuguese women who
have shown their low moral sense by rearing a family of fatherless
children exhibit their courage and industry by sewing early and late
to gain a meager living for their little ones."
Although unskilled, ignorant and segregated, the Portuguese commit
very little crime. Nevertheless, their moral standard is in some
respects exceedingly low. Says Dr. Bushee: "The idea of family
morality among them is almost primitive, resembling that of the
negroes of the South. Not only are elopements made and repaid
in kind without involving further complications, but also what
anthropologists call 'sexual hospitality' is not unknown among
the Portuguese." They "are not free from drunkenness and thieving,
but these faults are more carefully concealed among them and fewer
arrests result than would be the case with other nationalities. Many
of the Portuguese men are idle and thriftless, and some of the women
are suspected of having been public women in the Azore Islands from
which they come."
In California the Portuguese live like the Italians, but while
the Italians coöperate in leasing land, the Portuguese are so
individualistic that they seldom rent or own land in partnership.
This has handicapped them in agricultural competition with the
Italians and the Japanese.
Their interest in education is of the feeblest. In the mill towns
the percentage of Portuguese children at home is much larger than
that of the English; although in this respect the showing of the
Fall River Poles is much worse. No other mill people have so large a
proportion of their children in the primary grades. The retardation
of Portuguese school children is high. In California their children
are taken out of school early and the few who go on are sent to
"business college" rather than to high school.
No immigrants care so little for citizenship as the Portuguese. Of
the men whose term of residence entitles them to claim citizenship
only 3.2 per cent. have become naturalized. At New Bedford only one
in twenty entitled to citizenship has sought it; whereas, of the
other foreign born, over half have taken steps to gain citizenship.
The Portuguese farmers of California, although prosperous, care
nothing for public affairs and not half of them take a newspaper.
They are interested only in making money, saving, and buying land.
Owing to their extreme clannishness assimilation is slow. In the
city they live in a quarter by themselves; in the country they form
a colony. They have their church life apart and their societies
center about their church. Although the thriving farmers are
improving their housing and standard of living, they are "inclined
to be clannish, partly because Americans do not care for their
society." The chief agents of assimilation are the children. Having
mingled with other children in the public schools, the young people
are taken into fraternal orders and share the social life of the
community. Moreover, the parents unconsciously raise their standard
of living through their efforts to gratify the wants inspired in
their children by contact with schoolmates coming from better homes.
If the second generation are soon to be segregated in parochial
schools, as are the children of the Poles and the French Canadians,
this happy assimilation of the Portuguese through their children
will be checked.
THE GREEKS
Practically all our 150,000 Greeks have joined us in the course
of a decade and a half. The immigrants are mostly young men and
the proportion of females is negligible. Fugitives from oppression
always bring their families; so that this stream almost without
women is the clearest proof that the immigration from Hellas is
purely economic. The Hellenic Government is democratic and popular,
military service is slight and there is no religious or political
oppression. What has happened is that the huge American orb has
swum within the ken of a little people about as numerous as the
population of New Jersey and the larger mass is exerting its solar
attraction. The peasant living on greens boiled in olive oil, who
eats meat three times a year and keeps without noticing it the 150
fasting days in the Greek calendar, has sniffed the flesh pots
of America. Hence a wild-fire exodus which has devastated whole
villages and threatens to deplete the labor force of the kingdom.
Says the emigrant when questioned as to his motive: "It is hard to
make a living here. America is rich, I can make more money there. It
is the money." "Money" is the keynote of Greek immigration. Flashy
strangers have gone about talking with the peasant in his furrow and
the shepherd on the hillside, exciting their imagination as to the
wonders of America and smoothing out the difficulties in the way of
migrating. In the earlier days of the movement one man made $50,000
a year from his network of agencies selling tickets and advancing
passage money on a mortgage. The letter to the home folks, written
by the Greek who has found footing in Lowell or Chicago and which
is read by or to every one in the village, has been seized upon by
money-lenders and they have lost no opportunity to encourage both
the writing and the wide circulation of such epistles. The result
is that, in the words of Professor Fairchild the closest student
of this immigration, "The whole Greek world may be said to be in
a fever of emigration. From the highlands and the lowlands of the
Morea, from Attica, Thessaly and Euboea, from Macedonia, Asia Minor
and the Islands, the strong young men with one accord are severing
home ties, leaving behind wives and sweethearts and thronging to the
shores of America in search of opportunity and fortune." "America is
a household word in almost every Greek family." "Greek immigrants
know to just what place in the United States they are going and have
a very definite idea of what work they are going to do."
Although there are 10,000 Greek mill hands in Lowell, there is a
strong tendency for the Greeks in America to take to certain lines
of business, such as candy-kitchens and confectionery stores,
ice-cream parlors, fruit carts, stands and stores, florist shops
and boot-blacking establishments. This is due to the fact that
this catering to the minor wants of the public admits of being
started on the curb with little capital and no experience. Once his
foot is on the first rung, the saving and commercial-minded Greek
climbs. From curb to stand, from stand to store, from little store
to big store, to the chain of stores, and to branch stores in
other cities--such are the stages in his upward path. As the Greeks
prosper, they do not venture out into untried lines, but scatter
into the smaller cities and towns in order to follow there the few
businesses in which they have become expert.
[Illustration: Magyar Peasant Woman
Note own embroidery on apron: "If I am pure and good, I expect to be
honored"]
[Illustration: Molokan from Russia
From a semi-wild tribe, members of which eat no meat]
If the immigration from Hellas keeps up, in twenty years the Greeks
will own the candy trade of the country, the soda fountains and
perhaps the fruit business. Born epicures and cooks the Greeks
are going into the catering of food. In Atlanta they have 35
restaurants, in St. Louis 26, in Pittsburgh 25, in Birmingham 12
hotels and 14 restaurants.
Although Greeks are very rarely farmers, we hear of them as fruit
raisers in California, miners in Utah, laborers on the railroads
and fishers on both our coasts. In the cotton mills the Greeks are
on a level with the more backward nationalities. They show little
mechanical ability and few have reached responsible posts. They are
sober and amenable to discipline, but some employers find them too
excitable and unsteady to be good workers.
The ugliest thistle patch we owe to Old-World seed is the serfdom
of thousands of Greek boys in the shoe-shining parlors that have
sprung up everywhere. In some parts of Greece the peasant sets his
children early to work in order that their earnings may leave him
free to loaf the livelong day in a coffee-house. Upon them, too,
he saddles the burden of providing dowries for their sisters.
Accordingly, in certain districts, the poor send away their boys
to the cities of Greece and Turkey, where they are hired out to
peddlers, grocers and restaurant keepers, who treat them badly and
work them unconscionably long hours. From such parents the Greek in
America has no difficulty in recruiting boys whom he exploits under
conditions that savor of slavery.
In thousands of Greek shoe-shining shops are working bound boys who
are miserably fed and lodged by their masters, paid $3.00 or $4.00
a week and required to turn over all tips. Often the tips alone
cover the boy's wages and keep, so that his labor costs the master
nothing. Seeing that from each boy the _padrone_ makes from $100 to
$200 a year, a chain of such establishments yields him a princely
income. No wonder the negro bootblack and the Italian bootblack have
been forced to the wall.
The bound boys are on duty 15 or 16 hours a day and work every day
in the year. They get in their eating and sleeping as best they can.
They know no recreation. Late at night, completely exhausted, they
drop with their clothes on into a bed that must suffice for four or
five. Boys who have been in a city several years may learn nothing
of it save the shop, their living quarters and the streets between.
Since the _padrone's_ game is to keep his boys dumb and blind, they
are not allowed to talk freely with Greek customers. The moment a
customer talks with a boy, "trusties" crowd round to listen. No
truth can be gotten from the boys, concerning their age, their work
or their pay. To avoid the arm of the truant officer, no Greek bound
boy confesses to less than seventeen years. They are ignorant of
the rights and rewards of labor in this country and are told that,
if they leave their work, they will be arrested. Even their letters
home are read and censored.
The effects of this servitude on the boys are shocking. They miss
all schooling and years may elapse before they get their eyes open.
The study of English is the first step towards emancipation; but
where work is constant they miss even this chance and young men will
be found who have been shining shoes for years and feel no ambition
for anything else. The physical ravages of such work and confinement
are appalling. In their memorial to the Immigration Commission the
Greek physicians of Chicago say:
"Young immigrants laboring in shoeshining places for a period
of upwards of two years become afflicted with chronic gastritis
and hepatitis. These diseases undermine their constitutions,
so that if they continue longer at the same work they become
afflicted with pulmonary tuberculosis. Being too ignorant to
take precautionary measures, the disease is communicated to
others by contagion."
They go on to ask the Government not to allow such bound boys to
land.
Through this peep hole we glimpse one secret of the immigrant's
sky-rocket commercial rise. Behold Stephanos, who landed ten years
ago without a drachma and now draws a cool thousand a month from
his business and is one of our solid men! "Wonderful!" exclaims the
innocent American. "What stuff there must be in him! Shows, too,
that the country is still full of good chances." The fact is the
worthy Stephanos lolls on the backs of a hundred unseen bootblacks
who are being ruined that he may prosper. When one considers
how mercilessly the immigrant landlord, banker, saloon keeper,
contractor or employment agent hoodwinks and fleeces his helpless
fellow countrymen, certain of the "successes" one hears of do not
seem so remarkable after all.
THE LEVANTINES
One hundred thousand immigrants from Asiatic Turkey introduce us to
certain very marked differences between the European civilization
and the Asiatic. In general, these Syrians, Armenians, Arabs and
Turks eschew alcohol, shun violence and give little trouble to the
police. They are thrifty, acquisitive and self supporting. Their
women folk are hedged and virtuous. Their native intelligence
is beyond question, they respect learning and they appreciate
educational opportunities for their children.
On the other hand, they tend to crowd, their standards of
cleanliness are low and they are greatly afflicted with _trachoma_,
an excludable eye disease. Their narrow range of interests throws
out in ugly relief their lust of gain, especially gain without
sweat. The Oriental attitude toward females shows itself in a great
difference between the sexes in illiteracy, and in the betrothal
of young girls to mature men whom they scarcely know. These people
love trade, particularly the individual bargain, which offers scope
for what is amiably called "a contest of wits" but is really the
ensnaring of the unsuspecting by the spider type. At a time when
our retail commerce has happily come to the "one-price" system, the
lustrous-eyed peddlers from the Levant bring in again the odious
haggling trade with its deceit and trickery.
[Illustration: A Finnish Woman by her Cabin of Hewn Logs in Northern
Wisconsin near Lake Superior]
[Illustration: Courtesy of The Survey
Some of Syracuse's Newer Citizens--a Greek and Two Turks]
That these immigrants lack physical and moral courage is conceded
even by their friends. They do not settle their quarrels on the
spot face to face but revenge themselves treacherously from behind
when they get a safe chance. Their feeling that truth is a luxury
not to be brought out on common occasions gives them an advantage
in a commercial system which takes for granted a good deal of
Anglo-Saxon straightforwardness. It needs but half an eye to see
that the "business ability" attributed to the prospering dealer
is often nothing but the practice of Oriental craft among the
unsuspicious. As the Romans found these people at the eastern end
of the Mediterranean, so we find them to-day, good looking, pliant,
clever, sometimes brilliant, but shifty and wanting in character.
When two peoples find that their standards repel like oil and water,
they do not care to associate. Naturally, then, the Oriental
immigrants tend to huddle in colonies in which they may live in
the old way, keep their pride and spare themselves the pains of
adjustment to American ideals. Not only do such colonies check the
assimilation of those who most need it, but they are apt to be nests
of congestion, disease and depravity, as well as hot-beds for the
propagation of false and impractical ideas of political and social
freedom.