I
"Telegraph how many pieces you have."
In this wise did the Steamship Company convey to the astute agent its
desire to know how many Russian Jews he was smuggling out of the Pale
into the steerage of its Atlantic liner.
The astute agent's task was simple enough. The tales he told of
America were only the clarification of a nebulous vision of the land
flowing with milk and honey that hovered golden-rayed before all these
hungry eyes. To the denizens of the Pale, in their cellars, in their
gutter-streets, in their semi-subterranean shops consisting mainly of
shutters and annihilating one another's profits; to the congested
populations newly reinforced by the driving back of thousands from
beyond the Pale, and yet multiplying still by an improvident reliance
on Providence; to the old people pauperized by the removal of the
vodka business to Christian hands, and the young people dammed back
from their natural outlets by Pan-Slavic ukases, and clogged with
whimsical edicts and rescripts--the astute agent's offer of getting
you through Germany, without even a Russian passport, by a simple
passage from Libau to New York, was peculiarly alluring.
It was really almost an over-baiting of the hook on the part of the
too astute agent to whisper that he had had secret information of a
new thunderbolt about to be launched at the Pale; whereby the period
of service for Jewish conscripts would be extended to fifteen years,
and the area of service would be extended to Siberia.
"Three hundred and seventy-seven pieces," ran his telegram in reply.
In a letter he suggested other business he might procure for the line.
"Confine yourself to freight," the Company wrote cautiously, for even
under sealed envelopes you cannot be too careful. "The more the
better."
Freight! The word was not inexact. Did not even the Government reports
describe these exploiters of the Muzhik as in some places packed in
their hovels like salt herrings in a barrel; as sleeping at night in
serried masses in sties which by day were tallow or leather factories?
To be shipped as cargo came therefore natural enough. Nevertheless,
each of these "pieces," being human after all, had a history, and one
of these histories is here told.