WITH POOR IMMIGRANTS TO AMERICA
[Illustration: Logo]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON· BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: THE EMIGRANTS IN SIGHT OF THE GREY-GREEN STATUE OF
LIBERTY IN NEW YORK HARBOUR.]
WITH POOR IMMIGRANTS TO AMERICA
BY
STEPHEN GRAHAM
AUTHOR OF
"WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM"
_WITH 32 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
BY THE AUTHOR_
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1914
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1914,
BY HARPER AND BROTHERS.
COPYRIGHT, 1914,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1914.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
NOTE
A translation of this book has appeared serially in Russia before
publication in Great Britain and America. The matter has accordingly
been copyrighted in Russia.
My acknowledgments are due to the Editor of _Harper's Magazine_ for
permission to republish the story of the journey.
I wish to express my thanks to Mrs. James Muirhead, Miss M. A. Best,
and to Mr. J. Cotton Dana, who, with unsparing energy and hospitality,
helped me to see America as she is.
STEPHEN GRAHAM.
VLADIKAVKAZ, RUSSIA.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PROLOGUE xi
CHAPTER
I. THE VOYAGE 1
II. THE ARRIVAL OF THE IMMIGRANT 41
III. THE PASSION OF AMERICA AND THE TRADITION
OF BRITAIN 54
IV. INEFFACEABLE MEMORIES OF NEW YORK 73
V. THE AMERICAN ROAD 85
VI. THE REFLECTION OF THE MACHINE 103
VII. RUSSIANS AND SLAVS AT SCRANTON 123
VIII. AMERICAN HOSPITALITY 141
IX. OVER THE ALLEGHANIES 161
X. DECORATION DAY 177
XI. WAYFARERS OF ALL NATIONALITIES 188
XII. CHARACTERISTICS 209
XIII. ALONG ERIE SHORE 225
XIV. THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE 245
XV. THROUGH THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 252
XVI. THE CHOIR DANCE OF THE RACES 274
XVII. FAREWELL, AMERICA! 294
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. The emigrants in sight of the grey-green statue of
Liberty in New York Harbour _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. Russian women on board--
(_a_) The peasant 12
(_b_) The intellectual and revolutionary type 12
3. The boisterous Flemings 14
4. (_a_) The dreamy Norwegian with the concertina 18
(_b_) The endless dancing 18
5. (_a_) A Russian Jew 26
(_b_) "A patriarchal Jew, very tall and gaunt,
hauled along a small fat woman of his race" 26
6. "One of the young ladies was being tossed up in a
blanket with a young Irish lad" (p. 25) 30
7. (_a_) English 36
(_b_) Russians--Fedya, Satiron, Alexy, Yoosha, Karl,
Maxim Holost 36
8. Dainty Swedish girls and their partners looking over the sea 44
9. Apple orchards in blossom on the spurs of the Catskills 84
10. On the way to school: my breakfast party 92
11. The tramp's dressing-room 110
12. By the side of the highway to Michigan: the electric freight
train 120
13. An Indiana farm: the wind-well behind it, the wheatfield
in front 142
14. "The cream-vans come along and buy up all the cream" (p. 261) 152
15. "Ploughed upland all dotted over with white heaps of
fertiliser" (p. 161) 158
16. "Slovaks working on the line with pick and shovel" 166
17. The Slav children of Snow-Shoe Creek 174
18. Italians working with the "mixer" on the Meadville Pike 200
19. Ingenious photographs of American types 212
20. The Lithuanian who sat behind the asphalt and coal-oil
scatterer 226
21. "Johnny Kishman, a German boy, got off his bicycle to
find out what manner of man I was" (p. 233) 234
22. Erie Shore. "Amidst old logs, under a stooping willow
tree, I made my bed" (p. 235) 238
23. The sower 252
24. The store on wheels 258
25. "I had an interesting talk with an ancient man by the side
of the road" 262
26. "Old Samuel Judie, lying on a bank, and philosophising on
life" 270
27. At the fountain in the park: a hot day in Chicago 276
PROLOGUE
From Russia to America; from the most backward to the most forward
country in the world; from the place where machinery is merely imported
or applied, to the place where it is invented; from the land of Tolstoy
to the land of Edison; from the most mystical to the most material;
from the religion of suffering to the religion of philanthropy.
Russia and America are the Eastern and Western poles of thought. Russia
is evolving as the greatest artistic philosophical and mystical nation
of the world, and Moscow may be said already to be the literary capital
of Europe. America is showing itself as the site of the New Jerusalem,
the place where a nation is really in earnest in its attempt to realise
the great dream of human progress. Russia is the living East; America
is the living West--as India is the dead East and Britain is the dying
West. Siberia will no doubt be the West of the future.
For one who knows Russia well America is full of a great revelation.
The contrast in national spirit is so sharp that each helps you to see
the other more clearly. The American people are now on the threshold
of a great progressive era; they feel themselves within sight of the
realisation of many of their ideals. They have been hampered badly by
the trusts and the "bosses" and the corrupt police, but they are now
proving that these obstacles are merely temporary anomalies, caused by
the overwhelmingly sudden growth of population and prosperity. A few
years ago it could with truth be said that material conditions were
worse in the United States than in the Old World. But it has been clear
all the time that the corruption existent in the country was truly
foreign to the country's temper.
The common citizen is becoming the watchdog of the police-service.
Tammany has fallen. Women are getting the suffrage, state by state.
The nation is unanimous in its cry for a pure state, a clean country,
and an uncorrupted people. All diseases are to be healed. Couples who
wish to be married must produce health-certificates. The mentally
deficient and hereditary criminals are to be segregated. Blue-books,
or rather what the Americans call White-books, are going to form the
Bible of a new nation. The day is going to be _rationally_ divided
into eight hours' work, eight hours' pleasure, eight hours' sleep--or
rather, eight hours' looking at machinery, eight hours' pleasure, eight
hours' sleep, for machinery is going to accomplish all the ugly toil.
Everybody is to be well dressed, well housed, comfortable. America
is raging against drink, against the exploitation of immigrants,
against the fate of the white slave, against any one who has done
anything immoral. It will nationally expel a Russian genius like
Gorky. It makes great difficulty of admitting to its shores any one
who has ever been in prison. It is so in earnest about the future of
America that it has set up what is almost an insult to Europe--the
examination of Ellis Island. Any one who has gone through the ordeal
of the poor emigrant, as I did, going into America with a party of
poor Russians in the steerage, and has been medically examined and
clerically cross-questioned about his life and ethics, knows that
America is a materialist and progressive country, and that she is no
longer a harbour of refuge for the weak, but a place where a nation is
determined to have health and strength and prosperity.
Now in Russia, when you arrive there, you find no such tyranny as that
of Ellis Island awaiting you. You have come to the land of charity. If
there is any question it is of whether you are a Russian Jew wanting to
be recognised as an American citizen. Their charity does not extend to
the Jews. But disease does not stand in your way, neither does crime;
ethics are not inquired into; Mylius or Mrs. Pankhurst or Miss Marie
Lloyd receive their passports without a frown. You have come to the
nation to whom are precious the sick, the mentally deficient, the
criminal, the waste-ends of humanity, the poor woman on the streets,
the drunkard. Her greatest novelist, Dostoievsky, was an epileptic;
her national poet, Nekrasof, was a drunkard; Vrubel, one of her
greatest painters, was an imbecile; Chekhof, her great tale-writer,
was a hopeless consumptive. She is not opposed to the good and the
sound, but the suffering are dearer to her, more comprehensible. She
loves the drunkard, and says "Yes, you are right to be drunk; you are
probably a good man. It is what you are likely to be in this world of
enigmas." She loves the white slave, but does not wish to shut her in
a home for such. The Russians, so far from segregating the diseased
and the fallen, frequently fall in love with them and marry them. They
are sorry for the crippled children, but do not wish they had never
been born. They see in them a reminder of the true lot of man upon the
world. They make such children holy, and set them at the church doors.
Russia does not execute the murderer except under martial law, but she
sends him to Siberia to understand life and be _resurrected_. Thus, in
_The Crime and Punishment_, Raskolnikof the murderer, goes to Siberia
with little Sonia, the white slave, who whispers to him all the way the
promises of St. John's Gospel.
In America the man who is tramping the road and will not work is an
object of enmity. He is almost a criminal. He is not wanted. He will
receive little hospitality, must chop wood for his breakfast or steal.
His life is a blasphemy breathed against the American ideal. But in
Russia none is looked upon more kindly than the man on the road, the
tramp or the pilgrim. There are a million or so of them on the road
in the summer. They are characteristic of Russia. In them the Russian
confesses that he is a stranger and a pilgrim upon the earth.
The Christianity of Russia is the Christianity of death, of
renunciation, of what is called the _podvig_, the turning away from the
empire of "the world" as proposed by Satan on the mountain, the wasting
of the ointment rather than the raising of the poor, the giving the lie
to Satan, the part of Mary rather than the part of Martha.
But the Christianity of America is the Christianity of Life, of
affirmation, of "making good," of accepting "the world" and preparing
for Christ's second coming, of obedience to the law, of almsgiving.
America is the great almsgiver, appealed to for money from the ends
of the earth, and for every object. If Russia can give faith, America
can give the rest. It is impossible for America to say with St. Peter,
"Silver and gold have I none, but _such as I have_ give I thee." The
Americans believe in money, and the pastor of a fashionable church is
able to say, "I preach to fifty million dollars every Sunday morning."
But as Mme. Novikof, in one of her brilliant conversations, once said,
"What is greater than the power of money? Why, contempt of money."
There are no people in the world who keep fewer account-books than the
Russians. They fling about their wealth or the pennies of their poverty
with the generous assurance that the bond of brotherhood is greater
than their fear of personal deprivation.
The Americans are great collectors. It may be said collecting is the
genius of the West; empty-handedness is the glory of the East.
The Russians are a sad and melancholy people. But they do not want to
lose their melancholy or to exchange it for Western self-satisfaction.
It is a divine melancholy. As their great contemporary poet Balmont
writes:
I know what it is to moan endlessly--
In the long cold Winter to wait in vain for Spring,
But I know also that the nightingale's song is beautiful to us just
because of its sadness,
And that the silence of the snowy mountain peaks is more beautiful
than the lisping of streams--
which is somewhat of a contrast to a conversation reported in one of
Professor Jacks' books:
_Passenger, looking out of the train window at the snowy ranges of
the Rockies_: "What mountains!"
_American, puzzled for a moment_: "I guess I h'ant got any use for
those, but ef you're thinking of buying real estate...."
The phrase, _real estate_!
Britain is seated in the mean. Compared with America she is
semi-Eastern. Despite the blood-relationship of the American and
British peoples they are more than an ocean apart. We receive without
much thanks American songs and dances, boxers, Carnegie libraries,
and plenty of money for all sorts of purposes. But our backs are to
America; we look towards Russia and are all agog about the next Russian
book or ballet or music. We are an old nation; as far as the little
island is concerned hope has died down. We have explored the island.
America will take a long time to explore _her_ territory. No vast
tracts and inexhaustible resources and terrific upheavals of Nature
reflect themselves in our national mood. The American working man has
a true passion for work, for his country, for everything; the British
working man does his duty. We have not the belief in life that the
American has--we have not yet the Russian's belief in death.
The American breathes full into his lungs the air of life. The American
is glad at the sight of the strong, the victorious, the healthful. How
often, in novels and in life, does the American woman, returning from
a sojourn in the far West, confess to her admiration of the cowboy!
She is thrilled by the sight of such strong wild "husky" fellows, each
of them equal to four New Yorkers. In England, however, the town girl
has no smiles for the strong peasant; he is a country bumpkin, no
more. She wants the ideal, the unearthly. In Russia weakness attracts
far more than strength; love is towards consumptives, cripples, the
half-deranged, the impossibles. The Americans do not want the weak
one; England backs the "little un" to win; Russia loves the weak one,
feeling he will be eternally beaten, and loves him because he will be
beaten. But America loves the strong, the healthy, the pure, because
she is tired of Europe and the weakness and disease and sorrow of
Europeans.
WITH POOR IMMIGRANTS TO AMERICA
I
THE VOYAGE
At Easter 1912 I was with seven thousand Russian peasants at the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem. On Easter Day 1913 I arrived with Russian
emigrants at New York, and so accomplished in two consecutive years two
very different kinds of pilgrimage, following up two very significant
life-movements in the history of the world of to-day. One of these
belongs to the old life of Europe, showing the Middle Ages as it still
survives under the conservative regime of the Tsars; the other is
fraught with all the possibilities of the future in the making of the
New America.
It was in March that I decided to follow up the movements of the people
out of the depths of Europe into America, and with that purpose sought
out I---- K----, a well-known immigration agent in the East End of
London. He transhipped Russians coming _via_ Libau and London, and
could tell me just when he expected the next large detachment of them.
"Have you a letter of introduction?" asked the agent.
"I shouldn't have thought any was necessary," I answered. "A Russian
friend advised me to go to you. You don't stand to lose anything by
telling me what I want to know."
He would do nothing for me without an introduction, without knowing
exactly with whom he had to deal. I might be a political spy. The hand
of the Tsar was long, and could ruin men's lives even in America. At
least so he thought.
I mentioned the name of a revolutionary anarchist, a militant
suffragette. He said a letter from her would suffice. I went to
Hampstead and explained my predicament to the lady. She wrote me a note
to a mysterious revolutionary who was living above Israel's shop, and
this missive, when presented, was promptly taken as a full credential.
The mysterious revolutionary was on the point of death, and could not
see me, but Israel read the letter, and at once agreed that he was
ready to be of any service to me he could. There was a large party of
Russians coming soon, not Russian Jews, but real Russian peasants,
and he would let me know as soon as he could just when they might be
expected. I returned to my ordinary avocations, and every now and then
rang up "I. K." on the telephone, and asked, "Had the Russians come?"
"When were they coming?" At last the intelligence came, "They are just
arriving. Hurry down to Hayes wharf at once."
The news took me in the midst of other things, but I dropped all and
rushed to London Bridge. There, at Tooley Street, I witnessed one of
the happenings you'd never think was going on in London.
A long procession of Russian peasants was just filing out from the
miserable steamship _Perm_. They were in black, white, and brown
sheepskins and in astrakhan hats, some in blue blouses and peak-hats,
some in brightly embroidered linen shirts; none wore collars, but some
had new shiny bowlers, on which the litter and dust of the port was
continually falling,--bowlers which they had evidently purchased from
German hawkers who had come on board at some point in the journey. The
women wore sheepskins also, many of them, and their heads were covered
with shawls; they had their babies sewn up in little red quilts. Beside
them there were pretty town girls and Jewesses dressed in cottons and
serges and cheap hats. There were few old people and many young ones,
and they carried under their arms clumsy, red-painted wooden boxes
and baskets from which kettles and saucepans dangled. On their backs
they had sacks, and in their hands several of them had crusts of bread
picked up in their hurry as they were hustled from their berths and
through the mess-room. Some of the sacks on their backs, as I afterward
saw, contained nothing but crusts of white and black bread, on which,
perhaps, they trusted to live during the first weeks in America!
They were all rather bewildered for the moment, and a trifle anxious
about the Customs officers.
"What is this town?" they asked.
"For what are the Customs men looking?"
"Where is our agent--the man they said would be here?"
I entered into conversation with them, and over and over again answered
the question, "What is this town?" I told them it was London.
"Is it a beautiful town?" they asked.
"Is it a large town?"
"Do we have to go in a train?"
"How far is it?"
"Look at my ticket; what does it say?"
They made a miscellaneous crowd on the quay-side, and I talked to them
freely, answered their questions, and in turn put questions of my own.
They came from all parts of Russia, even from remote parts, and were
going to just as diverse places in America: to villages in Minnesota,
in Michigan, in Iowa; to Brooklyn, to Boston, to Chicago. I realised
the meaning of the phrase, "the magic word Chicago." I told them how
many people there were in London, how much dock labourers get a week,
pointed out the Tower Bridge, and calmed them about the non-appearance
of their agent. I knew him, and if he didn't turn up I would lead them
to him. They might be calm; he knew Russian, he would arrange all for
them.
At last a representative of my East End friend appeared--David the Jew.
He was known to all the dockers as David, but he had a gilt I. K. on
the collar of his coat, wore a collar, had his hair brushed, and was a
person of tremendous importance to the eager and humble emigrants. Not
a Jew, no! No Jew has authority in Russia. No Jew looked like David,
and so the patient Christians thought him an important official when
he rated them, and shouted to them, and cursed them like a herdsman
driving home a contrary lot of cows and sheep and pigs.
Another Jew appeared, in a green hat and fancy waistcoat, and he
produced a sheaf of papers having the names, ages, and destinations of
the emigrants all tabulated. He began a roll-call in one of the empty
warehouses of the dock. Each peasant as his name was called was ticked
off, and was allowed to gather up his belongings and bolt through the
warehouse as if to catch a train. I ran to the other side and found
a series of vans and brakes, such as take the East-enders to Happy
Hampstead on a Bank Holiday. Into these the emigrants were guided,
and they took their seats with great satisfaction. They clambered in
from all sides, showing a preference for getting up by the wheels, and
nearly pulling away the sides of the frail vehicles.
The vanmen jested after their knowledge of jests, and put their arms
round the pretty girls' waists. David rushed to and fro, fretting and
scolding. Loafers and clerks collected to look at the girls.
"Why does that old man look at us so? he ought to be ashamed of
himself," said a pretty Moscow girl to me. "He is dressed like twenty
or twenty-five, but he is quite old. How quizzically he looks at us."
"He is forty," said I.
"Sixty!"
"That's a pretty one," said a young man whose firm imported Koslof eggs.
"What does he say?"
"He says that you are pretty."
"Tell him I thank him for the compliment; but he is not interesting--he
has not a moustache."
All the vans filled, and there was a noise and a smell of Russia in the
grim and dreary dockyard, and such a chatter of young men and women,
all very excited. At last David got them all in order. I stepped up
myself, and one by one we went off through the East End of the city.
We went to St. Pancras station. On the way one of the peasants stepped
down from his brake and, entering a Jewish hat-shop, bought himself a
soft green felt and put his astrakhan hat away in his sack. He was the
subject of some mirth, and also of some envy in the crowd that sat down
to coffee and bread and butter at the Great Midland terminus. Under the
terms of their tickets the emigrants were fed all the way from Libau
to New York without extra charge.
They were all going from Liverpool, some by the Allan Line, some by the
White Star, and others by the Cunard. As by far the greatest number
were going on the Cunard boat, I went to I. K. and booked a passage on
that line. There was much to arrange and write, my sack to pack, and
many good-byes to utter--all in the briefest space of time.
At midnight I returned to the station and took my seat in the last
train for Liverpool. Till the moment before departure I had a
compartment to myself; but away down at the back of the train were
coach after coach of Russians, all stretched on their sheepskins on
the narrow seats and on the floor, with their children in the string
cradles of the parcel-racks. They were crowded with bundles and baskets
and kettles and saucepans, and yet they had disposed themselves to
sleep. As I walked along the corridor I heard the chorus of heavy
breathing and snoring. In one of the end carriages a woman was on her
knees praying--prostrating and crossing herself. As we moved out of St.
Pancras I felt as I did when upon the pilgrim boat going to Jerusalem,
and I said to myself with a thrill, "We have mysterious passengers on
board." The sleeping Russians gave an atmosphere to the English train.
It was like the peculiar feeling that comes to the other people in a
house when news is given downstairs that a new baby has arrived.
A man stepped into my compartment just as the train was moving--a
jovial Briton who asked me to have a cigar, and said, when I refused,
that he was glad, for he really wanted to give it to the guard. He
wanted the guard to stop the express for him at Wellingborough, and
reckoned that the cigar would put him on friendly terms. He inquired
whether I was a Mason, and when I said I was not, proceeded to reveal
Masonic secrets, unbuttoning his waistcoat to show me a little golden
sphere which opened to make a cross.
At St. Albans he gave the guard the cigar, and the charm worked, for he
was enabled to alight at Wellingborough. And I was left alone with my
dreams.
In a thunderstorm, with a high gale and showers of blinding hail
and snow, with occasional flashing forth of amazing sunshine, to be
followed by deepest gloom of threatening cloud, we collected on the
quay at Liverpool--English, Russians, Jews, Germans, Swedes, Finns--all
staring at one another curiously, and trying to understand languages
we had never heard before. Three hundred yards out in the harbour
stood the red-funnelled Cunarder which was to bear us to America; and
we waited impatiently for the boat which should take us alongside.
We carried baskets and portmanteaus in our strained hands; most of
us were wearing heavy cloaks, and some had sacks upon their backs,
so we were all very ready to rush aboard the ferry-boat and dump our
burdens on its damp decks. What a stampede there was--people pushing
into portmanteaus, baskets pushing into people! At last we had all
crossed the little gangway, and all that remained on shore were
the few relatives and friends who had come to see the English off.
This pathetic little crowd sang ragtime songs, waved their hats and
handkerchiefs, and shouted. There was a bandying of farewells:
"Ta-ta, ta-ta-ta!"
"Wish you luck!"
"Ta-ta-a, ole Lloyd George! No more stamp-licking!"
"Good luck, old boy!"
"The last of old England!"
The foreign people looked on and smiled non-comprehendingly; the
English and Americans huzzaed and grinned. Then away we went over the
water, and thoughts of England passed rapidly away in the interest
of coming nearer to civilisation's toy, the great liner. We felt the
romance of ocean travel, and also the tremulous fear which the ocean
inspires. Then as we lay in the lee of the vast, steep, blood- and
soot-coloured liner, each one of us thought of the _Titanic_ and the
third-class passengers who went down beneath her into the abyss.
The vastness of the liner made our ferry-boat look like a matchbox.
A door opened in the great red wall and a little gangway came out of
it like a tongue coming out of a mouth. We all picked up our bags and
baggage and pushed and squirmed along this narrow footway that led
into the mouth of the steamer and away down into its vast, cavernous,
hungry stomach: English, Russians, Jews, Germans, Poles, Swedes,
Finns, Flemings, Spaniards, Italians, Canadians, passed along and
disappeared--among them all, I myself.
There were fifteen hundred of us; each man and woman, still carrying
handbags and baskets, filed past a doctor and two assistants, and was
cursorily examined for diseases of the eye or skin.
"Hats and gloves off!" was our first greeting on the liner. We marched
slowly up to the medical trio, and each one as he passed had his eyelid
seized by the doctor and turned inside out with a little instrument.
It was a strange liberty to take with one's person; but doctors are
getting their own way nowadays, and they were looking for _trachoma_.
For the rest the passing of hands through our hair and examination of
our skin for signs of scabies was not so rough, and the cleaner-looking
people were not molested.
Still carrying our things we took our medical-inspection cards and
had them stamped by a young man on duty for that purpose. Then we were
shown our berths.
There was a spring bed for each person, a towel, a bar of soap, and
a life-preserver. The berths were arranged, two, four, and six in a
cabin. Married couples could have a room to themselves, but for the
rest men and women were kept in different sets of cabins. British were
put together, Scandinavians together, Russians and Jews together. It
was so arranged that the people in the cabins understood one another's
language. Notices on the walls warned that all emigrants would be
vaccinated on deck, whether they had been vaccinated before or not;
that all couples making love too warmly would be married compulsorily
at New York if the authorities deemed it fit, or should be fined or
imprisoned; that in case of fire or smoke being seen anywhere we were
to report to chief steward, but not to our fellow-passengers; that
smoking was not allowed except on the upper deck, and so on. The cabins
were a glittering, shining white; they were small and box-like; they
possessed wash-basins and water for the first day of the voyage, but
not to be replenished on succeeding days. There were general lavatories
where you might wash in hot or cold water, and there were bathrooms
which were locked and never used. Each cabin had a little mirror.
The cabins were steam-heated, and when the passengers were dirty
the air was foul. Fresh air was to be found on the fore and after
decks, except in time of storm, when we were barred down. In time of
storm the smell below was necessarily worse--atrocious, for most of
the people were very sick. We had, however, a great quantity of dark
space to ourselves, and could prowl into the most lonesome parts of
the vessel. The dark recesses were always occupied by spooning couples
who looked as if they had embarked on this journey only to make love
to one another. There were parts of the ship wholly given over to
dancing, other parts to horse-play and feats of strength. There was an
immense dining-room with ante-chambers and there, to the sound of the
jangling dinner-bell echoing and wandering far or near over the ship,
we assembled to meals.
[Illustration: RUSSIAN WOMEN ON BOARD.
The peasant woman.
The intellectual and revolutionary type.]
The emigrants flocked into the mess-room from the four doors to twenty
immense tables spread with knives and forks and toppling platters of
bread. Nearly all the men came in in their hats,--in black glistening
ringlety sheepskin hats, in fur caps, in bowlers, in sombreros, in
felt hats with high crowns, in Austrian cloth hats, in caps so green
that the wearer could only be Irish. Most of the young men were
curious to see what girls there were on board, and looked eagerly to
the daintily clad Swedish women, blonde and auburn-haired beauties
in tight-fitting, speckless jerseys. The British girls came in in
their poor cotton dresses, or old silk ones, things that had once
looked grand for Sunday wear but now bore miserable crippled hooks
and eyes, threadbare seams, gaping fastenings--cheerful daughters of
John Bull trapesing along in the shabbiest of floppy old boots. Then
there were the dark and somewhat forward Jewesses, talking animatedly
with little Jew men in queer-shaped trousers and skimpy coats; there
were slatternly looking Italian women with their children, intent on
being at home in whatever circumstances. There was a party of shapely
and attractive Austrian girls that attracted attention from the others
and a regular scramble to try to sit next to them or near them. No one
ever saw a greater miscellaneity and promiscuity of peoples brought
together by accident. I sat between a sheepskin-wrapped peasant wife
from the depths of Russia and a neat Danish engineer, who looked no
different from British or American. Opposite me were two cowboys going
back to the Far West, a dandified Spanish Jew sat next them on one hand
and two Norwegians in voluminous knitted jackets on the other. At the
next table was a row of boisterous Flemings, with huge caps and gaudy
scarfs. There were Americans, spruce and smart and polite; there were
Italians, swarthy and dirty, having their black felt hats on their
heads all through the meal and resting their elbows on the table as
if they'd just come into a public-house in their native land. There
were gentle youths in shirts which womenfolk had embroidered in Little
Russia; there were black-bearded Jewish patriarchs in their gaberdines,
tall and gaunt.
[Illustration: THE BOISTEROUS FLEMINGS.]
A strange gathering of seekers, despairers, wanderers, pioneers,
criminals, scapegoats. I thought of all the reasons that had brought
these various folk together to make a community, that had brought
them all together to form a Little America. From Great Britain it is
so often the drunkard who is sent. Some young fellow turns out to be
wilder than the rest of his family; he won't settle down to the sober,
righteous, and godly life that has been the destiny of the others; he
is likely to disgrace respectability, so parents or friends give him
his passage-money and a little capital and send him away across the
sea. Henceforth his name is mentioned at home with a 'ssh, or with a
tear--till the day that he makes his fortune. With the drunkard go
the young forger or embezzler whose shame has been covered up and
hidden, but who can get no "character" from his last employer. Then
there are the unemployed, and those discontented with their jobs, the
out-of-works, the men who have seen no prospect in the old land and
felt no freedom. There are the wanderers, the rovers, the wastrels, so
called, who have never been able to settle down; there are also the
prudent and thoughtful men who have read of better conditions and go
simply to take advantage of them. There are those who are there almost
against their will, persuaded by the agents of the shipping companies
and the various people interested to keep up the flow of people into
America. There are the women who are going out to their sweethearts to
be married, and the wives who are going to the husbands who have "made
good"; there are the girls who have got into trouble at home and have
slid away to America to hide their shame; there are girls going to be
domestic servants, and girls doomed to walk the streets,--all sitting
down together, equals, at a table where no grace is said but the
whisper of hope which rises from each heart.
But it is not only just these people whom I have so materially and
separately indicated. The cheerful lad who is beginning to flirt with
his first girl acquaintance on the boat has only a few hours since
dried the tears off his cheeks; they are nearly all young people on
the boat, and they mostly have loving mothers and fathers in the
background, and friends and sweethearts, some of them. And there are
some lonely ones who have none who care for them in all the world.
There are young men who are following a lucky star, and who will never
be so poor again in their lives, boys who have guardian angels who
will never let them injure their foot on the ground, boys who have in
their favour good fairies, boys and girls who have old folk praying
for them. And there is the prodigal son, as well as the too-prodigal
daughter. There are youngest brothers in plenty, going to win the
princess in a way their elder brothers never thought of; young Hans is
there, Aladdin, Norwegian Ashepattle, Ivan Durak--the Angel of Life is
there; there is also the Angel of Death.
We sat down together to our first meal,--the whole company of the
emigrant passengers broke bread together and became thereby one
body,--a little American nation in ourselves. I am sure that had the
rest of the world's people been lost we could have run a civilization
by ourselves. We had peasants to till the soil, colliers to give us
fuel, weavers and spinners to make cloth, tailors to sew it into
garments, comely girls of all nations to be our wives; we had clerks
and shop-keepers and Jews with which to make cities; musicians and
music-hall artists to divert us, and an author to write about it all.
Mugs half-full of celery soup were whisked along the tables; not a
chunk of bread on the platters was less than an inch thick; the hash of
gristly beef and warm potato was what would not have been tolerated in
the poorest restaurant, but we set ourselves to eat it, knowing that
trials in plenty awaited us and that the time might come when we should
have worse things than these to bear. The Swedes and the British were
finicky; the Russians and the Jews ate voraciously as if they'd never
seen anything so good in their lives.
The peasant woman next to me crossed herself before and after the meal;
her Russian compatriots removed their hats and some of them said grace
in a whisper to themselves. But most ate even with their hats on, and
most with their hands dirty. You would not say we ate as if in the
presence of God and with the memories, in the mind, of prayers for the
future and heart-break at parting with home; yet this meal was for the
seeing eye a wonderful religious ceremony, a very real first communion
service. The rough food so roughly dispensed was the bread and wine,
making them all of one body and of one spirit in America. Henceforth
all these people will come nearer and nearer to one another, and drift
farther and farther from the old nations to which they belonged. They
will marry one another, British and Jewish, Swedish and Irish, Russian
and German; they will be always eating at America's board; they will
be speaking the one language, their children will learn America's
ideals in America's school. Even from the most aboriginal, illiterate
peasant on board, there must come one day a little child, his grandson
or great-grandson, who will have forgotten the old country and the old
customs, whose heart will thrill to America's idea as if he had himself
begotten it.
On Sunday morning when we came upstairs from our stuffy little cabin
we were gliding past the green coast of Ireland, and shortly after
breakfast-time we entered the beautiful harbour of Queenstown,
blue-green, gleaming, and perfect under a bright spring sun. Hawkers
came aboard with apples, knotted sticks, and green favours--the day
following would be St. Patrick's. And we shipped a score of Irish
passengers.
Outside Queenstown a different weather raged over the Atlantic, and
as we steamed out of the lagoon it came forward to meet us. The
clouds came drifting toward us, and the wind rattled in the masts.
The ocean was full of glorious life and wash of wave and sea. A crowd
of emigrants stood in the aft and watched the surf thundering away
behind us; the great hillsides of green water rose into being and
then fell out of being in grand prodigality. Gulls hung over us as we
rushed forward and poised themselves with gentle feet outstretched,
or flew about us, skirling and crying, or went forward and overtook
us. Meanwhile Ireland and Britain passed out of view, and we were left
alone with the wide ocean. We knew that for a week we should not see
land again, and when we did see land that land would be America.
[Illustration: THE DREAMY NORWEGIAN WITH THE CONCERTINA.]
[Illustration: THE ENDLESS DANCING.]
Then we all began to know one another, to talk, to dance, to sing, to
play together. All the cabins were a-buzz with chatter, and along
the decks young couples began to find one another out and to walk
arm and arm. Two dreamy Norwegians produced concertinas, and without
persuasion sat down in dark corners and played dance music for hours,
for days. Rough men danced with one another, and the more fortunate
danced with the girls, dance after dance, endlessly. The buffets were
crowded with navvies clamouring for beer; the smoking-rooms were full
of excited gamblers thumbing filthy cards. The first deck was wholly
in electric light, you mounted to the second and it was all in shadow,
you went higher still and you came to daylight. You could spend your
waking hours on any of these levels, but the lower you went the warmer
it was. On the electric-light deck were to be found the cleaner and
more respectable passengers; they sat and talked in the mess-room,
played the piano, sang songs. Up above them all the hooligans rushed
about, and there also, in the shadow, in the many recesses and dark
empty corners young men and women were making love, looking moonily at
one another, kissing furtively and giving by suggestion an unwonted
atmosphere to the ship. It was also on this deck that the wild couples
danced and the card-players shuffled and dealt. Up on the open deck
were the sad people, and those who loved to pace to and fro to the
march music of the racing steamer and the breaking waves.
I wandered from deck to deck, everywhere; opened many doors, peered
into many faces, sat at the card-table, crushed my way into the bar,
entered into the mob of dancers, found a Russian girl and talked to
her. But I was soon much sought for. When the Russian-speaking people
found out I had their language they followed me everywhere, asking
elementary questions about life and work and wages in America. Even
after I had gone to bed and was fast asleep my cabin door would open
and some woolly-faced Little Russian would cry out, "Gospodin Graham,
forgive me, please, I have a little prayer to make you; write me also a
letter to a farmer."
I had written for several of them notes which they might present at
their journey's end.
All day long I was in converse with Russians, Poles, Jews, Georgians,
Lithuanians, Finns.
"Look at these Russian fatheads (_duraki_)," said a young Jew. "Why
do they go to America? Why do they leave their native land to go to a
country where they will be exploited by every one?"
"Why do _you_ leave it, then?" asked a Russian.
"Because I have no rights there," replied the Jew.
"Have we rights?" the Russian retorted.
"If I had your rights in Russia I'd never leave that country. I'd find
something to do that would make me richer than I could ever be in
America."
There were three or four peasants around, and another rejoined. "But
you could have our rights if you wished."
Whereupon I broke in:
"But only by renouncing the Jewish faith."
"That is exactly the truth," said the Jew.
"Yes," said a Russian called Alexy Mitrophanovitch, "he can have all
our rights if he renounces his faith."
"If I am baptized to get your rights what use is that to you? Why do
Christians ask for such an empty thing?"
"All the same," said another Russian, "in going to America you will
break your faith, and so will we. I have heard how it happens. They
don't keep the Saints' days there."
Alexy Mitrophanovitch was a fine, tall, healthy-looking peasant workman
in a black sheepskin. With him, and as an inseparable, walked a
broad-faced Gorky-like tramp in a dusty peak-hat. The latter was called
Yoosha.
"You see, all I've got," said Alexy to me, "is just what I stand up in.
Not a copeck of my own in my pocket, and not a basket of clothes. My
friend Yoosha is lending me eighty roubles so as to pass the officials
at New York, but of course I give it back to him when we pass the
barrier. We worked together at Astrakhan."
"Have you a bride in Russia?"
No, he was alone. He did not think to marry; but he had a father and a
mother. At Astrakhan he had been three thousand versts away from his
village home, so he wouldn't be so much farther away in America.
He was going to a village in Wisconsin. A mate of his had written that
work was good there, and he and Yoosha had decided to go. They would
seek the same farmer, a German, Mr. Joseph Stamb--would I perhaps write
a letter in English to Mr. Stamb?...
Both he and Yoosha took communion before leaving Astrakhan. I asked
Alexy whether he thought he was going to break his faith as the other
Russians had said to the Jew. How was he going to live without his Tsar
and his Church?
He struck his breast and said, "There, that is where my Church is!
However far away I go I am no farther from God!"
Would he go back to Russia?
He would like to go back to die there.
"Tell me," said he, "do they burn dead bodies in America? I would not
like my body to be burned. It was made of earth, and should return to
the earth."
The man who slept parallel with me in my cabin was an English collier
from the North Country. He had been a bad boy in the old country, and
his father had helped him off to America. Whenever he had a chance to
talk to me, it was of whippet-racing and ledgers and prizes and his pet
dog.
"As soon as a get tha monny a'll enter that dawg aht Sheffield. A took
er to Durby; they wawn't look at 'er there. There is no dawg's can
stan' agin her. At Durby they run the rabbits in the dusk, an' the
little dawg as 'ad the start could see 'em, but ourn moight a been at
Bradford fur all she could see. A'll bet yer that dawg's either dead
or run away. She fair lived fer me. Every night she slep in my bed.
Ef ah locked 'er aht, she kick up such a ra. Then I open the door an'
she'd come straight an' jump into bed an' snuggle 'erself up an' fall
asleep...."
The dirtiest cabins in the ship were allotted to the Russians and the
Jews, and down there at nine at night the Slavs were saying their
prayers whilst just above them we British were singing comic songs or
listening to them. Most of us, I reckon, also said our prayers later
on, quietly, under our sheets; for we were, below the surface, very
solitary, very apprehensive, very child-like, very much in need of the
comfort of an all-seeing Father.
The weather was stormy, and the boat lost thirty-six hours on the way
over. The skies were mostly grey, the wind swept the vessel, and the
sea deluged her. The storm on the third night considerably reduced the
gaiety of the ship; all night long we rolled to and fro, listening to
the crash of the waves and the chorus of the spring-mattresses creaking
in all the cabins. My boy who had left the "dawg" behind him got badly
"queered up." He said it was "mackerel as done it," a certain warm,
evil-looking mackerel that had been served him for tea on the Tuesday
evening. Indeed the food served us was not of a sort calculated to
prepare us for an Atlantic storm--roast corned beef, sausage and mash,
dubious eggs, tea that tasted strongly of soda, promiscuously poked
melting butter, ice cream. On tumultuous Tuesday the last thing we ate
was ice cream! We all felt pretty abject on Wednesday morning.
Our sickness was the stewards' opportunity. They interviewed us, sold
us bovril and hawked plates of decent ham and eggs, obtained from the
second-class table or their own mess. The British found the journey
hard to bear, though they didn't suffer so much as the Poles and the
Austrians and the Russians. I found the whole journey comparatively
comfortable, stormy weather having no effect on me, and this being
neither my first nor worst voyage. Any one who has travelled with
the Russian pilgrims from Constantinople to Jaffa in bad weather has
nothing to fear from any shipboard horror on a Cunarder on the Atlantic.
Only two of the Russians went through the storm happily, Alexy and
Yoosha. They had worked for nights and months on the Caspian Sea in a
little boat, almost capsizing each moment as they strained at their
draughts of salmon and sturgeon; one moment deep down among the seas,
the next plunging upward, shooting over the waves, stopping short,
slithering round--as they graphically described it to me.
When the storm subsided the pale and convalescent emigrants came
upstairs to get sea air and save themselves from further illness.
Corpse-like women lay on the park seats, on the coiled rope, on the
stairs, uttering not a word, scarcely interested to exist. Other women
were being walked up and down by their young men. A patriarchal Jew,
very tall and gaunt, hauled along a small, fat woman of his race, and
made her walk up and down with him for her health--a funny pair they
looked. On Wednesday afternoon, about the time the sun came out, one of
the boisterous Flemings tied a long string to a tape that was hanging
under a pretty French girl's skirts, and he pulled a little and watched
her face, pulled a little more and watched the trouble, pulled a little
more and was found out. Then several of the corpse-like ones smiled,
and interest in life was seen to be reviving.
Next morning when I was up forward with my kodak, one of the young
ladies who had been so ill was being tossed in a blanket with a young
Irish lad of whom she was fond, struggling and scratching and rolling
with a young fellow who was kissing her, whilst four companions were
dangerously hoisting them shoulder high, laughing and bandying Irish
remarks. Life only hides itself when these folk are ill; they will
survive more than sea-sickness.
The white dawn is haggard behind us over the black waves, and our great
strong boat goes thundering away ahead of the sun. It is mid-Atlantic,
and we stare into the same great circle of hungry emptiness, as did
Columbus and his mariners. Our gaze yearns for land, but finds none;
it rests sadly on the solitary places of the ocean, on the forlorn
waves lifting themselves far away, falling into nothingness, and then
wandering to rebirth.
Nothing is happening in the wide ocean. The minutes add themselves and
become hours. We know ourselves far from home, and we cannot say how
far from the goal, but still very far, and there is no turning back.
"Would there were," says the foolish heart. "Would I had never come
away from the warm home, the mother's love, the friends who care for
me, the woman who loves me, the girl who has such a lot of empty time
on her hands now that I have gone away, her lover." How lonely it is
on the steerage deck in the crowd of a thousand strangers, hearing a
score of unknown tongues about your ears, hearing your own language so
pronounced you scarce recognise it!
[Illustration: A RUSSIAN JEW.]
[Illustration: "A PATRIARCHAL JEW, VERY TALL AND GAUNT, HAULED ALONG A
SMALL FAT WOMAN OF HIS RACE."]