town is the young men of this town." Must it be put that way? Is that
the only way in which the people of the town can be got to understand
how wonderful is the life and promise of any young man, how tender and
gentle and lovable he is personally, how unformed, how fresh from his
mother and his Creator?
As I go along the road I pick up tracts, sown by the devil, I suppose.
Here is one of them:
Verily I say unto you that each and every one of you may be a
Count of Monte Christo, and some day exclaim, "The World is mine!"
The world was made for you, that I know. That you were made for
the world goes without saying.
Therefore hear me and believe me. If you desire wealth it _can_ be
yours. If you desire _fame_ it can be yours.
But you cannot get something for nothing. You must pay for
everything worth having. You must pay the price set upon it, and
in the coin of the realm.
The coin of the realm is industry--just that. Industry and only
industry. Nothing but industry.
[Illustration: BY THE SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY TO MICHIGAN: THE ELECTRIC
FREIGHT TRAIN.]
Poor immigrant, who thinks it would be grand to be a Count of Monte
Christo, or, to bring it nearer home, a John D. Rockefeller or an
Andrew Carnegie, and who thinks that honest labour will take him there!
Even were American success a thing worth striving for it is not won
by that means. It is a game of halma. It's not the man who moves all
his pieces out one square at a time who wins, but the sagacious player
who knows both to plan in advance and to hop over others when the
opportunity arises.
But the good American young man, "the greatest asset of the town,"
believes this gospel, and he gives his body and mind to the great
machine, and fills the gap between two otherwise disconnected
mechanisms. If he has been brought up "well," he just fits the
gap and is standard size. He feels in his soul every throb of the
engines, and registers in his integuments every rhythm and rhyme of
the great, accurate, definite, circulating, oscillating machine. He
behaves like a machine in his leisure hours. He even dances like a
mechanical contrivance. On none of the occasions when the Fatherland
requires his sober human judgment can he stand as a man. He seems
spoilt for the true citizenship. What he does understand is the
improvement, adjustment, and significance of machinery, and he can
look intelligently at America the Great Machine. Perhaps this is his
function whilst America is realising the dream of materialism and
progress. But America would take care of itself if the American were
all right. I could not but have that opinion as I left the cities and
walked through the rich country, the new world, as yet scarcely visibly
shopsoiled by commercialism.
VII
RUSSIANS AND SLAVS AT SCRANTON
I came into Forest City along a road made of coal-dust. A black by-path
led off to the right down a long gradual slope, and was lost among
the culm-heaps of a devastated country side. Miners with sooty faces
and heavy coal-dusty moustaches came up in ones and twos and threes,
wearing old peak-hats, from the centre of the front of which rose
their black nine-inch lamps looking like cockades. They carried large
tarnished "grub-cans," they wore old cotton blouses, and showed by
unbuttoned buttons their packed, muscular bodies. Shuffling forward up
the hill they looked like a different race of men--these divers of the
earth. And they were nearly all Russians or Lithuanians or Slavs of one
kind or another.
"Mostly foreigners here," said I to an American whom I overtook.
"You can go into that saloon among the crowd and not hear a word of
white the whole night," he replied.
I addressed a collier in English.
"Are you an American?"
"No speak English," he replied, and frowned.
"From Russia?" I inquired, in his own tongue.
"And you from where?" he asked with a smile. "Are you looking for a
job?"
But before I could answer he sped away to meet a trolly that was
just whizzing along to a stopping-place. Presently I myself got into
a car and watched in rapid procession the suburbs of Carbondale
and Scranton. Black-faced miners waited in knots at the stations
all along the road. I read on many rocks and railings the scrawled
advertisement, "Buy diamonds from Scurry." Girls crowded into the car
from the emptying silk-mills, and they were in slashed skirts, some
of them, and all in loud colours, and over-decorated with frills,
ribbons, and shoddy jewellery. We came to dreary Iceville, all little
grey houses in the shadow of an immense slack mountain. We came into
the fumes of Carbondale, where the mines have been on fire ten years;
we got glimpses of the far, beautiful hills and the tender green of
spring woods set against the soft darkness of abundant mountains. We
dived into wretched purlieus where the frame-buildings seemed like
flotsam that had drifted together into ridges on the bending earth.
We saw dainty little wooden churches with green and yellow domes, the
worshipping places of Orthodox Greeks, Hungarians, Ruthenians, and at
every turn of the road saw the broad-faced, cavernous-eyed men and the
bright-eyed, full-bosomed women of the Slavish nations. I realised that
I had reached the barracks of a portion of America's great army of
industrial mercenaries.
I stayed three days at Casey's Hotel in Scranton, and slept nights
under a roof once more, after many under the stars. I suppose there was
a journalist in the foyer of the hotel, for next morning, when I opened
one of the local papers, I read the following impression of my arrival:
With an Alpine rucksack strapped to his back, his shoes thick with
coal-dust, and a slouch hat pulled down on all sides to shut out
the sun, a tall, raw-boned stranger walked up Lackawanna Avenue
yesterday afternoon, walked into the rotunda of the Hotel Casey
and actually obtained a room.
Every paper told that I was an Englishman specially interested in
Russians and the America of the immigrant. So I needed no further
introduction to the people of the town.
Just as I was going into the breakfast-room a bright boy came up to me
and asked me in Russian if I were Stephen Graham. "My name is Kuzma,"
said he. "I am a Little Russian. I read you wanted to know about the
Russians here, so I came along to see you."
"Come and have breakfast," said I.
We sat down at a table for two, and considered each a delicately
printed sheet entitled, "Some suggestions for your breakfast." Kuzma
was thrilled to sit in such a place; he had never been inside the hotel
before. It was pretty daring of him to come and seek me there. But
Russians are like that, and America is a free country.
As we had our grape-fruit and our coffee and banana cream and various
other "suggestions," Kuzma told me his story. He was a Little Russian,
or rather a Red Russian or Ruthenian, and came from Galicia. Three
years previously he had arrived in New York and found a job as
dish-washer at a restaurant, after three months of that he progressed
to being bottle-washer at a druggist's, then he became ice-carrier at
a hotel. Then another friendly Ruthenian introduced him to a Polish
estate agent, who was doing a large business in selling farms to Polish
immigrants. As Kuzma knew half a dozen Slavonic dialects the Pole took
him away from New York, and sat him in his office at Scranton, putting
him into smart American attire, and making a citizen out of a "Kike." I
should say for the benefit of English readers that illiterate Russians
and Russian Jews are called Kikes, illiterate Italians are "Wops,"
Hungarians are "Hunkies." These are rather terms of contempt, and the
immigrant is happy when he can speak and understand and answer in
English, and so can take his stand as an American. After six months'
clerking and interpreting Kuzma began to do a little business on his
own account, and actually learned how to deal in real estate and sell
to his brother Slavs at a profit.
Kuzma, as he sat before me at breakfast, was a bright, well-dressed
business American. You'd never guess that but three years before he had
entered the New World and taken a job as dish-washer. He had seized the
opportunity.
"You're a rich man now?" said I.
"So-so. Richer than I could ever be in Galicia. I'm learning English at
the High School here, and when I pass my examination I shall begin to
do well."
"You are studying?"
"I do a composition every day, on any subject, sometimes I write a
little story. I try to write my life for the teacher, but he says I am
too ambitious."
"Do you love your Ruthenian brothers and sisters here?"
"No; I prefer the Great Russians."
"You're a very handsome young man. I expect you've got a young lady in
your mind now. Is she an American, or one of your own people? Does she
live here, or did you leave her away over there, in Europe?"
"I don't think of them. I shall, however, marry a Russian girl."
"Have you many friends here?"
"Very many."
"You will take me to them?"
"Oh yes, with pleasure."
"And where shall we go first? It is Sunday morning. Shall we go to
church?"
We left the hotel and went to a large Baptist chapel. When we arrived
there we found the whole congregation engaged in Bible study. The
people were divided into three sections,--Russians, Ruthenians, Poles.
Russians sat together, Ruthenians and Little Russians together, and
Poles together. I was most heartily welcomed, and took a place among
the circle of Russians, Kuzma being admitted there also, though by
rights he should have gone to the other Ruthenians. He was evidently a
favourite.
We took the forty-second chapter of Genesis, reading aloud the first
verse in Russian, the second in Ruthenian, and the third in Polish.
When that was accomplished we prayed in Ruthenian, then we listened to
an evangelical sermon in Russian, and then sang, "Nearer, my God, to
Thee!" in the same manner as we had read the chapter of Genesis--first
verse in Russian, second in Ruthenian, third in Polish. It was strange
to find myself singing with Kuzma:
Do Ciebie Boze moj!
Przyblizam sie.
I have never seen Poles and Ruthenians and Russians so happy together
as in this chapel, and indeed in America generally. In Russia they more
or less detest one another. They are certainly of different faiths, and
they do not care about one another's language. But here there is a real
Pan-Slavism. It will hold the Slavic peoples together a long time, and
separate them from other Americans. Still there are not many cities in
the United States resembling Scranton ethnologically. The wandering
Slav when he moves to another city is generally obliged to go to a
chapel where only English is spoken, and he strains his mind and his
emotions to comprehend the American spirit.
After the hymn the congregation divided into classes, and talked about
the Sermon on the Mount, and to me they were like very earnest children
at a Sunday School. I was able to look round. There were few women in
the place; nearly all of us were working men, miners whose wan faces
peered out from the grime that showed the limit of their washing.
At least half the men were suffering from blood-poisoning caused
by coal bruises, and their foreheads and temples showed dents and
discolorations. They had been "up against it." They would not have been
marked that way in Russia, but I don't think they grudged anything to
America. They had smiles on their lips and warmth in their eyes; they
were very much alive. "Tough fellows, these Russians," wrote Gorky.
"Pound them to bits and they'll come up smiling."
They were nearly all peasants who had been Orthodox, but had been
"converted"; they were strictly abstinent; they sighed for Russia,
but they were proud to feel themselves part of the great Baptist
community, and knit to America by religious ties. None of them entirely
approved of Scranton. They felt that a mining town was worse than
anything they had come from in Russia, but they were glad of the high
wages they obtained, and were saving up either to go back to Russia and
buy land or to buy land in America. They craved to settle on the land
again.
It seemed to me Kuzma's business of agent for real estate among the
Slavs was likely to prove a very profitable one. I shall come back
to Scranton one day and find him a millionaire. He evidently had the
business instinct--an example of the Slav who does not want the land
again. The fact that he sought me out showed that he was on the _qui
vive_ in life.
When the service was concluded we went over the church with a young
Russian who had fled to America to escape conscription, and who averred
that he would never go back to his own country. His nose was broken,
and of a peculiar blue hue, owing to blood-poisoning. His finger-nails
were cut short to the quick, but even so, the coal-dust was deep
between the flesh and the nail. He was most cordial, his handshake was
something to remember, even to rue a little. He had been one of those
who took the collection, and he emptied the money on to a table--a
clatter of cents and nickels. He showed us with much edification the
big bath behind the pulpit where the converted miners upon occasion
walked the plank to the songs of fellow-worshippers. They were no
doubt attracted by the holiness of water, considering the dirt in which
they lived.
"He is a Socialist," said Kuzma, as we went away to have lunch. "A
Socialist and a Baptist as well. He has a Socialist gathering in the
afternoon and Russian tea and speeches, and he wants me to go. But they
hold there should be no private property. I want private property. I
want to travel and to have books of my own, so I can't call myself a
Socialist."
In the afternoon Kuzma took me to the Public Library and showed me its
resources. In the evening we went to supper at the house of a dear old
Slovak lady, who had come from Hungary on a visit thirty years ago, and
had never returned to her native land. She had been courted and won and
married within three weeks of her arrival--her husband a rich Galician
Slav. Now she was a widow, and had three or four daughters, who were so
American you'd never suspect their foreign parentage.
She told me of the many Austrian and Hungarian Slavs in Pennsylvania,
and gave it as her opinion that whenever a political party was badly
worsted in south-eastern Europe the beaten wanted to emigrate _en bloc_
to the land of freedom. When they came over they held to the national
traditions and discussed national happenings for a while, but they
gradually forgot, and seldom went back to the European imbroglio.
A touching thing about this lady's house was a ruined chapel I found on
the lawn--a broken-down wooden hut with a cross above it, built when
the Slav tradition had been strong, and used then to pray in before
the Ikon, but now only accommodating the spade and the rake and a
garden-roller.
We had a long talk, partly in Russian, partly in English--the old
lady had forgotten the one and only knew the other badly. So it was a
strange conversation, but very informing and pleasant.
Slavs always talk of human, interesting things.
Kuzma was very happy, having spent a long day with an Englishman whose
name had been in the newspaper. We walked back to the hotel, and for a
memory he took away with him a newspaper-cutting of a review of one of
my books and a portrait of the tramp himself.
Next day, through the kindness of a young American whom I had met the
week before entirely by chance, I was enabled to go down one of the
coal-mines of Scranton, and see the place where the men work. The whole
of the city is undermined, and during the daytime there are more men
under Scranton than above it.
I was put into the charge of a very intelligent Welshman, who was a
foreman, and we stepped into the cage and shot down the black shaft
through a blizzard of coal-dust, crouching because the cage was so
small, and holding on to a grimy steel bar to steady ourselves in the
swift descent. In a few seconds we reached the foot--a place where
there was ceaseless drip of water on glistening coal--and we walked out
into the gloom.
Black men were moving about with flaming lamps at their heads, electric
cars came whizzing out of the darkness, drawing trucks of coal. Whole
trucks were elevated in the opposite shaft from that in which we had
descended, elevated to the pit-mouth with a roar and a rush and a
scattering of lumps of coal. I gained a lively realisation of one way
in which it is possible to get a coal-bruise.
My guide showed me a map of the mine, and we went along dark tunnels
to the telephone cavern, and were enabled to give greeting to miners
as far as three miles away underground. Every man working in the mine
was in telephonic communication with the pit-mouth. I saw the men at
work, watched small trucks of coal being drawn by asses to the main
line where the train was made up. I talked with Poles, Ruthenians,
Russians--actually meeting underground several of those whom I had seen
the day before in the Baptist Chapel. They were all very cheerful,
and smiled as they worked with their picks. Some were miners, some
labourers. The miner directs the blasting and drilling, puts in the
powder and blows out the coal; the labourer works with pick and shovel.
A man has to serve two years in a mine as a labourer before he can be
a miner. Even a British immigrant, who has worked in South Wales or
Northumberland or elsewhere, has to serve his term as a labourer. This
discourages British men. Scranton used to be almost entirely Welsh;
but it goes against the grain in an English-speaking man to fetch and
carry for a Slovak or a Pole. On the other hand, this rule safeguards
American strikers against imported miners.
After I had wandered about the mine a while I went up to the
"Breaker's" tower, to the top of which each truck of coal was hoisted
by the elevator; and I watched the fanning and screening and guiding
and sifting of this wonderful machine, which in collaboration with
the force of gravity can sort a ton of coal a second. I talked with
Polish boys sitting in the stream of the rolling, hurrying coal; their
task was to pick out bits of slate and ore; and I watched the platemen
splitting lumps of coal with their long-handled hammers, and casting
out the impurities. I saw the wee washhouse where the collier may bathe
if he wish.
"Well, America or Russia, which is it?" I asked of almost every Russian
I met. "Which do you prefer? Are you Americans now or Russians?"
And nearly all replied, "America; we will be Americans. What does one
get in Russia?--fifty cents a day."[2] Only a few said that America was
bad, that the mining was dangerous and degrading. Strange to say, the
astonishment at America's wealth and the wages they get from her had
not died away. They admired America for the wages she gave; not for
the things for which the people of culture in the great cities admire
her. America gave them money, the power to buy land, the power to buy
low pleasures, the power to get back to Russia, or to journey onward to
some other country--to the Argentine or to Canada.
I then spent a day visiting people at random. I went into Police
Station No. 4, and found Sergeant Goerlitz sitting at a desk reading
his morning paper, and he was very ready to talk to me. From him I
gathered that the Slavs were the best citizens--quiet, industrious, and
law-abiding. By Slavs he meant Huns, Bulgarians, Galicians, Ruthenians.
The Russians were vulgar and pushing. He probably meant Russian Jews
and Russians. The Italians were the most dangerous people; they
committed most crimes, and never gave one another away to the police.
The Poles and Jews were the most successful people.
I went to the house of a communicative, broad-nosed, broad-lipped
little Ruthenian priest--an Austrian subject--and he told me that
Russia could take India whenever she wanted to, America could take
Canada, and that Germany would break our naval power. But the English
would still be the greatest people in the world. In the near future
the whole of North America would be one empire, and the whole of South
America another--one Anglo-Saxon, the other Latin. He was evidently
a student of contemporary possibilities. Despite his belief in
America he was proud of his own nationality, and jealous of the loss
of any of his flock. To his church there came three hundred Little
Russians and about thirty Great Russians. He reckoned there were fifty
families in Scranton purely Nihilist--by that he meant atheistic and
pleasure-seeking. At his church the service was in Slavonic and the
sermon in Ruthenian. He was sorry to say there were comparatively few
marriages. People came to the town to make money rather than to live.
Then I went to the official Russian priest, away on Division Street. He
shepherded one hundred and thirty-seven families, and four hundred and
sixty-two unmarried people. His church had been burned down the year
before, but had sprung up again immediately. Some of the congregation
had succeeded in business, and having come as poor colonists were now
rich and respected citizens, professional men, large storekeepers,
responsible clerks. Scranton was more like a Russian city than an
American, and it was possible to flourish as a lawyer or a doctor or
an estate agent although you knew very little of the English language.
And out in the country round about were many Russian farms with
real Russian peasants on them; and he spent many weeks in the year
travelling about in the rural districts giving the consolation of
Orthodoxy to the faithful.
A pathetic thing happened whilst I was taking leave of the priest; a
young workman came in to ask advice, and in salutation he took the
priest's hand to kiss it, but the latter was ashamed to receive that
homage before me, and so tried to pull his hand away. Despite the
churchman's enthusiastic account of his work I felt that little action
was symbolical of the ebb-tide. It was to me as if I had looked at the
sea of faith, and said, "The tide is just turning."
I visited the Y.M.C.A., so important an institution in America, giving
a good room for fifty cents a day, and having its club-rooms, its
swimming-baths, its classes for learning English. It wanted to raise
seventeen thousand dollars in the forthcoming week, and many posters
reminded passers-by that Scranton's greatest asset was not its coal or
its factories or its shops, its buildings, its business, but its young
men.
I walked the many streets at evening time when the wild crowd was
surging in and out of the cinema houses and the saloons, and heard
the American chaff and music-hall catch-words mixed with half a dozen
Slavonic dialects. A young American engineer took me to several
resorts, and initiated me in the mysteries of bull-dogs and fizzes,
and as we went along the street he gave a running comment on the
gaudily attired girls of the town, which he classified as "pick-ups,"
"chickens," and the like. At ten o'clock at night the streets were full
of mirth, and all given over to sweethearting and flirting. Scranton's
safety lies in the interest which the people have in one another, their
sociability and general disposition to talk and hope. What it would
be like if all these foreign mercenaries were mirthless and brutal
it would be loathsome to picture. But I was surprised to find such
lightness, such Southern frivolity in the people. It is strange that
a people, most of whom are working all day in darkness, should take
life so gaily. Even when they come up to the air of the outside world
it is a bad air that is theirs, vitiated by the fumes of the burning
mines; for at Scranton also the coal has been on fire ten years, and
the smoke rolls from the slag-coloured wastes in volumes, and diffuses
itself into the general atmosphere. One would think that the wretched
frame-dwellings, ruined by the subsidence of the ground on which they
were built, and begrimed with the smoke which factories belch all day,
would disgust humanity. But it seems the man who works in dirt and ruin
accepts dirt and disorder as something not wrong in themselves, quite
tolerable, something even to be desired, a condition of freedom.