thought the resultant type of American was going to be. America seemed
feverishly anxious to get an answer to that question. No one can answer
it, but it is exciting to speculate.
"Are you aware that in a few years we shall come to such a pass that it
will be a stand-up fight, Americans _versus_ Jews?" said one man to me.
"The influence of the other races goes for nothing beside the influence
of the Jews. The Jews are buying up all the real estate, they make any
sacrifice for education, they get the better of Christians nine times
out of ten. A Jewish pedlar comes past this door one day, and I think,
'Poor wretch!' Next year he comes past in a buggy; next year I find he
owns a big general store in the town; next year he owns a department
store and employs a thousand hands. He is too much for us."
What is to be the emerging American? At New York I was inclined to
answer, "A sort of English-speaking Russian Jew who believes in dollars
and sensual pleasures before all else, who, however, reads advanced
literature, and whilst he is poor is an anarchist, and when he is rich
is more tyrannous than the Tsar--more tyrannous, but never illegally
so." But when I escaped into the country I found that New York was not
America, but only a great hostelry on the threshold of that country. I
learned the great control power of the Anglo-Saxon and Dutch Americans,
the subtle influence of the Russian people, who after all not only
dominate the Jews in Russia, but give them many traits of the Russian
national character, making out of a materialist something which is
almost a sentimentalist. There are many Jews in Russia who have become
de-judaised by the Russians, and indeed the Christian Jew has become
part of the very fabric of that bureaucracy which the poor persecuted
mob of Hebrews hate and fear. The Russians are a strong influence in
the development of the American. And the Germans and Norwegians and
Swedes and Danes, who swiftly change to a species of American hardly
distinguishable from the old Anglo-Saxon and Dutch type? They cannot
go for nothing, they are not simply raw material, but are moulders and
fashioners as well. The coming American will be a very recognisable
relation of the Teutonic peoples. But he will nevertheless be clearly
and decidedly different from any one race on the Continent.
Even to-day an American is distinctly recognisable as such on the
pavements of London, Berlin, or Paris. You know him by his face; he
does not need to speak to reveal his nationality. You can even tell a
man who has spent five years in the country; something new has been
moulded into his face and has crept into his eyes. I have even noticed
it in the face of Russian peasants returning from America after two
years away from Russia, travelling in a Russian train to their little
village home.
"You are American?" I asked of them.
"Yes, boss, you are rait," they replied, and smiled knowingly.
They then began to enlarge on what a wonderful place America was--just
like American tourists in Switzerland.
But the American of to-day is not the American of to-morrow. The
Tsar's subjects coming into America at the rate of a quarter of a
million a year ensure that, the flocking of almost whole nations from
South-Eastern Europe ensure it. As I said, none can tell what the new
American nation will be. We can only watch the wonderful patterns and
colours that form in the great ballet and choir dance, the mingling
in the labyrinths of destiny, the disappearances and the emergences,
the involution and the evolution. It is something enacted within the
mystery of the human race itself.
XVII
FAREWELL, AMERICA!
I observed many interesting things in Chicago, the following circular
for instance:
Balsok aut John J. Casey.
Hlasujte na John J. Casey.
Glosujgie na John J. Casey.
Votate per John J. Casey.
Vote for John J. Casey,
Labour candidate for Congress.
Ten years hence that farrago will have changed to simply "Vote for
Casey."
My neighbours in the hotel spelt their name in two ways, one way for
Polish friends and the other for American understanding:
Nawrozke.
Navrozky.
It is the latter name that will endure; or perhaps that also will be
shed for some cognomen that sounds more familiar and reliable,--to
Harris or Jones or Brown.
I had a talk in a slum with a family of Roumanian Jews who had come to
Chicago twenty years ago. Chicago was a good place, they intended never
to leave it, the family had come there for ever.
I met an Alsatian who told me how he had fled from home when he was
twelve years old. He crossed the Swiss frontier, and got into Basle
at midnight, and had travelled to America _via_ Paris and Havre, and
had never gone back. He did not want to serve in the German Army. His
father had been a great French soldier in the Franco-German war.
"If you went back now would the German authorities bring you to trial?"
I asked.
"No. I have the Emperor's pardon in black and white."
"Do many of those who run away get pardon?"
"Only when there is good cause. I used to send money home regularly to
keep my sister. The mayor of the town heard of my generosity, reported
it to Berlin, and a pardon was written out for me."
"They thought it a pity to keep a good citizen out of his own country,
even though he had cheated the army. A wise action, eh?" said I.
"The Germans are 'cute," he replied.
I met a Russian revolutionary who complained that his compatriots in
the towns spent all their spare time getting drunk, fighting, and
praying. The Russian who made his pile went and opened a beer-shop.
He thought the priests of the Orthodox Church kept the immigrants
down; they got more money from drunkards than from the virtuous, and
therefore they made no efforts to encourage sobriety. He would like to
see the Orthodox Greek and Russian Churches demolished, and the priests
and deacons packed back to Europe. America was a new country, and
needed a new church.
At Chicago also I received a letter from Andray Dubovoy, a young
Russian farmer, whose acquaintance I made by chance in the Russian
quarter of New York. He was rich enough to come travelling from North
Dakota to New York to see the sights of America, a wonderfully keen
and happy Russian, full of ideas about the future and stories of the
settlement where he lived. He gave me a most interesting account of the
Russian pioneers in North Dakota. In the towns where he lived every one
spoke Russian, and few spoke English. If you went into a shop and asked
for something in English the shopkeeper would shrug her shoulders and
send for a little child to interpret. The children went to school and
knew English, but the old folks could not master it, and had long given
up attempts to learn the language. The town was called Kief, and was
named after the province of Russia from which they originally came.
He told me the history of two villages in Kiefsky Government in
Russia. They had heard of America, but thought it was a place in a
fairy-tale--not a real place at all. They were even incredulous when
the Jews began to depart for America in numbers. But they were destined
to understand.
The villagers were people who asked themselves serious questions and
searched their hearts. They ceased going to monasteries and making
pilgrimages and kissing relics, and instead gathered together and read
the Gospel.
Many were arrested for going to illegal meetings. Those who were sent
to prison or to Siberia went gladly, as on the Lord's business, to be
missionaries to those who sat in darkness.
But there was so much persecution that a great number of the villagers
thought of following the example of the Jews and emigrating to America.
It was in 1894 that they resolved to go; but at that time a large party
of Stundists, who had gone out to Virginia the year before, came back
with tidings of bad life and poor wages, and damped the enthusiasm. Ten
families, however, were tempted by what the Stundists said, and they
took tickets to go to the very district of Virginia that the Stundists
had abandoned.
On their way out they fell in with a party of German colonists going
back, after a holiday, to North Dakota. Such tales they told that five
of the families changed their minds and determined to throw in their
lot with the Germans.
The five families received land free, homesteads, they were given
credit to purchase horses and cattle and carts and agricultural
implements, and they liked the new country and wrote glowingly to the
others in Virginia and in the two villages of Kiefsky Government. As a
result, twenty-five new families came at once, and in a few years there
were 200 families installed.
Each man brought 20 to 30 dollars but no more, and each became indebted
to companies for 1000 to 1500 dollars, a debt which they hoped to pay,
but which hung on their necks like the instalments their ancestors had
to pay to the Land Banks of Russia for the land they had been granted.
However, they ploughed and sowed and hoped for harvests, built log
cabins and even American houses. They had hard times, and were on the
verge of starvation--famine and death staring at them from the barren
fields. They were forced to make an appeal through the newspapers of
Eastern America, and as a result truck-loads of provisions were sent to
them, and "clothes to last five years."
Succeeding years made up for their sufferings. There was a plentiful
flax harvest; and though in 1909 hail destroyed the wheat and in 1910
and 1911 there was drought, the Russians bore up. And 1912 was a most
fruitful year, some farmers garnering as many as 25,000 bushels of
wheat.
Each year they were able to add to their stock, to build a little more,
and to do various things. As a result of good harvests Andray Dubovoy
himself was able to go a-travelling, and to meet me and tell me his
story. He had himself come to America when a little child, and did not
know of his native land except by repute. He had not, however, had the
advantage of education in an American school as a child, and so was as
yet more Russian than American; but he was unlike the Russian type, he
was clean of limb, clear of eye and of skin, calm--almost a Quaker in
faith and morals. No one drank spirits or smoked tobacco in Kief, North
Dakota, he told me with pride. The Russians there were living in a new
way.
"Are the people as religious now as they were in Russia?" I asked.
"Not quite," said he, "they feel they don't need religion so much in
America. At first the struggle for life was so hard, we had little
thought for religion. It was only as we gained a footing on the land
that we began to think of our religion seriously, and we built a
chapel. We have a chapel of our own now."
"I suppose when you were no longer persecuted you did not need to
affirm your way of religion so emphatically," I hazarded.
Andray did not know.
"Have you any bosses in Kief?" I asked.
Andray smiled.
"Our sheriff is a cabman."
"You feel no tyranny at all now?"
He was glad to say they never had need of a policeman; there were
no robberies, every one lived in mutual love and kindness. Only, of
course, they were heavily in debt to the companies, and felt they were
never solvent.
"Perhaps, when you have improved your land and made it really valuable
you will be sold up by the companies and you will lose your property,"
said I.
He did not think that possible.
"And what is the cost of living with you?"
"Cheap," said my friend; "beef is 2½ cents a pound, eggs 10 cents the
dozen, butter 12 cents the pound, potatoes 35 cents the bushel; but the
things we import, such as boots, clothes, fruits, are very dear, much
too dear for our pockets."
"Food is cheaper than in the country in Russia, then?"
"Meat and butter and milk are cheaper, but other things are more
than twice as dear. Still we do not complain. It is a good life out
there; our children are growing up stalwart, happy, earnest. God's own
blessing is upon our enterprise."
"Are you ever going back to Russia with its persecutions, its sins, its
crimes, its pilgrimages, the secret police, the hermits who live in
forest huts, its moujiks and babas, who think that America is a place
in a fairy-tale, at the other side of endless forests?"
The farmer smiled in a peculiar way. He would like to go to see it.
Was he quite sure he was going to be an American and not a Russian?
"We have Russian classes in the summer," said he. "We must never forget
Russia, evil as she is."
* * * * * * *
It must not be forgotten that this little settlement of which I write
here is only one of many in North Dakota. There are already thirty
thousand Russians living in that state, and there are many people of
other nationalities living in the same way--Swedes, Germans, Danes. The
story of the young colonies is marvellously touching; when you read one
of the excellent novels of to-day, such as Miss Cather's _O Pioneers_,
which tells of the growth of a Swedish colony in the Middle West, you
are obliged to admit that it is no wonder the Americans find their own
such an exclusively interesting country.
* * * * * * *
I returned to New York by train, and on the way saw the Niagara Falls,
one morning at dawn; the procession of white-headed rapids, the vapour
and mist rising in volumes veiling the sun, darkening it. A sight of
holiness and wonder that left me breathless. I was glad to be alone,
and just close the picture into the heart, in silence!
Late one Saturday night I arrived in New York and stepped out of the
Grand Central Station, pack on back, and searched for a hotel. The
grand "Knickerbocker," with sky-sign the length of the Great Bear,
was not for me. I wandered into a queer-looking little palace, all
mirrors, deep carpets, white paint, and niggers. My room faced the
street, and opposite me was a pleasure-resort, a cabaret, a dancehall,
a pool-house, with three stories of billiard-rooms, through whose open
windows I saw many white-sleeved billiard-players leaning over green
tables.
The weather was so hot that all the windows in the city were wide open.
I heard the throbbing of music and dancing, even in my dreams.
Some days later I booked my passage back to England. But I was in
America till the last moment. The American who was so kind to me,
and who was in herself a little America, "fed to me" daily the facts
of American life, and the hope of all those who were working with
her. We visited Patterson, where half a dozen "Jim Larkins" had been
fighting for fighting's sake, and leading the well-paid silk-workers to
strike for the sun and moon, and accept no compromise. We visited the
President of the City College and saw the wonderful modern equipment
of that institution. We called on J. Cotton Dana, the librarian of
Newark. I was enabled to visit a maternity hospital, heavily endowed by
Pierpont Morgan, and to see all the provision made for the happy birth
of the emerging Americans. One vision remains in my memory of a dozen
babies on a tray, each baby having its mother's name written on a piece
of paper pinned to its swaddling-bands.
We visited five or six settlements, and invitations were given me to
visit several thousand establishments in the United States, and miss
nothing. I would have liked to go farther afield and have a thousand
more conversations, but perhaps, since brevity is the soul of wit,
I have done enough. As it is, I have only made a small selection of
instances and adventures and thoughts from the immense amount of
material which I carried back to England and to Russia. I think America
has been brought to the touch-stone of my own intelligence, experience,
and personality.
* * * * * * *
My friend took me to the charming play, _Peg-o'-my-Heart_.
"Isn't it delicious?"
"The thrilling thing is that the fifth act is not played out here, but
on the _Campania_, and I have to play that part myself," said I.
We got out of the theatre at eleven. I saw her home. As midnight
was striking I claimed my luggage at the cloak-room at Christopher
Street Ferry. At 12.15 I entered the Cunard Dock and saw the great,
washed-over, shadowy, twenty-year-old Atlantic Liner. Crowds of
drunkards were gesticulating and waving flags--Stars and Stripes and
Union Jacks--singing songs, embracing one another. Heavily laden
dock-porters, carrying sacks, moved in procession along the gangways.
Portly Chief Steward Macrady, with mutton-chop whiskers, weather-beaten
face, and wordless lips, sat in his little kiosk and motioned to me to
pass on when I showed my ticket. I got aboard.
I returned with the home-going tide of immigrants; with flocks of Irish
who were going boisterously back to the Green Isle to spend small
fortunes; with Russians returning to Russia because their time was up
and they were due to serve in the army; with British rolling-stones,
grumbling at all countries; with people going home because they were
ill; with men and women returning to see aged fathers or mothers;
with a whole American family going from Butte, Montana, to settle in
Newcastle, England.
It was a placid six-day voyage; six days of merriment, relaxation, and
happiness. The atmosphere was entirely a holiday one--not one of hope
and anxiety and faith, as that of going out had been. Every one had
money, almost every one was a person who had succeeded, who had tall
tales to tell when he got home to his native village in his native
hollow.
Thousands of opinions were expressed about America. I heard few of
disillusion. Most people who go to America are disillusioned sooner
or later, but they re-catch their dreams and illusions, and gild their
memories when they set sail upon the Atlantic once more. They have
become Americans, and have a stake in America, and are ready to back
the New World against anything in the Old.
"Do you like the Yankees?"
"They're all right--on the level," answers an Irish boy.
"Do you like America? Would you like to live there and settle down
there?" asks a friend of me, the wanderer.
A smile answers that question.
We stood, my friend and I, looking over the placid ocean as the moon
just pierced the clouds and glimmered on the waters.
Evening splendours were upon the surface of the sea, the delicate light
of the moon just showing the waves, most beautiful and alluring.
"It is like first acquaintance with one's beloved," said I; "like the
first smile that life gives you, bidding you follow her and woo her.
Later on, in the rich splendour, when the golden road is clear and
certain and ours, we do not care for the quest. We look back to those
first enchanting glances, those promising reconnaissances. The promise
of love is more precious than love itself, for it promises more than
itself; it promises the unearthly; it touches a note of a song that
we heard once, and have been all our lives aching to remember and sing
again."
America is too happy and certain and prosperous a place for some. It
is a place where the soul falls into a happy sleep. The more America
improves, the more will it prove a place of success, of material
well-being, of physical health, and sound, eugenically established men
and women. But to me, personally, success is a reproach; and failure,
danger, calamity, incertitude is a glory. For this world is not a
satisfying home, and there are those who confess themselves strangers
and pilgrims upon the earth.
* * * * * * *
Back to Russia! From the most forward country to the most backward
country in the world; from the place where "time is money" to where the
trains run at eighteen miles an hour; from the land of Edison to the
land of Tolstoy; from the religion of philanthropy to the religion of
suffering--home once more.
The following pages contain advertisements of
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_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem
_Decorated cloth, illustrated, 8vo, $2.75 net_
The journey of the Russian peasants to Jerusalem has never been
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