Three Types of ImmigrantsThree Types of Immigrants
Less Favorable Repute
The Lettish people, like the Lithuanians, their neighbors and kinsmen, are among the oldest races of Europe. They are clearly distinguished from the southern Slavs, being tall and fair, like the Swede, in complexion. The Letts at home number about a million and a half. Since 1900 nearly 35,000 of them have come to America, settling mostly in the anthracite coal regions. They are also found in New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, and New Jersey. About one half are illiterate, and in the coal fields both Lithuanians and Letts have a poor reputation. In Boston, however, there is an encouraging mission work among the Lettish people.
From a Poor Environment
The Ruthenians, or Ukrainians, called also the Little Russians, at home occupy the southern part of Russia, eastern and southwestern Galicia, and part of Bukovina in Austria-Hungary.Their number in Europe is computed at over 30,000,000. They are darker and smaller than the typical Slav. Roman Catholic in religion, they are generally poor, illiterate, backward in civilization, and oppressed. Immigration began perhaps thirty years ago, but not in appreciable numbers until recent years. In the four years ending in June, 1903, there were 26,496 arrivals, two thirds men, nearly all unskilled laborers, and one half unable to read or write. The number in 1905 was 14,473. Pennsylvania is their common destination. Estimates as to their present numbers in the country vary from 160,000 to 350,000, the latter figures given by Ivan Ardan, editor of their paper,Svoboda, at Scranton. He says there are 60,000 more in Canada, and as many in Brazil and other South American republics, or about half a million altogether in the new world. Probably there are 90,000 of them in Pennsylvania. They are said to be accessible to missionary influences, but their ignorance and crowded conditions of living make work difficult.
Mostly Laborers
About eight tenths of the Ruthenians here are laborers, chiefly in the mines; and about one tenth are farmers. The young women work in shops and factories, but prefer domestic service, and are efficient. The people are very saving, and scarcely one but has from $50 to $200 at least saved and put away in some hidden corner or in a bank. They buy lots and build houses, ortake up farming. They have beneficial societies for sickness, injury, and death, including wife and mother as well as husband and father. Mr. Ardan says Ruthenian men and women drink, "farmers and Protestants being exceptions." What a notable exception and testimony that is.
Greek Catholics
Superstitious, devout, attached to their churches, the majority are Greek Catholics, with a few Protestants from Russian Ukraine, where Protestants are bitterly persecuted. There are 108 Ruthenian churches, composed of eighty Greek Catholic, twenty-six Greek Orthodox (Russian State Church), and two Protestant, besides several Protestant missions.
Hopeful Features
The people are as a rule very eager to learn both their native and the English language. They have their adult schools for this purpose. Their children go to the public schools. There are four Ruthenian weeklies and one monthly published in this country, and some books. Education is prompted by reading circles, lectures, and societies for self-improvement. The race has a fine physique, with great physical endurance. Individuality is more marked in it than in many Slavonic races, and assimilation is comparatively rapid. In this country they rapidly wake up to a new life and promise to make a worthy addition to citizenship. Such missionary opportunities should move our Christian churches to active efforts.
Croatians and Dalmatians
We can only mention the remaining nationalities of the Slavic group. The Croatians and Dalmatians, unable to make a living at home, are fleeing from starvation and mismanagement, and seeking work in America. Croatia is a kingdom of Austria-Hungary. Dalmatia is the seacoast province of Austria.
Slovenians
The Slovenians come from the provinces northwest of Croatia. The three nationalities have probably sent between 200,000 and 300,000 persons to America. Dalmatians are oyster fishermen at New Orleans, make staves in Mississippi, are wine dealers in San Francisco, and vine growers and miners in other parts of California. The Slovenians are chiefly found in the Pennsylvania mines and other mining regions. The Croatians are mostly in the same regions and work, although in New York there are about 15,000 of them engaged as longshoremen and mechanics, and a small number are farmers out West. They are Roman Catholic, largely illiterate and unskilled. The Catholics do little for them, and the Protestant denominations have undertaken no specific work in their behalf.
A Needy Group
The Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Bulgarians, Servians, and Montenegrins are just beginning to come in appreciable numbers. They represent much the same home conditions as the nationalities mentioned more in detail. Catholicism, Greek or Roman, has cast them pretty much in the same mold. Ignorant, semi-civilized many of them, they have everything to get and learn in their new home, and afford still larger opportunity for Protestant Christianity in its mighty work of making and keeping America the land of righteousness and progress.
A Hopeful View
An interesting series of articles appeared in 1906 in a magazine devoted to social betterment,[68]the writer having spent a year in studying conditions in the Slav districts of Austria-Hungary. Living among the people, she has become profoundly interested in them, and takes a most hopeful view of their possibilities in America. She says the life from which the peasants mostly come to us is the old peasant life, but a little way removed from feudalism and serfdom. Each little village is a tiny world in itself, with its own traditions and ways, its own dress, perhaps even its own dialect. The amazing gift of the Slav for color and music permeates the whole home life with poetry. The Slav immigrants have the virtues and faults of their primitive world. They come to America to make money. The majority come with intent to earn money to take back home, rather than with expectation to settle here permanently. Unenterprising, unlettered, they are at the same time hardy, thriftyand shrewd, honest and pious. They are undoubtedly highly endowed with gifts of imagination and artistic expression for which in their American conditions they find little or no outlet.
Necessity of Christian Environment
And here again is the point we are constantly having impressed upon us. What the immigrant shall become, for good or ill, depends chiefly upon what conditions are made for him, and whether he is given a chance to express his best self in this country. Grinding monopoly, harsh treatment, prejudice that drives into clannishness and race hatred—these will make of the Slavs a peril. A genuinely Christian environment and treatment will find them receptive and ready for Americanization through evangelization.
An Interesting Group
In some respects the most interesting immigrants from the Slav countries are the Jews from Russia and Roumania. The German Jew and the Russian Jew must not be confounded; they are as distinct as any two races in the entire immigrant group. The German Jew came to America to make more money, and is making it. The Russian Jew, who comes from persecution, is rigidly orthodox, and regards the commercial German class as apostate. He forms a picturesque, vigorous,sui generismember of the alien procession.
Coming Rapidly
Since the year 1881 not less than 750,000 Jewish immigrants have arrived at the port of New York alone. On Manhattan Island more than every fourth person you meet is a Jew. The Jews admitted at Ellis Island during the past five years outnumbered all the communicants in the Protestant churches in Greater New York.
Where they Come from
Of the 106,000 Jews admitted in 1904, a large proportion of whom settled in New York, 77,000 came from the Russian Empire, 20,000 from Austria-Hungary, and 6,000 from Roumania. Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe are all one people.
Occupation
They show a larger proportion with skilled, professional and commercial training and experience than do any of the other newer immigrants except the Finns. Nearly twenty per cent. of the Hebrew immigrants are tailors, nearly five per cent. mechanics, merchants, or clerks, and almost one per cent. follow the professions. Of the remainder a very considerable proportion, though not a majority, are skilled workers such as bakers, tobacco workers, carpenters, painters, and butchers. The garment trades, to which they find themselves adapted, and for which New York is the world center, engages perhaps 100,000 of them, men, women, and children, many of them in the sweat-shops, which they created. For the first time in their history, the Jews have built up a great industrial class, this beingan American development. According to a Jewish authority,[69]the "unspeakable evils of the tenements and sweat-shops" of the ghetto are undermining their physical and moral health.
Location
The newly arrived Russian Jew is kept in the ghetto of the larger cities—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston—not only by his poverty and ignorance but by his orthodoxy. In this district the rules of his religion can more certainly be followed. Here can be found the lawful food, here the orthodox places of worship, here neighbors and friends can be visited within "a sabbath day's journey." The young people, however, rapidly shake off such trammels, and in the endeavor to be like Americans urge their parents to move away from this "foreign" district. When they succeed, the Americanizing process may be considered well under way. Concerning the religious change that comes over the young Jew after he reaches this country, a writer says:[70]
Become Estranged from Judaism
"Many a young man, who was firm in his religious convictions in his native village, having heard of the religious laxity prevalent in America, had fully made up his mind not to be misled by the temptation and allurements of the free country, but he succumbed in his struggle and renounced his Judaism when first submitting his chin to the barber's razor, at the entreaties andpersuasions of his Americanized friends and relatives. Religion then appeared to him not only distinct from life, but antagonistic to it, and since it was life, a free, full, undisturbed life he sought in coming here, he felt compelled to divorce himself from all the religious ties that had hitherto encompassed him. Thus it is that the immigrant Jewish youth, even those faithful and loyal to the institutions of old and who desired to conduct their lives in accordance with the precepts of their religion, became estranged from Judaism and suffered themselves to be swept along by the tide. Thus the immigrant Jew in America has frequently become callous and indifferent, and sometimes cynical and antagonistic to everything pertaining to Judaism." While they are thus lost to Judaism they are not won to Christianity, but they ought to be. The older people become reconciled with difficulty to this irreligious attitude and "the old Jewess still curses Columbus for his great transgression in discovering America, where her children have lost their religion."
Ambitious for Wealth and Education
The Russian Jews usually come in great poverty, but do not stay poor very long. In New York's East Side many tenements in Jewish quarters are owned by persons who formerly lived in crowded corners of others like them; and from this population comes many a Broadway merchant, and professional men in plenty. It is certain that the adult Hebrew immigrant has definite aspirations toward social, economic, and educational advancement. The poorest among them will make all possible sacrifices to keep his children in school; and one of the most striking social phenomena in New York City is the way in which the Jews have taken possession of the public schools, in the highest as well as lowest grades. The city college is practically filled with Jewish pupils. In the lower schools Jewish children are the delight of their teachers for cleverness at their books, obedience, and general good conduct; and the vacation schools, night schools, social settlements, libraries, bathing places, parks, and playgrounds of the East Side are fairly besieged with Jewish children. Jewish boys are especially ambitious to enter professions or go into business. For example, the head of one of the largest institutions of the East Side tells a story of a long interview with a class of boys in which all spoke of the work they intended to do. Law, medicine, journalism, and teaching came first. There were even some who intended to become engineers. A smaller number were going into business, and not one intended to learn any manual trade. Some were going in for music, and occasionally one is found who intends to make his living by art. But above all, the young Jew is ambitious and intends to rise. This is true in all cities.
Worthy Qualities
The strong good qualities of the Jews are absence of the drink evil, love of home, desire to preserve the purity of the family, and remarkable eagerness for self-improvement. They easily adapt themselves to the new environment and assimilate the customs and language of the new country. This leads to the danger of readily falling in with the vices found in the tenement districts—the children showing this in the large numbers of them that appear in the Juvenile Court. The remedy is removal, and this the Jewish parents seek as soon as they are able.
Good Citizens, but Poor Americans
With decent environment and a fair chance, the Russian Jew promises to become a good citizen, intellectually keen, commercially shrewd, professionally bound to shine. But that he will ever, except in rare instances, imbibe the real American spirit or understand the American ideals is a question. At the same time, the Jews are believers in the principle of democracy, and in case of an issue arising on the separation of Church and State, would be found standing with American Protestantism for the religious liberties of the American people.
I.The Slavic People as a Whole.
1. What nationalities are generally included under the term Slavs? Are they numerous in population? Are they strictly of one race?2. What grounds are there to justify popular prejudice against them? Or to show it to be ill founded?3. When did they begin to come in large numbers?4. Where have they largely settled, and with what results?
1. What nationalities are generally included under the term Slavs? Are they numerous in population? Are they strictly of one race?
2. What grounds are there to justify popular prejudice against them? Or to show it to be ill founded?
3. When did they begin to come in large numbers?
4. Where have they largely settled, and with what results?
II.Racial Divisions of the Slavic Immigrants.
5. What can you tell about the Bohemians, as to their religious history, political sufferings, and coming to America? What are their conditions here? Their accessibility? Their location?6. Tell about the Poles in the same way.7. Tell about the Slovaks in the same way.8. Tell about the Magyars in the same way.9. Who and what are the Lithuanians?10. Who and what are the Ruthenians?
5. What can you tell about the Bohemians, as to their religious history, political sufferings, and coming to America? What are their conditions here? Their accessibility? Their location?
6. Tell about the Poles in the same way.
7. Tell about the Slovaks in the same way.
8. Tell about the Magyars in the same way.
9. Who and what are the Lithuanians?
10. Who and what are the Ruthenians?
III.Slavic Elements of Strength and American Outlook.
11. Mention some encouraging features with reference to the above-named and other Slavs.12. * If you had been born a Slav in Europe, would you be likely to prefer America to Europe? Protestantism to Roman Catholicism? The country or the city?IV.Social, Moral, and Religious Aspects of the Jewish and Slavic Population.13. How many Jews are there in New York City?14. What keeps the new arrivals in the larger cities?15. Are they religious, quick to learn, temperate?16. Mention some form of Christian work for Slavs or Jews about which you know.
11. Mention some encouraging features with reference to the above-named and other Slavs.
12. * If you had been born a Slav in Europe, would you be likely to prefer America to Europe? Protestantism to Roman Catholicism? The country or the city?
IV.Social, Moral, and Religious Aspects of the Jewish and Slavic Population.
13. How many Jews are there in New York City?
14. What keeps the new arrivals in the larger cities?
15. Are they religious, quick to learn, temperate?
16. Mention some form of Christian work for Slavs or Jews about which you know.
I.Further Study as to Race Origin and Inter-relationship of the Slavs.Warne: The Slav Invasion, III.McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, IV.II.National Conditions in Europe which the Slavs Seek to Escape.Hall: Immigration, 60-65.III.Social and Moral Effects Produced by the Slav Invasion of the Anthracite Regions.Warne: The Slav Invasion, IV, VII.IV.Factors in Slavic History and Conditions Favoring and Hindering the Access of the Gospel.McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, 34-58.Charities and Commons, issues 1905-06.V.Conditions Among Russian Jews.Statements of Jewish authors as to conditionsamong Russian Jews in their native lands and inAmerica.Bernheimer: The Russian Jew in the UnitedStates, I (B), IV (A), VI (A).
I.Further Study as to Race Origin and Inter-relationship of the Slavs.
Warne: The Slav Invasion, III.McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, IV.
II.National Conditions in Europe which the Slavs Seek to Escape.
Hall: Immigration, 60-65.
III.Social and Moral Effects Produced by the Slav Invasion of the Anthracite Regions.
Warne: The Slav Invasion, IV, VII.
IV.Factors in Slavic History and Conditions Favoring and Hindering the Access of the Gospel.
McLanahan: Our People of Foreign Speech, 34-58.Charities and Commons, issues 1905-06.
V.Conditions Among Russian Jews.
Statements of Jewish authors as to conditionsamong Russian Jews in their native lands and inAmerica.Bernheimer: The Russian Jew in the UnitedStates, I (B), IV (A), VI (A).
The city is the nerve center of our civilization. It is also the storm center. The city has a peculiar attraction for the immigrant. Here is heaped the social dynamite; here the dangerous elements are multiplied and concentered.—Josiah Strong.
The city is the nerve center of our civilization. It is also the storm center. The city has a peculiar attraction for the immigrant. Here is heaped the social dynamite; here the dangerous elements are multiplied and concentered.—Josiah Strong.
The city is the most difficult and perplexing problem of modern times.—Francis Lieber.
We must save the city if we would save the nation. Municipal government and city evangelization together constitute the distinctive problem of the city, for this generation at least.—Josiah Strong.
Talk of Dante's Hell, and all the horrors and cruelties of the torture chamber of the lost! The man who walks with open eyes and bleeding heart through the shambles of our civilization needs no such fantastic images of the poet to teach him horror.—General Booth.
With the influx of a large foreign population into the great cities, there have come also foreign customs and institutions, laxity and license—those phases of evil which are the most insidious foes of the purity and strength of a people. The slums of our large cities are but the stagnant pools of illiteracy, vice, pauperism, and crime, annually fed by this floodtide of immigration.—R. M. Atchison.
You can kill a man with a tenement as easily as with an ax.—Jacob Riis.
Our foreign colonies are to a large extent in the cities of our own country. To live in one of these foreign communities is actually to live on foreign soil. The thoughts, feelings, and traditions which belong to the mental life of the colony are often entirely alien to an American.—Robert Hunter.
The vastness of the problem of the city slum, and the impossibility, even with unlimited resources of men and money, of permanently raising the standards of living of many of our immigrants as long as they are crowded together, and as long as the stream of newer immigrants pours into these same slums, has naturally forced itself upon the minds of thinking persons.—Robert D. Ward.
Tendency Toward the Cities
As is the city, so will the nation be. The tendencies all seem to be toward steady concentration in great centers. The evils of congestion do not deter the thronging multitudes. The attractions of the city are irresistible, even to those who exist in the most wretched conditions. The tenement districts baffle description, yet nothing is more difficult than to get their miserable occupants to leave their fetid and squalid surroundings for the country. To the immigrants the city is a magnet. Here they find colonies of their own people, and prize companionship more than comfort. "Folks is more company than stumps," said an old woman in the slums to Dr. Schauffler. In the great cities the immigrants are massed, and this constitutes a most perplexing problem. If tens of thousands of foreigners could somehow be gotten out of New York, Boston, Chicago, and other cities, and be distributed where they are needed and could find work and homes, immigration would cause far less anxiety. But when the immigrantprefers New York or Chicago, what authority shall remove him to Louisiana or Oklahoma?
Perils Due to Environment
The foreigner is in the city; he will chiefly stay there; and the question is what can be done to improve his city environment; for the perils to which we refer are primarily due not to the foreigner himself but to the evil and vice-breeding conditions in which he has to exist. These imperil him and make him a peril in turn. The overcrowded tenements and slums, the infection of long-entrenched corruption, the absence of light, fresh air, and playgrounds for the children, the unsanitary conditions and exorbitant rents, the political heelers teaching civic corruption, the saloons with their attendant temptations to vice and crime, the fraudulent naturalization—these work together upon the immigrant, for his undoing and thus to the detriment of the nation. When we permit such an environment to exist, and practically force the immigrant into it because we do not want him for a next-door neighbor, we can hardly condemn him for forming foreign colonies which maintain foreign customs and are impervious to American influences. It has too long been the common practice to lay everything to the foreigner. Would it not be fairer and more Christian to distribute the blame, and assume that part of it which belongs to us. In the study of the facts contained in this chapter, put yourself persistently in the place of the immigrant, suddenly introduced into the conditions here pictured, and ask yourself what you would probably be and become in like circumstances.
A Call for Reform
How the other half lives is not the only mystery. How little the so-called upper-ten know how the lower-ninety live. And how little you and I, who are fortunate to count ourselves in the next upper-twenty, perhaps, know how the under-seventy exist and think and do. If only the more fortunate thirty per cent. knew of the exact conditions under which a large proportion of men, women, and children carry on the pitiful struggle for mere existence, there would be an irresistible demand for betterment. Every Christian ought to know the wrongs of our civilization, in order that he may help to right them. This glimpse beneath the surface of the city should stir us out of comfortable complacency and give birth in us to the impulse that leads to settlement and city mission work, and to civic reform movements. The young men and women of America must create a public sentiment that will demolish the slums, and erect in their places model tenements; that will tear down the rookeries, root out the saloons and dens of vice, and provide the children with playgrounds and breathing space. And this work will be directly in the line of Americanizing and evangelizing the immigrants, for they are chiefly the occupants and victims of the tenements and the slums.
Vanishing Americanism
New York is a city in America but is hardly an American city. Nor is any other of our great cities, except perhaps Philadelphia. Boston is an Irish city, Chicago is a German-Scandinavian-Polish city, Saint Louis is a German city, and New York is a Hebrew-German-Irish-Italian-Bohemian-Hungarian city—a cosmopolitan race conglomeration. Eighteen languages are spoken in a single block. In Public School No. 29 no less than twenty-six nationalities are represented. This indicates the complicated problem.
A Jewish City
New York is the chief Jewish capital. Of the 760,000 Jews on Manhattan, about 450,000 are Russian, and they overcrowd the East Side ghetto. In that quarter the signs are in Hebrew, the streets are markets, the shops are European, the men, women, and children speak in Yiddish, and all faces bear the foreign and Hebrew mark plainly upon them.
An Italian City
Go on a little further and you find that you are in Little Italy, quite distinct from Jewry, but not less foreign. Here the names on the signs are Italian, and the atmosphere is redolent with the fumes of Italy. The hurdy-gurdy vies with the push-cart, the streets are full of children and women, and you are as a stranger in a strange land. You would not be in a more distinctively Italian section if you were by magic transplanted to Naples or Genoa.
A Group of Immigrants Just ArrivedA Group of Immigrants Just Arrived at Ellis Island
A Foreign City
Nor is it simply the East Side in lowerNew York that is so manifestly foreign. Go where you will on Manhattan Island and you will see few names on business signs that do not betray their foreign derivation. Two out of every three persons you meet will be foreign. You will see the Italian gangs cleaning the streets, the Irish will control the motor of your trolley-car and collect your fares, the policeman will be Irish or German, the waiters where you dine will be French or German, Italian or English, the clerks in the vast majority of the shopping places will be foreign, the people you meet will constantly remind you of the rarity of the native American stock. You are ready to believe the statement that there are in New York more persons of German descent than of native descent, and more Germans than in any city of Germany except Berlin. Here are nearly twice as many Irish as in Dublin, about as many Jews as in Warsaw, and more Italians than in Naples or Venice. In government, in sentiment, in practice, as in population (thirty-seven per cent. foreign-born and eighty per cent. of foreign birth or parentage), the metropolis is predominantly foreign, and in elections the foreign vote, shrewdly manipulated for the most part, controls.Other Foreign CitiesNor is this true of New York alone. In thirty-three of our largest cities the foreign population is larger than the native; in Milwaukee and Fall River the foreign percentage rises as high as eighty-fiveper cent. In all these cities the foreign colonies are as distinct and practically as isolated socially as though they were in Russia or Poland, Italy or Hungary. Foreign in language, customs, habits, and institutions, these colonies are separated from each other, as well as from the American population, by race, customs, and religion.
Failure in City Government
To believe that this makes no particular difference so far as the development of our national life is concerned is to shut one's eyes to obvious facts. As such an impartial and intelligent student of our institutions as Mr. James Bryce has pointed out, the conspicuous failure of democracy in America thus far is seen in the bad government of our great cities. And it is in these centers that the mass of the immigrants learn their first and often last lessons of American life.
Where the Newcomers First Go
The strong tendency of immigrants is to settle in or near the ports of entry. Where in the great cities do these newcomers find a dwelling place? What will their first lessons in American life be? If we deal largely with New York, it is simply because here are the typical conditions and here the larger proportion of arrivals. Once admitted at Ellis Island, the alien is free to go where he will; or rather, where he can, for his place of residence is restricted, after all. If he is an Italian, he will naturally and almost of necessity go to one of the Little Italies; if a Jew, to the ghetto of the East Side; if a Bohemian, to LittleBohemia; and so on. In other words, he will go, naturally and almost inevitably, to the colonies which tend to perpetuate race customs and prejudices, and to prevent assimilation. Worse yet, these colonies are in the tenement and slum districts, the last environment of all conceivable in which this raw material of American citizenship should be placed.
Vice-Breeding Conditions
To those who have not made personal investigation, the present conditions, in spite of laws and efforts to ameliorate the worst evils, are well nigh unbelievable. The cellar population, the blind alley population, the swarming masses in buildings that are little better than rat-traps, the herding of whole families in single rooms, in which the miserable beings sleep, eat, cook, and make clothing for contractors, or cigars that would never go into men's mouths if the men saw where they were made—these things seem almost impossible in a civilized and Christian land. It is horrible to be obliged to think of the human misery and hopelessness and grind to which hundreds of thousands are subjected in the city of New York day in and out, without rest or change. It is no wonder that criminals and degenerates come from these districts; it is a marvel, rather, that so few result, and that so much of human kindness and goodness exists inspite of crushing conditions. There is a bright as well as dark side even to the most disgraceful districts; but there is no denying that the dark vastly predominates, and that the struggle for righteousness is too hard for the average human being. Nearly everything is against the peasant immigrant thrust into the throng which has no welcome for him, no decent room, and yet from which he has little chance to get away. He is commonly cleaner morally when he lands than after six months of the life here. Why should he not be? What has American Christianity done to safeguard or help him?
Immigrants Not Responsible
The existence of the tenement-house evils, it must be borne in mind, is chargeable primarily to the owner and landlord, not to the foreign occupant. The landlords are especially to blame for the ill consequences. The immigrant cannot dictate terms or conditions. He has to go where he can. The prices charged for rent are exorbitant, and should secure decency and healthful quarters. No property is so remunerative. This rent money is literally blood money in thousands of instances, and yet every effort to improve things is bitterly fought. Why should not socialism and anarchism grow in such environment? Of course many of the immigrants are familiar with poor surroundings and do not apparently object to dirt and crowding. But that does not make these conditions less perilous to Americanlife. Self-respect has a hard struggle for survival in these sections, and if the immigrant does not possess or loses that, he is of the undesirable class. Mr. Robert Hunter makes the statement that no other city in the world has so many dark and windowless rooms, or so many persons crowded on the acre, or so many families deprived of light and air as New York. He says there are 360,000 dark rooms in Greater New York. And these are almost entirely occupied by the foreigners. But unsanitary conditions prevail also in all the cities, large and small, and especially in the mine and mill and factory towns, wherever large masses of the poorest workers live.
Legal Remedies Possible
Concerning possible legislation to correct these city evils of environment, Mr. Sargent says: "So far as the overcrowding in city tenements is concerned, municipal ordinances in our large cities prescribing the amount of space which rapacious landlords should, under penalties sufficiently heavy to enforce obedience, be required to give each tenant, would go far toward attaining the object in view. Whether such a plan could be brought into existence through the efforts of our general government, or whether the Congress could itself legislate directly, upon sanitary and moral grounds, against the notorious practice of housing aliens with less regard for health and comfort than is shown in placing brute animals in pens, the Bureau is unprepared to say.
Demands Immediate Remedy
It is, however, convinced that no feature of the immigration question so insistently demands public attention and effective action. The evil to be removed is one that is steadily and rapidly on the increase, and its removal will strike at the root of fraudulent elections, poverty, disease, and crime in our large cities, and on the other hand largely supply that increasing demand for labor to develop the natural resources of our country."[71]
Little Italy
Not to draw the picture all in the darker shades, let us look at the best type of Italian tenement life. We are not left to guesswork in the matter. Settlement workers and students of social questions are actually living in the tenement and slum sections, so as to know by experience and not hearsay. One of these investigators, Mrs. Lillian W. Betts, author of two enlightening books,[72]has lived for a year in one of the most crowded tenements in one of the most densely populated sections of the Italian quarter. We condense some of her statements, which reveal the foreign life of to-day in New York's Little Italy, with its 400,000 souls.
Immigrant Isolation
"A year's residence in an Italian tenement taught me first of all the isolation of a foreign quarter; how completely cut off one may be from everything that makes New York New York. The necessities of life can be bought without leaving the square that is your home. After alittle it occasioned no surprise to meet grandparents whose own children were born in New York, who had never crossed to the east side of the Bowery, never seen Broadway, nor ever been south of Houston Street. There was no reason why they should go. Every interest in their life centered within four blocks. I went with a neighbor to Saint Vincent's Hospital, where her husband had been taken. I had to hold her hand in the cars, she was so terrified. She had lived sixteen years in this ward and never been on a street-car before. Of a family of five sons and two daughters, besides the parents, in this country fifteen years, none spoke English but the youngest, born here, and she indifferently. Little Italy was all of America they knew, and of curiosity they had none.
Children American in Spirit
"The house in which we lived was built for twenty-eight families and occupied by fifty-six. One man who had been in the country twenty-eight years could not speak or understand a word of English. Nothing but compulsion made his children use Italian, and the result was pathetic. The eldest child was an enthusiastic American, and the two civilizations were always at war. This boy knew more of American history, its heroes and poetry, than anyone of his age I ever met. This boy had never been five blocks from the house in which we lived. He removed his hat and shoes when he went to bed in winter; insummer he took off his coat. A brother and two sisters shared the folding bed with him. His father hired the three rooms and sublet to a man with a wife and three children. The women quarreled all the time, but worked in the same room, finishing trousers and earning about forty-five cents a day each.
Evils of Overcrowding
"How do they live? One widow, with three in her own family, took nine men boarders in her three rooms. A nephew and his wife also kept house there, the rent being $18 a month. Another neighbor, whose family consisted of four adults and two children, had seven lodgers or boarders at one time. These men owned mattresses, rolled up by day, spread on the floor at night. One of them had a bride coming from Italy. Two men with their mattresses were ejected and space made for the ornate brass and green bedstead. The wedding was the occasion of great rejoicing. Next day the bride was put to work sewing 'pants.' At the end of a month I found she had not left those rooms from the moment she entered them, and that she worked, Sundays included, fourteen hours a day. She was a mere child, at that. The Italian woman is not a good housekeeper, but she is a homemaker; she does not fret; dirt, disorder, noise, company, never disturb her. She must share everything with those about her. She cooks one meal a day and that at night. Pot or pan may be placedin the middle of the table and each may help himself from it, but the food is what her husband wants.
Family Coöperation
"Together they will wash the dishes or he will take the baby out. The mother, who has sewed all day, will wash till midnight, while the husband sits dozing, smoking, talking. But he hangs out the clothes. They work together, these Italian husbands and wives. Their wants are the barren necessaries of life; shelter, food, clothing to cover nakedness. The children's clothes are washed when they go to bed. Life is reduced to its lowest terms. They can move as silently as do the Arabs and do so in the night watches. But they are rarely penniless; they have a little fund always in the bank. They put their young children in institutions from weaning-time until they are old enough to work, then bring them home to swell the family income. Recently a father, whose children had thus been cared for by the state, bought a three-story tenement. This is typical thrift. There was never a day when all the children of school age were in school. School was a prison house to most of them. There was not room for them, even if they wanted to go.
City Neglect
"The streets in which the Italians live are the most neglected. It is claimed that cleanliness is impossible where the Italian lives. The truth is that preparation for cleanliness in our foreigncolonies is wholly inadequate. The police despise the Italian except for his voting power. He feels the contempt, but with the wisdom of his race he keeps his crimes foreign, and defies this department more successfully than the public generally knows. He is a peaceable citizen in spite of the peculiar race crimes which startle the public. The criminals are as one to a thousand of these people. On Sundays watch these colonies. The streets are literally packed with crowds from house line to house line, as far as the eye can see, but not a policeman in sight, nor occasion for one. Laughter, song, discussion, exchange of epithet, but no disturbance. They mind their own business as no other nation, and carry it to the point of crime when they protect the criminal."[73]
Possibilities of Uplifting
This is testimony directly from life and has especial value. It reveals the difficulties, and at the same time the possibilities, of reaching and Americanizing these immigrants, who are better than their surroundings, and promising if properly cared for.
Sources of Degradation
The impression that steadily deepens with observation and study is that of the evil and degrading surroundings. Not only are there the evil moral influences of overcrowding, but also the contact with elements of population already deteriorated by a generation of tenement houselife. The fresh arrivals are thrown into contact with the corrupt remnants of Irish immigration which now make up the beggars, drunkards, thugs, and thieves of those quarters. The results can easily be predicted. The Italian laboring population is temperate when it comes to this country; but under the evil conditions and influences of the tenement district disorderly resorts have been opened, and drinking and other vices are spreading. The Hebrews show tendencies to vices from which formerly they were free. The law does not protect these immigrants, and it is charged that the city permits every kind of inducement for the extension of immorality, drunkenness, and crime. Thus the immigrant is likely to deteriorate and degenerate in the process of Americanization, instead of becoming better in this new world. He has indeed little chance. If he does not become a pauper or criminal or drunkard, it will be because he is superior to his environment.
An Awful Peril
An immigrant peril is the sweat-shop labor which this class performs. "Sweating" is the system of sub-contract wherein the work is let out to contractors to be done in small shops or at home. According to the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, "in practice sweating consists of the farming out by competing manufacturers tocompeting contractors of the material for garments, which in turn is distributed among competing men and women to be made up." This system is opposed to the factory system, where the manufacturer employs his own workmen, sees the goods made, and knows the conditions. The sweating system is one of the iniquities of commercial greed, and the helpless foreigner of certain classes is its victim. The contractor or sweater in our cities is an organizer and employer of immigrants. His success depends upon getting the cheapest help, and life is of no account to him, nor apparently to the man above him. The clothing may be made in foul and damp and consumption or fever-infested cellars and tenement-styes, by men, women and children sick or uncleanly, but the only care of the sweater is that it be made cheaply and thus his returns be secured. It is a standing reproach to our Christian civilization that the sweating system and the slums are still existing sores in American centers of population. So far the law has been unable to control or check greed, and the plague spots grow worse. Here is a typical case, taken from the report of the Industrial Commission: