“Washington, January 16, 1905.“Robert Watchorn will succeed William Williams as United States Commissioner of Immigration at New York. The appointment will be solely on merit. Mr. Watchorn is now United States Commissioner of Immigration at Montreal. He has been in the immigration service for many years, and his record is perfect.”
“Washington, January 16, 1905.
“Robert Watchorn will succeed William Williams as United States Commissioner of Immigration at New York. The appointment will be solely on merit. Mr. Watchorn is now United States Commissioner of Immigration at Montreal. He has been in the immigration service for many years, and his record is perfect.”
I ventured to ask the Commissioner one day if he had been given any instructions by the President as to the course to be pursued. He replied: “Yes, the President gave me instructions very brief but very pointed. ‘Mr. Watchorn, I am sending you to Ellis Island.—You will find it a very difficult place to manage.—I know you are familiar with the conditions.—All I ask of you is that you give us an administration as clean as a hound’s tooth.’”
Should one desire any further evidence that Ellis Island is a difficult place to manage, let him turn to this incident and its sequel in Senator Hoar’s “Autobiography of Seventy Years” (Scribner’s):
During the Christmas holidays of 1901 a very well-known Syrian, a man of high standing and character, came into my son’s office and told him this story:A neighbour and countryman of his had a few years before emigrated to the United States and established himself in Worcester. Soon afterwards, he formally declared his intention of becoming an American citizen. After a while, he amassed a little money and sent to his wife, whom he had left in Syria, the necessary funds to convey her and their little girl and boy to Worcester. She sold her furniture and whatever other belongings she had,and went across Europe to France, where they sailed from one of the northern ports on a German steamer for New York.Upon their arrival at New York it appeared that the children had contracted a disease of the eyelids, which the doctors of the Immigration Bureau declared to be trachoma, which is contagious, and in adults incurable. It was ordered that the mother might land, but that the children must be sent back in the ship upon which they arrived, on the following Thursday. This would have resulted in sending them back as paupers, as the steamship company, compelled to take them as passengers free of charge, would have given them only such food as was left by the sailors, and would have dumped them out in France to starve, or get back as beggars to Syria.The suggestion that the mother might land was only a cruel mockery. Joseph J. George, a worthy citizen of Worcester, brought the facts of the case to the attention of my son, who in turn brought them to my attention. My son had meanwhile advised that a bond be offered to the immigration authorities to save them harmless from any trouble on account of the children.I certified these facts to the authorities and received a statement in reply that the law was peremptory, and that it required that the children be sent home; that trouble had come from making like exceptions theretofore; that the Government hospitals were full of similar cases, and the authorities must enforce the law strictly in the future. Thereupon I addressed a telegram to the Immigration Bureau at Washington, but received an answer that nothing could be done for the children.Then I telegraphed the facts to Senator Lodge, who went in person to the Treasury Department, but could getno more favourable reply. Senator Lodge’s telegram announcing their refusal was received in Worcester Tuesday evening, and repeated to me in Boston just as I was about to deliver an address before the Catholic College there. It was too late to do anything that night. Early Wednesday morning, the day before the children were to sail, when they were already on the ship, I sent the following dispatch to President Roosevelt:
During the Christmas holidays of 1901 a very well-known Syrian, a man of high standing and character, came into my son’s office and told him this story:
A neighbour and countryman of his had a few years before emigrated to the United States and established himself in Worcester. Soon afterwards, he formally declared his intention of becoming an American citizen. After a while, he amassed a little money and sent to his wife, whom he had left in Syria, the necessary funds to convey her and their little girl and boy to Worcester. She sold her furniture and whatever other belongings she had,and went across Europe to France, where they sailed from one of the northern ports on a German steamer for New York.
Upon their arrival at New York it appeared that the children had contracted a disease of the eyelids, which the doctors of the Immigration Bureau declared to be trachoma, which is contagious, and in adults incurable. It was ordered that the mother might land, but that the children must be sent back in the ship upon which they arrived, on the following Thursday. This would have resulted in sending them back as paupers, as the steamship company, compelled to take them as passengers free of charge, would have given them only such food as was left by the sailors, and would have dumped them out in France to starve, or get back as beggars to Syria.
The suggestion that the mother might land was only a cruel mockery. Joseph J. George, a worthy citizen of Worcester, brought the facts of the case to the attention of my son, who in turn brought them to my attention. My son had meanwhile advised that a bond be offered to the immigration authorities to save them harmless from any trouble on account of the children.
I certified these facts to the authorities and received a statement in reply that the law was peremptory, and that it required that the children be sent home; that trouble had come from making like exceptions theretofore; that the Government hospitals were full of similar cases, and the authorities must enforce the law strictly in the future. Thereupon I addressed a telegram to the Immigration Bureau at Washington, but received an answer that nothing could be done for the children.
Then I telegraphed the facts to Senator Lodge, who went in person to the Treasury Department, but could getno more favourable reply. Senator Lodge’s telegram announcing their refusal was received in Worcester Tuesday evening, and repeated to me in Boston just as I was about to deliver an address before the Catholic College there. It was too late to do anything that night. Early Wednesday morning, the day before the children were to sail, when they were already on the ship, I sent the following dispatch to President Roosevelt:
“To the President,“White House, Washington, D. C.“I appeal to your clear understanding and kind and brave heart to interpose your authority to prevent an outrage which will dishonour the country and create a foul blot on the American flag. A neighbour of mine in Worcester, Mass., a Syrian by birth, made some time ago his public declaration for citizenship. He is an honest, hard-working and every way respectable man. His wife with two small children have reached New York.“He sent out the money to pay their passage. The children contracted a disorder of the eyes on the ship. The Treasury authorities say that the mother may land but the children cannot, and they are to be sent back Thursday. Ample bond has been offered and will be furnished to save the Government and everybody from injury or loss. I do not think such a thing ought to happen under your Administration, unless you personally decide that the case is without remedy. I am told the authorities say they have been too easy heretofore, and must draw the line now. That shows they admit the power to make exceptions in proper cases. Surely, an exception should be made in case of little children of a man lawfully here, and who has duly and in good faith declared his intention to become a citizen. The immigration law was never intended to repeal any part of the naturalization laws which provide that the minor children get all the rights of the father as to citizenship. My son knows the friends of this man personally and that they are highly respectable and well off. If our laws require this cruelty, it is time for a revolution, and you are just the man to head it.GEORGEF. HOAR.”
“To the President,
“White House, Washington, D. C.
“I appeal to your clear understanding and kind and brave heart to interpose your authority to prevent an outrage which will dishonour the country and create a foul blot on the American flag. A neighbour of mine in Worcester, Mass., a Syrian by birth, made some time ago his public declaration for citizenship. He is an honest, hard-working and every way respectable man. His wife with two small children have reached New York.
“He sent out the money to pay their passage. The children contracted a disorder of the eyes on the ship. The Treasury authorities say that the mother may land but the children cannot, and they are to be sent back Thursday. Ample bond has been offered and will be furnished to save the Government and everybody from injury or loss. I do not think such a thing ought to happen under your Administration, unless you personally decide that the case is without remedy. I am told the authorities say they have been too easy heretofore, and must draw the line now. That shows they admit the power to make exceptions in proper cases. Surely, an exception should be made in case of little children of a man lawfully here, and who has duly and in good faith declared his intention to become a citizen. The immigration law was never intended to repeal any part of the naturalization laws which provide that the minor children get all the rights of the father as to citizenship. My son knows the friends of this man personally and that they are highly respectable and well off. If our laws require this cruelty, it is time for a revolution, and you are just the man to head it.
GEORGEF. HOAR.”
Half an hour from the receipt of that dispatch at the White House Wednesday forenoon, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, sent a peremptory order to New York to let the children come in. They have entirely recovered from the disorder of the eyes, which turned out not to be contagious, but only caused by the glare of the water, or the hardships of the voyage. The children are fair-haired, with blue eyes, and of great personal beauty, and would be exhibited with pride by any American mother.When the President came to Worcester he expressed a desire to see the children. They came to meet him at my house, dressed up in their best and glorious to behold. The President was very much interested in them, and said when what he had done was repeated in his presence, that he was just beginning to get angry.The result of this incident was that I had a good many similar applications for relief in behalf of immigrants coming in with contagious diseases. Some of them were meritorious, and others untrustworthy. In the December session of 1902 I procured the following amendment to be inserted in the immigration law.“Whenever an alien shall have taken up his permanent residence in this country and shall have filed his preliminary declaration to become a citizen and thereafter shall send for his wife and minor children to join him, if said wife or either of said children shall be found to be affected with any contagious disorder, and it seems that said disorder was contracted on board the ship in which they came, such wife or children shall be held under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury shall prescribe until it shall be determined whether the disorder will be easily curable or whether they can be permitted to land without danger to other persons; and they shall not be deported until such facts have been ascertained.”
Half an hour from the receipt of that dispatch at the White House Wednesday forenoon, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, sent a peremptory order to New York to let the children come in. They have entirely recovered from the disorder of the eyes, which turned out not to be contagious, but only caused by the glare of the water, or the hardships of the voyage. The children are fair-haired, with blue eyes, and of great personal beauty, and would be exhibited with pride by any American mother.
When the President came to Worcester he expressed a desire to see the children. They came to meet him at my house, dressed up in their best and glorious to behold. The President was very much interested in them, and said when what he had done was repeated in his presence, that he was just beginning to get angry.
The result of this incident was that I had a good many similar applications for relief in behalf of immigrants coming in with contagious diseases. Some of them were meritorious, and others untrustworthy. In the December session of 1902 I procured the following amendment to be inserted in the immigration law.
“Whenever an alien shall have taken up his permanent residence in this country and shall have filed his preliminary declaration to become a citizen and thereafter shall send for his wife and minor children to join him, if said wife or either of said children shall be found to be affected with any contagious disorder, and it seems that said disorder was contracted on board the ship in which they came, such wife or children shall be held under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury shall prescribe until it shall be determined whether the disorder will be easily curable or whether they can be permitted to land without danger to other persons; and they shall not be deported until such facts have been ascertained.”
Senator Hoar had touched however, only one of the many phases of the situation. As the President said, it was still “a difficult place.” Yet under Commissioner Watchorn changes were soon visible. The place became cleaner; a new and better system of inspection was organized, discipline was maintained and strengthened, the comfort of the immigrants was considered, the money changers were watched, dishonest, discourteous and useless employees were discharged; and above all, the institution in its remotest corner was open to any one who wished to come and inspect the place which is so important in our economic and social life.
Heartier welcome than the Commissioner gives to the visitor cannot be imagined; and you may take your place among the dozen or more who have come and who are watching him as he decides the destinies of human lives.
The cases which come before him are those upon which the special courts have alreadypassed; so you will see only the wreckage of humanity; those who upon landing are barred by a law which is indefinite enough to leave the way open to human judgment for good or ill.
Two undersized old people stand before him. They are Hungarian Jews whose children have preceded them here, and who, being fairly comfortable, have sent for their parents that they may spend the rest of their lives together. The questions, asked through an interpreter, are pertinent and much the same as those already asked by the court which has decided upon their deportation. The commissioner rules that the children be put under a sufficient bond to guarantee that this aged couple shall not become a burden to the public, and consequently they will be admitted.
A Russian Jew and his son are called next. The father is a pitiable looking object; his large head rests upon a small, emaciated body; the eyes speak of premature loss of power, and are listless, worn out by the study of the Talmud, the graveyard of Israel’s history. Beside him stands a stalwart son, neatly attired in the uniform of a Russian college student. His face is Russian rather than Jewish, intelligent rather than shrewd, materialistic rather than spiritual. “Ask them why they came,” the commissioner says rather abruptly. The answer is: “We had to.”“What was his business in Russia?” “A tailor.” “How much did he earn a week?” “Ten to twelve rubles.” “What did the son do?” “He went to school.” “Who supported him?” “The father.” “What do they expect to do in America?” “Work.” “Have they any relatives?” “Yes, a son and brother.” “What does he do?” “He is a tailor.” “How much does he earn?” “Twelve dollars a week.” “Has he a family?” “Wife and four children.” “Ask them whether they are willing to be separated; the father to go back and the son to remain here?” They look at each other; no emotion as yet visible, the question came too suddenly. Then something in the background of their feelings moves, and the father, used to self-denial through his life, says quietly, without pathos and yet tragically, “Of course.” And the son says, after casting his eyes to the ground, ashamed to look his father in the face, “Of course.” And, “The one shall be taken and the other left,” for this was their judgment day.
The next case is that of an Englishman fifty-four years of age, to whom the court of inquiry has refused admission. He is a medium-sized man, who betrays the Englishman as he stands before the commissioner, and in a strong, cockney dialect begins the conversation in which he is immediately checked by the somewhat brusque question: “What did you do in England?”“I was an insurance agent.” “How much did you earn?” “Four pounds a week.” “Why do you come to America?” “Because I want a change.” “How much change, that is, how much money have you?” “Forty dollars.” “What do you expect to do here?” “Work at anything.” “At insurance?” “Yes.” “The decision of the court is confirmed; deported, because likely to become a public charge.” Evidently insurance agents are not regarded as desirable immigrants.
The next case is a sickly looking Russian Jew over forty years of age, with an impediment in his speech and physically depleted. He is guaranteed an immediate earning of ten dollars a week. The commissioner turns towards his visitors and asks, “What would you do in this case?” The answers differ, the majority favouring his admission. Although he values our judgment the commissioner is compelled to confirm the decision of the court. It is all done quickly, firmly and decisively as a physician, conscious of his skill, might sever a limb; but it is done without prejudice.
He knows no nationality nor race, his business is to guard the interests of his country, guarding at the same time the rights of the stranger.
Work of this kind cannot be done without friction, for intense suffering follows many of his decisions. Yet I have found no one closely acquainted with the affairs of the island, who doesnot regard the “man at the gate” as the right man in the right place.
It is interesting to follow him on one of his rounds; for he watches closely the workings of his huge machine. “Why don’t you let those people sit down?” A long line of Italians had been standing closely crowded against each other when they should have been seated to await their turn.
“Open that box,” he says, to a lunch counter man, who forthwith opens box after box containing luncheons bought by the immigrants as they are starting westward; boxes containing rations enough for a day or two, according to the length of the journey undertaken.
Out upon the roof, shaded, protected and guarded are many who still await the decision of the court. Little children who came all alone and who often wait for their parents, in vain; wives whose husbands have not yet come as they promised they would; a promiscuous company of unhappy mortals of various degrees. One child, a little girl, sees her father far away among those who come to claim their loved ones; but the law still holds the child, and she cries: “Tate, Tateleben,” and he calls back to her; but his voice is caught by the wind, and the “man at the gate” has to be the comforter for a season; and no one knows how long it may be before her own father will comfort her.
A blind old mother here awaits tidings from her son that she may be speeded on towards her destination, and when she hears his voice demands to know just when she may go; and she, too, draws on the sympathies of the “man at the gate.”
We follow him into a room which harbours some eight or ten young women marked for deportation. They are gaily attired and betray at a glance that they belong to the guild of the daughters of the street. They claim to have come to America for all sorts of purposes; but they were caught with the men who imported them, members of a firm whose business it is to supply the New York market with human flesh. They know neither shame nor remorse; it is all crushed out of them, and they brazenly demand to know just when they may go into New York to begin their careers. America will be none the worse for their speedy departure.
We have seen “the lame, the halt and the blind” and one is apt to think that they represent the normal type of immigrants; while they are really but a small fraction of the mass which is strong, young, industrious and virtuous and which makes of the “man at the gate” an optimist. He does not share the feeling that the immigration of to-day is worse than that of the past; in fact he will say quite freely that it is growing better every day. He has his fears andforebodings; but he knows that the miracle of transformation wrought on us, can still be wrought on this mass which is just like us, in that it is like clay in the hands of the potter, which may be moulded just as millions of us have been moulded, into the likeness of a new humanity. The danger, he does not hesitate to say, lies less in the clay than in the potter.
The visit over, we take the little boat for the battery, crowding through a mass of men who look up to the guarded roof where their loved ones are detained. “Tate Tateleben” comes the painful cry of the little children, and one envies the man at the gate who on the morrow may answer these cries and give the children to their fathers and the wives to their husbands; who may unite those who have been divided by long years and a wide sea.... But what if he cannot answer the cry of the children?
The “man at the gate” need not be envied for the hard, daily task which awaits him; the task of opening or shutting the gates, of saying: “This one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.”
Clear and vivid before his eyes constantly stands the law, commanding him, on his allegiance, to refuse admission, not merely to those physically or morally tainted in such degree as to endanger the nation’s life, but to those “persons likely to become a public charge.” He isnot responsible for the law. He is responsible for its execution, even though his decisions sometimes are not less hard for himself than for those who find the gates shut against them.
BACK TO THE FATHERLAND. Not merely the dangerous elements are refused admission, but those who for reasons of ill health of mind or body, or inability to work, are likely to prove a hindrance rather than a help.BACK TO THE FATHERLAND.Not merely the dangerous elements are refused admission, but those who for reasons of ill health of mind or body, or inability to work, are likely to prove a hindrance rather than a help.
It requires a buoyant spirit, a steady hand, a tender heart, and a resolute mind. He must be both just and kind, show no preferences and no prejudices, guard the interests of his country and yet be humane to the stranger. To be able to say of “the man at the gate” that he accomplishes this in a very large measure is not scant praise; and if here and there his judgment is questioned, it simply proves that he is as human as his critics.
THEpast had its apprehensions about its various problems no less than the present has, and our forefathers looked upon the non-English speaking immigrants much as we look upon them to-day. No doubt they spoke of them as an undesirable class.
Many of us remember when the German and the Scandinavian immigrants who came, received no heartier welcome than we now give the Slav, the Italian and the Jew.
This large tide of immigration from among our non-English speaking races had its beginning long before there was a Castle Garden or Ellis Island, and shortly after the Pilgrims and Puritans laid the foundations for their colonies at Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. Upon the path made by English Quakers, came in 1682 the first German immigrants. They were Mennonites, a Protestant sect which manifested in its tenets many of the faults and virtues of both Quakers and Puritans.
They sailed up the shallow Delaware Bay, where a Penn, who was“mightier than the sword,” had subdued the savages by his gentle spirit and had made the flat shores peaceful for the habitation of these strangers. They settled in what is now called Germantown, and soon their little cottages were surrounded by gardens where the rosemary wafted its fragrance on the air, and where no doubt the cabbage lifted its astonished head above the ground, little dreaming that some day it would be “monarch of all it surveyed.”
In some points these Germans out-Puritaned the Puritans; for while it is said that the Puritans did not kiss their wives on the Sabbath, these German Puritans did not kiss their wives at all. That they brought with them noble ideals is proved by the fact that they were the first people on this continent to oppose slavery, and sent to the Quakers a petition to that effect. It contains the following quaint paragraph: “If once these slaves (wch they say are so wicked and stubborn men) should joint themselves, fight for their freedom and handel their masters & mastrisses, as they did handel them before; will these masters & mastrisses tacke the sword at hand & warr against these poor slaves, licke we are able to believe, some will not refuse to doe? Or have these negers not as much right to fight for their freedom, as you have to keep them slaves?”
The Germans were also the first among us tolegislate against the vice of intemperance, and may be said to be the first Prohibitionists, a fame which the modern German immigrant does not care to share with them.
One of the most ideal men of this time was Francis Daniel Pastorius, a man who combined in himself all the graces and virtues of his noble race; he was a lover of science and the finer pleasures, and was a mystic who yearned for the closer communion with God. Pietists, Tunkers, and others followed the Mennonites in the eighteenth century; and Pennsylvania was soon dotted by communities in which these strangely garbed people lived their peculiar and simple lives. To name them all would require much space, and to describe their peculiarities would fill a book. The Schwenkfelders, the Moravians, and the Amish were the most important among the later arrivals, and Germany seemed to have exhausted her ability to produce sects after their departure. Encouraged by good Queen Anne, Lutherans and Roman Catholics came later, and these were neither so pious nor so intelligent as their predecessors; but were the advance guard of that vast horde of peasantry which ceased not its coming for nearly two centuries, which moved from Pennsylvania to Ohio, from there southward along the Mississippi to Louisiana, and northward to Wisconsin and Minnesota, and which was a great factorin redeeming the wilderness and making it to “blossom as the rose.”
Thousands of these peasants were sold into a semi-slavery as Redemptionists, and thousands more laid down their lives in the attempt to blaze paths through the forest and make the fever-stricken plains habitable. Wherever they went they created wealth by their unremitting industry, and by their skill in cattle-raising and farming, so that where an English-speaking farmer starved and was forced to move westward, they stayed and dug riches out of the neglected soil.
To-day, in travelling through this country, one can almost invariably detect the German farm; and the German farmer is everywhere the standard of excellence.
These immigrants were not idealists like their forefathers, but were content to worship God as did their fathers, and by the honest sweat of their brows eat the fruit from their own “vine and fig tree.” In 1848, when the breath of freedom grew into a wind-storm, there came involuntary immigrants, political exiles of whom the late Carl Schurz is the best known, if not the best example. They were all educated men, many of them real scholars, and whatever German culture there is among the Germans to-day in our cities is in a large measure due to their influence and example. They and their descendantsare our real German aristocracy, and in the German centres of Cincinnati and Milwaukee they form the select society.
While these men were idealists politically, they were in a large degree materialists religiously, and planted the seed of Marxian Socialism and of infidelity among their countrymen. One whole colony in Minnesota made it one of its tenets not to have a church or even to mention the name of God, and the little city of New Ulm bore that distinction for a great many years; but in spite of the most diligent efforts to keep God and the churches out of their town, several houses of worship have been built in late years. While much skepticism still prevails, the younger generation almost as a whole has turned to its God.
The modern German immigrant comes pressed neither by hunger nor by his conscience, but most often to escape irksome military service, or drawn by the German “Wanderlust” which carries him beyond the mountains of his Fatherland into all corners of the earth, although emigration from Germany increases and decreases, as the economic times are good or bad. On board ship he is the jolliest of passengers, and you will find him at the bar in the morning for his beer and late at night in the smoking-room with a crowd of jovial men and women, singing the songs of the Fatherland, which grow sadder as he grows jollier. He carries with him an exalted opinion of his owncountry, and has fully made up his mind not to let anything crowd out his love for it, so that when New York Harbour with its vastness and beauty rises before him he insists that it is not half as big or as beautiful as the harbour at Hamburg, and only at the sight of the sky-scrapers does he acknowledge our superiority. I once stood before mighty Niagara with one of these subjects of Kaiser Wilhelm, and, with a deprecating shrug of his shoulders, he said: “Ve gots dem in Shermany too.” This attitude towards our country lasts a long time, and is lost only when success comes.
The German immigrant invariably has a good common-school education, although not always possessed of culture, and, if he has it, he does not find much of it among those with whom his lot is cast. A young chemist whom I met grew so despondent at the sight of his German boarding-house, and at the lack of manners among the boarders that he returned to Germany two weeks after he landed. Not many such young men come, and few of such who come succeed, for the “hustle and bustle,” the common tasks to be performed, and the common people whom they must meet as equals, repel them. The weaning from aristocratic notions, the being thrown into the hopper without being asked, “Who are you, and who are your parents?” are painful processes, and only the fit survive. Although the processis slow, it is sure. A young man who has come to this country to study our way of doing business was employed in a large department store in Chicago as a bundle-boy. At first he politely addressed the elevator man thus: “Vill you blease let me off on de second floor?” but within two months he said imperatively, “Second”; and he was on the road towards complete Americanization.
The city of Milwaukee is probably the most German city in the United States, although nothing in its business or residence portion suggests the Germany across the sea and, with sixty per cent. of its population German, it has not impressed upon the city the best things which we usually associate with that nationality. The intellectual life of its people does not receive that stimulus which one might expect; and whatever German culture there is outside of the ever-diminishing circle of the “forty-eighters” has been transplanted by Americans who have travelled and studied in the Fatherland. The few Germans who try to bring the Germany of America in touch with its glorious heritage across the sea, usually fail most miserably. The cry I most often heard from them was, “The idealists are dead, and the dollar reigns supreme.”
With a few exceptions, neither the German stage nor the German newspaper has been able to keep alive that intellectual spirit; and,as a rule, the German population falls below the American in its desire to keep in touch with the intellectual life of Germany. “We have two kinds of Germans in Milwaukee: soul Germans and stomach Germans, and the latter are in the vast majority,” said a keen observer; and it does seem that the national spirit rallies around social usages rather than around the things which make Germany a world power in the noblest sense. The editors upon whom I called were all intent upon telling me how great their papers were and how many subscribers they had, and I could not go beyond the business point with any of them, although I wasted two hours upon one, trying to get a glimpse of his German soul; but if I saw it at all, it had the American dollar-mark written all over it. Upon the social side the German is abnormally developed, and to be a “good fellow” is to him a high ideal. He usually belongs to numberless lodges and societies, in few of which he receives any intellectual stimulus. He retains his convivial habits and frequents the saloon, but is seldom intemperate, although the American treating habit often works havoc with his frugality.
That I have not misjudged the situation is proved by the fact that similar conclusions have been reached by eminent German scholars who have recently visited the United States.
Prof. K. Lamprecht, of the University ofLeipsic, who has recently published his notes under the title “Americana,” says: “Have the Germans done much besides having a large share in making the soil tillable? A visit to the great cities such as Chicago and Milwaukee compels to the sad answer, no.
“The Germans, capable as they are, in their separate and narrower activities have not held together and have been overcome by others; overcome to the degree that they still make the stupid “Dutchman” the target for their jokes. One need only to see the part he plays in the American farce to be convinced of this. He is the man who is always too late, who always wants much and at last gets but little, and who in spite of the fact that he is portrayed as good natured, is laughed at. This caricature tells some truth and is the product of some observation.
“Intellectually he does not stand very high; (the Negro also learns reading and writing), but in intense thinking he is outdistanced by the Englishman and presumably by the Slav also.
“Whoever has visited the beer gardens of Milwaukee, especially the unfortunate Pabst Park, that pattern of stupidity, must say to himself that a people which enjoys such things as are here offered, is not capable of intellectual competition in America.“Still sadder is the lack of political discernment. One need not speak of the corrupt condition of American politics. If the Germans had really had the desire they could greatly have improved the political morals of the United States. That they did not use their opportunity is due largely to the fact that when the early German immigrants came to us, their country was not politically ripe; nevertheless they may be accused of not having kept pace with the citizens of the mother country, who, under more difficult conditions have reached a very high political development. The common people from whom our immigrants sprang, now have large powers in directing the political well-being of the Fatherland under less favourable conditions. This is also true in regard to the German intellectual development with which the German-American has not kept in touch and to which he is now very slowly awaking.”
Another thing which this vast German population has failed to impress upon our cities is the love of law and order which characterizes it in its native home, and almost without exception it stands arrayed against any attempt to curtail the privileges of the saloon; while lawmakers, and officials, are usually kept from enforcing existing laws by their fear of the German vote. One of the Milwaukee beer-brewers with whom I talked in regard to his influence upon local politics naively said:“No, we have no influence upon politics at all, but if a sheriff or a judge should try to enforce laws against our saloons, he would simply lose his head.” The fact is that a certain phase of municipal life is completely controlled by the brewing interest in nearly every city where the German element plays a political part, and that element always rallies to the support and defence of the brewers. It is a strange but general experience that the German immigrant is immediately arrayed against the temperance element; this is due in no small measure to the facts that his first lodging-place is usually connected with a saloon; that the German newspaper almost always ridicules temperance effort and misinterprets the motives of its leaders, and, lastly, that designing politicians make their slogan, “personal liberty,” synonymous with “beer at any time and anywhere.” Only very recently a large portion of the German population of Chicago was the leading element in a mass-meeting in which over ten thousand people took part, demanding the granting of special licenses to dance-halls; a precedent which would be as illegal, as dangerous.
Nevertheless, the German is a law-abiding citizen, although he has never been convinced that temperance laws are either wise or just; and that, in spite of the fact that his own Fatherland is making strenuous efforts in that direction, and that temperance societies are comingto be as numerous in Germany as they are in America, but much more sensible in their agitation than with us. The average German comes, willing enough to obey all the laws, and, if he has proper environment, develops quickly into the best kind of citizen.
Neither in Milwaukee nor elsewhere did I find that the Church, whether Lutheran or Roman Catholic, had kept pace with the intellectual development of the home Church, nor has it come to feel its social responsibility to the community. The German Lutheran pastors, in certain synods, are often more exclusive than the Catholic priests in their unwillingness to coöperate with other churches for the public good; and while the churches in Germany are the most progressive on the continent, here they are the most conservative, and correspondingly inactive in the affairs which move society. Certain synods of the Lutheran Church, and those the most prosperous, hold to the Augsburg Confession more tenaciously than Luther ever did, and believe that beside that Church there is no Church, and outside of that creed no salvation.
I attended a Lutheran church one Sunday evening when it was crowded largely by young people, all of them wage-earners in the lower walks of life. The whole burden of the sermon of nearly forty-five minutes’ length was the thought that salvation is not in morality ormerit or good deeds, but that the only thing necessary to it is a proper definition of the nature of Jesus Christ. There was not one ethical note in the whole sermon, and if it is a fair sample of that man’s discourses, his flock of more than fifteen hundred souls is feeding upon barren pasture. When I called upon a Lutheran pastor who was pointed out to me as a liberal, I found, upon asking him to define his liberality, that it turned entirely upon social habits and had nothing to do with theology. “I want to drink my beer whenever I want to,” was the article in his creed that had driven him into the arms of a more liberal synod.
Among the Germans of the Northwest there is a good deal of infidelity, fostered by the Turner societies; but they are languishing and dying, and with them dies the unbelief. I was told in Milwaukee by a business man that the disappearance of those societies is due to the fact that men of affairs discovered that it was poor business policy to belong to them, because it arrayed against them the conservative church element, and that the cessation of infidel agitation is not a sign of more faith, but simply a sign of more common sense. One free-thinking paper is still published in Milwaukee; but its constituency is gradually growing smaller, and the lecturers on infidelity, of whom there used to be many, have dwindledto one or two. They find it hard to make a living out of a thing that has no life. Yet the German immigrant contributes positive good to this nation’s life; he brings usually a sound body, and while seldom intellectual, he is nearly always intelligent. He is scrupulously honest in business affairs, and has elevated the business morals of his community. By his love of music he has robbed the social life in America of some of its sternness; and the German singing societies are known not so much for the artistic quality of their performance, as for keeping alive the spirit of good fellowship.
Unfortunately, the German falls an easy prey to the prevailing materialistic spirit, and when he worships mammon he becomes the most ardent of devotees. Then he has no time for his “Gesangverein,” nor for anything else which is not utilitarian, and “Geldmachen,” the making of money, is his great ideal. In his home life he still emphasizes those virtues which have given inspiration to the German poets’ best songs. His wife is, even in America, the model “Hausfrau”; for “she looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” Yet the Woman’s Club has touched her also, and the “Kaffeeklatsch,” with its innocent neighbourhood gossip, has given way to the formal reception and kindred social delusions. The German has been the prime factor in dispellingthe Puritan idea of the Sabbath, which to many is a positive evil, but may at least be considered a mixed good. Still, he ought not to bear the blame alone, for the average American was ready to have his Sabbath broken for him and has easily followed into the breach; just as it often takes four or five grown persons to escort one child to the circus, so one may find four or five natives at every Sunday base-ball game, helping the German to amuse himself.
The disintegrating process has also been stimulated by the American tourists who annually cross the ocean, and who, during their visits in Continental Europe, leave much of the Puritan spirit behind them—too much for their own good and the good of their country.
The German has not largely contributed to the deepening of the religious life of the nation, although wherever he enters the life of the church he makes its expression more honest. The one thing which he hates desperately is hypocrisy, and because of that he guards himself very jealously and seldom speaks of his religious experiences. The German Methodist and Evangelical Churches, which are of the emotional type, are not only failing to grow, but are perceptibly becoming smaller. This is to be deplored, because they developed a somewhat deep if rather narrow Christian character, and strove to counteract the cold and more formal spirit ofthe majority of their brethren in other communions.
The German in America has not produced many great men, but he has filled this country with good men, which is infinitely better. The cause of the dearth of prominent German-Americans is due to the fact that they blend more quickly than any other foreigner (except the Scandinavian) with the nation’s life, especially if the German reaches any kind of eminence; and the effect which he has upon the life of the nation is difficult to trace just because of that.
The coarse, the crude and the low, retain their national stamp, while the finer and better soon become part of us. Some of us seem to know the German best and judge him most from the standpoint of the saloon and all it implies; but I have almost always found him industrious, intelligent, honest, frugal, patriotic, and God-fearing—noble qualities for American citizenship. If he has not risen to the highest which he is capable of reaching, and if he does not exert his influence for the best in all directions, it is not due to the fact that he is not willing to do it; but because he could not rise much higher than the highest marked out for him by the native citizens, or because he could not quite comprehend that this money-making, materialistic Yankee had ideals which he was trying honestly to realize.
If we misjudge the German, he misjudges theAmerican and rates him much lower than he deserves. This has robbed him of a higher standard for himself and made him exaggerate our national weaknesses, imitating which has created a peculiar combination of character which does scant justice to himself or to his American neighbour. When he revisits his Fatherland, these weaknesses manifest themselves most; and then his adopted Fatherland comes in for a good share of the blame for his lack of manners. The following incident illustrates this point. In the lobby of a fashionable hotel in Berlin a German-American of this type was expectorating tobacco-juice with the exactness and frequency of an adept. To a German who called his attention to this nuisance, he replied: “Everybody does that in America.” He needs to know the American and value him as he deserves, and he ought to know that which he does not seem to, that the making of money is to the true American, after all, not the greatest of achievements; that the hypocrisy with which he charges him in his religious life is less frequent than he thinks it is, and that the national ideal is slowly but surely gaining ascendency. He ought also to know that, more than any other foreigner, he has impressed upon us both his strength and his weakness, and that we are growing quite definitely Teutonic. It is for us to find out what this strength is and to appropriate itmore; and it is for him to grow conscious of his weakness and eliminate it from his social life, that he may become indeed one of the strongest pillars of this Republic, which already, like the coming Kingdom, is made up of“every nation and kindred and tribe and people under heaven.”
THEsteerage of an English vessel on which the Scandinavian immigrants travel is not the forbidding place usually found on the steamers which sail from Continental ports. The passengers have cabins assigned to them, their meals are served in human fashion, and the general appearance of everything is in keeping with that of the travellers who come from the best peasant stock of Europe. The Scandinavian peasants bear no taint of past slavery; and as far back as their “Saga” reaches, they were freemen.
When the new light which first shone at Wittenberg travelled northward, it found ready entrance into Swedish hearts, and Scandinavia has ever been the bulwark of Protestantism, so that wherever its story is written, the name of Gustave Adolphe has a prominent place. With scarcely any exception the Scandinavian immigrant is a Protestant, a confessed adherent of some church, and in most cases an ardent worker and worshipper. Repeatedly during services on shipboard I have found that every Scandinavian present took an active interest in it, and on theSabbath the number of Bible readers and students was astonishingly large. There is practically no illiteracy among them and the steerage passenger who read nothing on his journey was an exception; the quality of the reading was also remarkable, for on one journey I counted among fifty books, nine of Sheldon’s “What would Jesus do?” and only fourteen novels of a purely secular character.
The demeanour of the Scandinavian immigrant is quiet, unobtrusive, almost melancholy; and when he sings it is always in a minor key, his folk-song having the dreaminess of the Orient and being as far removed from the jig of his Irish fellow traveller as the North is from the South. He is homesick from the time he steps on board of ship until he reaches his home “in the land where there is no more sea”; and the asylums of the Northwest are full of Scandinavian men and women who have sunk into hopeless melancholia because of homesickness. Yet in spite of this most of the immigrants remain in America and more than any other foreigner blend completely into the national life.
There is scarcely such a thing as a second generation of Scandinavians, although the first generation never loses its love and longing for fair “Scandia.” A great many who come know the English language or at least some words, and being in touch here with a spirit which is asserious as their own it is no wonder that they remain, and become merged in the national life. Not one who comes is a pauper, although not a few are poor; yet nearly all are rich in a heritage of health and character which unfortunately they do not always retain on this side of the Atlantic. In fact it is proved that the second generation is weaker physically, and many of the older immigrants claim that it has lost much moral fibre also. This complaint which I have heard from all foreigners about their descendants is largely due to the natural tendency to overrate the past and to underrate the present. It is also true that the second generation undervalues the heritage which the parents brought with them from across the sea; and in not a few cases because of that, it becomes morally and spiritually bankrupt.
From stereograph copyright—1905, by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. FAREWELL TO HOME AND FRIENDS Close of kin to us are the Scandinavians, not only in race, but in thought and in ideals. More than any other element do they blend quickly and thoroughly with our national life.From stereograph copyright—1905, by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.FAREWELL TO HOME AND FRIENDSClose of kin to us are the Scandinavians, not only in race, but in thought and in ideals. More than any other element do they blend quickly and thoroughly with our national life.
I have seldom seen Scandinavian immigrants of more than middle age, and most of them are young men and women between eighteen and thirty-six. Some remain in the large cities of the East where they are valued as servants, gardeners and dairymen, more of them drift to Jamestown, N. Y., as mechanics; but the large majority of immigrants go to the Northwest where they have been “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” where they have turned the sod of far stretching acres towards the sun and where their cattle graze upon a thousand hills.They like the melancholy plains of the Dakotas; the cold winters remind them of their own far North, and if any strange country ever grows to them like home it certainly is this hospitable region in whose mills and factories, beginning at Chicago and ending in that West which each day comes nearer to the true East across the Pacific, they are toilers, skilled labourers and trusted foremen.
I have yet to find the shop where they are not liked; although their less industrious fellow workmen of other nationalities call them treacherous—a word which they themselves do not quite understand; but which means that the Scandinavians “get ahead,” and that is often cause enough to give them a bad name. In all my dealings with them I have found them frank and generous, and while playing farmer in order to know them better, my fellow labourer has many a time hitched the horses for me, or shovelled my portion of the corn, and when he found that I was only a make-believe farmer did not betray my confidence.
With such experiences and with such high esteem of the Scandinavian, I joined a party of young Swedes who were travelling from Chicago to the Northwest. They were disgusted by that city, by its moral and physical filth, its noise and its few glimpses of God’s heaven, and I congratulated them upon going to Minneapolis whichI described in glowing terms as a clean and godly city in which an American population of New England descent combined with this wholesome Scandinavian element in making a model city. Eager to have America shine to them in its very best light I offered myself as their guide through the city, an offer which they readily accepted. We had scarcely stepped out of the Union Depot before I wished that I had not said anything about the godliness of Minneapolis; for we were set upon by thugs, fakirs and lewd women in such numbers and in such a disgusting manner that I thought for a moment I had struck the Bowery in its palmiest days. Dozens of squares around the depot and deep into the heart of the city were filled by brothels of the most disgraceful kind; pictures were displayed in show windows and in the open porticos of museums which would make a Paris street gamin blush, and the whole city seemed to be stricken by some fatal disease. Policemen were neither ornamental nor useful, city detectives were employed by gamblers to hustle the fleeced stranger out of town, the mayor, the sheriff and who knows who else were in league with gamblers and thieves, while vice was everywhere rampant and did not even have to defy the law for there was no law.
Newspaper men whom I interviewed, told methat Minneapolis was considered by travelling men the “toughest” town this side of Butte, Montana. Ministers said that they were helpless and many told me that it was none of their or my business; officials were paralyzed, the mayor was a fugitive from justice, the chief of police was about to be sent to the penitentiary for safe keeping; and all of them agreed that these conditions were in no small measure due to the Scandinavian population which was not fitted for public responsibility.
I had just come from Jamestown, N. Y., which has about the same population of Scandinavians, where they had elected a Swedish mayor who gave great satisfaction, where many offices were held by Swedes, and where I had heard no such complaints.
In Minnesota generally, no taint attached itself to such Scandinavians as Knute Nelson, Lind and others who had served in high offices in state and nation; therefore I was shocked, puzzled and disappointed. I found the common verdict in Minnesota to be: “We can’t trust the Swedes in public offices;” and the number of defaulting county and city treasurers of Scandinavian nationality (especially Swedish) who spent a few years in Stillwater prison, makes the generally accepted estimate of the high character of the Swede as a citizen waver not a little.
If this estimate be true it may be due first ofall to the Swedish churches, which have not as a rule, in common with a large share of the American churches, sufficiently emphasized the fact that “righteousness exalteth a nation,” and that it can become exalted only through a righteous citizenship. The Lutheran churches have been busy preaching doctrines and have been so eager to maintain the Augsburg confession that they have not laid much stress upon upholding the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and all that it means for the Kingdom of God. The “Mission Friends,” as a large body of Swedish Christians calls itself, has been so busy in common with Methodists and Baptists, doing evangelizing work, and building up its local church membership, that it has forgotten that it has something to do with saving the state or the city.
The second cause may be ascribed to the clannish feeling fostered by cunning politicians, which makes these people vote for a Scandinavian no matter what his character is, just because he is one of their own. In this as in the first case I do not wish it to appear that the Scandinavian is a sinner above all others, but he has been remarkably unfortunate in the character of the officials whom he has chosen, and it will take a great deal of repentance and general betterment to make the people of Hennepin County unsuspicious of the Scandinavian office seeker.
The very worst thing in our national life, the most corrupting thing in every way is this voting as Scandinavians or Hungarians, and not as Americans. It amounts in many cases to a kind of treason and deserves to be treated as such. The politicians and the political party which foster that sort of thing are in a small but very dangerous business which does more to hamper the American consciousness in the foreigner than any other thing I know of; and is to-day the great poison which needs to be eliminated from the national life. In nine cases out of ten the foreigner is made a scapegoat by designing politicians who give him a small office which pledges him to do an unfair and often a dishonest thing. In the Northwest it has brought a stigma upon the Swedes: a bad reputation which they do not deserve and which they must throw off for their own good and for the good of the country.
The third and perhaps the best reason for this state of affairs is the fact that in common with other foreigners they have had a poor example set them by the Americans. Minneapolis citizens were so busy making money that they did not realize that their city was in the hands of thieves and robbers who not only “killed the body,” but cast many a soul into hell. One is roused to anger by the disclosures of graft in St. Louis, Philadelphia andother cities too numerous to mention; but when city officials like the mayor of the city and the chief of police, both of them of good American stock, are proved to be in league with gamblers and other immoral folk who corrupt the youth and destroy the trustful foreigner who comes from farm and forest, then one’s indignation ought to know no bounds. Justly, the Swedes of Minneapolis say, “the big rascals were Americans supported by American voters, many of them in Christian churches and highly esteemed in business and social life.” Nor can the contented citizen of that beautiful place take any satisfaction in the fact that some of the rascals were brought to justice and that the conditions have changed. This miserable state of affairs might still exist if the aforesaid rascals had not quarrelled with each other and finally destroyed themselves. Scarcely any one in Minneapolis deserves the credit of having lifted his voice against it or raised a protest because of the encroachment of a vice which has no bounds and which can be made harmless only by being driven away. For a city to give up its waterfront to palaces of shame where openly and defiantly, women plied their fearful trade, is poor business, poor esthetics, poor ethics and poor Christianity. Its encroachment upon the Union Depot where every stranger enters, and its perfect freedom to obtrude itself, is all poorpolitics as it certainly is a poor introduction to that beautiful city’s life. How much the foreigner is to blame I cannot tell, but this is true: that Minneapolis has the best foreign element and of course some of the worst; it has a vigorous, earnest American population with a noble heritage, and yet it has failed not only in making an all-around citizen of that foreigner but even in governing its own city; and the usual excuses of an ignorant, Sabbath-breaking foreign element do not hold good here, for the foreigner in Minneapolis obeys the Sunday law, goes to church (one church has over 4,000 worshippers on Sunday night), is not ignorant or vicious, and yet he is said to be a poor citizen.
After all the blame must fall largely upon those Americans who have lost the backbone of the Puritans and the vision of the Pilgrims, who feel little responsibility towards the great city problem, and rest content with the fact that they live in parks, that the saloon cannot encroach upon their dwellings, and then are willing to let the rest go as it pleases and where it pleases. If their pastors lift the prophetic voice, they are “fired,” even as Savonarola was burned, and it amounts to the same thing. There is a perfect stream of new ministers who come and go, and many go away broken in body and in spirit.
In the politics of the state, the Scandinavian has a well-deserved and honoured place, and the administration of Governor Johnson goes far to disprove any aspersions cast upon his people.
One of the most interesting communities in Kansas is the Swedish town of Lindsburgh, where Bethany College is located. It has become an intellectual and musical centre, and its influence is as wholesome as it is large.
I am not defending the foreigner; he has his faults, and too often does not make the most of his great opportunity, but he is as clay in the hands of the American who can make of him what he pleases.
In Jamestown, N. Y., you have a strong American community with firm convictions, and this same Scandinavian becomes like it.
In Minneapolis you have no such strong convictions of righteousness and you have a Scandinavian population which men in authority say is unfit to exercise its citizenship. Our cities need to cultivate a twentieth century Puritanism—broad and deep, intense yet sympathetic, unyielding yet charitable; and they will find that the most ready imitators will be the foreigners; especially these Scandinavians who were our kinsmen before they came here and who are ready to be our brothers, and heirs of the same Kingdom.
In everything which makes a strong people and a great state they have taken an active and conscientious part. They are staunch supporters of the public schools; their children finally become teachers and in every academy and university of the northwest the Scandinavians are an important contingent, industrious and faithful as students, scholarly and loyal as professors. Their churches are well built, well supported, and more and more their pastors are taking their places as true leaders among the people. They are intensely interested in the larger mission of the gospel and in the evangelization of the world; they believe in missions, pray for missions, give to missions, and thus have a wide horizon. In the Northwest they are the greatest foes of the liquor traffic, and one can always count on many of them in an effort to enforce existing laws or frame new ones for its restriction or destruction. Neither they nor any nationality which has come to America is alike good or free from serious faults, but a man would have to be short-sighted indeed not to realize that they have brought to this country rich moral treasures which we have not sufficiently used or developed.
What a people we might be, if we would appropriate all that the Jew brings of spiritual vision and cut down his business ardour and craftiness by our own emphasis of the nobler gift; ifwe would receive the Slav’s virgin strength and plant upon it all that we of older civilization have learned to hold precious; if we would emulate the German’s thoughtfulness and thoroughness and not imitate and encourage him in the trade in lager beer and the use of it. What a nation we should be if we would take the Hungarian’s devotion to his native land and make it burn with just such a true fire upon the altar of this country; and finally, if we would mingle all the virtues that the nations bring us with the seriousness and loftiness of the Scandinavian’s mind and heart,—if we did this through one generation, in one city of our country we would bring the Kingdom of God down upon the earth.
Nor is this all a pious wish or simply a flow of rhetoric: we shall have to do that,—cultivate in one another the best gifts,—or we shall reap a harvest of the worst; for in the Scandinavian we can see how the very best may become like the worst simply through our own neglect. We must believe about one another only the best, for people, like bad boys, live up to their reputation.
This country ought to be no place for racial or national hatreds, and no people must be branded as this or that simply because of one superficial or even deep seated fault. How often I have heard from well meaning, respectable people:“You can’t trust the Scandinavians, they are immoral, they are treacherous;” when in fact they had no proof for their assertions, and simply sowed seeds of discord of which they must some day reap the harvest.
ITis said of a certain English scientist that he began a work on “Snakes in Ireland” by the sentence: “There are no snakes in Ireland”; and one could easily without seeming to be facetious begin this chapter by saying: “The Jew has no home.”
He is a man without a country, and without a king; he belongs to a nation which, scattered over the face of the earth has yet retained the chief elements of an ancient faith, although no centralized authority guards it. Inheriting the cultural influences of his past, he absorbs the culture of each race which harbours him for a season. Although driven in turn from each insecure habitation, he has not degenerated into a nomad, but begins the task of home and fortune making, wherever a more hospitable people affords a resting place for his weary feet.
In his ancient home in Palestine, in the very citadel of his faith,—Jerusalem, he is the greatest stranger, and people of alien beliefs have built their monuments on the sites of his grandest spiritual conquests, and over the tombs of his prophets and seers.
Weeping, he tears his garments and beats his head against a wall which is all that is left of the temple thrice rebuilt, thrice ruined, and now having upon its ancient foundations a mosque, with crescent crowned minaret, from whose height the Muezzin cries: “Allah ho Akbar,” a sound which vibrates against the ears of the Jew like the mocking of the prophets who seem to say: “I told you so.”
Among the Arabs, his kinsmen, he is a stranger; for although in speech, dress and bearing he is like them, in thought and feeling he is above them; yet the coarsest Mohammedan servant will pronounce the word “Yahudi,” with all the scorn of a superior and all the hatred of an enemy.
His features have not changed since the time when Egyptian artists drew with crude touch on their temple walls the story of the stranger’s coming, his slavery and his exodus.
Wherever you find him, among the Arabs of North Africa or among the Danes of Northern Germany, he still bears the marks of his race, with the flame of Sinai in his look and the fire of the Southland on his cheek.
In Africa he is most numerous in Morocco, where 300,000 souls struggle for daily bread and are hated according to their number; while in Egypt where once he was found in largest numbers, now only about 10,000 Jews live.
The whole number for Africa does not exceed half a million; in Asia he is 200,000 strong or weak, in America above 2,000,000, while Europe has given him room enough to grow into 7,000,000. Between 10,000,000 or 11,000,000 is about the whole number of Jews now in existence, with the city of New York as the largest Jewish centre in the world, having no less than 600,000 of the faithful.
To describe the Jews in their varied environments means to draw many pictures and yet one; for while they differ widely according to the degree of civilization by which they are surrounded, certain characteristics remain the same.
Everywhere the Jew becomes outwardly like his masters—but often remains unlike them in his spiritual life and in those deeper things which express themselves spontaneously and which are too well grounded in his nature to be wiped out entirely by the mere touch of the stranger.
Physically he is usually smaller and weaker, has brown or gray eyes and dark hair, although not seldom it is red and curly. Among the Europeans his head and neck are always large; but his face is the smallest.
There are a vivaciousness in his manner, a rather emphatic and constant gesticulation, and a certain something in his speech which always mark him, and mark him unmistakably, the Jew.
He quickly reciprocates both good and evil,and is regarded with apprehension because of his aggressiveness; for as both friend and foe he is intense. Where an inch of approach is granted he may want an ell, while where he hates he does not hate in moderation. His business shrewdness is proverbial, although it is not his native genius for the proverb current in the Orient: “It takes one Jew to cheat three Christians, it takes one Armenian to cheat ten Jews, it takes one Greek to cheat twenty Armenians,” while no more correct than such generalities are likely to be, proves the assertion that he is not the champion in the chief game of life.
He has had bad environment for the development of business honesty, yet I know of scarcely a community in the world, in which the Jew plays any part, where he would not have a strong representation, if a group of the most trustworthy citizens was called together for any purpose.
The world in which he lives and in which he trades, is the world which he reflects, and he has not always created the conditions which exist there.
To “Jew down,” which is a synonym for beating down in price, is as current in business where he is no factor, as where he is. In Italy it is an economic disease, and in Russia, in those regions closed to the Jewish tradesman, the native haggles with the priest about the price of a funeral or a baptism, with the cab driver over the fare, andeven attempts to bargain on the railroad when he buys his ticket.
To generalize about the good or bad characteristics of the Jew is as difficult as it is to portray those of any race. When he judges himself he is either unjustly severe or profusely apologetic, for a people which has lived for so many centuries under abnormal conditions, cannot be known by the stranger, nor can it know itself.
At present the Jew is somewhere between Shakespeare’s Shylock and George Elliot’s Daniel Deronda; and more Shylock where the hate of the middle ages makes it impossible for him to grow into George Eliot’s ideal. He is most uncomfortably felt in those countries where he is in the transition period, when he is apt to be over-bearing and given to sensuous pleasure; even then he is not so grasping as Shylock although not so lovable as Daniel Deronda. He does not need much time to come to his full development. His genius quickly manifests itself, and while he is charged with superficiality, the fact that in all sciences there are accurate scholars of the Jewish race, disproves that accusation, although his emotional nature does not best fit him for the patient task of the investigator.
His neighbours are quickly conscious of his faults because he is not yet schooled in the art of suppressing them, and his virtues are often unrecognized because they shine the brightest inthe inner circle, from which the neighbour is usually excluded by mutual consent.
In Northern Africa we find him to-day just as he was thirty-five or forty years ago when Sir Moses Montefiore tried to alleviate his inhuman treatment and his impoverished and miserable condition. The Moors without knowing the prophecy concerning the fate of Israel are actively engaged in fulfilling it with a cruel literalness. In every city and village the Jews have their separate quarters and their own judges.
They are not permitted to study the reading and writing of Arabic lest their eyes defile the sacred pages of the Koran; they are not allowed to ride a horse although they may ride a donkey; and they must walk barefooted before the mosques.
They are prohibited from going near a well when a Mussulman is drinking, and must wear black, a colour despised by the Moors.
The men are all ugly because of the abject fear on their faces; their eyes are always cast down and their walk is unsteady while the whole posture is expressive of the worst kind of slavery.
They may be beaten, kicked and spit upon at any time without being able to protect themselves or even having the spirit to do it.
The women are unusually handsome and some of the homes are splendidly furnished and are hospitably opened to the traveller. The sameconditions existed in Algiers until it passed under the rule of France, when the Jews asserted their superiority and became landowners, manufacturers and business men, so that nearly half of the property in Algiers is said to be in their hands, for which they are again beginning to feel hatred and persecution.
The Egyptian Jews are found only in the two cities of Cairo and Alexandria; but they have followed the victorious arms of England and have entered the heart of Africa where in Khartum and the fabled Timbuctoo there are Jewish communities.
In Asia Minor the largest Jewish population outside of Jerusalem is in Smyrna; where there are over thirty thousand in the city and vicinity. These Jews, like those of Morocco, are descendants of Spanish fugitives and are considered, even by their enemies, honest and industrious, performing the commonest and hardest labour.
Jerusalem remains to this day the unhappiest city in the world for the Jew, who sees in it his glorious past and his present shame, and who must feel the pangs of persecution most in the city in which once he was master and lord.
Highly interesting is the story of the Jews in China. That they existed there, was known as early as the sixteenth century when the Jesuit, Ricci, found them in Khai Fung Fu, the old capital of Honan.
How they came to China is not definitely known, but according to Chinese history they came as far back as 58 B. C.
In 1848 they were found by some English missionaries, who reported their synagogues in ruins and the Jews unable to read the one scroll of the law which remained. At present there are only about twenty families left, and but a few years ago, a number of Jews came from the interior to Shanghai, to be taught Hebrew by the English Jews and to have the rite of circumcision performed.
The real Jewish world, and that which touches our own each day is in the eastern part of Europe; in Hungary, Poland, Russia and Roumania.
While most of the Jews in the south of Europe and Asia are the descendants of Spanish Jews, from whom they inherit a peculiar language and certain tendencies of worship and belief,—those of Eastern Europe are nearly all under the cultural influences of Germany, whose language they speak, in a more or less corrupt form. They left Germany because of the persecutions of the middle ages and settled among the Slavs, where they have lived for many centuries; never quite sure of an abiding place, and suffering ever recurring persecutions of varying degrees of intensity.
The Jews of Bohemia, whose spiritual centrewas the Ghetto of the city of Prague, as well as the Jews of Hungary, exhibit certain liberal tendencies in their faith, and are midway between orthodox and reformed Judaism. They are generally classed among German Jews, while the Jews of Poland, Lithuania and Bessarabia, are classed with the Russian Jews, by far the largest number, and the one great source of Jewish immigration to this country.
The cause of this immigration is found in the persecutions, not new in the history of Israel, but like death, always holding a new terror.
In Russia the horrors of these persecutions are shared by other non-Russians, yet there is in the Jewish persecutions an element of hatred and contempt which makes them exceptionally galling, and affects not only the Jews’ civic, social and economic condition but their self-respect also. They are classed with the Kalmuks, the Samoyedes, the Kirghese and other aboriginal tribes of low mental capacity and still lower standards of civilization; while not sharing with them their legal status, being as Jews, regarded as outlaws, for whom special repressive legislation is necessary.
Above all else, these laws tend to keep them within the pale, which pale is the old kingdom of Poland, and the western provinces originally belonging to Poland. On this territory which is by far the smaller portion of European Russia,over 5,000,000 Jews are virtually imprisoned, entrance into the larger Russia being permitted only to:
1. Merchants of the first class, who have to pay an annual tax of nearly $500.
2. Professional men who have university diplomas. As, however, of the entire number of pupils admitted to the higher schools only from five to ten per cent. are permitted to be Jews, this class is very small.
3. Old soldiers who have served twenty-five years in the army.
4. Students of higher education.
5. Apothecaries, dentists, surgeons and midwives.
6. Skilled artisans, who have no legal residence outside the pale but who may follow their vocation anywhere, provided they earn their living by their trade, and that they are members of their trade guilds; a privilege rarely granted to Jews.
Worst of all is the element of uncertainty as to the interpretation and operation of the laws, which are now lax, now severe, but always means of extortion and a recognized avenue of income for numerous officials.
The greatest hardship suffered comes from the fact that in the villages, only those residents who were there prior to a certain date, are permitted to remain; while the vast majority is herded togetherin the city Ghettos, which offer but a scant living to the normal population.
The Jewish part of the city, the Ghetto, is invariably sunk in mud or dust, according as there is rain or sunshine, and is the picture of melancholia. Cadaverous men in long, black, greasy cloaks, countless children and women, who alone carry sunshine; for in the Jewish woman’s heart the hope of giving birth to the Messiah is not yet dead.
All of these people are narrow chested, with the melancholy eyes deep set; they have long bodies and short limbs with which they make ambling strides like the camel in the desert.
It is a haggling, bargaining, pushing, crowding, seething mass; ugly in its environment, hard for the stranger to love, cowed by fear, unmanned by persecution; a thing to jeer at, to ridicule, to plunder and to kill.
This is no apology for the Jew. He carries the faults and the sins of ages; not only his own, but those of his persecutors also. He is himself the keenest critic of racial faults, and once awakened to them hates them and his race most unmercifully. His people are greedy, greasy, and pushing, or doggedly humble; as might be expected of hunted human beings, who for 2,000 years have known no peace, wherever the cross overshadowed them. They could escape torment in a moment by having afew drops of holy water sprinkled over them, for baptism opens to all, the door of opportunity. Whatever else may have died, the ancient fire is not dead in them, and they prefer to suffer, to die, if need be, rather than to enter a so-called Christian church through the door of expediency. Sometimes that door has to be entered, but the Jews who enter it are still Jews, and often they suffer agonies of mind and of spirit, to which persecution might be preferable.
A friend of mine in Moscow, a manufacturer of tobacco, who had lived in that city for thirty years, received sudden notice to dispose of his business and leave the city. He was prosperous, his children were going to school, they knew no home but Moscow, and the town to which they were to go was in the crowded Jewish pale which he had left as a child.
He and his family were baptized, he became a full-fledged Russian, with all the rights of citizenship, and his business went on as usual.
Soon afterwards, however, he became depressed, the depression increasing each time that he had to take part in religious ceremonies which were hateful to him, and it was not long before he grew violently insane.