With whom drink I to-day?With thee, honoured brother, with thee drink I to-dayIn God’s name.The Virgin bless thine earthly store;Increase thine honour more and more;Be near thy friend with helpful deed,But never thou his help to need.God grant thee much of earthly bliss,And may the saints thy forehead kiss.May wine for friends abundant flow,And children in thy household grow.May God unite our house and land,As we thus grasp each other’s hand.
With whom drink I to-day?With thee, honoured brother, with thee drink I to-dayIn God’s name.The Virgin bless thine earthly store;Increase thine honour more and more;Be near thy friend with helpful deed,But never thou his help to need.
God grant thee much of earthly bliss,And may the saints thy forehead kiss.May wine for friends abundant flow,And children in thy household grow.May God unite our house and land,As we thus grasp each other’s hand.
Admirable as is the family tie which binds the Slav, abhorrent even to the strongest “Slavophile” is the position occupied by woman in the family and in the social life among Southern and Eastern Slavs. To escape the charge of prejudice, I shall quote a few proverbs current among the Southern Slavs—a few out of many hundreds:
The man is the head, the woman is grass.One man is worth more than ten women.A man of straw is worth more than a woman of gold.Let the dog bark, but let the woman keep silent.He who does not beat his wife is no man.
The man is the head, the woman is grass.One man is worth more than ten women.A man of straw is worth more than a woman of gold.Let the dog bark, but let the woman keep silent.He who does not beat his wife is no man.
“What shall I get when I marry?” asks a boy of his father. “For your wife a stick, for your children a switch.”Twice in his life is a man happy: once when he marries, and once when he buries his wife.
“What shall I get when I marry?” asks a boy of his father. “For your wife a stick, for your children a switch.”
Twice in his life is a man happy: once when he marries, and once when he buries his wife.
And the woman sings in the Russian folk-song, which I have freely translated,
Love me true, and love me quick,Pull my hair, and use the stick.
Love me true, and love me quick,Pull my hair, and use the stick.
Although there are love-songs of another kind,in which woman is praised for her charms, she becomes virtually a slave as soon as she marries, and the little poetry of the folk-song does not accompany her even to the marriage altar. She is valued only for the work she can do in a household and for the children she can bear; and should this latter blessing be denied her, her lot becomes doubly pitiable, and she sometimes seeks release by suicide, after which the proverb says of her, “It is better thus; a barren woman is of no use in the world.” In Montenegro the proverb says, “My wife is my mule,” and she is treated accordingly; and to see her bent double beneath her load of wood, flour, or oil, while her liege lord walks erect by her side, with his arsenal of weapons in his girdle, is to see the proverb in action. Yet here, where woman’s lot is the worst, woman’s virtue is regarded most highly, the penalty for adultery being swift death, and the social vice almost unknown.
It would, of course, be unjust to charge every Slav with beating his wife, but, unfortunately, it is the rule rather than the exception among the peasants; and the lot of the Slavic woman grows better only as the Slav is further from Eastern barbarism and nearer to Western civilization. Yet she is wooed with the same ardour as is her more favoured sister, and perhaps she is loved just as much by her husband, only he has a strange way of showing his affection. That theSlavic woman possesses the qualities to make of herself a “new woman” can be plainly seen among the women of the higher class in Russia, where there is a second paradise for women; America, by common consent, being the first.
Among all the Slavs music is much loved, and the fields in the busiest harvest-time are melodious from song. The Czech’s love for music has become proverbial, although the proverb is not complimentary to him and was invented by his enemies. It is said that when a Czech boy is born, the nurse holds up to him a penny and a violin; if he seizes the penny, he will be a thief; if the violin, he will be a musician. It is true that every Czech village has its band, which often wanders all over Europe, making melody as it goes; and, in nine cases out of ten, the “Leetle Sherman pand” upon which the American bestows his pennies and his jokes does not come from Germany at all, but from some village in Bohemia. Mechanical musical instruments have played havoc with the native genius of these people. Slavic music has a melancholy strain, and this is especially true of the music of the Southern Slav, whose simple musical instruments, the “swirala” and the “gusla,” are not capable of giving one joyous note, even at a wedding. They may be truly called Jeremiac instruments. With love of music goes the love of dancing, and the Czechs and Poles inventnew dances for every occasion, while the Southern Slavs cling to their monotonous national “kolo,” which is a reckless sort of kicking exercise, accompanied by the aforesaid instruments, while some old minstrel sings of the heroic deeds of the past.
Cities among the Slavs are rare; the people usually live in villages, nearly all of which have common characteristics. It seemed strange to find that I could walk through a Russian village near Moscow, and yet could easily think myself among the Slovaks, thousands of miles away, or even among the more picturesque Dalmatians on the Adriatic. The villages all look alike. There is always one street, and just one, in the village; one wood or mud house leans against the other, one thatched roof overlaps the other, and there is never more than one fire at a time in a village like this; for generally the whole business burns down at once. The barns, called “stodoly,” are generally built together, a short distance from the village. The church occupies the centre of the village, and near by is a mud-puddle, where geese, pigs, and babies take their daily swim. Put into some convenient place a pump, tie some ox-teams to it, place in the foreground clouds of dust or a sea of mud, and you have a fair picture of Slavic villages.
Of course they differ in degrees of ugliness, the Russian village taking the first prize for unadulteratedhomeliness, as there is no sign of beauty, not even a primitive attempt at decoration, anywhere. Among the Slovaks in Hungary, and among the neighbouring tribes, there is an attempt at art. Crudely painted houses are the rule, and somewhere about them there will be an indication of decoration, but it requires a vivid imagination to find out just what it is, the art spirit being strong but undeveloped.
Little flower-gardens near or around the houses are seldom or never seen in Russia, but are common among the Czechs and other Western Slavs. The interior of the houses differs among them as to size and arrangement. The Russian house has two rooms, separated by the main entrance. One is called the cold room and the other the hot room. The hot, or winter room has as its chief possession a brick bake, cook, and heating stove or oven, the top of which is the bedstead in the winter-time; and a very comfortable place it is. The cleanliness in these Slavic homes is also of varied degrees, and is often conspicuous by its absence. Dirt, I am sorry to say, is often in evidence, and certain insects which would annoy us dreadfully exist in these rooms in uncountable numbers, but are treated with silent contempt, which does not tend to their diminution.
The Slavic tribes differ in their costumes, but nearly all of them have retained the sheepskincoat, which they wear summer and winter. The wool is turned inside. The skin is often coloured red, and the legs of the sheep hang over the shoulders. Both men and women wear this coat; but, of course, the woman’s coat is decorated in fantastic ways and costs a great deal of money. The rest of the man’s attire consists of linen trousers and shirt, home-made from the tough fibre to the coarse stitching. A cap is also worn, and in Russia is generally of fur. There are numberless varieties of this dress, but in each village all dress alike, differing only in the fineness of the material used.
“How do the women dress?” Can a man ever describe a woman’s dress? And can any mortal describe the Slavic woman’s dress, when in nearly every village they have a peculiar style? And, oh! what styles! Colour in everything; red, yellow, silver, and gold, laces and embroideries and what-not, costing sometimes nearly two hundred dollars. But, of course they do not get a new dress every year, just one in a lifetime, or, if they are really good, maybe two. The costliness of the woman’s dress is the cause of much suffering, for, although the styles do not change, vanity is a shrewd mistress, and will put a half-inch broader lace upon a woman’s cap, thus setting all the feminine hearts on fire from envy; and the next market day the broader lace will be shading every woman’s eyes, althoughperhaps a feather-bed had to be pawned, or next winter’s pig had to wander to the butcher’s ere its time had come.
Among the Slovaks, with whom woman’s garb is most costly and most picturesque, there is a great desire to lay it aside and adopt the more fashionable dress of society; for the peasant’s costume compels one to be addressed as an inferior—ti(thou)—and putting on the modern garb puts one, at least in the eyes of strangers, upon a higher social level, andonyi(you) is the pronoun used.
The Slavic peasant lives simply enough at home. His food consists largely of a vegetable diet, and meat on the table is the sign of a holiday, a wedding, or of a fortunate excursion into a neighbour’s chicken-coop or pig-sty. Among one large tribe they have only one meal a day, usually at noon. It is cooked in the morning and kept warm under the ashes or under the feather-bed until it is time to eat it.
The main staples of diet among all are, potatoes, black, sour rye bread, cabbage for soups and cakes;kascha, or gruel; and, finallybarshtsh, a concoction made of beets, and not half so bad as it looks.
The Czech has a reputation as an epicure, and the Bohemian girl is generally an excellent cook, in addition to her other good qualities. To mention Slavic cooking and leave out garlicwould be “Hamlet with the Prince left out,” and I feel sure that travellers in Slavic countries will readily testify to the excessive presence of this fragrant bulb, although they may never have seen it.
The literature of the Slav is abundant, and some of it is no doubt great. That of Bohemia is the oldest, that of Poland the most finished, and that of Russia in modern times the most abundant. The folklorist has here much virgin territory in which to gather material, but it remains to be seen whether it is worth gathering and preserving. Both folk-lore and literature are strongly realistic, being a reflection of the Slavic character, and not a protest or reaction, as with the Germanic people. The Slav speaks and sings about plain things plainly, but naturally, and not offensively when one understands the source of his song. It never makes sin attractive, and consequently is wholesome. The lyric love-song is made in the hearts of the people, travels from lip to lip, and is simple and beautiful in the original; thus the Czech sings:
If I see thee, kneeling, prayingIn the church, my dear,I am far from God and heaven,But to thee am near;If I’d love my God in heavenAs I now love thee,I would saint or very angelIn His presence be.
If I see thee, kneeling, prayingIn the church, my dear,I am far from God and heaven,But to thee am near;If I’d love my God in heavenAs I now love thee,I would saint or very angelIn His presence be.
The Slovak sings thus of love:
Whence getteth everybodyLove in his very breast?It grows not on the bushes,It’s hatched not in the nest;And were this love abidingOn rocks as heaven high,We’d send our hearts to find it,Yes, even if we die.
Whence getteth everybodyLove in his very breast?It grows not on the bushes,It’s hatched not in the nest;And were this love abidingOn rocks as heaven high,We’d send our hearts to find it,Yes, even if we die.
More poetically, the Croatian sings:
Oh, what is love? a zephyr mild,As gentle as a new-born child,To kiss each blossoming flower.Oh, what is love? a wild storm-cloud,A roaring, maddening tempest loud,A weeping, drenching shower.Oh, what is love? a scattered gloom,A thousand glorious flowers in bloom,A glowing, burning fireball,A giant held by chains in thrall,A joyful, chiming wedding bell,A dreadful chasm, a burning hell.Oh, may thy love, thou dearest child,Like spring winds be, so sweet, so mild!Oh, reach to me thine angel hand,And lead me to that heavenly land!
Oh, what is love? a zephyr mild,As gentle as a new-born child,To kiss each blossoming flower.Oh, what is love? a wild storm-cloud,A roaring, maddening tempest loud,A weeping, drenching shower.Oh, what is love? a scattered gloom,A thousand glorious flowers in bloom,A glowing, burning fireball,A giant held by chains in thrall,A joyful, chiming wedding bell,A dreadful chasm, a burning hell.Oh, may thy love, thou dearest child,Like spring winds be, so sweet, so mild!Oh, reach to me thine angel hand,And lead me to that heavenly land!
One of the marked characteristics of the Slav is his deep religious feeling. If you wander through Moscow, you will see at every step evidences of this in the many churches, chapels, andwayside icons before which the faithful cross themselves or lie prostrate in the dust. Everywhere the Russian manifests his deep allegiance to the Church, and every action of his life is in some way influenced by its teaching. He obeys implicitly all its rules, especially in regard to the many fast or feast days. He venerates the churches and cloisters, has implicit faith in the intercession of the saints, and every year out of every village go forth pious pilgrims over barren wastes and through dense forests to some sacred tomb in some faraway cloister. The height of ambition of every pious mujik is to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and a whole lifetime is spent in self-denying struggle to accumulate money enough for that purpose.
Common to all the Slavs is the tendency to superstition; remnants of the old heathenism remain everywhere, startling one by stories and usages which during centuries of winters’ nights have grown to grotesque proportions in the dark, uncomfortable izbas of the peasants, and have curiously blended with their Christian faith, so that it is difficult for them to distinguish one from the other. The Slav is usually charitable to the poor, although not always generous to the weak, and he cannot be praised for excessive hospitality. He is too often clannish, is apt to be jealous, and consequently not always faithful or honest. The Polish and Russian peasants are proverbiallythievish; as one of their current sayings has it, “the only things which they will not carry away are hot iron and millstones,” a characteristic which they lose completely under better economic conditions.
The Slav is humanity still in the rough, and to that fact are due his faults, his virtues, his weakness, and also his strength.
THESlovak and the Pole, or the “Hunkies” as they are often contemptuously called, are among the most industrious and patient people who come to our shores. I know this because time after time I have followed them from their native villages, across the sea and into the coal mines of Pennsylvania, or the steel mills, coke ovens and lime stone quarries along the lakes, to which they were called because their virtues as labourers were known. Even on board ship they are the most patient passengers, for hardships are not new to them, and the bill of fare, meagre though it is, contains not a few luxuries to which their palates are strangers; if it were not for the seasickness, they would consider their ocean trip as much of a pleasure as do those of us who cross the sea for a wedding trip or a vacation. I have crossed the ocean with them ten times at least, and have never heard a word of complaint, although their more refined travelling companions say much about their untidiness, rudeness, and other marks of semi-civilization. I have never seen one of them read a newspaper; only one man do I remember who read a book, and that was a prayer-bookof the Greek Church. They leave their picturesque garb at home, and lie on the deck in all sorts of weather in all kinds of dress and undress, the women being barefooted even in winter. In conversation with the men I can never go beyond the facts that they are going to work, earn money, pay off a mortgage on a piece of land at home, or save enough money to send for Katchka or Anka to be their wedded wife. If the Slovak feels any great emotions when he reaches New York, he never expresses them; he is usually dumb from wonder and half frightened, as he faces this new and busy world in which he will be but an atom or just so much horse-power. In spite of the contract labour law, he is billed to an agent in New York or taken to Pennsylvania, where his new life begins and too often ends in a coal-mine.
The home which he will make for himself is one of many, and all alike are painted green or red,—shells of buildings into which crowd from fifteen to twenty people who are taken care of by one woman whose husband may be the foreman of a gang and the chief beneficiary of its labour.
In the town of Verbocz, in Hungary, I recently met a man who had returned from America with $2,000 in his pocket, and whose career here is typical of a large number. He came to America fifteen years ago and worked in a mine in Pennsylvanianear Pittsburg. He had stayed long enough to learn English, to be able to receive and give orders and have them carried out, so he became a foreman. His wife and children then came, and moved into one of the houses previously described, bringing with them twenty men, boarders. Through much industry and frugality they saved these $2,000 and now in their old age they had returned to spend that money at their pleasure. The wife has permanently put off the peasant garb and has retained in her vocabulary such bits of English as “come on,” “go on” and “how much,” which she displays on every occasion. The children are still in America, one of the sons being in the saloon business, and on the road to greater wealth than that which his father accumulated.
Their competitors in the field of labour accuse them of filthiness, yet, after having walked through hundreds of these shanties, I can say that the report of untidiness among them is exaggerated; for the majority of homes are cleaner than their crowded condition would warrant, while there are not a few in which the floors are scrubbed daily, and fairly shine from cleanliness. Just as uncomplainingly as into the life on board ship, the Slovak fits into the new work, whatever it may be, and no animal ever took its burden more patiently than he does his, as he faces unflinchingly the hot blasts of a furnace or the darkdepths of mines. He can be worked only in gangs directed by one of his number who has gathered a few crumbs of English, and who seasons them freely by those words which are usually printed in dashes. Such a thing as rebellion he does not know, as his whole past history testifies; in our strikes he is a very convenient scapegoat and not seldom a sheep, led to deeds whose consequences he has not measured. In nearly every case of violence which I could trace and in which he took an active part, he was inflamed by drink which interested persons had given him.
He is considered by the tradesmen of his town to be their most honest customer, and one merchant who has dealt with the Slovaks for twelve years, who has carried them from pay-day to pay-day, and through strikes and lay-offs, told me that he had not lost one cent through them, while his losses from the other miners were from fifteen to thirty-five per cent.; and, with but slight variations, this is the testimony of all the merchants.
In no small measure this is due to their fear of law, for in Hungary every debt is collectible, and not even the homestead is exempt from the executioner. There is also no petty thieving in communities where they have lived for twenty years, and they have never been accused or even suspected of theft. As one common accusationagainst them is that they spend very little in this country and send most of their earnings abroad, I examined this matter very carefully, interviewing every merchant and every class of merchants, the postmasters, and even the saloon-keepers, and they all agree that these people are fairly good customers.
In visiting their homes I found that usually they are not lavish as to house-furnishings; the front room, which in the American household would answer for the parlour, is filled by the trunks of the boarders, and in a few cases has that beginning of American civilization, the rocking-chair. A stand with a white cloth cover holding a few knickknacks is a rarity, but exists in about five per cent. of the houses I have visited; carpets I have seen only twice, but the lace-curtain fashion has not a few imitators. Upon his bed the Slovak lavishes a great deal of money, making it his costliest piece of furniture, while his imported feather-beds keep out entirely the more sanitary mattress and blankets. He does not stint himself in his food, as is commonly supposed, for he eats a good deal, although his steak, being cut from the shoulder, is cheap, and is always called “Polak steak.” He eats quantities of beans, cabbage, and potatoes, and about eight dollars a month covers the board bill of an adult. He drinks too much, but drinks economically, preferring a barrel of beer for thecrowd to the more expensive glass, and he carries a bottle in his hip pocket as invariably as the cowboy is supposed to carry a pistol. Instead of whiskey he sometimes takes alcohol and water, which may, after all, be the same rose by another name. In buying clothing I am told that he buys the best which is fitted for his work and for his station, and to see him after working hours, cleanly washed and dressed in American fashion from the boots up to the choking collar, one would not suspect him of miserliness. He does save money, for out of an average earning of forty dollars a month he will send at least fifteen dollars to Hungary, and on pay-day the money-order window in the little post-office is crowded by these industrious toilers who have not forgotten wife, children, old parents, and old debts.
Many of them claim that they would buy houses in this country if they were assured of steady work, and in many places they plead that they cannot buy property because the company owns all the real estate and prefers to rent all the houses falsely called homes.
Unfortunately they have imported into this country their racial prejudices which are keenest towards their closest kin, and each mining camp becomes the battle-ground on which ancient wrongs are made new issues by repeated quarrels and fights which become bloody at times,although premeditated murder is rather infrequent. In a large number of cases these unfortunate divisions are intermingled by religious differences, although the Slovak and the Pole do not speak well of one another even if they belong to the same church. The Pole regards himself as the especial guardian of the Roman Catholic Church, and while a majority of the Slovaks are of the same Church, Protestantism has made some inroads and the Greek Church claims many loyal adherents. Many of the Catholics belong to the Greek Catholic Church which is that portion of the Greek Church in Austria which united with Rome after the division of Poland, and which was permitted to use its own Slavonic ritual and retain its married clergy. Only a portion of the Greek Church entered this union so that nearly every large Slovak community has a number of Russian Greeks, who look upon the Roman Greeks with a great deal of scorn. In Marblehead, on Lake Erie, where these Slovaks are engaged in the limestone quarries, this division was discovered after all the Greeks had built one church, that of the Roman Greeks. A few of the wiser ones who arrived in this country later were dreadfully shocked when they saw this, and in Peter Shigalinsky’s saloon plans were made to gain possession of the church for the only true Greeks, the Russian; many pitched battles were fought, a long and fruitless litigation followed,and finally Peter Shigalinsky built next to his saloon a new church, whose orthodoxy is emphasized by one of the horizontal pieces of the cross slanting at a more acute angle than that of the Roman Greek church, in which of course there can be no salvation.
Where they have no church of their own they are usually found worshipping with the English or Germans, if they are Romanists, but in many cases the priests told me that they are not wanted and must keep to one corner of the building. There are not priests enough to shepherd them, and those they have are in many cases unfitted for the task. It is asserted that the Lutheran pastors are no better, and count for little or nothing in making these people Christians and citizens. They are naturally suspicious of strangers, but grateful for every kindness, and once a door is opened to their hearts it is never closed again. Unfortunately, their speech shuts them out from the touch with American people of the same community, but there are avenues of approach in which only one language is spoken—the language of love and kindness; one noble American woman whom I know ministers to them by nursing them and suggesting simple remedies when they are ill, and has thus become no small factor in their social and religious redemption.
Of literature little or nothing enters the miningvillages, although among the Poles the hunger for it grows and many papers and magazines are coming into existence. The Slovak lives an isolated life, sublimely ignorant of “wars and rumours of wars”; his breakfast is not spoiled by the glaring head-lines of the daily paper, nor does the magazine or novel press upon him the problems of human society. He knows his camp, his mine, his shop, and though he lives in America and in the most busy States in the Union, his world now is not much bigger than it was when its horizon touched his village pastures.
As yet he is not a factor politically, though the political “boss” finds him the best kind of material, for he is bought and sold without knowing it, and votes for he knows not whom. At Braddock, Pa., it was told me that he is sold first to the Democrats and then to the Republicans, and afterwards is naïve enough to come back to the Democrats and tell of his bargain, willing to be bought back into his political family. Like almost all foreigners, he is a Democrat by instinct or by association, one scarcely knows which, although he is usually anything that a drink of liquor makes him. I asked one his political faith, “Are you a Democrat?” “No, me Catholic—Greek, not Russian,” was the reply. “What are your politics?” I asked a number. “Slovak,” was the invariable answer. Not twenty per cent. of those I interviewed knew thename of our President, not two per cent. the name of the Governor of the State in which they were residing. The Slovak does not know the meaning of the word citizen, and the limited franchise in Hungary is exercised for him by those shrewder than himself; he is just force and muscle, with all the roots of his heart in the little village across the sea, and with his brain wherever the stronger brain leads him.
At a recent election in Hungary, a district where the Slovaks were in a large majority, they were, nevertheless, defeated by the Magyar element which knew how to manage them; so that they may be said to have had just enough political training to fit them into the political life of the average American community.
Although the Slovak is a quiet and peaceful citizen, on feast day he does not consider his religious nature sufficiently stirred without a fight, which is usually a crude, bungling affair, devoid of the science which accompanies such an episode among the Irish, and also without the deadly results of an Italian fracas.
On the wedding day of Yanko and Katshka, the silence of the camp is broken by the sound of a screeching violin, followed by the wailing of a clarinet and the grunting of a bass viol. Above the discord of noise made by these instruments is heard the voice of the bridegroom, who leads the dances with the song:“I am so glad I have you, I have you, and I wouldn’t sell you to any one.” If you enter the house of the bride, you will find it full of sweltering humanity, all of it dancing up and down, down and up, while the fiddlers play and the bridegroom sings about “The sweetheart he is glad to have and wouldn’t sell to any one.”
Usually the Slav dancers provide the notes and the bank notes also; for at the end of the piece half a dozen stalwart men will throw themselves in front of the musicians, each one of them demanding in exchange for the money tossed upon the table, his favourite tune to which he sings his native song. The result is, half a dozen men, each singing or trying to sing, a different song, all of them pushing, crowding, and at last fighting, until in the middle of the room you will find an entanglement of human beings which beats itself into an unrecognizable mass. The wedding lasts three days, the ceremony often taking place after the first day’s festivities. The order of proceedings and the length of the feast vary, according to imported traditions which among the Slavs are different in every district.
WITHOUT THE PALE. Not always is the adverse decision of the Commissioner so easy as in the case of some Servian gypsies who, deported from New York, found their way to Canada and quickly made police records.WITHOUT THE PALE.Not always is the adverse decision of the Commissioner so easy as in the case of some Servian gypsies who, deported from New York, found their way to Canada and quickly made police records.
Of course the whole mining camp is an interested spectator and guests usually do not wait for a formal invitation. The ceremony over, the wedding dinner is served, and never in all the Carpathian Mountains was there such feasting as there is in the Alleghanies. “Polak” steak,cabbage with raisins, beets, slices of bacon, links of sausages, sweet potatoes, and, “last but not least,” the great American dish, conqueror of all foreign tastes—pie; huge, luscious and full of unheard-of delicacies. Beer flows as freely as milk and honey flowed in the promised land; again the musicians play and if the bridegroom has voice enough left he will sing the song of “The sweetheart he is so glad to have and wouldn’t sell to any one, no, not to any one.” Barrel after barrel is emptied until the pyramids of Egypt have small rivals in those built entirely of beer barrels in the little mining town in Pennsylvania. Many of the drinkers fall asleep as soundly as Rameses ever did before he was embalmed, while others are making ready for the end of the feast—the fight, for “no fight, no feast” is the proverb. Somebody calls a Slovak a Polak, or vice versa; some young man casts glances at some young maiden otherwise engaged—and the fight is on. I have never discovered just the reason for the fight, and one might as well search for the cause of a cyclone, but the results are nearly the same: furniture, heads, and glasses all in the same condition—broken; everybody on the ground like twisted forest trees, while one hears between long black curses the peaceful snores of the unconscious drunk. The next day and the next the programme is repeated, and this is the Slovak’s only diversion, unless it be a saint’s day, when history repeats itself and he once more practices his two vices, drinking and fighting.
As a rule the Slav is virtuous although this depends largely upon local conditions in the village or district from which he comes. One could prove him in certain regions the most virtuous of men while in others he is just the reverse. Almost without exception where one woman cooks for fifteen or twenty men as is often the case in mining camps, they respect her as the wife of one man, while she respects her own virtue and would fight if necessary to remain loyal to her husband. There is much coarse, indelicate talk and much crudeness, for the Slav is a realist in speech and action; therefore that which would seem to us immoral, is simply his way of expressing himself, accustomed as he is to call “a spade a spade.”
The Pole who emigrates to this country comes from nearly the same region as the Slovak, and lives very much the same life, although in many things he is his superior. He has greater self-assertion, is not so submissive to the church, chafes more under restraint, has a greater racial and national consciousness, and is by virtue of his historic development both better and worse than the Slovak. He becomes more identified with American life and will remain an important part of it whether for good or evil, while a largeportion of the Slovaks will return to the villages and the peaceful acres from which they came. The Polish community is consequently more of an entity and looks towards permanence. The centralizing power is usually the church; around it, and stimulated by it, grows the Polish town which not unfrequently occupies the best location to be had, with its agencies well organized and controlled.
Perhaps the best example of such a Polish town completely governed and controlled by the church is in New Britain, Conn., where the population is engaged in manufacturing hardware. With rare foresight the best situation in the city was bought, and facing the still undeveloped part of this real estate holding, the church, a magnificent white stone structure, was built; a church which might well be the pride of any community. Their priest, who is both Czar and Pope, is a strong, wise monarch who holds in his keeping the destinies of thousands who trust and obey him implicitly. The houses built are rather rude tenements, evidently built to bring large and quick results; but the sanitary condition must be good if it can be judged by the cleanliness and wholesomeness of the children. Indeed, this part of the city of New Britain is as clean and orderly as one might reasonably expect among a population imported to do the roughest kind of labour.
One is likely to be apprehensive as to the future when one realizes that nearly all the children go to a parochial school, in which only a minimum of the English language is taught; that the men are all organized into patriotic and religious brotherhoods which march armed through the streets. One cannot yet determine how much these things will do to prevent Americanization and assimilation, two things which are exceedingly desirable and which these and other agencies seem to prevent.
Besides Slavs and Poles, lesser groups of Crainers from the Austrian Alps, Croatians and Servians, have gathered in the larger Slav centres and around them, and while in a great measure they live the same life as do their more numerous kindred, there are minor differences which are somewhat accentuated by the abnormal conditions under which they all live.
THEgreat city had not been kind to them. For three weeks they had been beaten back and forth all the length and breadth of its hot and inhospitable streets until their little money and their courage were exhausted, and they had drifted back to the Battery, the place nearest home which they could reach “without money and without price.”
They had come here for work and had sought it from shop to shop, wherever men with a fair share of muscle were wanted; but they always found that some stronger man had come before them so they were left, like the sick man at the Pool of Bethesda, unhealed at the edge of the water.
They had been my travelling companions across the sea, and I felt some responsibility for them, besides being anxious to know what becomes of men in America who have neither our speech which might be silver, nor the silent gold which serves as power. So I cast my lot and my small change among them. We travelled as far as a five cent fare would take us and began looking for work among the large mansions and fancy farms which line the shore of Long IslandSound. Barking dogs, frightened house maids and discourteous lackeys we found everywhere, but neither work nor food for the four of us. We did not look like tramps, although our clothes were shabby and the dust and grime of the city did not tend to improve our appearance; yet we spent a whole day looking unsuccessfully for work, and when night came upon us nothing remained but to return to the city, as bankrupt in our stock of courage as in our finances.
That blessed and famous bread line, where the Lord answers His poor people’s prayer for daily bread, kept us from starving, and there was enough free ice water to be had to wash down the bread and benumb our digestive organs into silence.
Union and Madison square park benches were our beds a few minutes at a time, for the watchful policeman kept us moving as if we were drunk from laudanum. We went the length of lower Broadway, to City Hall park, and finally to the Battery where the next morning’s gray found us, wearier and shabbier than ever. Twenty-four such hours as we lived were enough to push us down the social scale to the level of the tramp, and we were greeted as such by those birds of passage, one of whom proved to be a “friend in need.” He really pitied my speechless companions and after sharing with us his begged buns, he told us of the New Jersey paradise whereorchards and truck gardens were waiting for the toil of our hands.
He promised to accompany us, and was generous enough to offer to pay our way across the river. He seemed to enjoy the task of leadership and unfolded his great plans for us as he led us along the railroad track by the salt marshes of New Jersey, where we nearly perished from the attacks of mosquitoes. The New Jersey mosquito is enough of a factor to prevent the distribution of the immigrant. I certainly should not blame any one who preferred the stenches of Rivington Street to the sting of the mosquitoes on the New Jersey marshes. Nowhere was work given us, although we were treated less rudely, and in a few cases were offered food in exchange for a few chores; our travelled friend diligently instructing us to do as little as possible in return for the kind of food which we generally received. The day’s earning of food included: smoked sturgeon, which was wormy, and ham bones to which clung a minimum of meat and a maximum of tough skin. On the whole, we were soon made to realize that the New Jersey farmer knew how to drive a good bargain, in connection with what he was pleased to consider his charities.
When night came, our friend suggested an empty freight car as our lodging place, and in lieu of a better one, we went to sleep for the first time in this country, where the bed cost us nothing,and where some one’s else property became temporarily our own. We slept, in spite of the soreness of our muscles and the continued attacks of mosquitoes, and when we awoke it was still dark; at least in the car, into which neither starlight nor sunshine could penetrate,—for we were locked in, our guide and guardian gone, and with him three watches, four coats and our shoes.
After a long, long time, in answer to our cries, a railroad man opened the car and found us more destitute than we had yet been, and in need of a better friend(?) than the one we had lost. I told him our story, and he directed us to a farmer on the Trenton road who always needed labourers, and who he was quite sure would take us in, notwithstanding our denuded condition.
Barefoot and coatless we reached the farm which we recognized by the fact that a sign was tacked to the gate post, stating in four languages that “Labourers are wanted within.” In the rear of the house we were received by a be-aproned gentleman who proved to be the cook and housekeeper of this strange establishment. After I had told him the story of our adventures, we were invited to breakfast to which we did ample justice, in spite of the fact that it was prepared by a man who evidently knew little or nothing about the art of cooking. He told me that he too, had drifted from the great city, animmigrant who had found no standing room in the crowded shops. He told me also that every man at work here was a “Green-horn,” as he expressed it, and that not one of them had been longer than six months away from the Old Country.
At last the “Boss” came from the field; a rather portly man, red faced, hard headed and with small, beady eyes. He made a poor impression upon me, especially when he began to speak German, a language which he had acquired to be able to deal with his help. He offered us the hospitality of his farm and $10.00 a month, beside which he was ready to advance us the necessary farm clothing which he kept in stock for such emergencies. The clothing consisted of overalls, jacket, a straw hat and very coarse shoes.
We were not told what he charged us for them, but I began to suspect the man when that evening he drove me to the village to buy a pair of shoes, none of those in his stock fitting me.
When we reached the store, he told the proprietor in English which I was not supposed to understand, to tell me that the shoes were hand made and cost $3.50. They were common, roughly made shoes which could be bought in any store for $1.25 and I have no doubt that the profit was to be divided between these gentlemen.
At night in the loft of the barn, a dozen men, representing about ten nationalities met, and after looking at one another in stolid silence for a time, went to sleep. In the morning we were initiated into our task, which consisted of the customary chores, and finally, the field work in the patches of garden stuff, where hoeing and pulling weeds were the order of the twelve hours labour, with the beady eyes of the “Boss” ever upon us. He grew more and more impatient with our unskillful ways, and swore loudly in English and German, terrifying my Slavic friends beyond my ability to calm them.
Each day was the same as the one just past; hard work in the field, poor food in the kitchen, a hay bed at night, and the impatience of the “Boss” manifesting itself in personal violence against those of us who were the weaker among his slaves. Each day one or the other man disappeared, some of them leaving behind the little bundle of clothing bought from the farmer. This he immediately appropriated and sold to the next comer; for one or more new men of the same type were sure to drift in, to begin the labour which brought no wages.
According to the cook, the four of us broke the record, having stayed nearly a month. About two days before pay day I came in at evening with a broken cultivator. Whether running it into a tree stump had wrecked it, or whether ithad been ready to fall to pieces at the slightest provocation I do not know; but the “Boss” grew violent in his anger and attacked me with a pitchfork, driving me out of the very gate through which I had come twenty-nine days before.
I went to the village and after finding a justice of the peace, laid before him my complaint, but he discouraged any legal action on my part because I did not have money enough to back it. When night came, I returned to the farm and calling out my men, who were only too ready to follow, we cut through a tall corn-field, and climbing a wire fence were again on the Trenton road. We walked the whole night, into Trenton and out of it, and far on our way to Pennsylvania. The next day we found that our labour was indeed wanted, and a few weeks in the tobacco fields of a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer put money into our purses and flesh upon our muscle. Upon finishing our work we started again upon our journey and soon entered the industrial region of Pennsylvania, where steel furnaces lined the highway and coke ovens illumined the landscape, making the air heavy by their fumes. Here for the first time my companions saw labour in America at its highest tension. They were frightened by the pots of glowing metal and made dizzy by the roar of the furnaces.
Opportunity for labour was soon secured, butmy companions entered into it so timidly that I tried to dissuade them from it, but could not, as here alone was steady employment offered to men of their class. I can still see them in the great yard of one of the steel mills, pale and trembling, as if facing the dangers of war. Half naked, savage looking creatures darted about in the glare of molten metal, which now was white, “Like the bitten lip of hate,” then grew red and dark as it flowed into the waiting moulds. Close to these hot moulds the men were stationed to carry away the bars still full of the heat of the furnace, and they became part of a vast army of men who came and went, bending their backs uncomplainingly to the hot burden.
I watched them day after day coming from their work, wet, dirty, and blistered by the heat; dropping into their bunks at night, breathing in the pestilential air of a room crowded by fifteen sleepers, and in the morning crawling listlessly back to their slavish task.
No song escaped their parched lips, attuned to their native melodies, and the only cheer came on pay day, when the silver dollars looked twice as big as they were, when a barrel of beer was tapped at the boarding house and this hard world was forgotten. Then they tried to sing from throats made hoarse by the heat,
“Chervene PivoBile Kolatshe.”
“Chervene PivoBile Kolatshe.”
With the song came memories of their native village, the inn and the fiddlers, the notes of the mazurka and krakowyan, and visions of the wives and children who awaited their return. To the town they went that day and sent $20 each, out of the month’s earnings, to Katshka and Susanka and Marinka, the anticipation of their gladness making them happy too.
It was the beginning of the second month and I had drifted back to watch my men at the furnaces. They were still carrying hot bars from one place to the other and had withered into almost unrecognizable dryness. I watched these gigantic monsters consuming them and as I watched a terrible thing happened. An appalling noise arose above the roar to which my ears had grown accustomed, and which seemed the normal stillness. White, writhing serpents shot out from the boiling furnaces and were followed by other monsters of their kind which burned whatever they touched, and before I knew what had happened the whole dark place was full of smoke and the smell of burning flesh. Eight men, my three among them, had been caught by the molten metal, scorched in its own fire and consumed by its unquenchable appetite. What happened? Nothing. A coroner came to view the remains,—of which there were practically none; out of the centre of the cooled metal, lumps of steel were cut and buried,—andthat is all that happened; and oh, it happens so often!
As I write this, the daily paper lies before me; theChicago Tribuneof May 13th, 1906. It devotes six columns to the horrors of the steel mills in South Chicago. I could fill the whole paper with the horrors which I have witnessed in mill and mine; and I could fill pages with the names of poor “Hunkies” whom nobody knows and about whom nobody cares. I cannot write it; it makes me bitter and resentful; so I shall let this newspaper reporter speak, and he knows but half the story. I know the other half, but the whole truth would hardly sound credible.
Here in this hospital building and its environment centres the horror of horrors of the untutored mill workman. Its inspiration is terror to the millman of the polyglot pay roll, as he enters the Eighty-eighth Street gate to his work.
Hun, Pole, Austrian, Bulgarian, Bohemian—the “Hunkies” of Illinois Steel colloquialism—indifferent to pain of shattered, burned, mangled body, grow frantic as the stretcher bearers near this fortress hospital. At its gates, over and over again, the frantic, hysterical wife and children of the victim have begged and pleaded for admission against the grim barrier of the guards.
Why is it? You cannot get the information in South Chicago unless it be that these men are “ignorant.”
South Chicago distinctly doesn’t like the “Hunkie.” He jams the money order window of the post-office for two long days after the bi-monthly pay day. He sleeps sometimes thirty deep in a single room after the day shift, and he sleeps again in the still warm floor bed, thirty deep, after the night shift. He has his grocer’s book on which are entered his scant, half offal meats, which day after day are prepared for him by his hired cook; he wears little and he sleeps in that; his bed is never made, for the reason that some one always is in it; his money goes to the saloon-keeper or through the foreign money order window at the post-office.
He is merely a “Hunkie” in Illinois Steel or in South Chicago. What if the Illinois Steel hospital is his conception of Inferno?
He doesn’t know much. He doesn’t know when he is spoken to, unless it is by an epithet which makes any other man fight. Then he moves doggedly and often with little understanding. Not understanding, he is the chosen, predestined occupant of the hospital bed.
A “Hunkie” who has been “hunked” in Illinois Steel makes a lot of strictly corporationtrouble. The chief “safety inspector” and his staff are alert and active at a moment’s notice of an unofficial accident report. The Illinois Steel photographer and his camera are made ready; the stretcher bearers seize stretchers to the necessary number and a hurried move is made towards the scene of the accident, of which the Chicago police department may never know.
On the scene, the camera is set and the photograph—which so seldom is ever seen beyond the gates of Illinois Steel—is made. Then the “Hunkie”—protesting if he be conscious enough—is picked up, put upon the stretcher, and the giant bearers of the body start for the hospital, which may be a mile away. There are difficulties in the march. Surface lines for ore and coal trains net the grounds. Often a train’s crew finds difficulty in breaking a train to let the body through; sometimes the crew balks and swears, and the stretcher bearers wait for the shunting of the cars.
In the hospital? Few people know and they don’t talk. There is a “visiting hour,” but the surly guard at the gate passes upon the applicant’s request long before the request may be repeated at the hospital door. And at the door they don’t encourage visitors.
WHATEVERapprehensions one may have about the Slav in America, may be dispelled or accentuated by a study of the Bohemian immigrants. They began coming to us when, during the counter reformation under Ferdinand II, Austria sent her Protestants to the gallows or to America.
In Baltimore the churches they founded still stand, and a sort of Forefathers’ Day is observed by their descendants, who, though they have lost the speech of their fathers, still cling to the historic date which binds them to a band of noble pioneers—close comrades in spirit to the Pilgrims of New England. Under Austrian rule Bohemia became impoverished physically, mentally, and spiritually; and after the misgovernment of Church and State had done its worst, the flood-tide of immigration set in anew towards this country.
Bohemia grew to be in the last century an industrial state, and the immigrants who came here were half-starved weavers and tailors, who naturally flocked to the large cities. In New York nearly the whole Bohemian population turned itself to the making of cigars, and theEast Side, from Fiftieth to about Sixty-fifth Streets, is the centre. In Cleveland, Ohio, more than 45,000 Bohemians live together, while Chicago boasts of a Bohemian population of over 100,000, who nearly all live in one district, which began on Twelfth and Halstead Streets, but now stretches southward almost to the stockyards, with a constant tendency to enlarge its boundary towards the better portions of the city. The large tenement-house is almost altogether absent from this locality, the little frame house of the cigar-box style being the prevailing type of dwelling, and most of the homes are owned by their tenants. This part of the city is as clean as the people can make it in a place where street-cleaning is a lost, or never learned, art. The prevailing dirt is clean dirt, with here and there an inexcusable morass which offends both the eye and the nostril. The whole district is typical of Chicago rather than of Bohemia, and if it were not for the business signs in a strange and unphonetic language, and occasionally a sentence in the same queer speech, one might imagine himself anywhere among any American people of the working class; nor is there a trace of the native country in the interiors, where one finds stuffed parlour furniture, plush albums, lace curtains, ingrain carpets, and a piano or organ—all true and sure indications of American conquest over inherited foreign tastes and habits.
Yet the conquest is only on the surface, for it takes more than a carpet-sweeper to wipe out the love of that language for which Bohemia has suffered untold agony; to which it has clung in spite of the pressure brought to bear upon it by a strong and autocratic government, and which it is trying to preserve in this new home, in which the English language is more powerful to stop foreign speech than is the German in Austria, though backed by force of law and force of arms. With many Bohemian daily newspapers, with publishing houses printing new books each day, with preaching in the native tongue, and with societies in which Bohemian history is taught, the Czechish language will not soon disappear from the streets of Chicago; and language to the Bohemian, as, indeed, to all the Slavs, is history, religion and life.
The Bohemian immigrant comes to us burdened by rather unenviable characteristics, which his American neighbour soon discovers, and the love between them is not great. Coming from a country which has been at war for centuries, and in which to-day a fierce struggle between different nationalities is disrupting a great empire, and clogging the wheels of popular government, he is apt to be quarrelsome, suspicious, jealous, clannish and yet factious; he hates quickly and long, and is unreasoning in his prejudices; yet that for which a people is hated, andwhich we call characteristic of race or nation, soon disappears under new environment, and the miracle which America works upon the Bohemians is more remarkable than any other of our national achievements. The downcast look so characteristic of them in Prague is nearly gone, the surliness and unfriendliness disappear, and the young Bohemian of the second or third generation is as frank and open as his neighbour with his Anglo-Saxon heritage. I rather pride myself upon my power to detect racial and national marks of even closely related peoples, but in Chicago I was severely tested and failed. I have addressed many Bohemian audiences to which I could pay this compliment, that they looked and listened like Americans; but what thousands of years have plowed into a people cannot be altogether eradicated, and the Bohemian, with all of us, carries his burden of good and evil buried in his bones.
Of all our foreign population he is the most irreligious, fully two-thirds of the 100,000 in Chicago having left the Roman Catholic Church and drifted into the old-fashioned infidelity of Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll. Nowhere else have I heard their doctrines so boldly preached, or seen their conclusions so readily accepted, and I have it on the authority of Mr. Geringer, the editor of theSvornost, that there are in Chicago alone three hundred Bohemiansocieties which teach infidelity, carry on an active propaganda for their unbelief, and also maintain Sunday-schools in which the attendance ranges from thirty to three thousand. One of the most painful and pathetic sights is this attempt to crush God out of the child nature by means of an infidel catechism, the nature of whose teaching is shown by one of the first questions and its answer: “What duty do we owe to God? Inasmuch as there is no God, we owe Him no duty.” As it is always possible to exaggerate the strength of such a movement I called on the editor referred to above, one of the leaders, whose paper, in common with two others, pursues this tendency and daily preaches its destructive creed. Calling at the office of the Svornost, I found Mr. Geringer, a Bohemian of the second generation, frank and open in acknowledging his leadership and the tendency of his paper, although he was less extreme than the statements about him by priests and preachers had led me to suppose. He certainly was much more willing to talk about his people than were the priests upon whom I had called, and I found that his views have not been without change in the fifteen years since I last read his paper. “We are fighting Catholicism rather than religion,” he said; and I added, “A Catholicism in Austria, with its back towards the throne and its face towards the Austrian eagle;” to whichhe replied, “You have hit the nail on the head.”
In reality, this hatred extends unreasonably to all religion, and among the less educated it amounts to a fanaticism which does not stop short of persecution and personal abuse. Blasphemous expressions and old musty arguments against the Bible are the common topics of conversation among many Bohemian working-men, who hate the sight of a priest, never enter a church, and are thoroughly eaten through by infidelity. They read infidel books about which they argue during the working hour, and the influence of Robert Ingersoll is nowhere more felt than among them. His “Mistakes of Moses” had taken the place of the usual newspaper story, and the editorials are charged by hatred towards the Church and towards Christianity as a whole. The unusual number of suicides among the Bohemians is said to be due to the fact that their secret societies encourage suicide. The books published in Chicago are of a rather low type, and among them are many whose sole purpose it is to vilify the Church.
An unusually coarse materialism pervades that colony. Professor Massarik, of the University of Prague, and a recent visitor to this country, makes this the chief note of his complaint against them. They have singing and Turner societies after the manner of the Germans, but the idealsthey foster are really the causes of their materialism and infidelity. The Roman Catholic Church is fighting that spirit by maintaining strong parochial schools, encouraging the organization of lodges under its protection, and it now publishes a daily paper. The Protestants cannot boast of more than one per cent. of members among them, and the three small churches in Chicago are but vaguely felt and are practically no factors in the life of this large population. “We don’t know that they are here,” said one of the infidel leaders, and the Catholics take no notice of them at all. Some Protestant literature is scattered among them but it is not of the highest type, and is not calculated to reach those who need it most.
Chicago is as much a Bohemian centre for America as is Prague for the old Bohemia, and the type of thought found there is duplicated in all the Bohemian centres that I visited; everywhere there is a battle between free thought and Catholicism, and many a household is divided between theSvornostand theCatholic, yet I have good reason to believe that this infidelity is only a desire for a more liberal type of religion, only a strong reaction and not a permanent thing, and I found signs of weakening at every point. The little village of New Prague in southwestern Minnesota is a good example. It is the centre of a large Bohemian agriculturalcommunity, and has the reputation of being a “tough” town and quite a nest of infidelity. I found it a clean and prosperous place of 1,500 inhabitants, outwardly neater and better cared for than the ordinary Western village. It has a clean and wholesome-looking hotel, a little Protestant church and a big Catholic church, and the usual variety of stores. I was surprised to find the hotel without the customary bar, and to my question about it the hotel-keeper replied, “I have no use for bars; I ain’t no drinking man and I don’t want nobody else to drink.”
The editor of the New PragueTimeshad been pointed out to me as the chief infidel, yet I found him an interested reader ofThe Outlookand kindred literature, and a rather fine type of the liberal Christian. Indeed, while, of course, the ChicagoSvornostand its kind find a great many readers, I came to the conclusion that with the infidels were classed all those who refused to go to confession, or had helped to secure a fine edifice for the public school. From the banker, the physician, the druggist, and the photographer, I received additional proof that my conjecture was correct, and the only one who had little to say in praise of these people and much in blame was the village priest, a true type of the Austrian Catholic, who would rule with an iron hand if he could, and who misses the strong support of government. Typical of him was theanswer to my question as to his touch with the people in comparison with that of the Austrian priest at home. “You know in Austria the State pays us, and we don’t need to come in close touch with the people, but here it is different; here the people pay, and that alone brings us in closer touch.”
My impression of New Prague is that it is neither “tough” nor infidel; it is true that it has saloons and too many of them, that the Continental Sabbath is the type of its rest-day, but in outward decency and in the degree of intelligence among its professional and business men, it rivals any other town of its size with which I am acquainted. It is surrounded by Irish and American settlements, the first of which it surpasses in order and decency, and is not far from the other in enterprise and an unexpressed desire to establish the kingdom of God upon the earth.
Unfortunately the saloon holds an abnormally large place in the social life of the Bohemians, and beer works its havoc among them socially and politically. The lodges, of which there are legion, are above or beneath saloons, and all societies down to the building and loan associations are in close touch with them. It is the pride of Bohemian Chicago that two of its greatest breweries are in the hands of its countrymen, and brewers and saloon-keepers control much of the Bohemian vote. I asked one of thepoliticians whether that element was active in politics, and he replied, “Oh, yes; we have five aldermen and the city clerk.” The fact is that they have given Chicago a poor class of officials and have placed their worst infidels in the city council and on the school board. There is not a little avowed Anarchy among them, and a great deal more of Marxian Socialism, one of the daily papers advocating the latter political faith. Just as there is much dangerous half-knowledge on religious subjects, so there is on politics, and the worst and yet the most eloquent arguments I have heard on Socialism, have been by these agitators.
Though the Bohemian is very pugnacious, he is easily led, or rather easily influenced, and in times of political excitement I should say that he would need a great deal of watching. He is much more tenacious of his language and customs than the German, and I have found children of the third generation who spoke English like foreigners. An appeal to his history, to the achievements of his people, awakens in him a great deal of pride, which he easily implants into the hearts of his children. This does not make him a worse American, and in the Bohemian heart George Washington soon has his place by the side of John Huss, and ere long is “first” with these new countrymen.
The Bohemian is intelligent enough to knowwhat he escaped in Austria, and thus values his opportunities in America. Undoubtedly too often he confuses liberty with license, but in this he is not a sinner above others. His greatest sin is his materialism, and he stunts every part of his finer nature to own a house and to have a bank account. Children are robbed of their youth and of the opportunity to obtain a higher education by this hunger after money, and parental authority among the Bohemians has all the rigour of the Austrian absolutism which they have transplanted, but which they cannot maintain very long, for young Bohemia is quickly infected by young America, and a small-sized revolution is soon started in every household. It is then that the first generation thinks its bitterest thoughts about this country and its baleful influence upon the young. In fact, the second generation is rather profligate in “sowing its wild oats,” which are reaped in the police courts in the shape of fines for drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and assault and battery.
The Bohemian is among the best of our immigrants, and yet may easily be the worst, for when I have watched him in political riots in Prague and Pilsen, or during strikes in our own country I have found him easily inflamed, bitter and relentless in his hate, and destructive in his wild passion. He has lacked sane leaders in his own country, as he lacks well-balanced leaders in this.The settlement and missionary workers in Chicago find him rather hard material to deal with, for he is unapproachable, not easily handled, and repels them by his suspicious nature and outward unloveliness, although he is better than he seems, and not quite so good as he thinks himself to be, for humility is not one of his virtues. He develops best where he has the best example, and upon the farms of Minnesota and Nebraska he is second only to the German, whose close neighbour he is and with whom he lives in peace, strange as it may seem. The Bohemian is here to stay, and scarcely any of those who come will ever stand again upon St. Charles bridge, and watch their native Moldava as it winds itself along the ancient battlements of “Golden Prague,” as they love to call their capital. America is their home, “for better or for worse”; they love it passionately; and yet one who knows their history, every page of it aflame with war, need not wonder that they turn often to their past and dwell on it, lingering there with fond regret.
Some years ago, while I was in Prague, Antonin Dvorák, the composer, celebrated his sixtieth birthday, and the National Opera-house was the scene of a gala performance and a great demonstration in his honour. They gave his national dances in the form of a grand ballet, and to the notes of those wild and melancholy strains of the mazurka, the kolo, and the krakovyan, came allthe Slavic tribes in their picturesque garb, and all were greeted by thunderous applause as they planted their national banners. At last came a stranger from across the sea, and in his hand was a flag, the Stars and Stripes, while to greet him came Bohemia, with Bohemia’s colours waving in her hands; and these two received the greatest applause of that memorable evening.
These two are in the heart of this stranger. Faithful to the old, he will ever be loyal to the new. How to be loyal to this flag in times of peace; at the ballot-box, on the streets of Cleveland during a strike, as a citizen and alderman in Chicago, is the great lesson which he needs to learn, and we need to learn it with him. He will remain a Bohemian longest in the agricultural districts of Minnesota and Nebraska, where he holds tenaciously to the speech of his forefathers; but, in spite of that, I consider him a better American than his brother in the city. He needs to find here a Christianity which will satisfy his spiritual nature and which will become the law of his life, a religion which binds him and yet will make him truly free; and that we all need to find. Above all, he has to resist the temptation to make bread out of stone, to use all his powers to make a living and none of them to make a life; and that is a temptation which we must all learn to resist, for neither men nor nations can“live by bread alone.”