THEinitiated New Yorker knows half a dozen restaurants at the edge of the great Ghetto, where eating and drinking are a pleasure bought for a modest price, and where the fragrance of fine cigars mingles with that of better wine, and good fellowship reigns supreme. Some of these restaurants are splendidly furnished, and cater to the lucrative trade of those Americans who have had a taste of the social life of Southern Europe and who like to lapse into its mild sins every once in a while.
One of these places, now so fashionable that the real Hungarian rarely darkens its doors, where the popping of champagne corks is heard in the early morning hours, and where the oyster and lobster have almost entirely supplanted the native Gulyas,—is one of the pioneers among them, and in its early days served as a boarding house for the Hungarian Jews who, for one reason or another, had exiled themselves from the gay boulevards of Budapest. Here they tried to find consolation in food cooked Magyar fashion, and in playing for a few hours at “Clabrias,” their social game of cards, whichcould also occasionally degenerate into gambling. The keeper of the place whose Semitic name of Cohen had been changed into the Magyar, Koronyi, recovered the fortune which he had lost in the Old Country, but in spite of the fact that his bank account grew larger every day, he still kept the boarding house as he had always kept it, with his wife as the cook and himself as the waiter.
In stentorian voice he would call out: “Harom Lövös” (three soups) or “Harom Gulyas” (three Hungarian stews). Into the kitchen and out of it he would rush with full and empty plates, in evident enjoyment of his hard task.
The reputation of the place travelled as far as Broadway, and great was the day when rich clothing merchants came to eat his twenty-five cent dinner with evident relish; but still greater the day when their Gentile customers were brought thither to taste of the fleshpots of “Little Hungary.”
With increased speed he would run to the kitchen calling: “Harom Lövös,” returning with three plates of soup upon his outstretched arm, unburdened by a coat sleeve; and his bank account grew and his children also.
Two sons, boys still, helped the father call out the orders, until they came to a realization of the dignity of the business and the size of their father’s bank account. It was a sorry day for Simon Koronyi when bills of fare appeared uponhis tables. They were there only after a bitter struggle which cost him many a sleepless night. With the bills of fare came waitresses, leaving the old man no occupation but to stand silently, and receive the quarters which were heaped in great piles in the till, while he grew daily more silent and morose.
The sons had caught the enterprising spirit of this country; they bought a lot on a street a few blocks nearer Broadway and built a house with a suggestion of Hungary in its style. The dining-room was frescoed in Hungarian scenes, with mottoes in the Magyar tongue, and was soon transformed into a fashionable resort.
Simon Koronyi, the founder of “Little Hungary,” moved into the house reluctantly. Stormy scenes followed the introduction of American dishes into the bill of fare, and when as a last straw a cash register appeared on the counter, the old man’s heart almost broke. Hesitatingly, his gentle old fingers moved over the keys of the machine, but he was pushed rudely aside by the hurrying hand of his younger son. Thus dishonoured in the sight of his guests, Simon Koronyi, tottering like a drunken man, went to his apartments up-stairs, and there remained until the “Chevra Kedisha,” the Jewish Funeral Society, carried him to his last resting place.
A few blocks north of these fashionable“Little Hungarys,” the real Hungary begins, and hither come the “Magyars” as the ruling race in Hungary is called. If you call them Slavs they will reject it as an insult.
The Magyar has not the slightest relation to the Slavs, unless it be that of ruling a portion of them with a rather iron hand, and hating all of them proportionately. The Magyar’s closest relation is to the Finns on the north and to the Turks in the east of Europe, and he is classed anthropologically as a Ugro-Finn. In his development he has leaned closely to the west, having a Germanic culture while still retaining a somewhat untamed Asiatic nature, which manifests itself in nothing worse than a love of fast horses, fiery wine, and the wild music with which the gypsy bewitches him, and draws the loose change out of the pockets of his tight-fitting trousers.
In that strange conglomerate of races and nationalities called the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Magyar has gained a dominant influence, and although numerically among the smallest, he has gained for himself the greatest privileges, and practically dictates the policy of the Empire. Upon those rich plains by the Danube and the Theis, he has been a plowman who enjoyed the fruits of his toil as long as the marauding Turk would let him, furnishing wheat and corn for the rest of Europe, and gaining nota little wealth since his arch-enemy has been driven back into peace. What he has made of his country in the last forty years of internal and external peace, how he has created for himself a capital which surpasses Vienna, and built factories and railroads unrivalled anywhere, forms a glorious page in the history of Europe.
From this comparatively wealthy country; from its freedom, its broad prairies and its picturesque village life, there have come to America one hundred thousand men and women who are hard to wean from this Magyar land, but who, like all others, finally lose themselves in the national life, bringing into it fewer vices and more virtues than we ever connect with the Hungarian as he is superficially known among us. In Little Hungary rosy-cheeked maidens with bare arms akimbo, stand in many a doorway while their swains court them on the street as they were in the habit of doing at home. Nearly every second house advertises “Sor-Bor” or “Palenka” for sale—the wine, beer, and whiskey to which the Magyar is devoted; everywhere one hears the sound of the cymbal, that unpromising instrument which looks more like a kitchen utensil than anything else, but out of which the gypsy hammers sweet music. Little Hungary has but a small domain in New York; it ends abruptly with more restaurants in which gulyas, the favourite stew of the Magyar, luresthe appetite; close by is Little Bohemia, and finally the big Germany which overshadows every other nationality.
The Hungary of New York, however, is only a stopping place,—is more Jewish than Magyar, and consequently does not promise a good field for observation. In Cleveland some twenty thousand Magyars live together round about those giant steel mills which send their black smoke like a pall over that much alive but very dirty city. Although street after street is occupied solely by them, I have not seen a house that shows neglect, and the battle with Cleveland dirt is waged fiercely here, judging by the clean doorsteps, window-panes, and white curtains which I saw at nearly every house. A large Catholic church, with its parochial school dedicated to St. Elizabeth, the Hungarian queen, shows that the Magyar does not neglect his religion. There are also a Greek Catholic church and a flourishing Protestant congregation. A weekly newspaper keeps the Hungarians in touch with one another and with the homeland, although it does not represent the Magyar spirit either by its contents or through the personality of its editor, who has no influence among his countrymen. I looked in vain for a Hungarian political “boss,” for no party can claim these people exclusively. Social Democracy has made great gains among them, whichis due in no small measure to the fact that they come from a comparatively wealthy country, from conditions which are not unbearable, and from something of ease and comfort; and so, finding the work in the iron-mills hard and grinding, they soon grow dissatisfied, which means—Social Democracy. A sort of pessimistic philosophy is developed, and the happy Hungarians grow melancholy, dejected, and homesick. They cling with rare tenacity to the fatherland, in which they have a just pride, and whenever the opportunity offers itself they show how much they love it. The erection of a monument to Louis Kossuth by men and women of the labouring classes, the enthusiasm with which it was dedicated, the festivities which recalled by speech, song, and dress the greatness of the man whose memory they honoured, speak much for their idealistic and loyal love of country.
Of all foreigners the Hungarians are among the most tolerant towards the Jews, who live in large numbers in Hungary, while Hungarian Jews in Cleveland love to be known as Magyars and are treated as such by their fellow countrymen. The Magyar’s good nature is also shown by his treatment of the gypsies, who have followed him in large numbers to America, and are really a sort of parasite, being supported by the easy-going and pleasure-loving Magyars, who dance the czardas to the fiery notes of fiddlesand cymbals whose owners finally possess the largest portion of their patron’s wages.
The Hungarian gypsy boy, who is supposed to choose between the violin and the penny, must in most cases take the two, for in Hungary as in America he is both musician and thief with equal adeptness. One gypsy in Cleveland keeps a saloon which is a combination of the Hungarian “czarda” (inn) and its American namesake, the saloon, and it combines the evils of both institutions. The regular bar is supplemented by rickety chairs and tables and a clear space for the dancing floor, without which the Hungarian czarda does not exist. On Saturday night, the soot of the week washed away, the Hungarian is found here in all his native glory. His moustache, twisted to the fineness of a needle-point, is his most prominent national characteristic, unless it be his small, shining eyes which barely escape looking out into the world from Mongolian openings. A small head and prominent cheek-bones are also characteristic, while the colour of the hair is dark brown and black, the blond being almost unknown. He differentiates himself from his neighbour the Slav by his agility of both temper and limbs, and to see him dance a czardas, to hear him sing it and the gypsy play it, is as good as seeing that other acrobatic performance, a circus. When the gypsy inn-keeperknows that his guests have pay-day money in their pockets, he has ready a band of gypsies, who look shabby enough, and very unpromising from an artistic standpoint; the leader, who plays the first violin, tunes it with remarkable care and tenderness, the second violin scrapes a few hoarse notes after him, the bass-viol comes in grudgingly, and the cymbal-player exercises his fingers by beating cotton-wrapped sticks over the strings of his strange instrument. One patriotic youth, who has had just enough liquid fire poured into him, now lifts his voice and sings a song of the puszta (the Hungarian prairie), of the horses and cattle which graze upon it, and of the buxom maiden who draws water from the village well. Slowly, pathetically, almost painfully melancholy, the notes ring out as if the singer were bewailing some great loss, the musicians follow upon their instruments as sorrowful mourners follow a hearse; but all at once the measure becomes brisk and the notes jubilant, the singer and the musicians are caught as by a fever, faster and faster the bows fly over the strings, the cymbal is beaten furiously, and the bass-viol seems in a roaring rage.
HO FOR THE PRAIRIE! From Roumania to the sheep farms of the west is a long journey. Those who make it, form a most useful element in the development of the country.HO FOR THE PRAIRIE!From Roumania to the sheep farms of the west is a long journey. Those who make it, form a most useful element in the development of the country.
Sunday morning finds the dancers sobered and reverent on the way to church, most of them going to the Roman Catholic church, in which a zealous priest blesses, but is not blessed by them. Seldom have I found among foreignerssuch frank criticism of the priest and yet such loyalty to the Church. The Hungarian Catholic is not narrow; he is much more liberal than the Slav or the German Austrian, and a bigoted priest may hold him to the Church but will not win him to himself. It is always hard to judge of a priest or preacher from the reports of disgruntled members of his flock, but the Catholics seldom speak ill of their shepherd unless there is much hard truth to tell. The following, which I heard from trustworthy sources, is characteristic. At a meeting of one of the lodges the motion was made to have a mass said on a certain memorial day; the priest arose to second the motion, and said, “We have two kinds of mass, the five-dollar and the ten-dollar one, and I would not advise you to have the cheap one.” True or untrue, the fact remains that this priest has built a fine church and a magnificent parochial school. He is a good financier, and I doubt not that he is such for the glory of his Church and not for his own enrichment; I can testify to the fact that he has done much good, that he has quieted much turbulence, that he is not a friend of strong drink, and that he is a narrow but exceedingly careful shepherd of his flock.
The Greek Catholic priest in Cleveland was driven from the church by his independent parishioners, who found him not only a good financier,but a bad man, a “peddler in holy goods,” as they called him, who was ready to dispense his blessing to man and beast for money, large or small, or for a drink more often large than small. The Protestant church is shepherded by a young man from the Oberlin Theological Seminary, who is in touch with the American life and its interpretation of the Christian Church and ministry.
The Protestant Hungarian is, as a rule, better educated, morally on a higher level, and in America more quickly assimilated, than his Catholic brother. In Hungary this has well-defined causes. First, splendidly equipped Protestant ministers, not a few of them graduates of English and Scotch universities and imbued by the Puritan spirit of those countries. Second, a Protestant theology of the Calvinistic type, which, harsh and hard as it is, makes everywhere strong men and women, and which in Hungary distinguishes the Calvinistic communities from the Catholic by a severer philosophy of life and a much more moral conduct. The third cause may in the eyes of some persons be the most real one. Wherever a religious community is in the minority and is or has been severely persecuted, it becomes thrifty and highly moral. Whatever the reason, the fact exists and is a pleasant one to chronicle.
Not so pleasant is the problem that, in commonwith all foreigners, the Magyar presents. Neither church, priest, nor preacher holds authority over him very long after he reaches these shores. He rebels against, loses interest in his church, and finally ceases to support it; neglect not seldom ends in hate, and a rude atheism is a common disease among these people. Besides this, it is not easy to find enough and suitable priests and preachers for these foreigners, as slight differences in language call for different pastors, and in Cleveland alone the Church could use advantageously men of twenty nationalities of whose existence the average man has scarcely any idea. The imported pastor is almost always in discord with his congregation, which is generally in accord with the freer American spirit and cannot be treated as he treated his parish in Hungary or Poland. Many, perhaps most, of the pastors who are educated abroad have no sympathy with the democratic spirit of our country, and they frequently complain of its effect upon their authority. I met one such priest on his way back to Europe. He was leaving his work because, as he said, “I could find nobody in my parish to black my boots, for everybody considered himself as good as I am. In the old country my people would stop on the street and kiss my hand, but here the children say, ‘Hello, Father,’ and go on their way.” The ministers trained in Americaare few, and these are yet young and inexperienced.
The English Protestant churches are not seriously concerned about this growing problem, the solution of which does not consist only in building missions and paying money into the treasury, but also in presenting to these foreigners a living, acting, and blessing Christ, who, when uplifted, draws all men unto Him.
It is good to be able to say of people who come to a strange country, as of the Hungarian, that they maintain their integrity. He is, as a rule, honest, easily imposed upon, somewhat quarrelsome, addicted to drink, not so industrious as the Slav but much more intelligent, comprehending more easily and assimilating more quickly. He is not a problem but a lesson. Crossing the ocean in December on the Red Star Line steamerVaterland, I found among the mixture of steerage passengers over two hundred Magyars, or, as we more exactly call them, Hungarians. I was eager to know what they were carrying home to their native country after years of living with us, and I found that many of them seemed completely untouched by the American life. Their language, spoken by but a few people in Europe, is almost unknown in America, and the man without a language is almost always “the man without a country.” If anything, these poor creatures seemed worse than whenthey came, for many of them had failed and were broken in spirit. Some whose tongues had become loosened were aware of the larger life, and were full of the praises of America. They were going back to look again upon the village in which they were born, in which they made whistles from the hanging willows by the creek, where they chased the pigs into the mud-puddles, where they lived their small and simple life, and to which they were now returning as travelled men. They had crossed the ocean, seen miles of earth, had struggled with wind and weather, felt freedom’s breezes blow, and had grown mightily. Brain, heart, and soul had developed, or perhaps only changed, but even change is experience, if not always life and growth. It was good to talk to these men who had “arrived,” who saw things as we see them and felt them as we feel them, and who carried American flags in their pockets to show to their friends and who gloried in their American citizenship. “I love the old country,” said one of them, “but I love America more. Stay in Hungary? Oh, no! I do not even want to die there, but if I do, I want them to wrap me in this shroud,” and he pulled out of his pocket the Stars and Stripes.
SOMBREas is the Slavic world, from which both Jew and Slav emigrate, so bright and joyous is all Italy the home of most of the Latins who come to us.
Nowhere in Europe does the sky seem so blue, the stars so brilliant in their setting, or the colour of earth and sea so entrancing. Approach it as you will it fills you and thrills you with pleasure unspeakable, and to eyes accustomed to the sober plains of Russia and the dull colourlessness of her villages, it seems as unreal as a dream or the stage setting of grand opera.
Venice, Genoa, Naples, Milan, Florence, Rome; these names conjure more in one’s vision than the pen can record. But one could mention a hundred little spots to us nameless, towns with their own beauty, with their own art treasures and their own large influences upon the history of mankind. All Italy has mountains and plains, the North and the South, vast natural contrasts; yet there is everywhere the one inexplicable charm which makes the name of the country synonymous with beauty and art.
Yet while Italy is one the Italian is not. Agreat gulf still divides the people of different provinces and districts, and old political divisions still survive, leaving their marks upon the speech, and the character of the individual. All the older and newer invasions have left their traces, and wherever an alien army has come, it has plowed its way with the sword into the life of these impressionable people.
Where the Slav has touched the Italian, you see his heavy finger marks in a rougher exterior, a slower gait, a harsher speech, more industry and less art. Where the Austro-Germans have enthralled and governed him you will find him more governable, more sedate, more a statesman and less a revolutionist, “a captain of industry” rather than a leader of brigands, more a business man and less a dreamer. Where the French crossed the mountains they made a gateway for their tastes and habits, which blended quickly and easily into the Italian character, for the Italians were never very unlike the French who were their friends and enemies in turn, and often both at the same time. Where the Arabians and the Greek touched the South with thought and thoughtfulness, with culture and vices, with rest and restlessness, these contrasts are accentuated in the Italian, who, although small in stature, is great in passions and desires.
Yet frugality and industry have been forced upon him by the climate and by economic conditions.The rest of Europe long ago became conscious of this fact. When railroads just began to be built the Italian blasted his way through the mountains, and I am sure there is not a tunnel which he did not help to dig, and perhaps not a great stone bridge whose foundations he did not lay. Until comparatively recently the Italian seemed indispensable in all such undertakings and in a greater portion of Europe his camp could be seen wherever the railroad was making a new path for civilization.
Never given to alcoholic excess like the Slav, more inventive than his duller competitor, easily adjusted to any task or condition; he would lie uncomplainingly in a ditch were the weather hot or cold, wet or dry, and for a comparatively small wage do a day’s full work, which the natives of these countries seemed unable to do.
The pioneer of Italian migrations was his lazier brother, who, with a trained monkey and a hand-organ out of tune, made his way from place to place; he also came first across the Atlantic and caused many of us to believe that he was the typical Italian.
The tourist who is besieged by the beggars in Naples, and who sees the lazy Lazzaroni stretched out upon the ground with his face turned towards the baking sun, sees the exceptional Italian, although this exception seems to be numerous.
As a rule the Italian asks for but little in life. He lives on olives and macaroni, cornmeal mush or Polenta, as it is called, and is content. He rarely drinks to excess, his wine being often watered to such a degree that it can no more be called an alcoholic beverage. His home need not be either beautiful or commodious when all out of doors is his, when God has set ornaments into the heavens and calls out of the earth such beauties as no mortal can reproduce. The very rags which cover his body become picturesque as the sunlight plays upon them with its wonderful colouring.
Satisfied as is the Italian at home by his condition, he is equally unsatisfied with any restraint by authority; lawlessness has cut so deep into his life, that it may be said to be a natural characteristic. The root of it lies in the fact that for centuries the lawmakers were aliens and conquerors, the laws being made for the strong and not for the weak; to oppress and not to protect.
Brigandage and heroism often became synonymous, while murder and theft were easily excused upon the grounds of expediency. Much of this spirit has remained in all classes of society, especially in the south, and the population is so used to it, that the criminal is more often pitied than condemned, while the people would rather put a halo around the heads of assassins and murderers, than a rope about their necks. Modernpsychology, under the leadership of the Italian physician Lombroso, has encouraged this leniency towards criminals and the Italian when he can find no other excuse for a crime lays it to hereditary influences, which make the criminal still more an unfortunate man. Rarely does he call a prison by its right name; it is the “place for unfortunates.” The criminal is regarded as an unfortunate one, and heinous indeed must be the crime which is looked upon as more than a misfortune.
The various secret societies in Italy which once had political bearing, have become largely a menace to organized society, and a school for the worst kind of crimes. The consequence is that many of the criminals who come to our shores are Italians who are trying to escape punishment or who are entangled in the meshes of the Maffia or Camorra, and the officials are very glad to have their room rather than their company. Evidences are not lacking that their way out is made easy, even if it cannot be proved that the government aids them to come.
It does not follow that the Italian is dishonest; he compares well with the average European who comes to us, but in his ethics he is decidedly mixed, and his poetical temper does not always help him to tell the exact truth. His exceeding great politeness prevents him from saying no when he means it, and often when one feels himselfaggrieved by what seems a deception, it is only an overplus of good manners. He is extremely amorous in his wooing, jealous when he has attained his end, and fights for his love to the death. He is generous, if not chivalrous to his wife, and with proper training in America he may become a docile husband. Even now he is one of the few European fathers who may push a baby carriage through the streets without losing caste by it. Travelling through Italy I have come upon many a husband who took complete charge of the baby during the journey, while his wife looked out of the window and enjoyed the leisure. The ties which bind him to his wife are rather easily broken, due to the fact that many marriages are contracted early, so that the wife passes from youth to age quickly, and great family cares are apt to make him feel that he would better move on.
Socialism tinged by anarchy has deeply eaten into the life of the common people and is regarded by most Italians as an important factor in the control of the government, in which corruption and graft are nearly as common as in Russia. While better conditions are in sight they have not yet come, and taxation is as heavy as it is unjustly raised and distributed.
Eighty-four per cent of all the taxes raised are expended upon the national debt, the administration and defense; while all the rest of the nationalneeds must be met by only seventeen per cent. But 2.79 per cent. of that sum is used for education, the consequence being that fifty per cent. of the population of Italy are illiterate, that the public schools, both government and church schools, are poor, and that the high schools and universities are suffering from the lack of proper equipment and are not able to keep pace with modern advancement in education. Compulsory education is a law never enforced, and yet suffrage depends upon the ability to read and write; therefore over 6,000,000 voters are robbed of their right to vote. The king is loved for the simplicity of his life, the honesty of his purposes, and for his adaptability to modern thought and conditions. But this cannot be said of most of his ministers and state officials. The accepted name for an official used to be and in a measure still is “Goberno Ladro,” which means government thief.
The Italian is a good business man and a good organizer, having a talent for the dollar which to-day makes him a new business force in Europe, and one to be reckoned with; especially if he improves his business morals, which are very poor.
In spite of the fact that Italy is the centre of the most dogmatic Christian Church, the Italian is tolerant towards those of other faith or race, even while being superstitious to a degree. He loves the pomp and splendour of the Church but has notbeen deeply touched by her ethical features, and is in a measure, as much pagan as when his forefathers worshipped local deities; although now he calls them patron saints.
One might justly accuse the Catholic clergy of not having risen to their responsibility, of having increased the enmity rather than the love of a large portion of the population, of having played politics on the off side and of having had no social vision. But a charge like this though true, has back of it certain facts which would, perchance, show us the Roman priests in a better light. There are priests and priests, bishops and bishops, even as there are popes and popes. If the clergy of Italy was made after the pattern of the present Pope, if it had his spirit, his devotion and his piety, the Italian might still become a Christian who would prove the power of his faith and who would be thoroughly genuine and tolerant; not a dogmatist, a thorough optimist, a man of great faith, and consequently not a good politician.
We know enough of Pope Pius X to wish for Italy and for America also that he might become the model for all Roman Catholics; then indeed the immigrant would be to us no problem but a blessing. Yet one cannot judge the hierarchy by the Pope, and there are in Italy not a few discerning men who distrust the Church the more, in the measure in which it has a good Pope behind whom to hide its evil designs.
Yet who that has looked into the face of Pope Pius X will ever forget its strong, yet sweet manliness? He must indeed have no religious sensibilities who does not realize when in his presence that he is face to face with a man of God. Shortly after his elevation to his office he stood before a congregation of some ten thousand people who filled the court of St. Damassia. His face shone from the pleasure of loving those who stood before him, and they could not help loving him. He began to speak, and gradually a deep-felt silence crept over the vast assemblage. “I am so glad,” he said, “my dearly beloved friends, to see so many of you here, and I thank you all from the depths of my heart. They tell me that society is corrupt, full of weakness and disease, a sickly dying body, but I,” he said, and his voice was filled by the strength of his faith, “do not believe it.” He then told the simple story of the child which Jesus raised from the dead; he told it as simply as it was written, as a disciple of Jesus who was an eye-witness might have told it to the humble folk of Judea. He told how Jesus with His companions came, how He looked upon the girl, and as He laid His hands upon her head said, “The child is not dead; it is not true.”
With his face bathed in a flame of holy passion the great pope and preacher said to the breathless multitude: “Non e vero”—it is nottrue; “Non lo credo”—I do not believe it; “and if we all cling to one another I believe that humanity still has vitality, and that it will come to full life and health, as long ago did the little child in Palestine.”
As I look upon the Italian at home with his many social diseases which have so deeply eaten into his life that one might judge him incurable—I nevertheless say: “Non e vero, Non lo credo.” It is not true, I do not believe it. True, my faith in his healing does not rest with the Pope, in spite of his native piety and his sterling character. The Italian is sick and sore because the Church which has so long been his physician, acknowledges no error, and even its humble Pope will not persuade it that it must radically change its treatment; this not only for the sake of Italy but for the sake of America also. The most dangerous element which can come to us from any country, is that which comes smarting under real or fancied wrongs, committed by those who should have been its helpers and healers. Such an element Italy furnishes in a remarkably great degree, and I have no hesitation in saying that it is our most dangerous element.
ITis hard to determine how long it is since the first Savoyard came to our country with his trained bears, making them dance to the squeaky notes of his reed instrument, as he wandered from town to town. He and the man with the monkey and organ were of the same adventurous stock, and they were the vanguard of a vast army of men who were to come; first with a push-cart, later with shovel and pickax. Not to destroy, but to build up and to help in the great conquest of nature’s resources, so abundantly bestowed upon this continent.
While the average Italian immigrant is not regarded by any of us as a public benefactor, it is a question just how far we could have stretched our railways and ditches without him; for he now furnishes the largest percentage of the kind of labour which we call unskilled, and he is found wherever a shovel of earth needs to be turned, or a bed of rock is to be blasted. Hundreds of thousands come each year and each one of them fits into the work awaiting him, moving on to a new task when the old one is finished. The kind of work which they do calls for unattached, migratinglabour, and eighty per cent. of those who come have no marriage ties to hinder their movements. When the winter comes and out of door work grows slack, or when the labour market is depressed, these unattached forces return to Italy and bask in its sunshine until conditions for labour on this side of the sea grow brighter. Their quarters, which are as near as possible to their work, are easily recognized; not because they are more slovenly than their neighbours, but because there is such a “helter skelter, I don’t care” sort of atmosphere about their squalor. This comes from the fact that they regard their quarters as purely temporary, and treat them as one might a camping-ground, which to-morrow is to be abandoned for a better site.
Like all foreigners, they prefer to be among their own; not so much from a feeling of clannishness, although that is not absent; but because among their own, they are safe from that ridicule which borders on cruelty, and with which the average American treats nearly every stranger not of his complexion or speech.
In passing through Connecticut, where nearly each large town has its Italian colony, I found one lonely Italian asking the conductor whether this was the train for New York. “Which way want you go?” (Usually the American thinks that the foreigner can understand poor English.)All the Italian knew, he repeated: “New York—New York.” The conductor left the puzzled man standing on the platform and the train moved on. I remained with the Italian and saw him three times treated similarly, if not worse, and I concluded that it is not very safe for the Italian to distribute himself too thinly over this continent.
The Italian usually moves into quarters formerly occupied by the Irish or Jews, whose demands have risen with their better earnings, and who have left the congested districts for the uptown or the suburbs. At present it is no doubt true that the Italian is satisfied by these quarters, and that what nobody wants, he is ready to take. So it is that he comes to the edges of the great Ghetto in New York, to Bleecker Street and beyond, and that his trail leads almost into the heart of it. Jewish and Italian push-cart peddlers stand side by side, the Italian barber shop seeks Semitic customers, the smells from the “Genoese Restaurant” blend with those from the “Kosher Kitchen,” and the air is disturbed by the perfumes of garlic and paprika, a combination not half so bad as it smells.
In Chicago, “Little Italy” hovered around a large district condemned to the sheltering of vice, and when good business sense dictated that it be moved to some less conspicuous portion of the town, it was immediately invaded by Italians.Scarcely a day had passed, yet the change made was as complete as it was revolutionary. Large plate windows were broken and pillows were stuck into the aperture to keep out the lake breeze; the broad stairways which had led to destruction were slippery now, but not so dangerous as before; the large parlours were divided and subdivided, while the gay paper was torn from the walls; it looked as though conquerors had come who were bent upon destruction. A happy change was manifest in the streets, for it was full of children, and the innocent face of a child had not been seen in those streets for years.
Housing conditions among the Italians are as bad as can be imagined and the most crowded quarters in our cities are those inhabited by them. Four hundred and ninety-two families in one block is the record, and it is held by New York, on Prince Street, between Mott and Elizabeth Streets; while Philadelphia can boast of having the most unwholesome tenements, where air is a luxury and daylight unknown. In that city thirty families numbering 123 persons, were living in thirty-four rooms.
Of course the landlord who builds these shacks and the community which tolerates them, are equally to blame. Both commit a crime against society, but a good share of the blame must fall upon the Italian himself for being satisfied with such surroundings. He is of course anxious tosave money, and a decent dwelling in our large cities is a luxury; so he who at home used the heavens for the roof of his tenement, and the long street for his parlour, is naturally content with but a small shelter for the night.
Considering the conditions under which the Italians live, their quarters are not nearly so bad as one might expect, and when a period of prosperity has come upon the community, when it can look back upon a year or two of consecutive work, they show in common with other foreign quarters, decided improvement.
Rather characteristic is the tenement district of Hartford, Conn., which has gone through all the stages of such districts in other cities, is no better than they, and in many respects worse. There are buildings occupied which would be condemned elsewhere as unfit for human habitation. There are whole blocks which look damp, dingy and dirty; ancient structures, with filth oozing from every pore.
Jews and Italians are the chief inhabitants of this district, although one comes across a stranded American family here and there, the dregs of New England, the most hopeless people in this new city of ancient tenements. The two nationalities live rather close together, and it is a mixture of Russian and Italian dirt, the Italian article being much the cleaner.
Walk through the streets with me and youwill readily forget that you are in America. Here Pietro, the shoemaker, on his three-legged stool, mends boots out on the streets; while Lorenzo shaves his customer upon the pavement in front of his shop. Gossiping groups of swarthy neighbours sit together upon the threshhold of their homes, and Bianca, Lorenzo’s wife, is complaining in a loud voice that Pietro, the shoemaker, has called her a hussy. “And he a low-down Sicilian, a good for nothing, has called me, the barber’s wife, a hussy.” She is rousing the ire of her neighbours, and woe to Pietro, for Lorenzo’s wife has a temper.
They do look so unchanged as yet, nearly all of them—so genuinely homely, as if they had landed but yesterday; and they have not yet gone through the transforming process, except as Francesco, the chief of the hurdy-gurdy grinders, has changed one or two tunes of hisrepertoire; for he appeases the New England conscience by playing “Nearer, My God to Thee,” with variations, “Rock of Ages,” closely followed by “Tammany,” and airs from Cavaliero Rusticana.
If the Italian in Hartford were less handicapped by the wretched conditions of his dwelling, he would more easily be able to utilize the splendid advantages of that city. As it is, he rises very slowly but perceptibly; although he lives in the worst possible houses, he is growing more and more cleanly; he is gaining in self-respect andwhen he has had the opportunity and the experience of the Irish people, he will probably not only duplicate their splendid record in New England and elsewhere, but excel it. Slowly but surely he is rising from a tenement dweller to a tenement owner and soon he “will do others as he was done,” and charge exorbitant rent for uninhabitable quarters.
The Italian is regarded as a good asset in the real estate business, for he can be crowded more than any other human being. He is fairly prompt with his rent and he does not make heavy demands in the way of improvements. This he himself appreciates, for he has business sense, and buys real estate as soon as he can invest his small earnings. Usually he acquires a small house with a large mortgage. He moves into the house at once, proceeds to draw revenue from every available corner, and in a few years lifts the mortgage and is on his way to buy more real estate.
The value of the business is proved by the fact that in the Italian quarters in New York 800 Italians are owners of houses, a large proportion of course being tenements of the worst character, which nevertheless, represent the respectable value of $15,000,000. A like large sum lies in the savings banks of that city, deposited by Italian immigrants; while the total value of all the property owned by them in the city of NewYork alone, is not far from $70,000,000. These figures, I must confess, do not impress me, for the sufferings endured and meted out for the sake of these earnings are terrible, and in the “tit for tat” of our economic order the Italian gives as good as he gets. The narrow quarters he rents are invariably sublet, and he imposes upon the newcomer conditions as hard as, or harder than, those under which he began life in the land of the free. The hardest conditions are those he imposes upon his wife and children; yet he is not a cruel husband or father, and shares their hard labour, often making the children part owners of what they earn. Of course the western and southern cities where the Italians have settled make a better showing, for they are not the men who came but yesterday; they have had a larger opportunity and have made full use of it. Italian clubs, opera houses, and Chambers of Commerce, are being organized in the western and southern cities; and one can judge of the quality of our Italian immigrant best, where the struggle for life is not too keen, the surroundings not so terribly depressing, and where the American spirit has had a chance to be grafted upon the Latin stock. More and more he is leaving the city and in the Southwest especially, colonies of Italians are springing up and are conducted with such eminent success, that with some encouragement, the Italian may be made helpful inreclaiming our arid deserts, even as he is now making the rocky hill farms of Connecticut and Massachusetts to “blossom as the rose.”
Among these settlements, that at Bryan, Texas, is the most notable. It is composed of what we usually call the least desirable Italian element, the Sicilian. Nearly twenty-five hundred people have settled there as renters, although not a few of them are owners of the land they work. Some eighteen miles separate the various families, all of whom come from near Palermo, and have lived together in reasonable harmony, making rapid financial progress. They are as peaceful a community as is found in so turbulent a state as Texas. In Utah and California the progress made is still more marked; and proves that the Italian like the rest of us needs only a fair chance.
I have had good opportunity also to observe him in his migratory state, attached to a construction crew on the railroad, and tenting by a cut in the rock, or by the western fields.
Usually the farmer fears his coming. The word “Dago” has in it an element of dread; it carries the sound of the dagger, and the dynamite bomb. The far away villager who sees the camp approaching fears its proximity. I have watched the Italians coming and going and although there was a heated brawl at times, they quarrelled among themselves, disturbed nobody, left the hen coops of the farmers untouched, didnot burn down the village, and paid decently for their food. When they went away a fairly good source of revenue had disappeared and with it a good share of unreasoning prejudice.
THE BOSS Where a shovel of earth is to be turned, or a bed of rock is to be blasted, there the Italian, unattached, migratory, contributes his share to the public welfare.THE BOSSWhere a shovel of earth is to be turned, or a bed of rock is to be blasted, there the Italian, unattached, migratory, contributes his share to the public welfare.
As competitors in certain fields of activity they are justly feared by those who have regarded those fields as their own peculiar province; and they are pushing the Russian Jew very hard in his monopoly of the manufacture of clothing. The nimble fingers of the Italian woman, her lesser demands upon life, and the ease with which she carries the burdens of wifehood and motherhood, have enabled her to outdistance the workers of the Ghetto, although the strife is still on and the issue not decided. Yet I believe that the future clothing worker in America will be the Italian and not the Jew; for the Jew loves life and its good things, and moreover he has educational ambitions for his children, which the Italian does not yet feel, he being a sinner above all others in the use of his children’s labour. The Chicago truant officers have had the privilege of arresting nearly all the parents of one “Little Italy” at least once; for almost every child of school age was kept at home and “sweated” for all the strength it possessed.
The Italian is very fertile in inventing excuses for the purpose of evading the law, and his ethical standard in that direction is still extremely low. This comes from his inherited hatred of allgovernmental restrictions; he still thinks that the state seeks only its own good and his hurt, in its insistence upon the education of his children. Substantially this is the Italian’s attitude towards law in general; and to that in a large measure is due the fact that he rates relatively high in the statistics of crime.
I have thus far refrained from using statistics, largely because they may be juggled with, as has been done very successfully; just as zealots juggle with Bible texts to prove their contentions. I have done something besides gathering figures, and that something may be of importance. I have visited nearly all the penitentiaries in the eastern and western States; not to ask how many foreigners there are in jail, but to ask why and how they were convicted, what their present behaviour is; to look the men and women squarely in the face and to converse with them. Let me say here again, emphatically, that statistics are misleading and that in spite of the large number of Italians in prison, there are by farfewercriminals among them than the statisticsindicate. In a large number of cases, the crimes for which the Italian suffers, have grown out of local usage in his old home. None the less are they justly punished here, lest they be permitted to perpetuate themselves in the new home.
Most of the Italians in prison have used the stiletto and the pistol too freely, just as theyused them at home when jealousy made them mad, or when they were in pursuit of vengeance for real or fancied wrongs. There are not a few real criminals who have used the weapon for gain, but in the majority of cases the stabbing or shooting was an affair of honour with those concerned, and even the aggrieved parties preferred to suffer in silence and die, bequeathing their grudge to the next generation, rather than bring the affair before a sordid court. Testimony in such cases is very hard to get, and I have seen many a wounded Italian bite his lips, inwardly groaning, and suffering in silence, unwilling to let strange ears hear the proud secret of which he was the keeper and the victim.
Italian burglars have not reached proficiency enough to have a place in the “Hall of Infamy,” and bank robbers and “hold-up” men need not yet fear serious competition from that source. The prisons contain many Italians who transgressed out of ignorance as well as from passion; numbers suffer because they do not know the language of the court, and did not have enough coin of the realm.
The worst thing about the Italians is that they have no sense of shame or remorse. I have not yet found one of them who was sorry for anything except that he had been caught; and in his own eyes and in the eyes of his friends, he is “unfortunate” when he is in prison and“lucky” when he comes out. “He no bad” his neighbour says: “He good, he just caught,” and when he comes out, he is received like a hero.
This is the severest indictment that can be brought against the Italian, and it is severe enough; but it comes largely from his attitude towards the State and from the nature of the crime. Lillian Betts, who knows her foreigners critically and sympathetically, says:“In New York, the streets the Italians live in are the most neglected, the able head of this department claiming that cleanliness is impossible where the Italian lives. The truth is that preparation for cleanliness in our foreign colonies is wholly inadequate. The police despise the Italian except for his voting power. He feels the contempt but with the wisdom of his race he keeps his crimes foreign, and defies this department more successfully than the public generally knows. He is a peaceable citizen in spite of the peculiar race crimes which startle the public. The criminals are as one to a thousand of these people. On Sundays watch these colonies. The streets are literally crowded from house line to house line, as far as the eye can see, but not a policeman in sight, nor occasion for one. Laughter, song, discussion, exchange of epithet, but no disturbance. They mind their own business as no other nation, and carry it to the point of crime when they protect their own criminal. Like every other human being in God’s beautiful world, they have the vices of their virtues. It is for us to learn the last to prevent the first.”
In spite of the fact that Italy seems to be the land of beggars, the Italian immigrant is rarely a medicant and (according to Jacob Riis), among the street beggars of New York, the Irish lead with fifteen per cent., the native Americans follow with twelve, the Germans with eight, while the Italian shows but two per cent. In the almshouses of New York the Italian occupies the enviable position of having the smallest representation, with Ireland having 1,617 persons and Italy but nineteen; while the figures for the United States are equally favourable.
Considering the congested conditions of the tenements, the Italian retains much of his inherited vigour, but consumption which plays havoc with him in this uncongenial climate is aggravated by his mode of living that is so entirely changed. Especially do the women and children suffer, for they are suddenly transferred from a complete out-of-door life to the prison-like walls of the tenements.
In Chicago I visited a family in which I had become interested through a son who was in constant antagonism to the school law and who was the special pet of the truant officers. When I first saw these people they occupied two rearrooms in which the mother had been for three months without once going out of doors. She was coughing constantly although hard at work making vests; and the husband could not understand how her red cheeks could so soon have disappeared, or why her colour was as yellow as the light of the coal oil lamp by which she worked ten of the fourteen working hours of the day. Thomasio, the son, was stunted physically and mentally, and the mark of the tenement was upon him. He was the oldest of eight children and had borne the burden of his seven brothers and sisters as if it were his own. While the other boys were playing on the sidewalk, he had to rock the baby. Through seven years he had rarely seen God’s out of doors, except as it shone upon him through a little spot in the air shaft of the tenement. He and his parents hated the school and the school officers who were after him, and that c-a-t spells cat will be as much as he will know of all the mysteries, in spite of the zealous truant officers and teachers, lay and clerical. The public schools will be unable to work their magic not only upon Thomasio and his family of seven, but upon numbers of the same kind, reared under the same circumstances, for even before they were born they were robbed of their mental and physical background, and their horizon will always be bounded, more or less, by garbage cans, barrels of stale beer, wash-tubsfull of soiled clothing, and by cradles full of little bambinos.
Nevertheless the Italian is not a degenerate; he usually survives the wretched years of his infancy and then like all people who share his environment, grows up less rugged, perhaps more subtle, and hardened to some things which would prove a very serious handicap to those of us who know the value of pure air and of soap and water.
It would seem upon a superficial glance that the large incursion of Italians to America would add strength to the Roman Catholic Church here, and that their coming into a community would be welcomed because of that; but I have found almost the opposite to be true. The Irish priests do not like them; they lack the serious devotion to the Church which characterizes Irish or German parishioners, they care only for the show element in religion and are not willing to pay even for that. They will come to church on great holidays, when many candles are lighted and banners are carried; but they do not bother themselves to come to early mass, nor are they the best attendants at the confessional. They will spend much money upon showy funerals and christenings, but if the Catholic Church were dependent for its support upon the Italian immigrants it would fare badly. This of course may be due to the fact that they are very poor andthat in Italy the Church is comparatively rich; but it is most largely due to the fact that, contrary to the common opinion, the Italian is not religious by nature, that as a rule he has no understanding for the serious and ethical side of religion, that he is a heathen still who needs to have his spiritual nature discovered and stirred, after which he should have the alphabet of the gospel preached to him in the simplest possible way. The Italian priest in America is the poorest kind of vehicle for that purpose; in proof of which I quote Lillian W. Betts because she cannot be accused of prejudice in the light of the conclusions which she draws:
“To one who knows and appreciates the great spiritual life of the Roman Catholic Church, the relation between that Church and the mass of the Italians in this country is a source of grief, for it does not hold in the lives of this people the place it should. Reluctantly, the writer has to blame the ignorance and bigotry of the immigrant priests who set themselves against American influence; men who too often lend themselves to the purposes of the ward heeler, the district leader in controlling the people; who too often keep silence when the poor are the victims of the shrewd Italians who have grown rich on the ignorance of their countrymen. One man made eight thousand dollars by supplying one thousand labourers to a railroad. He collected fivedollars from each man as railroad fare, though transportation was given by the road, and three dollars from each man for the material to build a house. The men supposed it was to be a home for their families. They found as a home the wretched shelters provided by contractors, with which we are all familiar. This transaction, when known, did not disturb the church or social relations of the offender, but it increased his political power, for it showed what he could do. He is recognized to-day as the Mayor of ---- Street; his influence is met everywhere.
“The claim is made that the parochial school has the advantage that it gives religious as well as secular instruction. Observing and comparing the children living under the same environment who attended the public and parochial schools, I found that they did equally good work in English, but that the public schools did very much better work in arithmetic. The time given in the public schools to the so-called “fads and frills” was apparently given in the parochial school to religious exercises and instruction, with about an equal degree of comprehension and application on the part of the pupils. There was no difference in the appreciation of truth, honesty or peace. They lied, stole and fought without showing distinction in training. The singing voices of the children in the public schools werefar better trained than the voices of children in the parochial schools.
“What the Italian needs in New York above all things is his church in the full possession of its great spiritual power; young men born in this country, imbued with a love of and appreciation of its great opportunities, trained for the priesthood, to work and live among the Italians; in the interval before this is accomplished, a novitiate of at least five years for all foreign-born and trained priests before they are put in charge of an American parish; the establishing of music schools in connection with all the Roman Catholic churches in the foreign colonies; the rapid disappearance of the Italian parish because the people have become American. Above all, the immediate suppression of all proselyting among these people. Their Church is in their blood. The veneer, which is all the new church connection is, stifles the vital breath of the soul, and leaves the so-called convert without a Church. The exceptions prove the rule. Remove the temptation of the loaves and fishes in this proselyting endeavour and see how successful the effort is. Let the Catholic Church in America live at her highest among these people, and the political problems they create will disappear.”
I do not fully agree with the author of the above; but I join with her heartily in the desire expressed in her last sentence. I would also add:let the Protestant Church live her highest before these people; let her take her share in the responsibilities which these strangers bring, without a thought of proselyting them; and she will find that her efforts are needed, and are not in vain.
ABAGGAGEwagon heavily loaded by bags and trunks, and half lost to view in the muddy street and against the muddier sky of Chicago, stopped in front of the saloon to the Acropolis, on Halstead Street. The baggage man was surrounded by an angry mob, for he demanded four dollars for his trip, and that, the unsuspecting immigrants were unwilling to pay. In this they were supported by their countrymen who had come out of the saloon to welcome them to New Greece, which is unpicturesquely located on the West side of Chicago, between dives and cheap restaurants on one side, and the busy Ghetto on the other. Men of all nationalities, if of no occupation, gathered about the haggling crowd, and the baggage man received the support of the mob, for he wore a Union button, and the war cry: “It’s the Union price” was the Shibboleth by which the Greeks were vanquished and made to pay the four dollars; not of course, without having spent an hour in their national pastime of haggling for the price.
The driver mounted his quickly emptied wagon, with a curse upon the “Dagos,” and the crowdinformally discussed for a while the immigration question; its verdict being, that it is time to shut our doors against the Greeks, for they are a poor lot from which to make good American citizens.
The crowd dispersed as quickly as it came and the freshly landed Greeks entered the gates of the “Acropolis,” a Greek saloon and restaurant combination, not unlike (externally at least) its American prototype on the same street, where the saloon is decidedly at its worst.
The newcomers were feasted on black olives, brown bread and goat’s cheese; for the Greek is very loyal to the national appetite,—and they immediately begin to plan their entrance into the busy life of America, through the avenues of barter or of labour.
It is not to be wondered at that the crowd which knows nothing of the Greeks, called them “Dagos,” for it would be hard even for one who knows them only from the classic past, properly to place this group of men, were it not that their speech betrayed the ancient heritage.
We never picture the heroes of Greek epics, undersized, like these moderns; round headed, looking into the world out of small, black, piercing eyes, their complexion sallow and their hair straight and black. We too, would place them nearer modern Palermo than ancient Athens, and judge their blood to have flowed through the veins of rough Albanese mountaineers and crudeSlavic plowmen, rather than through the perfect bodies of those Greeks who have dissolved with their myths, and who disappeared when Mt. Olympus was deserted by its divine tenantry.
These modern Greeks have retained much of their past, stored in their memories at least, and scarcely one of those whom I have met but knows the Iliad and the Odyssey, or whose black eyes do not sparkle proudly when he recounts the glory of those Attic days.
They are still eager to know, even more eager to tell what they know, and a brave front is not the least part of the equipment of the modern Greek. A consuming pride which amounts to conceit, shuts his eyes to his own faults as well as to the virtues of other races, and he will long hold himself aloof from the hopper which grinds us all into the same kind of grist.
“Where do these men come from, Mr. B?” I asked the keeper of the classic bar of the “Acropolis.” “They are all Athenians.” Every Greek is, although cradled in some island unrenowned either in the past or the present. “Why do they come to Chicago? To make money?” I answer my own question. “Oh, no!” replies the classic barkeeper, delicately ironical. “They are not poor, no Greek is ever poor, even if he cannot buy five cents’ worth of black olives.”“Do they come here because they have a better chance?” “Chance? why, everyone of these men was on the way to become a Demarch (Mayor). They have come here to learn American ways, and incidentally to enrich American culture by their presence.”
Full of this pride and confidence in themselves, they are nevertheless ready to blacken our boots for ten cents, and they do it remarkably well, displacing negroes and Italians, until later, they open stores and sell American candies to an undiscriminating public, hungry for the cheap sweets. No labour is too hard for them, although they prefer to stand behind the counter. More or less, all the Greeks will finally be in trades of some kind, and monopolists in all of them. At present, their eyes are on bootblacking and confectionery stores, nearly every town of any size in the United States being invaded by them, so that their presence is beginning to be felt.
The modern Greek still has the license of the poet, and he uses the license whether he has the poetry or not. I think he is happiest when he exaggerates to no one’s hurt; albeit, like the rest of us he does not always stop to ask whether it hurts or not. Conceit and deceit are as close relatives as poetry and lying, and to Greeks and Americans they often look strangely alike.
If the modern Greek is a hero, he is a cautious one and recklessness is not one of his faults. He is no “Plunger,” but moves along the “straight and narrow way which leadeth to”—a bigbank account. Contented by little, he does not despise the much, and although he is not meek, he will inherit a fair share of this earth’s goods. Born with democratic instincts, he soon feels himself as good as anybody, and when he grows sleek and fat, he selects “the chief seat in the synagogue” or some other lofty height, from which he looks in disdain upon his poorer brothers.
While hospitable, he has become strangely suspicious of strangers, and he is not a good bedfellow for he likes to occupy the whole bed. If it is a settlement which opens its doors to him it becomes all his, and he does not shrink from intimidation as a means of driving the Italian or the Jew from its welcoming gates.
He is industrious and temperate, yet he likes to lounge about the saloons where he sometimes gets too much of his native wine and then he can be a really bad fellow.
In his native village he is as chaste as the women, but in America he has a bad name and the neighbourhood in which he lives is not regarded as the safest for unprotected women. The Chicago police especially, has an eye upon his candy stores which are supposed to be as immoral as they often are uninviting. The fact that in the Chicago colony, 10,000 Greeks live, practically without their wives, explains this situation, and it is just possible that 10,000 Americansunder the same conditions would not act differently.
The police in New Greece is not on a good footing with the inhabitants, and occasionally shooting and stabbing occur. At such times it is difficult to know who is more to blame; the police or the supposed culprits.
The modern Greek is still punctiliously pious, his church and priest follow him into every settlement, and he is loyal to the forms of his religion. It is doubtful whether here or in the Old World, it discloses to him the ethical teachings of Jesus; but in this, we are in a poor condition to “cast the first stone” at him. His priest is not servilely revered or feared, and the relation between them is too often that of buyer and seller. The priest has the means of grace, the Greek is in need of them for salvation, and he pays for what he gets,—sometimes reluctantly.
At present it would fare ill with any one who would try to wean him from his Church; for loyalty to it is loyalty to Greece, and the Greek has never been a turn-coat.
No more patriotic people ever came to us than these modern Greeks, and although that patriotism is centred upon their native country, they will ultimately make good citizens, and even before that day, make splendid politicians; for in the craft of politics every Greek is an adept, and he is a“Mighty (place) hunter before the Lord.”
The only trouble with the government of modern Greece is, that it has not enough offices for all the aspirants for them, and this learned proletariat is a fair sized menace in this little country. In governing themselves the modern Greeks have not been a conspicuous success, and the only things we can teach them in this line are, the willingness to acknowledge failure and the eagerness with which we seek the better way.
The New Greece of Chicago, a few blocks in a busy thoroughfare, is not a large world, yet it is more Greek than the Ghetto is Russian or Little Sicily is Italian. Homes in the true sense there are but few, because the women have not yet come; the housing conditions of the Greeks are bad and likely to remain so for a long time. There are grocery stores containing little or no American food; saloons, by far too many, but providing food and drink at the same time as is the custom in Greece; a Greek bank, the front windows of which are covered by the advertisements of steamship transportation companies; clothing and dry-goods stores, whose proprietors are Greeks, although their stock in trade is necessarily American; and the Greek church with a double cross to mark its orthodoxy;—this is New Greece.
Out of it some of our newly arrived immigrants will go in the morning, to the railroad tracks, to do the digging and the ditching. Theywill be “bossed” by “Big Pete,” whose size is exceeded only by the length of his oaths, and who boasts of being able to handle his countrymen easily, because: “The Greeks can be handled only by a man who can show them that he is a better man, and that I am; and if you don’t believe it, feel my muscle. I pay them $1.50 a day and I treat them like Greeks.”
I watched “Big Pete” treat them like Greeks for half a day, and I did not discover that such treatment saved a man from being geared to the highest notch and made to work incessantly, while “Big Pete” watched and cursed to help the pace.
The same night that they arrived, some of the young boys were looked over by the men of the Greek colony, who had assisted them to come, and whose labour was theirs until the passage money was paid, and paid with interest. The next morning they began their tutelage in blacking boots in so-called parlours, whose walls are covered by chromos depicting Greek wars in which the Greeks are always the victors and the Turks are slaughtered like sheep at the stockyards; there are also one or two pictures of classic ruins.
In such surroundings, and seemingly unconscious of the life about them, these boys will blacken boots for eighteen hours a day, with heart, mind and soul in Greece; and their fingersin America only when they handle our coin. They will attempt no conversation, even after they know our speech, literally obeying the Scriptural injunction to say “Yea, yea and nay, nay,” and not much else if they can help it. They are not nearly so communicative as the Italians, and although a smile sits well on a Greek face, I have rarely seen one there.
The confectionery stores which are outside of New Greece, are open all the time, at least so long as a customer may be expected, and although these customers are nearly all Americans, the Greeks have few friends among them. They all return to New Greece as often as possible, and there their virtues unfold, and “their soul delights itself in fatness.” They are not exceeded even by the Chinese in that loyalty to native food which I call the patriotism of the stomach, and a Greek grocery store is filled from one end to the other with food from the classic isles. There are dried vegetables whose present form does not betray their natural shape, but which taste luscious, because the flavour of the native soil clings to them; fish, dried, pickled and preserved in some form, and cheese made from the milk of goats whose horns butted broken classic vases instead of modern tin cans.
The smells seem ancient, too; but in these the Greek revels, and here he is at home.
New Greece in Chicago is fortunate in havingas one of its boundaries, Hull House, one of the numerous activities of which consists in trying to discover the possible point of contact between the home-born and the stranger.
A Greek play given at Hull House opened the eyes of many American people to the fact that the past is alive in the modern Greek, and at a banquet, also at Hull House, where Americans and Greeks vied with each other in extolling the glory of Athens, the wealth of the past was again richly displayed. How near the American and the Greek have come to each other through these two notable events, it is difficult to tell; but I am sure that they have increased the pride of the Greeks, and have given us an added respect for them.
But after all, they will be judged by the way they live to-day and by the measure in which these small, dark-haired traders and workers exemplify in their lives the virtues of those men of old, whose names they have inherited and whose fame they are eager to preserve.