On the Trail of the Immigrant

IF the man who said, “Give me neither poverty nor riches” had been a modern globe trotter he might have added: “And when I cross the ocean let me travel neither in the first cabin nor in the steerage but in the second cabin.” That is if he cared more for the companionship of human beings than for the luxuries of modern life, and if he had not objected to the fact that the second cabin is located directly over the powerful driving gear of the ship.

Because of the latter fact one may experience a “continuous performance” of an earthquake without its disastrous results, and yet not without consequences which at the moment seem very serious. The second cabin does not lapse into the silence of the steerage nor into the dignity of the first cabin, but begins its noisy comradery immediately; being interrupted only, when the earthquake plays havoc with good nature, and resumed as soon as the appetite for food and drink returns.

Poles, Bohemians and Slovaks all travelled in the second cabin; but invariably they were saloon-keepers and displayed the demoralizing tendencies of their business to their full extent.

Dividing the passengers according to their race, most of them were Jews from Hungary and Russia; and while still unmistakable Jews, they all bore marks of the new birth which had taken place. The Russian Jews in many cases were slovenly, obtrusively dressed and noisy; their Yiddish was tainted by bad English, but they were frugal, sober, and minded their own business.

Such a close touch with American life was not vouchsafed to another Russian Jew in that group. He had lived in New York and had also gone through the long tutelage of hard bargaining and hard times. He too was going to Europe; but he went to buy diamonds, not to visit his relatives, and neither his past experience nor his vision was tinged by any idealism. He was money from the toes up, and in each pocket he carried some trinket, from fountain pens to diamond pins, which could be bought at a bargain.

“Little Hungary” has been a bad political school and one need not be over apprehensive if he regards this poor political tutelage as one of the greatest problems connected with the influx of foreigners into our large cities. In speech and names these Hungarian Jews were almost completely metamorphosed, and their patriotism knew no bounds. On a certain day one of them dug out of the depths of his trunk a dozen or more American flags, with which he wanted us to parade up and down the ship to the notes of a patriotic air. Upon our refusal to do so he grew angry, saying: “Nice Americans you fas.”

The second cabin goes back richer not only in worldly goods but in conscious manhood and womanhood, in loftiness of ideals and above all else, pathetically grateful to the country which gave these gifts.

But few Italians travel in the cabin; there were half a dozen who had reached that degree of prosperity, and they came from the South, had been engaged in the cotton business and were indulging in an European trip, while the product of their plantations was daily increasing in price. They were genteel, and quiet, and so well dressed and well groomed, that it came as a surprise to most of the passengers to find that they were Italians, and that they had risen from the “Dago” class. On them America has performed the miracle of transformation, in spite of its sordid instincts and its materialistic atmosphere; a miracle which art-filled Italy could not perform, a task before which both sculptor and painter are powerless.

That the Pole and Slovak will be hard to change, and that they present somewhat tough material, not easily assimilated, often forces itself upon me; yet when I see their children, that second generation, born in America, I can see no difference between the Slav and the German. One of the most beautiful girls on board of ship, one of the most refined in her attire and behaviour, was a Bohemian girl born in Chicago. Although she spoke the language of her people, she spoke English better, associated with the American girls on board of ship, and it would have taken a keen student of racial stock to discover her Bohemian origin. She is not an isolated figure nor an exception. On nearly every journey I have taken I have found her type, and I recall with especial pleasure and satisfaction the companionship of two Bohemian school teachers from Cleveland, Ohio, both of them born in Bohemia, but having grown to womanhood on the shores of Lake Erie. While they showed in their faces the Slavic strain, they were thoroughly Americanized and must have been a blessing to the children whom they taught.

The day we were to land there were more American flags in evidence in the second cabin than in any other quarter of the ship. The over-patriotic Jew had his dozen flags out, swinging them all in the face of the German policemen who lined the dock at Bremerhaven. Every button-hole bore the Stars and Stripes. When one of the thriftier Jews suggested that the wearing of the flag would cost them money, because the hotel keepers would charge them American rates, another replied: “It is worth all they will make me pay,” while another still more emphatically said: “They will see it in mine face that I am from America; let it cost me money.”

Swinging the Stars and Stripes they descended the gang plank; Slavs, Italians and Jews, all of them vociferous, patriotic Americans. Wherever they went they proclaimed their love for this country, and the superiority of America over the whole world.

My Dear Lady of the First Cabin:

        I have followed your good advice, have told my story as I told it to you; and yours be the praise and the blame. You interrupted me in the telling, by saying that I did not know the first cabin, and that my story would not be complete until I knew that part of the ship and that portion of the world also.

I have as you see taken passage in the first cabin. They sold me the ticket as readily as if it were for the steerage and did not ask for my pedigree, only for my check. Fifty dollars more gave me the privilege of sitting where you sat (which was at one time the “seat of the scornful”), of looking proudly upon the second cabin, and pityingly upon the steerage below.

It is a delightful sensation this; of being summoned to your meals by the notes of a bugle rather than by the jangle of a shrill bell; of looking over half a yard of menu, and ordering what you want, and whom you want, just as you please, rather than being ordered about as some one else pleases.

As yet, no one had spoken to me, although I had volunteered a wise remark about the weather to one passenger, and the gentleman addressed recoiled as if I had struck him with a sledge hammer. I learned afterwards that he occupied a thousand dollar suite of rooms and that his name was Kalbsfoos or something like it. In choosing his seat at the table, I heard him remark to the head steward that he did not want to sit “near Jews,” nor any “second class looking crowd”; but that was a difficult task to accomplish.

The staple conversation to-day is the size of the pool—which has reached the thousand dollar mark, and the fact that a certain actor lost fifteen thousand dollars at poker the night before. In the second cabin the pool was smaller, the limit in poker ten cents; while in the steerage they lived, unconscious of the fact that pools and poker are necessary accompaniments of an ocean voyage.

In the steerage, everybody “gets his grub” in the same way, in the same tin pans—“first come first served”; and all of us are kicked in the same unceremonious way by the ship’s crew.

The first cabin and the society it represents are not all finished products. There are many of those who eat, even at the captain’s table, who are still in blessed ignorance of the fact, that knives were not made for the eating of blueberry pie; and who also do not know what use to make of the tiny bowls of water in which rose leaves float, when they are placed before them.

Then there are the maidens who walk about with mannish tread, talking loudly and violently through their noses; who assault the piano furiously with the notes of rag-time marches; and who waft upon the air perfumes which offend one’s olfactory nerves.

Yet beside them, and in strong contrast to them are those superb men and women, the flower of American civilization, whose like has never been created anywhere else in the world.

The people of the steerage are in a large measure what I told you they are—primitive, uncultured, untutored people; with all their virtues and vices in the making. They are the best material with which to build a nation materially; they are good stock to be used in replenishing physical depletion; and capable of taking on the highest intellectual and spiritual culture. They are a serious problem in every respect; whether you shut the gates of Ellis Island to-day or to-morrow, those that are here are an equally serious problem.

One thing the journey in the first cabin has done for me; it has made me grateful for my journeys in the steerage; grateful that I could stand among those tangling threads out of which our national life is being woven, and see the woof and the warp, and know that the woof is good. I am conscious of the fact that it will take strong sound warp to hold it together, to fill out our pattern and complete our plan. Oh, my dear lady! What a great country in the making this is! And how close you and I are to the making!

My lady, you and I are here to work at a task which will outstrip all the wonders of the world, and we cannot do it in our own strength; we need to call to each other, as we bend to our task, the greeting which the Slovaks sent after you when you left the ship:

THE author has refrained from using statistics in his book, not because he has any objection to figures; but because the statistics of immigration (even those prepared by the United States Government) are misleading.

Professor Walter F. Willcox, Chairman of the Committee on Basal Statistics, appointed by the National Civic Federation, calls attention to this fact in his report, and gives the following reasons for their unreliability.