XXII

THE PROTESTANT CHURCH AND THE IMMIGRANT

That the Protestant church has endured thus far, that its ideals are still dominant, that its preachers’ voices are still heard in the tumults of our Babels, is direct evidence that somewhere her foundations rest upon bed-rock and that the Christian faith and practice, as she understands them, are essential in the solution of the problems of our civilization. Because I believe this, I am not frightened by figures but am concerned with forces. It is not a question of the ability of the church to increase, but of her willingness to decrease, if necessary, in the attempt to communicate to these masses, from all races and religions, her passion for humanity and her devotion to the Divine.

I am not at all concerned regarding the inability of the Protestant church to adjust other men to her creeds or to adjust herself to theirs; but I am deeply concerned with her inability or unwillingness to make good her professions of democracy, and to relate herself in some vital way to these new citizens who are satiated by creeds, but are hungry for brotherhood; upon whom, like a curse, rest the damp and mould of tombs and chapels, but who have been untouched by the power of the living, redeeming Christ, as He has incarnated Himself in His followers.

So long as these people are within the sphere of Foreign Missions, in “Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” or some other remote and romantic place, they are the subjects of prayer and the recipients of gifts of men and money; but when drawn into the radius of one’s immediate neighbourhood, they become a peril which threatens everything, from the price of real estate to the foundation upon which the church rests. There is no question that in many cases the Protestant church is facing this problem in an admirable spirit; although very often expressing it in a way calculated to alienate rather than to attract. On the whole there is a growing desire to serve this new host of men, to help them adjust themselves more easily to their new environment and to make of them conscious human beings, consecrated Christians and efficient citizens.

There are to-day increasing numbers of Protestant Christians who have broken away from the old prejudice against the Roman Catholic church. It is not their desire to alienate faithful communicants from the church in which their individual and national life has root and being; but they recognize certain facts.

First, that in this new influx of immigrants there is an appreciably large number of men who have fallen heir to Protestant traditions, without fully realizing their spiritual inheritance and their moral obligations. To these, the American Protestant churches owe the duty of interpreting their common faith in its practical terms.

Second, the church realizes that numbers of men, more than are commonly supposed, among Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Jews, are lost to their respective churches. Many of them revert to infidelity and Paganism, and the Protestant church is under obligations to interpret its faith in rational terms to these, who have been touched by the rationalism of our times.

One cannot believe that it is good for such men to be left under the influences of these reactions which may become dangerous to the well-being of the individual and of the State.

Third, the church finds itself surrounded by large masses of men, ignorant of our language, of the laws of health and of the land. They come from countries in which neither Church nor State has attempted to lift them out of ignorance and its attendant superstition; and whenever the churches in whose bosoms these people have starved in the Old World do not make amends here in the New, the Protestant church is called upon to lift them into a better knowledge of the nature of religion and into a better conception of human relations, both for her own sake and for the sake of the communities which she wishes to serve.

This she must do, even if it brings her under suspicion of proselyting; although with my knowledge of nearly all the agencies engaged in this task in the United States, I am convinced that the spirit in which this work is undertaken is not the spirit of the proselyter. Indeed, one of the growing weaknesses of the Protestant church in America is the loss of those deep convictions which make proselyting easy; while the number of those who have the courage zealously to pronounce their shibboleths is growing smaller every day.

The spirit of the following letter justifies its quotation, for it is an admirable example of the way in which one Protestant church is trying to meet the immigrant problem.

The Presbyterian church has given proof of the spirit of its intent by putting the department of Immigration in charge of Rev. Charles Stelzle, a splendid champion of the rights of labouring men, a man with the broadest social and religious outlook and a stranger to Pharisaic cant.

The Rev. Howard N. Grose, D.D., the home mission secretary of the Baptist church, and the men associated with him in the Home Mission Council of the Evangelical churches, seem to me to possess that broad outlook upon life, that appreciation of true values which render impossible their attempting any narrow, sectarian propaganda.

The action of the International Committee of the Y.M. C. A. in placing its work for “Young Men and Boys of Foreign Parentage” in charge of so competent an authority as Dr. Peter Roberts, the author of “Anthracite Communities,”—and the equipment by the State Committee of Pennsylvania of “The Expedition for the Study of Immigration” with its plans for a group of well trained college men as secretaries for immigrants, are additional evidences of the spirit which animates Protestantism in its relation to the immigrant.

There are, however, two fundamental mistakes which the Protestant church has made in her attempt to solve the problem she faces.

First, in the kind of results she tries to obtain.

Second, in the kind of men she has sent to represent her among the immigrants.

The American Protestant of the Evangelical type has carried his business into the church, but not always the church into his business. He expects in the church, results which can be tabulated under the head of profit and loss, just as he expects them in his counting-room.

“Immediate results!” is the cry of the constituents of missionary enterprises, and the result is, that where they cannot be legitimately produced, conversions are simulated for loaves and fishes.

I do not mean to say that missionaries have not so preached and practiced the Christian faith, as to produce in their hearers a desire to adjust their own lives to these new standards; for I know of innumerable cases of this kind among all races and nationalities.

However, the stress laid upon “immediate results,” the praise and money lavished upon those who can produce them, the “showing off” of this or that kind of converted foreigner, the neglect of those who face real difficulties honestly, and cannot humbug those who support them, put severe temptation in the way of missionaries and often unconsciously taint their whole endeavour.

If the Christian religion expresses itself in unselfish devotion to the noblest cause,—the service which the immigrant needs must be performed without an eye constantly upon church records.

The Social Settlement is under no such strain, and its work is like “casting bread upon the water” without expecting it back, “buttered” after a few days.

For a long time and even for all time with some individuals and groups, the church must be willing to follow this Biblical example set by an institution which some ill informed people suspect of being irreligious.

The error which the church has committed in sending poorly prepared men to minister to these immigrants is in many cases as irreparable as it is inexcusable.

An ignorant priesthood is more bearable than an ignorant ministry, and when ignorance is coupled with insincerity, as it is in many cases, the wrong done to both parties is incalculable.

In their haste to “do something,” and in their eagerness to get quick results, nearly all Protestant churches have pushed into the ministry “converted foreigners,” many of whom misrepresent the church which sends them and become a stumbling-block to honest seekers after truth and an insult to the people to whom they are sent.

An example of this lack of wisdom is shown in one of the most interesting missions of a really valuable type, developed in West Pittston, Pa., by a devoted young American woman who, in a remarkable degree, won the confidence of the Lithuanians there. She lived and laboured among them and created a centre of influence which gave great promise of being permanent in its effect. Her work, however, was much too indefinite and slow for the “hustling” church which supported her; so a converted Lithuanian was employed, who in his eagerness to save souls told the people whom he gathered to hear him preach, that they would all be damned if they continued going to the Roman Catholic church. The result was what one might expect. The Lithuanians immediately forsook the mission and went to the prohibited church.

As a rule, the work to be done demands American born men and women who are imbued by the spirit of service, who have some linguistic talent and much consecrated common sense.

The converted foreigner, even if well trained, will be met with suspicion by many groups; for to them he is a traitor to their religion and to their national life, the two being inseparable to them.

No such objection can be made to the American worker, who, if he brings patience to the tedious task of winning confidence, if he has an honest desire to live unselfishly for the people of a neighbourhood, if he gives everything and expects nothing as a reward, may be assured that such service will be accepted and will work out its results in God’s own time.

If converted immigrants are sent among these people, they should have a long testing time; a tutelage and training which, while giving them a thorough equipment for their task, will not spoil them for the humble work it will involve.

There are but few theological seminaries properly equipped to train men for this great work, and still fewer in which there is sufficient spirit of democracy among teachers and students to receive “immigrants” and treat them like brothers.

In many small, industrial communities where the “immigrants” are a problem, its solution is merely a question of the attitude of the churches towards them.

Nothing can be more repellent than the attitude of the average Protestant Christian towards the immigrant of to-day. As a rule he is prejudiced, is grossly ignorant of the historic and religious background of the strangers and meets every one of them with suspicion.

At a recent Summer School of the Y. M. C. A. it was my privilege to teach a class of young college men numbering about 150. They were studying this problem, and the questions asked, a few of which I quote, prove the assertion just made.

“Do not three martyred presidents prove that the immigrant is an Anarchist and ought to be excluded?”

“Is it not true that ninety per cent. of the criminals in the United States are foreign born?”

“Do not foreign governments dump their rubbish of criminals and paupers upon our shores?”

“Is the Constitution of the United States safe in the hands of people who crucified Jesus?”

“Did not our forefathers come to fight for liberty, and do not these people come to despoil us?”

The questions asked displayed such animosity and such ignorance, that to print them all would seem like slandering our Western colleges and the churches in which these young men were reared.

The churches and the Y. M. C. A.’s have no small task in converting their membership to some Christian view-point of these, their neighbours; even if they cannot be converted to a spirit of brotherliness.

The following instance, while not typical, shows the attitude of Y. M. C. A. memberships in many industrial communities, towards the immigrant. An Association in Pennsylvania wished to enlarge its building and solicited funds in the shops of its own community. Slav and Hungarian day labourers subscribed $2,000, every cent of which was paid; which cannot be said of all the money subscribed by Americans.

Some of these foreigners were anxious to learn English, and one of the rooms in the building—not the best—was opened to them and a teacher procured. When one of these boys used some of the public conveniences in the building, the American membership notified the secretary that the “Hunkies” must not be admitted to the building; and they were not, in spite of the fact that they had helped pay for its erection.

While no other such gross injustice has come to my knowledge, I know of many Y. M. C. A.’s in which an Armenian or Greek would be excluded from such a thoroughly religious privilege as taking a bath.

Wherever a church or Y. M. C. A. has shown itself hospitable to the strangers it has had as many of their souls to keep as it has cared to have; but most of them prefer to save the foreigner by “absent treatment.”

The feeling of the strangers regarding the efforts which the churches are making on their behalf in so-called missions, which are often repellently unclean and devoid of any saving grace, is explained in the following letter, written by a graduate of Oberlin Seminary, a young Pole, whose spirit and intelligence the letter itself reveals.

I do not quote this letter because it approves my plan; for I do not hold dogmatically to any one method. The work of saving men is desperately hard and there are a thousand ways of doing it.

More important than any plan is a right attitude; for in all human contact it is the spirit within the man or institution which counts, and not the precise method of approach.

Wherever an approach has been made in the right spirit towards the foreigners, they have responded in kind, and many Protestant churches have been enriched by their presence, by the ardour of their faith and their willingness to sacrifice for their convictions.

There is, as I have said before, no institution in the United States which will be so profoundly affected by the immigrant as the Protestant church. Without him she will languish and die and with him alone she has a future.

Already the Roman Catholic proclaims the conquest of America, and while that conquest is not complete, it soon will be, unless Protestantism wakens to the wealth of its heritage and its great opportunity; unless with a real sympathy and passion it teaches, preaches and practices the religion of Jesus.

The Protestant church need not rival the Roman Catholic church in building stately places of worship, or clothe herself in gorgeous vestments, or read ancient liturgies.

The immigrant comes from just such environment, and nothing that the Protestant church can do in this direction will be as beautiful and as impressive as that which he has left behind.

The one way and the only way in which she can enter into a successful rivalry with the ancient, Apostolic church, is in reviving the ancient, Apostolic passion for humanity.

Having quoted so many letters, I may perhaps be pardoned for quoting a small part of one written long ago, at a time when the church faced a crisis not unlike the one which she faces to-day.

“If there is therefore any comfort in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any tender mercies and compassions, fulfill ye my joy, that ye be of the same mind, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind; doing nothing through factions, through vainglory, but in lowliness of mind each counting other better than himself; not looking each of you to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others. Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

XXIII

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH THE NEW IMMIGRANT

The ocean was vaster and the fear of it most real to us who sailed out of Bremerhaven in the steerage of the steamer Fulda; for we were the forerunners of a vast army of men which had scarcely begun to think of leaving its age-long bivouac. The Slav has never taken kindly to the sea, and the “More” held unconquered terrors.

It is difficult now to describe the incidents of that first landing in New York, for in rapid succession the experience has been so often repeated; and all the joys, fears and hopes which repeatedly I have shared with hundreds and thousands of men are so blended in my memory into one great wonder, that either analysis or description seems vain.

It is strange and yet natural, no doubt, that I remember the trivial incidents of that first landing. The attempt on the part of some of my Slovaks to eat bananas without removing the skins; their first acquaintance with mince pie, which they declared a barbarous dish; our first meal on American soil, in a third rate boarding-house for immigrants, and the injunction of one of the earlier comers: “Don’t wait for anybody, but grab all you can. In this country the motto is: ‘Happy is the man who can help himself!’”

I remember the lonely feeling that crept over us as we found ourselves like driftwood in the great current of humanity in the city of New York, and the fear we had of every one who was at all friendly; for we had been warned against sharpers. I remember our pleasure in the picturesque ferry-boat which carried us to New Jersey, its walking-beam seeming like the limbs of some great monster crossing the water.

Then crowding fast upon one another come memories of hard tasks in gruesome mines and ghostly breakers; the sight of licking flames like fiery tongues darting out at us, from furnaces full of bubbling, boiling metal; the circling camps of the coke burners who kept their night’s vigil by the altars of the Fire God.

There are memories of dark ravines and mud banks, choked by refuse of mill and mine; the miners’ huts, close together, as if space were as scarce on the earth as compassion for the stranger.

I remember the kindness of the poor, the hospitality of the crowded, the hostility of the richer and stronger, who feared that we would drive them from their diggings; and the unbelief of those to whom I early began preaching the humanity of the Slav—rough and uncouth, but human still, although he has scarcely ever had a fair chance to prove it.

Of the names of the various towns through which I passed, in which I worked and watched, I particularly remember four: Connelsville, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and Streator, Ill., all of them typical coal towns. In none of them were my people received with open arms, although they rarely met with organized hostility.

In Scranton and in Streator, they still remember our coming and our staying. Since then, I have repeatedly visited all these four places upon errands of investigation and interpretation.

I always dreaded going back to them; not only because it would revive painful memories of a very hard apprenticeship, but because I could not avoid asking myself if the optimism with which I have treated the problem of immigration, by voice and pen, would be justified.

What if the Americans in these cities should say: “We have lived with these Slavs for twenty-five years and more; we have been with them day after day, while you have flitted about the country. We know better than you do. We told you the ‘Hunkey’ was a menace when he came, and he is a menace still.”

I well know that my readers and my auditors have often criticised my optimism, and especially the sympathetic note with which I approach this problem, regarding which they are always more skeptical the more remote they are from it.

I have tried to modify my view of the problem by facing it in all its bearings; I have not shrunk from seeing the worst of it. In fact I know American cities best from that dark and clouded side. I know the Little Italies, the Ghettos, the Patches around the mines, the East Side of New York and the West Side of Chicago; although I have never been the full length of Fifth Avenue and have never seen the famous North Shore drive.

I am familiar with penitentiaries, jails, police courts and even worse places; for I wanted to know to what depths these leaden souls can sink, and I fear that I have more anxiety as to their nativity than their destiny. Yet, having seen the worst of the bad, I never lost my faith in these lesser folk and my optimism remained unclouded. One fear alone assailed me; that what my critics said to me and of me was true. “He is an immigrant himself, and of course it is natural that he should see the brighter side of the problem.” To me, that was the severest and most cutting criticism, just because I feared it might be true; yet I have honestly tried to see the darkest side of this question, both as it affected the immigrant and the country that received him.

I have listened patiently to jeremiads of home mission secretaries about these “Godless foreigners.” I have read the reports of Immigrant Commissions, and all the literature written the last few years upon this subject, and I am still optimistic, and disagree with much that I have heard and read. Many authors who have written regarding this question had no first-hand information about it. They knew neither the speech nor the genius of these new people; they had a fixed belief that all civilization, culture and virtue, belong to the north of Europe and that the east and southeast of that continent are its limbo; and they relied upon statistics, which at best are misleading, when used to estimate human conduct and human influences.

Typical of this class of literature is a recent pamphlet upon the subject, which, judging from the excellent biography appended, must be based upon extensive reading; yet the author comes to this conclusion: “Assimilation in the twentieth century is a very different matter from assimilation in the nineteenth. In many respects, the new immigration is as bad as the old was good.”[3]

There are several facts which this author has forgotten, as have those from whom he draws. First, the older immigrant is not yet assimilated. In the agricultural counties of Mr. Edwards’ own state, there are townships in which the English language is a foreign tongue, although the second generation of Germans already plows the fertile fields of Wisconsin; and there are cities where the Germans have thoroughly assimilated the Americans.

There are places of no mean size in Pennsylvania, which are as German as they were 200 years ago, and as far as the Irish everywhere are concerned, it is still a question what we shall be when they have done with us.

I venture to predict that the twentieth century immigrant will assimilate much more quickly and completely than the immigrants of the eighteenth and the early half of the nineteenth centuries assimilated.

Beside the fact that the process is going on much more rapidly than ever before, as I asserted, my theories are corroborated by Professor Ross, of the University of Wisconsin, whose book is suggestive if not conclusive. Speaking of the assimilation of the immigrant, he says:

“On the whole, those who come now Americanize much more readily than did the non-English immigrants of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Not only do they come from lesser peoples and from humbler social strata, but, thanks to the great rôle the United States plays in the world, the American culture meets with far more prestige than it had then. Although we have ever greater masses to assimilate, let us comfort ourselves with the fact that the vortical suction of our civilization is stronger now than ever before.”[4]

Neither is any one prepared to prove that the “new immigrant is as bad as the old was good.”

It is very interesting that when authors and speakers quote statistics, as they usually do, to prove the criminal nature of the new immigrant, they do not differentiate between the older and the newer groups. If they did, and would let statistics determine the issue, they would find that the new immigrant is good and the old bad; yes, very bad.

The following tables, quoted from the Report of the Commission of Immigration of the State of New York, are worthy the close study of Mr. Edwards and the authors upon whom he has relied.[5]

What is more striking still is the following table which seems to prove that the new immigrant does not increase his percentage in the criminal column materially, in fact that there is a slight tendency to decrease it.[6]

I am not trying to prove that the old immigration was worse than the new; I do not believe that these statistics prove it, in spite of their appearing to. But they do prove conclusively that statistics of this kind are absolutely unreliable in furnishing tests of the moral fiber of this or that group.

Far more reliable is the verdict of various communities after twenty-five years’ experience with the newer immigrant.

Take for example the city of Streator, Ill., which has steadily grown in size and in the number and variety of its industrial establishments; a development which could not have taken place without the new immigrant. There are certain unprofitable seams in the mines which the English-speaking miners would not have worked; even as there are less profitable veins which the Slav does not care to touch and which are being worked by Sicilians, new upon the scene.

It is true that out of the 500 Welsh miners there are only about fifty left; but the 450 were pushed up and not out and are in no position to complain. They have moved on to farms and have grown prosperous while some of the most lucrative business in the city is theirs.

It does seem a great pity that a skilled trade like mining should have passed into the hands of unskilled labourers; but for this, the invention of machinery is to blame, and not the foreigner. Had comparatively cheap labour been unavailable, the genius of the American would not have stopped until he had all but eliminated the human element, as he has done in many other trades in which unskilled foreign labour is not a factor.

Twenty-five years ago I “squatted” near mine No. 3 with my men from Scharosh. It was as wretched a patch as miners’ patches always are. We bunked twenty in a room and took as good care of our bodies as conditions permitted; so that when we went down-town we were cleanly if not stylish.

My men soon learned to drink whiskey like the Irish, swear like the English and dress like the Americans.

After twenty-five years the patches around the mines in Streator are practically gone, and the homes there are as good as the Welsh or English miners ever had. Some of the newer additions in that growing city are occupied entirely by Slavs and do them credit.

Nor has the Slav been content to remain in the mines; he, too, has begun to move out and up. He owns saloons and sightly stores in which his sons and daughters clerk, and it would take a very keen student of race characteristics to distinguish the Slavs from the native Americans.

“Do you see that young man at the entrance to the Chautauqua?” said Mr. Williams, its public spirited secretary.

“Racially, his father is as sharply marked a man as I have ever seen, and the son, a graduate of Harvard, looks as if his forefathers had all grown up in the salt air of the New England coast.”

Here in Streator were the people who have lived with the new immigrant a quarter of a century and more, and I have spoken to them three times, in my most optimistic vein; many a man and woman has said:

“You are right, they make splendid citizens.”

“They are good neighbours.”

“They are as human as we are, and they are proving it.”

This, in spite of the fact that in Streator as in Connelsville and in hundreds of industrial towns, they have been met with suspicion and have been treated with injustice.

“They are a great strain upon our political institutions,” said Mr. Williams, himself once a Welsh miner, pushed out of the mine by the Slav and now one of the leading citizens of Streator.

But Mr. Williams knows that the year I lived in Streator, when the Slav had no vote or influence, politics in that city were already corrupt and that the corrupters were native Americans, whose ancestors harked back to the Mayflower, and who were rewarded for their corruption by high political offices. In truth, when the Slav came to this country, there was nothing left to corrupt, in Scranton or Wilkes-Barre, in Connelsville or Streator; or, indeed, in all Pennsylvania and Illinois. The Slav now has some political power; but as yet he has not produced the “grafter.” I do not say that he will not; but when he does, small blame to him.

In one of the four cities which I have mentioned, I shared with a group of Poles the vicissitudes of the first few weeks in a boarding-house, a combination of saloon and hotel, common in Pennsylvania, and usually offering more bar than board.

One evening an American came among us; a splendid type of agile manhood. When my men saw him, they said: “This is a prince!” They did not know that he was a politician. He shook hands with every one of us, and I said to the men: “This is democracy!” Poor fool! I did not know that it was the day before election.

Then he marched the men to the bar, and said to the barkeeper: “Fill ’em up.” And as they drank the fiery stuff, no doubt they thought they were in Heaven, and forgot that they were in Pennsylvania. When the whiskey took effect, they were marched into a large hall, where other Poles, drunk as they, were congregated; speeches were made, full of the twaddle of political jargon which they did not understand, and when morning came, these Poles, so intoxicated that they did not know whether they were North Poles or South Poles, were marched to the voting-place and sworn in.

I have told this story in each of the four places referred to, and in the place where it occurred, a judge, who was among my audience, said to me: “Don’t tell that story again.”

“Why not? It is true,” I replied.

“Yes,” he said, “it is perfectly true; but you’d better save your strength. In this city, not only the foreigners, who are not citizens, vote; but the dead vote, long after they have become citizens of Kingdom Come.”

One of these same Poles recently took me through the Capitol of Pennsylvania at Harrisburg. With great pride he guided me from foundation to dome, pointing out those objects of interest which every stranger must see, as if they were the memorials of noble deeds of valour.

They consist of wood, painted to imitate marble, chandeliers of base metal, to be sold by the pound, at fabulous prices, and among many other spurious things, a safe, supposed to be fire-proof and burglar-proof, but which was not politician-proof, for an ordinary gimlet bored a hole into its corrupt heart.

What was distressing to me was not so much that the State paid millions for this veneered and varnished fraud, but that my Polish guide pronounced the word graft with evident relish and without fear or shame.

I do not doubt that the presence of the new immigrant is “a great strain upon our political institutions”; but not greater than the old immigrant was, and still is. This certainly is true of Pennsylvania; for there are counties in that state, into whose wilds the new immigrant has not yet penetrated, and where those who have been living off its fat acres since their birth—the sons of immigrants who came 200 years ago—hold their right of franchise cheap. I am told that in these counties nearly every vote can be bought for five dollars.

This may be idle rumour; but the fact remains and can be proved by any one who chooses to investigate, that Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Connelsville and a hundred other cities and towns, are better governed now than they were before Slav, Latin and Jew came to live in their Patches and Ghettos. This is true in spite of our having tried to corrupt these new citizens from the very hour when they received their political rights, and that when they had no rights, we treated them with neglect and scorn.

The mayor of Greensburg, Pa., a man of the newer and better type of administrators, whose territory is completely environed by the coke regions and has an almost totally foreign population—says:

“They make reliable citizens. They can be trusted absolutely. Their worst enemy is drink; but when a foreigner comes before me and is fined, if he has no money and I let him go home, he will come the next day to pay his fine even if he lives ten miles from town. Yet in spite of the fact that the ‘Hunkey’ and the ‘Dago’ have helped build up Greensburg, and have enriched its citizens, they are still held in contempt by the majority of its people.”

This same official told me that a few years ago when the Italians celebrated their Independence Day, the High School boys of that city threw decayed vegetables at them and their national flag.

Without the slightest reserve I can say this: Wherever an enlightened official, like this mayor, or teachers of the public schools, ministers of the Gospel and business men, have come in real contact with the new immigrant, their verdict was entirely different from that of Mr. Edwards and many of the professional writers upon the problem which the foreigner represents.

There are some places in the United States where I have found the immigrant a menace, and one of them is in Pittston, Pa. There the Italian is really bad; there he is an Anarchist and a murderer. But in Pittston I discovered the really bad American, an Anarchist and a murderer; although he may be the owner of some of the mines or a high official in the town. In that city, every law which governs mining has been openly violated, and there is at least one mine in the place which is nothing but a deep hell-hole and is known as such by the men compelled to work in it. It is a mine in which anything may be had for a bribe and anything may be done without fear of punishment. In one of the last communal elections, the candidate for its highest office kept open house, with beer and “booze” in one of the miners’ shacks; young boys, not out of their teens, were allowed to drink to intoxication, and the candidate already mentioned was not an Italian or a Slav or a Jew; but an American, unto the tenth generation and a member of a Protestant church.

I do not rejoice in writing this or in telling it as I have had to tell it in the towns affected, and to the very men who have thus offended.

It is painful to me, because, after all, I do not feel myself so closely identified with the immigrant as with the American. While my sympathies are with the immigrant, they are much more with this, my country, and with that circle of the native born, whose ideals, whose hopes and whose aspirations have become mine.

I am not greatly concerned with immigration, per se; that is a subject for the economist, which I am not. It is for him, if he is skilled enough, to know whether we can afford to keep our gates open to the millions who come, or when and to whom to close them.

Narrowly, or perhaps selfishly, I am concerned for those who are here; that they be treated justly, with due appreciation of their worth, and that they may see that best in the American which has bound me to him, to his land and to its history; to its best men living, and to those of its dead who left a great legacy, too great to be squandered by a prodigal generation.

Knowing how great this legacy is, and yet may be for the blessing of mankind, I am pleading for this new immigrant. If we care at all for that struggling, striving mass of men, unblessed as yet by those gifts of Heaven which have blessed us, let us prove to these people of all kindreds and races and nations, that our God is the Lord, that His law is our law and that all men are our brothers.

XXIV

FROM CHAOS TO COSMOS

“I thought,” she continued, “that at home we were small and narrow and that over here I should find a larger freedom; but you can’t turn around here, without finding the bars up—racially, religiously, socially and politically. The only unobstructed passage is the way to Hell.”

Hers were large, black, dreamy eyes and the shadows of disappointment passed over them. Then, to shake off the gripping seriousness from her mood, she said, with a forced smile: “I am going to see the Merry Widow to-night with my Captain. They are both inane. Meeting you has made me blue, I fear; you remind me of my father.”

She said this reproachfully, I thought; although she added: “Let us sit down and talk things over. My daughter and the maid are listening to the music and I have nothing to do until my Captain comes to meet me.”

“Now please listen to me,” I said when we were seated. “I was born over here, right in this city. My playground was this very park. I have tasted the best this city can offer a boy, as well as its worst.

“Listen,” I said again; for her eyes wandered to the gay crowds. “I also know your home city, and I wouldn’t give one block in Hartford, Conn., not speaking from the commercial standpoint, for this whole magnificent city, with its Cathedral, its Grand Opera, its royal castle, its officers and its Merry Widow. Do you ask why? Just watch this crowd and let me interpret it to you. Those boys now passing are Bohemians, apprentices; and they are talking Czechish to make themselves obnoxious to the Germans whom they hate and who hate them, more than your forefathers hated the devil.

“Do you see that Bosnian? Notice his smile as he sells a jack-knife to the Austrian soldier. His smile would be more genuine if he could knife this detested ‘Schwab,’ his enemy and the conquerer of his country.

“Those men with the needle-pointed moustaches are Magyars, and they hate the Slavs and Germans and every one else who will not speak their language.

“The officers with the red fez are Turks, as you know; just now they despise everything Austrian, and not without reason.

“The picturesque nurse maids, wheeling the babies, do not have those soldiers with them to protect Austria’s ‘infant industries’; they are Slovaks, aliens of the aliens, and the unprotected prey of the soldiers. The Jews here add to the chaos; for all these races hate them and they reciprocate in kind.”

“We have all these people in Hartford! What of it?” My companion impatiently interrupted my explanations.

“This,” I replied. “These people have lived for many hundreds of years, in chaos and confusion. Each in his little world, hemmed in by the pride of his race or the hate of other people. Each day the barriers grow taller and the hate grows stronger.

“I lived in it for a good many years, and it is an awfully little world one is locked into; yet it is as big and terrible as Hell. That being branded by the marks of your race, by the speech your ancestors have bequeathed you, by your blood or your religion, and isolated as if you were a leper, while your heart yearns for the larger fellowships—all that I have felt from my youth.”

“Haven’t you felt it in America, too?”

“Yes; but with a difference, a tremendous difference. There they may shut one from the social contact, but there remain the public schools, the libraries, the churches and settlements. And what schools you have in Hartford! I have been in schoolrooms there, in the first grade, where 90% of the children were of alien birth, and at a glance I knew their nationality.

“Italians, miniature old men and women, although scarcely seven years of age.

“Serious, little black-eyed Jews, with the burden of ages upon their bent backs.

“Polish boys and girls, with small foreheads, as if some tyrant had trampled upon their heads.

“Armenians, sad-looking, dark-skinned creatures, haunted by the remembrance of their village street, red from the blood of the slain.

“Syrian children, out of the very village in whose meadows the angels sang when Christ was born; but who have never known either peace or good will.

“I went to the second and third grades, and there it seemed as if the hand of a good angel had already passed over those marked and marred faces; I could almost hear the voice of the All-Father saying:

“‘I will blot out the transgressions which have been transgressed against you.’

“They looked like children who were beginning to live the real life of the child in a really human world, and were having a chance to grow into the human likeness.

“I have been to your High School, and there the marks were all but obliterated; there was ‘neither Jew nor Greek, neither Roman nor Barbarian’; they were all a new people.”

Now, my Puritan rebel was listening attentively enough; so I continued: “In America, something happens which cannot happen here. Over there, the fiber, the tissue, that mysterious fluid which we call life or soul, the very nerve cells change, under the benign influences of the heritage left by your fathers; that heritage which you despise—you”—I repeated, and I said it angrily; “you, who expatriate yourself for the sheen of braid and buttons, for Grand Opera and Viennese waltzes! You expatriate yourself