XII “The Hole From Which Ye Were Digged”
It was some sort of saint’s day, one of the many; this day, just before the harvest time, served at least one useful purpose. It brought together the latifondisti, the landowners, and the contadini, the labourers, who, after mass, bargained with one another for the harvest wage.
There was a time when the padrone had a dozen men at his heels begging to procure them work; but now the tables are turned, and smartly dressed men court these rough toilers of the Abruzzi, and are happy, when, over a bottle of wine and a hand-grasp, the bargain is sealed.
In less than twenty years wages have increased from sixteen to sixty cents a day, and the difference in the attitude of the two classes towards each other is correspondingly great. The withdrawal from the intense congestion in Italy of nearly 2,000,000 toilers in the last ten years, accounts for the change in the economic condition of the common field labourer of that country. No phase of human relations has been left unaffected by this remarkable movement away from the home soil.
“Just as you wish, Signor,” I heard a man say to one of the upper class. “Three lire and not a centesimo less.”
The landowner watched the labourer closely, and when he saw him approached by another landowner, ran to him and sealed the bargain.
“Ah, Signor! Emigration has done this!” the labouring man said when I entered into conversation with him. “There are not men enough left to do the work, and if it weren’t for the hard times in America, I would have charged him two carini (about sixteen cents) more; but there are some men back from America who have not done so well, although they too will not hire out for less than three lire. They say that in America they have received three times as much.”
The gentleman to whom I introduced myself, and who was suspicious that I might be in his parts encouraging emigration, took a different view of the situation.
“It is a curse, sir! Why, sir, you rob us of our men; of our strongest men, and leave only the aged, the women and the children!
“I have fields still unploughed, although it is June, and the bringing in of my crops will cost me three times as much as it did ten years ago.”
“Didn’t he get a much better price for his produce?” I asked.
“Yes, indeed! Perhaps I am no worse off financially than before; but worse than the higher wage is the changed attitude of the common people towards the landowner. Signor, those who come back are worse than the Socialists! The Socialists simply talk and argue; most of our common people cannot understand what they mean. They have always known that God made some rich and some poor, they were content with their cheese and their olives; but these men who come back from America walk through the streets as if they were our equals. They wear just such clothing as we do; shoes without hobnails and starched shirts and collars.
“They no longer greet us respectfully as they used to, and the way they spend money looks to these deluded contadini as if they had found it in the streets of New York.
“Everybody in my town who has anything to sell, sells it or borrows from his friends in America and goes there. Last year over 1,600 went out of my town, which has less than 6,000 inhabitants. The saints alone know what will become of us! And the worst of it is, Signor, that they lose respect for us!”
Travelling from Naples towards Calabria, I noticed in the second-class compartment a group of Italians returning from America for a visit to their native hill town. Among all the people of this class that I had seen, these were the most remarkable. They were better dressed than others, spoke English fluently, were cleanly in their habits and travelled second-class.
“Oh, yes! Italy is beautiful!” said one of them, who I afterwards learned was a stationary engineer at New Brunswick, N. J. His finely chiselled face showed his delight as he watched the landscape.
“But America is more beautiful on the insides. You ask why? I will tell you.
“I was born in a small hill town of 3,000 inhabitants. My parents were poor labourers and I was born in a hole in the wall. I will show you the wall when we come to the town. No windows, no chimney, no nothing. Our goats and pigs had another hole, smaller than ours; but the goats and pigs were not ours, they belonged to the landlord and when the pigs were killed we got half. We had just one meal of the meat and the rest had to be sold to those who could afford to eat it; we couldn’t. It was a great day though when we had that taste of meat, and I don’t think I have ever tasted such good meat since. Of course we had meat only three or four times a year.
“My father and mother both had to work in the fields. They left the hole in the wall at four o’clock in the morning and came back to it at seven in the evening. When I was a baby, my mother carried me along on her back; later my sister carried me and I can’t remember the time when one of my sisters didn’t carry a baby out into the field.
“I worked from the time I was seven; we all worked when there was work to do. I never was hungry when the melons and the figs were ripe; but I never remember having eaten as much bread as I wanted. I remember I wanted to be older than I was, for the children got about an inch more bread for every year, as they grew older.
“I went to school to the padre, and he taught me the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria and just enough writing to sign my name. When I was fourteen years old, an uncle who lived in New York sent money to my father and mother to come over. Never can I forget when that letter came. I nearly went crazy. I ran around to every hole in the wall and called out: ‘We are going to America! We are going to America!’
“My father was crazy, too; for he gave the letter-man half a lira for bringing him such a letter and reading to him the good news. Everybody in the town knew of our good fortune; for the letter-man told all those to whom we could not speak, because they were above us. When we went to Naples I thought I was going to heaven, and on the ship, in spite of seasickness, I was happy; because for the first time in my life I had enough bread to eat.
“I can’t tell you how I felt when we came to New York; but at Ellis Island they turned all my joy into weeping. Two of the younger children had eye disease and they wanted to send all of us back. My uncle said he would take care of us older children, so they let us in and sent father and mother and the younger ones back. It was terribly sad and father and mother cried; but although I too cried, I felt very happy because I would not have to return to Italy. We promised them to come back and here we are.”
These then were the older children, three sons and one daughter, who had been admitted to their heaven and were now coming home to the padre and madre who had lived in the hole in the wall.
“What do you think of emigration?”
The young woman answered: “Signor, it works like a miracle! I used to pray many a time, when I went to sleep, that the good saints would work a miracle and wake me in another world, where I could wear real stockings and ribbons, and now my prayer is answered and the miracle has happened.”
Indeed it was a miracle. “Bessie,” as the brothers called her, was transformed and transfigured. She was more “stylish” than the landowner’s wife who travelled in the next compartment, and I feel sure that her gown cost more than that of a certain American woman who shared with me the pleasures of the journey Bessie was engaged to be married to a countryman of hers, who is head gardener in a cemetery in one of New York’s suburbs.
“When we are married we will live in a cottage all our own, Signor, at the edge of that beautiful cemetery; six rooms it has and a bath room!”
A miracle indeed! From the hole in the wall to a six-room cottage.
Of course this group is not typical. These people went to school in America during their youth. The boys went to night school in New York and the girl went to the public school; they had entered profitable trades. Stone-cutting, engineering and dressmaking.
What was perfectly normal in their history was the effect that their going away has had upon the town from which they came.
Does the father live in the hole in the wall? No indeed. They sent home money enough to build him a house and buy about fifteen acres of land. The children at home were all sent to school. Yes, times have changed. All the children in that town are sent to school; for the immigrant father writes to his wife: “Let the children learn how to read and write. We who cannot, have to remain beasts of burden, while those who can, rule over us.”
My travelling companions grew greatly excited as the train drew near their home. They collected their numerous packages and then looked longingly at the town, perched upon a high hill and crowned by a magnificent castle.
“Look, Signor, look! You see that wall, the old city wall? You see those holes? I was born in one of them!” Tears stood in Bessie’s eyes. No doubt she thought of the six-room cottage and the miracle.
The station, in the shadow of the town, was much like other such stations. There was the usual donkey cart. Pompous officials bustled about and a few carabinieri walked up and down, proud of their fuss and feathers. The padre and madre were there, and a throng of brothers and sisters and relatives, who greeted the travellers with noisy and affectionate salutations.
Bessie’s madre held her at arm’s length at first, as if to be sure that this fine Signorina was really the little girl she left behind in New York twelve years ago. Ah, me! It was a love-hungry heart to which Bessie was pressed. And the boys! What pride shone on the father’s face! Any father might be proud of them, and I was prouder than the father.
“See what America does for your men!” I cried to a portly gentleman who stood beside us at the window, watching the interesting scene. He did not answer; for the train puffed and screeched, and the cars lurched as they were drawn around the curves. For a long time we could see the donkey cart piled high with baggage, the happy people following it.
The train came closer and closer to the walls of that ancient town, and on its southern side we saw again the holes in the wall, swarms of little children, a gray, tired donkey and picturesque dirt and confusion. At sight of those holes in the wall, I repeated my remark.
“See what America does for your men!”
“Ah!” replied the gentleman, “you see only one side of it; the bright side. There is a dark side to emigration, as there is to an olive leaf. We have given you nearly two million of our best men, to do your dirty and dangerous work.”
“Yes,” I replied; “but we pay them a decent wage; more wages in one year than you pay them in ten.”
It was this remark, the sight of those holes in the wall, and the vision of that six-room cottage in America, which set me to striking the balance for Italy, the country most affected by the good and ill of immigration.
Italy has given to America for shorter or longer periods nearly two and one-half millions of men, for whose labour we have paid her a fair wage. At least two million dollars annually to every one of the provinces from which we have recruited this army of men.
While not all the money will remain in Italy, most of it has already been invested in land. In 1906, there were at least 50,000 land sales made, and much of the land will become doubly productive as a result of the extreme care which will be given it by this landless class, which has suddenly gained its foothold.
The rise in wages which is not far from sixty per cent. is a distinct benefit to the whole country; for a living wage means adequate consumption and increased production. While in some provinces there has been a dearth of labour, Italy is rather remarkable in that there is no danger of its being depopulated, and economically, the entire country is the gainer through emigration.
I have heard many complaints, especially in Italy, that we make Socialists and Anarchists out of their once docile peasantry. The facts are these. Crime has decreased in all districts affected by emigration; which however does not prove that the criminal classes have moved to America. There are other reasons. First, improved economic conditions have removed the causes for many crimes. Second, much crime was due to the uncontrolled passions and undisciplined characters of the peasantry; and the sojourn in America has given to many of them the power of self-control.
That Calabria in Sicily reports a reduction of about forty per cent. in crimes against the person, is certainly significant.
Again, the privileged classes in Italy and other European countries naturally look askance at the spirit of independence which the men bring back with them. Much as we may deplore with the aristocracy the fact that the peasant has lost his fine manners, we can but believe that, on the whole, the loss of docility and the gain in independence are a splendid exchange and of untold benefit to all concerned.
Some day, Democracy may teach her children the art of polished manners; let us hope that it may not be at the loss of the democratic spirit. That the peasant looks his master straight in the face and does not cringe; that he demands fair treatment, a comfortable yoke and no pricking with the goad, are as much benefit to Italy and Austro-Hungary, as they are cause for pride to those of us who believe that America has a mission to fulfill in the world.
If the Italian has really lost his good manners, we have given him in exchange a spirit of independence which, I admit, is sometimes a little in need of pruning, and with it, a yearning for better things and the possibility of its realization.
Public education in Italy has received an impetus directly traceable to the returned immigrant, who saw its value. He was a beast of burden because he knew nothing. The men who were educated had wealth, leisure and all that was denied him and his children.
If ignorance is removed from the common people of Italy, especially from those of the Southern provinces, she can well afford to pay double the price she has paid, whatever that price may be.
It is also charged against the returned immigrant, that he spreads sedition by bringing home strange religious ideas.
“Signor,” said a priest to me in the Campagna, “a man came home who had been in America a few years; an ignorant, stupid fellow, and when he came, he invited his neighbours to his house. Not to treat them with wine, as you might think; but to preach to them. Think of the impudence of the man! A common man, uneducated and not a priest!
“And the people flocked to hear him! One day shortly after that, there came a real American and he preached to them and they sang. I could hear them singing, Signor, while I was saying mass. The tunes kept going around on the tongues of the people and a few months after, they began building a church. They call it the ‘Methodisto’ church.
“Tell me, what heresy do they teach? My flock is divided; the women are crazy over this new doctrine and they gather the little children and teach them to sing these heretical songs.”
Undoubtedly, a new element of friction has been introduced into the solidary, religious life of the nation; but it is equally true that, in most of the towns of Italy, destructive ideas have long been at work and have weaned many peasants, especially the men, from the Mother Church, leaving them in an anarchical attitude towards Church and State.
The new religious ideals, which are largely the ideals of Protestantism while also acting destructively, have, after all, large constructive powers, and, on the whole, are of undoubted benefit. It is the undisputed testimony of impartial observers, that the Sectarians come home “cleaner” than others, that almost without exception they insist upon temperance and chastity, and that they encourage a sane, intellectual activity.
I have given concrete examples of this in other countries; but in Italy these examples could be multiplied. I do not know of a single instance where the introduction of vital religious ideals has not done more good than harm.
The work of Rev. Luigi Lo Perfido, a Baptist minister, is somewhat exceptional, yet in the main, typical. He has introduced into the town of Matera a really constructive, liberal, religious movement.
This includes, in addition to the simple church services, a coöperative system which has large economic consequences. He has made his church a social and literary centre besides keeping it a spiritual force of acknowledged value.
The Church in Italy may regard as a menace this spirit of the Reformation, which it thought dead; but the Church itself cannot fail to be stimulated by the introduction of the leaven. The Mother Church will, perhaps, have to bestir herself to hold the people, by offering them something better than festas and processions.
Many observers complain that in Italian towns especially, emigration has left too great a burden upon the women, and that their economic and social condition is worse than before. This is partially true, but is only temporary. The full truth is, that woman is being benefited most by these great changes, although she now suffers most. Just as the contadino in Italy or the nadelnik in Hungary has been freed from the oppression of his masters, by emigration; so the woman in Italy will be freed from the oppression which she is suffering from her “liege lord” who, especially among the peasant classes affected by immigration, is always at his worst in his relation to his wife.
If there is one complaint against the returned immigrant which is louder than others, it is that the woman who has been in America is spoiled and that she is a mischief maker among the other women, who are apt pupils.
While I do not anticipate that the peasant women of Southern Europe will demand suffrage, they are beginning to demand a voice in the affairs of the household; which has ever been their right, which has long been denied them and which certainly does not indicate that they are spoiled. Neither is there danger of their being spoiled; and it is more than probable that the women of Italy as well as of other immigrant centres, are as much benefited as the men, if not more than they.
After seeing the hole in the wall in which Bessie and her brothers were born, and after looking at the matter from all sides, I can still say, and with firmer conviction than before: “So far as my observation goes, I feel certain that emigration has been of inestimable economic and ethical value to the three great monarchies chiefly concerned, namely: Italy, Austro-Hungary and Russia. It has withdrawn inefficient labour and has returned it capable of more and better work; it has lifted the status of the peasantry to a degree which could not have been achieved even by a revolution; it has stimulated the neglected masses, lifted them to a higher standard of living and has implanted new and vital ideals.”
The hole in the wall in which Bessie and her brother were born brought to my mind anew the prophetic injunction: “Look unto the rock whence ye were hewn, and the hole of the pit whence ye were digged,” and aroused in me the spirit of humility; an attitude of mind essential for the appreciation of all the problems and opportunities arising from the presence in our country of these “lesser folk.”
This attitude of mind ought not to be a difficult one for the average American to attain; because most of his ancestors came out of such holes in the wall—some better, some worse.
Even those of whom we no longer think as immigrants, but proudly call our forefathers, who came long ago, came from good, plain, peasant stock; not blue blooded, but of virile red blood.
For this we should be deeply grateful; although we are likely to forget it, and also willing to forget it, I fear.
Recently I travelled with a friend and his wife. The gentleman, a professional man of high standing, was going on a pilgrimage to his ancestral village in Germany. The wife went there in the firm conviction that the home of his parents must have been some ancient castle; for her husband was a noble fellow indeed.
When we found the place where he was born, it was a cow-stable and looked as if it had been none too good for that purpose, even in its palmy days, and my friend discovered that his parents were peasants, so poor that they were sent to America at the expense of the town. Nevertheless, he and his wife are cultured Americans and their children are graduates of our best colleges and universities.
Not long ago, in travelling from the East to the West, my neighbour in the coach, a young man of evident good breeding, complained bitterly at the presence of some Russian Jewish immigrants. He hated them all, he said; and had no use for them.
I looked into his face, and beneath the ruddy skin and dark, wide open eyes, saw that which only the initiated can readily detect—the racial origin. “May I ask your name?” His name was McElwynne, and his parents were English; but before I had done with him I knew that they had come from Russia, that their name was Levyn and that he was a Russian Jew but one generation removed from the steerage.
Quite unintentionally, I once almost broke the heart of a woman in fashionable society. She pronounces her name with a French accent, and I translated it into Slavic; in that language it means a common garden tool, which proves her husband to be of peasant origin.
The sight of the hole in the wall in Italy, and of the wretched huts in Hungary and Poland, has quickened my sympathies with the people who come out of them. Even so our fathers and mothers went forth, driven by hunger and dire need, drawn by the dream of better things and sustained by a simple and devout faith.
After all, we are brothers. Born out of the womb of poverty, nourished by coarse fare, taught in the hard school of labour and saved from wretchedness by the same good providence.
More and more we shall grow into one another’s likeness, and that of God, as all have more bread, better air, cleaner homes, good books and an unobstructed view into heaven.
For this, “Praise ye the Lord, kings and all people; princes and all judges of the earth!”
Praise Him ye Irish and Scotch!
Praise Him ye English and Welsh!
Praise Him ye Germans and French!
Praise Him ye Slavs and ye Latins!
Praise Him ye Gentiles and Jews!
“Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord! Praise ye the Lord!”