Part II — With the Incoming Tide
XIII Problems of the Tide
THE 1,200 steerage passengers who sailed for the United States early in November, 1908, on the steamship America, of the Hamburg-American Line, were the advance guard of the vast armies of men which were waiting for the election of Mr. Taft to the presidency.
That to them, was synonymous with the return of good times; but before those good times had a chance to prove themselves identical with those which took sudden flight over a year ago, the steamers of all lines were assured their full number of steerage passengers.
When the first shipload of them sailed into New York harbour, its humble passengers were hailed as the harbingers of the prosperity which was being anxiously awaited by rich and poor; by native and foreign born; by the citizens of New York and Budapest and by the people of Chicago and Spalato.
We, in the United States, have alternated between fear because so many immigrants came, and regret because so many went away; but the recent influx brought joy to all, because the coming again of so many, indicated the return of good times.
For our good or ill, for what is better than mere good times, and for worse than financial depression or economic problems, these strangers of all races and nations come and go, helping to make our history and shape our destiny.
From the beginning, our history has in a large degree been determined by the migratory movements of larger or smaller groups from the Old World, and unless we have idealized these movements overmuch, those groups which came, unconscious of the gold and the iron slumbering in our hills—which came for “conscience’ sake”—those groups have affected our history most fundamentally if not most permanently.
Pilgrims, Puritans, Huguenots, Quakers and German Pietists certainly made history. They sailed the treacherous seas and marched into the pathless wilderness, driven by something higher than the mere necessity to sustain life.
Subsequently came other Germans, the Irish, Scotch and Scandinavians. They came primarily because of economic distress in the home-land; yet even among those were many groups which came because they were dreamers of dreams, and sought “a city whose builder and maker is God.”
In one of our Western states are two large communities, one from Holland and one from Germany; both are late comers to this Western world. One of them has built itself into a rather typical Western town and the other is the one successful example of a religious community in this country. Both these groups left prosperous homes in the Old World to seek a place where they might worship God according to the dictates of their conscience; and all this happened in the latter part of the nineteenth century, at the very zenith of our material development.
Large and influential groups of these seekers after God may be found throughout the length and breadth of our country; although they may now come out of the heart of Russia, like the Molicani in Los Angeles, California, they come moved by the same impulses which drew the Pilgrims to Plymouth and the Germans to Pennsylvania, and they exhibit the same characteristics.
In these days most people believe that when the last Irishman has arrived from Dublin, the Old World will be drained of her best people, and we look upon a certain boundary line in Europe as the division between good people and bad; yet from beyond that line come pilgrim bands in much larger numbers than the casual observer knows, and they are bent upon the same holy errand as that which brought those who came generations ago. In fact the Reformation with its religious and political consequences is making itself felt at this late day in these migratory movements. Large groups driven to the plains of the Volga or the Danube are now coming to the United States; with narrow doctrines, it is true, but with deep convictions, and the churches of the Reformation feel this current in the measure in which they have kept themselves spiritually alert. Yet one must admit that the vast majority of those who come is driven by no higher motive than the economic pressure. Yet it is not always poverty which drives them from their village homes to our cities or from their quiet fields to our noisy shops.
They are no poorer to-day than they were fifty years ago when no one thought of moving even a league from the village in which he was born. They are simply obeying an impulse which is extending to the very edges of civilization; an impulse created by discontent. Everywhere men are beginning to believe that God meant them to enjoy the good things of life now, and that all men, not merely a privileged class, should be able to enjoy them.
Nothing ever quite so rudely shattered the idea of the stability of wealth as the discovery of America and the subsequent migrations there of different groups from different portions of Europe.
Wealth had been in a measure entailed, the possession of a class; and poverty was meekly accepted as the divine apportionment to the mass of men. When it was rumoured that gold lay hidden in the mountains across the sea, that no key was needed to gain access to its hiding-place, and that it would belong to any one who dared, the myth was quickly dissolved. Poor men came and got their share of gold—not so often by finding it as by toiling for it.
Further and further the truth travelled; slowly, as is the way of truth; until to-day, scarcely anywhere is the prevailing social order or economic status accepted as fixed. The greater the number of men returning from America, even with very moderate wealth, the more the discontent spreads, and men seek the place where this change may soonest be effected.
They will continue to come until the economic opportunities at home are appreciably nearer those they find in this strange land. Although at present there is no European country or province from which there has not been some emigration, there are people who have only begun to seek this adjustment; therefore, the force of the tide towards America is destined to increase rather than decrease, and an annual influx of 2,000,000, more, rather than less, may be expected during the next decade.
No matter from where the groups come, they will present an economic problem to those who, in a measure at least, have risen to a higher standard of living. Each group will fear that the younger and often cruder body may lessen its chances of maintaining that standard. The Germans, the Irish and the Norse people were not received with open arms by those who preceded them, even those of related race or nationality. This was especially true during the years when war, famine and persecution brought them in large numbers.
Now, in turn, all these look askance at the Jew, the Slav and the Italian; while they, like the rest, are ready to close the doors to the vast hordes about to move onward, and, as they believe, upward. It is also interesting to note, that among these late comers, there are decided ideas as to who are desirable immigrants, and who are not.
The Slav, if he is a Pole, would exclude his cousin, the Slovak, and both are united in thinking that the Ruthenian is a rather inferior being; while the Ruthenian would debar the Jews, Servians and Croatians from the economic benefits of the land of his adoption.
Until now there has been room for all, and they have not presented a serious economic menace, except as they have intensified the general problem of labour. Each group, driven from the lower and coarser tasks, has risen from mine to shop, from shop to store, and from the store into every avenue of business and professional life.
Thus far all have been crowded up and not many have been crowded out. No considerable groups of native Americans are bewailing the fact that they cannot find work in the mines; nor would large numbers desire to go back to them from their safer toiling places.
The Irish are not mourning because they are not working on sections, nor would they be willing to leave their beats and office chairs from which they are ruling, not only those of us who came after them, but a fair share of those who came before them. They do not care to go back to the track, the pickax and the shovel.
Without the Slav, the Italian and the Magyar, that which we call our industrial development would have been impossible. This development does not lessen the economic problem, it intensifies it; but it cannot be proved that no economic problem would exist if, instead of Slav and Latin, the Teutonic races were dominant in this movement. In that case I believe the problem would be more difficult of solution.
Let me again frankly admit that I do not regard most immigrant groups of the present type as a serious menace to the other groups, or to the whole economic life, provided they are needed to do the work for which they seem best fitted. At present this is still a matter of proper distribution and presents no such serious difficulty as is commonly supposed; for the immigrant will go wherever he is wanted and a fair wage is assured him. Nor is he quite so eager to herd in cities as we imagine, and no community need be without an adequate supply of labourers, if they are needed for hard, crude labour. There is no work so hard or so dangerous that the immigrant will not attempt it.
Like their forerunners in the migratory movement of European races, the present immigrants respond quickly to the American higher standards of living, and in many cases much more quickly than some of the older groups responded.
When we speak of the horrors of the East Side of New York, the crowded Ghetto and Mulberry Street with its Italian filth, we forget the days when the Irish possessed the land, “squatting” wherever they could, and living in wretched huts; when the American used to sing:
“The pig was in the parlour, and that was Irish too.”
The pig and the goat have gone, and instead, the Irish have pianos and phonographs in their parlours; but in one generation, many Slavs and Italians, under less favourable conditions, have achieved the same results, minus the pig and goat period.
To-day, the merchants in Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Connelsville and Pittsburg regard the Slav as a great “spender”; and if the Italian is not now like his predecessors, he soon will become so imbued by the American spirit, that, like us, he will live up to his income and beyond it.
That phase of the problem so much complained of, which relates to the immigrants’ sending the bulk of their earnings to Europe, would not be half so serious if we provided a safe banking system; preferably, Postal Savings Banks. Both the Austrian and Italian governments thus safeguard every penny which is sent abroad, and one cannot blame the toiler who prefers to trust his money to a government in whose financial soundness he has absolute confidence, rather than place it in our own savings institutions, in which we ourselves have but little confidence.
The economic problem as presented by the effect of immigration upon the labour market is made less serious by the fact that large numbers of those who come, go back and forth, according to the demand for the commodity which they supply.
During our last financial crisis, the sudden withdrawal from competition of half a million toilers, certainly rendered conditions less difficult than they would have been had we drawn for our supply upon those sources in Northern and Central Europe, which have always sent us their surplus population for permanent settlement. Those aspects of the present immigrant population, which are usually pointed out as its defects, have in a large measure helped to make the economic problem less acute; although they have aggravated some phases of it. Foremost among these is the ethnic problem.
Possibly because of the bitterness of the race question in the South, the American people have become very sensitive to ethnic differences. All those primitive instincts which were at work in the childhood of the race have risen to the surface and threaten to become permanent factors in our national character.
A little more or less pigment in the skin, the shape of a nose or the slant of the eyes, produce in the average American that most primitive of antagonisms—race prejudice.
Being a primitive instinct, it defies reason, the commandments of religion and the dictates of humanity. In fact, it often becomes irrational, irreligious and inhuman.
During the recent agitation of the Japanese question on the Coast, I discovered that no matter how far removed the ordinary American may be from the seat of the difficulty, the very agitation of the question acts contagiously upon the people of the East as well as of the West. As a result, their feelings towards the Japanese have unconsciously changed for the worse, so that the question has assumed in their minds the qualities and proportions of the Negro problem.
To justify its existence, this instinct, if such it is, overemphasizes ethnic differences and minimizes the superior qualities of the race or group involved. It always applies the categoric judgment when the judgment is adverse, and admits grudgingly that in each group or race there are certain individuals who possess good qualities.
In visiting nearly every city of the United States where there are groups of Italians, I have everywhere heard it said by those who had dealings with them: “We have no bad Italians, ours are good, the bad ones are elsewhere.” In Trenton, N. J., you are told that the bad Italians are in Patterson; but when you are there, nearly every one denies the fact and consigns all the bad Italians to New York.
The truth is, that wherever men have had a chance to know the individual Italian, they have discovered that there are good Italians even as there are good Jews and good Slavs, and that there are good and bad in every race.
Naturally, when men apply the warped categoric judgment to another race, particularly when that race is in political or economic competition with them, they are likely to magnify the evil in the character of the race, and rarely even admit the good. That this categoric judgment is seldom just, that it leads to antagonisms which actualize themselves in race riots and wars, is certainly very evident.
I have watched the development of this prejudice against the Japanese, even as I am most anxiously watching it grow against certain European groups which are ethnically more or less differentiated from the native population, and I am not over confident that we shall solve the ethnic problem without much struggle and stress and strain. Indeed, the ethnic problem can be solved only if we have patience, a measure of sympathy and the sense of justice.
There is a subtle force at work, which, to a degree at least, is settling this matter for us—a force which, if we allow it full play, will complete the task whose result will be the miracle of the age.
I call it a miracle, advisedly; for the things which seemed fixed, unchangeable, deeply graven in the nature of certain European races, the products of long ages, vanish in a generation.
Race characteristics which were regarded as biological are found to be sociological; on the outside of the race, if we might so express it, and not on the inside.
The children of the Neapolitans and the Sicilians lose somewhat of their swarthiness; the features lose their sharpness, and as a rule the children grow over the heads of their parents. Indeed, the last named process takes place among natives and aliens alike.
The ethnic differences of even the most strongly marked European races will ultimately disappear; that is, if we have patience and sympathy, and, above all, if we mete out that justice which gives every man a chance, regardless of his nationality or race.
As a nation we do not possess in an abundant degree these qualities; therefore the ethnic problem is one which may yet postpone its solution until that time when indeed there shall be “Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men.”
Thus far I have touched upon two problems presented by the return of the immigrant tide: the economic and the ethnic.
Another problem presented by this influx of aliens is in that rather indefinable realm called culture.
The question is: Will these people be able to appreciate the cultural ideals of America, and make them their own?
It would be an insult to my readers to try to make clear to them that the people who come to us are not barbarians or semi-barbarians; although as a rule they are uncultured and not yet in harmony with many of our ideals. I would not even attempt to mention this, were it not for the fact that it is the commonly accepted idea, that we are dealing with the offscouring of Europe. Let me illustrate. Not very long ago, I heard a home missionary secretary of a certain denomination say before an audience of intelligent, Christian people, that “We are landing annually a million paupers and criminals”; and I venture to say that nearly every one who heard that statement believed it. Let us see who these people are who come to us.
Slavs, Latins and other Aryan groups, such as Lithuanians, Albanians, and Greeks; of whom the first two have fairly earned the right to be called the oldest inhabitants of the continent of Europe. Next in order are Finns and Magyars, from among the Ugru-Altaic races, Jews and some smaller Semitic groups. The bulk is made up of Slavs, Latins and Semitic peoples.
Need I question whether the Latin has in him the qualities which will enable him to appreciate our culture? The Italian who built Florence, whose sons built St. Peter’s, painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and carved out of Carrara marble the “Pieta” and the statue of Moses?
Need I mention Giotto, the builder, Raphael, the painter, a Dante, a Petrarch, a Savonarola—a hundred masters of the chisel and the brush, of rhythmic rhyme and stately prose, all reared in that Garden of Europe, Italy?
Will the Jew learn to appreciate that culture, the best of which was created by his sires? For the glory of our American culture lies in the quality of its manhood and womanhood and that at its best is patterned after men and women whose names would debar them from certain clubs and hotels to-day. Moses, Amos and Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and in all reverence I mention Jesus and Mary, John, Paul and Peter. Strange to say, it is sometimes necessary to call the attention of intelligent people to the fact that these men and women were not Methodists or Presbyterians or even Episcopalians; and that neither their sires nor their sons came over in the Mayflower.
Perhaps we need to realize that as Americans we have neither invented nor discovered education, liberty or religion. What we have accomplished is, that we have made gifts to the many, of some of those blessings which in the immigrants’ country are the possession only of the few; and that is no small achievement.
The problem, the real problem, is: how to feed these people on truly vital knowledge, how to make common to all, the beautiful, the harmonious, the ethical; how to bring to all, the knowledge of that religion which indeed makes free from tribal pride and racial hate and leads men into the freedom of the sons of God.
Perhaps the greatest problem still to be solved is, how to interpret to these people the one supreme gift of all these gifts which most of them never possessed—the right of citizenship.
Herein lies our real peril; not because the immigrant cannot be made to understand how to exercise this right; but because here we are least efficient, and here we, the earlier comers and their children, have most signally failed.
The Scotch-Irish of Pittsburg are not a conspicuous example of good citizenship for the Italians; the Germans of Reading and Lancaster have no overplus of civic righteousness to give the Slavs; the Quakers of Philadelphia have not been moved by the Spirit to teach the Jews how to govern a city righteously; the Yankees of Connecticut and Rhode Island have not ruled their states in such a manner that the crude Lithuanian or the Greek could in all cases follow their example; nor are the Irish of New York in a position to throw stones at the other races.
I do not know of a single case where the newer groups have failed to respond to sane, vigorous leadership in the struggle for civic righteousness; while in every large city there are conspicuous examples of many a battle won, because the immigrants have aided the cause.
In Scranton, Pa., in the fight for a clean city, the mayor’s private secretary, a Russian Jew, did valiant service; while Pittsburg’s “cleaning up” has been accomplished because a vigorous attorney of the same race was one of the captains in a campaign which may have vast consequences for the entire state.
It ought to be a matter of no little pride to the Jews of Pittsburg, that among its non-corruptible councilmen there was at least one of their race.
Prof. Graham Taylor of Chicago, whose worth and work that city does not fully appreciate, has found the Poles of his ward ready to share in the struggle for civic betterment. One of the first “clean” councilmen of the city came from that ward and was a member of the Slavic race.
The problem of citizenship is not a problem created by the immigrant, and his presence makes it more difficult of solution, only because we have not provided him with safe leaders and have not ourselves been very good examples. Indeed the primary corrupting influence in every city with which I am acquainted is either of native stock or belongs to the first or second generation of those immigrants whose coming does not disturb us and whose presence we regard as a blessing. These are either German or Irish, and largely of the latter nationality.
That phase of the struggle which is directed against the saloon, the newcomer does not understand, and as yet no one has taken pains to enlighten him. We are astonished when we find him opposing our efforts to deprive him of his liquor; but to the Slav, at least, whiskey means life and strength. He would regard being deprived of meat as more reasonable than having his vodka or palenka taken from him.
The immigrant needs leaders in whom he can have absolute confidence; leaders who possess the genius of democracy and the spirit of brotherhood; who will have patience with his slow ways.
Those of us who are not born to lead ought to realize that a good example is very contagious, and that the love of righteousness and justice is not so foreign to these strangers as some of us imagine.
It is in the hope of stimulating both leadership and good example that I have written the following chapters. In that hope I have pointed out how contagiously our example acts upon these groups and how the processes of assimilation are retarded by injustice and prejudice.
I have given special attention to the religious life of these newer groups whose interpretation I have attempted, because not only does religion play a large part in their lives; but because I believe that in the field of religion lie the largest possibilities for that kind of assimilation which can make of all these “tribes and tongues and nations” “fellow citizens with the saints”; and of all the “strangers and sojourners,” members of the “household of God.”