XX From Fifth Avenue to the Ghetto
It has always been dangerous for the common mortal who was the spokesman of his kind to eat at the king’s table; for the tyrant at close range proved an admirable host and pleasant gentleman, whose tender meats and delicate wines covered a “multitude of sins.”
When, after having eaten lunch on the East Side for a week, one receives an invitation to luncheon on Fifth Avenue, even the most scrupulous may temporize, and I confess that, feeling highly flattered, I tossed my scruples to the winds and accepted the invitation.
The feast began for me, when my eyes rested on the splendid architecture of the palatial residence, its furnishings, marbles and pictures, which appealed to my artistic sense and almost reproduced the atmosphere of the refinement and culture of those lands in which they had their birth. In the winter garden where fountains played, and rare flowers nodded their bedewed heads, filling the air with fragrance, I forgot the squalor of the East Side and the darkness and dampness of that raw, February day.
With the luncheon I was less pleased; for frankly, I prefer noodle soup and Gulyas to French snails and terrapin.
To my plebeian palate the snails tasted like mucilage flavoured with garlic, and the terrapin like fricasseed Turkish towels.
Of more importance than the menu was my host, whose every word betrayed the consciousness of his power and his ignorance of those lesser folk, as whose champion he had invited me to be his guest.
“What can be done to stay the power of Socialism?”
“How can we keep out Black Hands and Anarchists?”
To him, immigrants, Socialists and Anarchists were synonymous terms. My speech was not yet dulled by the luncheon or my brain clouded by the smoke of his Havana cigars, and I gave him such plain answers as I might have given after lunching on noodle soup and Gulyas.
My words were as unpalatable to him as his snails and terrapin were to me; for I told him that Anarchists live in brown stone houses and that Socialism is being fed and nourished on Fifth Avenue. Our views were as far apart as our bank accounts, and to argue with him seriously would have been as useless as it would have been poor taste. He became more human as the luncheon progressed from its airy and aristocratic entrées to the more democratic and substantial roast beef and potatoes.
When we reached pumpkin pie, one of the few connecting links with his humble past, he had quite lost his critical sternness, and asked my advice upon so delicate a matter as how to give his wayward sons a grappling place for the upbuilding of character.
I suggested work in the Settlements; but he regarded them with suspicion, declaring that they are irreligious and a breeding place for Socialism. He listened with indifference to my defense of these institutions which I regard as among the most valuable agencies we have for the common good. I suggested some public service for the community or the state.
“Politics?” he asked quizzically; “it’s a dirty game. I want my boys to help me take care of the interests I have.”
I did not know what those interests were, nor did I care to inquire, and luncheon being over, I rose to take leave.
“Where are you going?” asked my host, rather abruptly.
“To the East Side,” I replied.
He wondered whether I was not afraid to go there, and when I told him that I felt safer in the Ghetto at night than I should feel two blocks west of his palace, he asked whether he might accompany me.
Knowing the free and easy ways of the Ghetto I assured him a hearty welcome; so we left his home together and took the car for Houston Street and Avenue B to attend the Gulyas banquet to be given by the “Bolsover Sick and Benefit Association,” in its hall on Houston Street.
Sunday afternoon is the day on which the East Side looks its best. Its squalor is temporarily hid beneath the festal garb of the rest day; the children are still clean after their weekly scrubbing, and the mothers sit on the stoops, gossiping and watching with the Old World timidity their agile flocks playing in the middle of the street, also fairly clean in comparison with its condition on the busier work days, when the refuse of push-carts and ash cans covers it.
My millionaire host evidently found pleasure in this human mass. He saw children who seemed happier than his own; for although they had fewer pleasures, they had no governess to dog their footsteps, no maid to keep them from exertion and no fear of microbes or bacteria.
Here in the Ghetto all the unrestrained child nature asserted itself, and being children they had no thought for the morrow and having been born in America, they were boisterously happy.
My host decided that after all humanity on Houston Street is not so different from that on Fifth Avenue. The women, especially the younger ones, were gowned as fashionably although less extravagantly; pony coats being the style on Fifth Avenue were also found on Houston Street, and most of the women who paraded both streets looked very much as if they belonged to the same herd.
Hats were as expansive if not as expensive in this hemisphere of the social world as in his own; while pride and social prejudice were common properties of both.
Our entrance into the lodge room, on the fourth floor, over a Kosher restaurant, was announced by the outer guard, after which a committee came out to meet us. Then pledging us to secrecy we were escorted to places of honour at the right and left of the Grand Master of the lodge.
The small room was completely filled by over one hundred members, and after the business under discussion was finished, we were duly introduced and addresses of welcome were made by officers and prominent members.
I doubt that my fellow guest ever listened to addresses which he enjoyed more than those he then heard, spoken in broken yet picturesque language; and I am sure he never before realized that such lofty sentiments lodged in such humble hearts and amid such forbidding surroundings.
These hundred and more men, we were told, were bound together in fellowship to help one another when unemployed, to support and nurse one another when sick, to pay the last honours to the dead and to protect the widows and the orphans.
And that was not all. It is the object of this lodge to work for mutual intellectual improvement, and although politics are tabooed, the lodge strives to develop noble, patriotic ideals among its members.
Of the men who spoke, I have known some from their childhood, and all of them since their arrival in the United States.
It will not break the pledge of secrecy to say a word about these men, typical immigrants from Hungary.
The Grand Master was born in a Jewish home in which the best traditions of the Hebrew faith were adhered to. I have been there many a time carrying messages from son to parent, and it was always a delight to meet the saintly old father and mother who have never ceased being homesick for their boy. He has gone through a hard school in America, from sweat shop to laundry; and now he is a letter carrier.
The Past Grand Master is a wood-worker who tried business, but failed and is now back at his bench.
Another is a metal worker, and his calloused hands prove that he obeys the Divine injunction, and earns his bread by the sweat of his brow.
The man who proposed our being made honorary members of the lodge had entered the University of Vienna, suffered moral bankruptcy and ran away to America. He is a cloak presser.
The man who seconded his motion is a waiter, the prodigal son of a rich father, brought low by his iniquities; but kept from utter ruin by the fellowship of these men.
I know the record of them all; good and bad records, like those of other groups of men; but every one of them is now earning his daily bread and is contributing something to the wealth and the weal of the great city.
My millionaire friend frankly confessed that he had never seen a “bunch” of men which impressed him more favourably than these—and well they might impress him; for they all looked like toilers. Labour had bent their forms, parched their skin and shadowed their eyes.
It was a long meeting, until far into the night. Several times the outer guard had announced that the Gulyas was ready; but not even the odour of its rich sauce which pervaded the building could stop the flow of eloquence, once set in motion, or curb the eagerness with which rival candidates battled for office.
At last the Grand Master smote his desk with his gavel for the last time and the “meetunk” was adjourned.
In proper order and ceremoniously, we were conducted to the basement of the Kosher restaurant. The steaming Gulyas was on the tables, beer and wine awaited the thirsty guests and the banquet began even before all the members of the Bolsover Association were fairly seated.
My companion looked askance at the bowls of Gulyas with its red gravy; but it wooed his appetite through his nostrils and he gained sufficient courage to take a piece of the well cooked meat with its dripping sauce. Then I saw him eat as I had not eaten of his French snails and terrapin. The members of the Society drank their modest measures of beer and Hungarian wine as toast followed toast.
It had been my privilege not long before to have a conference with President Roosevelt, and as I rose to toast the chief magistrate of the United States, I repeated a few of his trenchant sentences. “Elyen! Elyen!” the men shouted when I mentioned his name; and when I said that the President had expressed to me the hope that we strangers should so live that the country which gave us “sanctuary,” a place to work in and to live in, might be proud of us—the enthusiastic “Elyens!” seemed unending. After the banquet, the man who had successfully run for the secretaryship invited us to come into his home, not far away. My host, having had a taste of the East Side and wanting more, readily accepted the invitation.
We found this home in the second story of a tenement house on East Ninth Street. We entered through the kitchen, and in the one other room, living room, sleeping room and nursery combined, was the man’s wife with their three daughters. The youngest was in bed, the older one was reading, while the oldest was entertaining friends—two or three girls and a young man, her “steady company.” The room was crowded, but clean, and my Fifth Avenue friend sat down and looked at the novel picture before him.
The young people chatted about the recent ball of the Bolsover Sick and Benefit Association, of clothes and beaux; very much as they talk of balls and clothes and beaux on Fifth Avenue.
Refreshments were offered us, and then the father told of his good fortune in having been elected secretary of his lodge. Every one was delighted; but the younger daughter, this little Jewish child, said: “Papa, why don’t you run for president, once?”
He replied: “My child, don’t you knows that I gets paid for being secretary, and gets nothing for being president?”
Upon which, this child of the Ghetto faced her father half angrily, crying: “Why, papa, don’t you know that honour is more than money?”
We left the tenement house together and walked across to Broadway, all along that gaily lighted thoroughfare, illy named the White Way. Theatres and concert halls were being emptied, and we were jostled by the crowds. My friend spoke never a word until we reached the marble steps of his home. Then, pressing my hand, he said, with almost a tenderness in his voice: “Honour is more than money.”