XXIII Twenty-Five Years With the New Immigrant
It is now twenty-five years since I landed in the United States with a group of Slovaks from the district of Scharosh in Hungary.
I followed them across the sea and watched this historic movement of the Slavs, who until then had remained practically dormant where they had been left by the glacier-like movement of their race, the pressure of the invader or the fate which governed Eastern European politics.
It was a fascinating experience to see these forgotten children of an unresponsive soil coming in touch with a civilization of which they had never dreamed; to see the struggle of emotions in their usually impassive faces, as they saw the evidences of European culture and wealth in the Northern cities through which we passed.
What fear crept into their hearts and drove the healthy blood from their cheeks when for the first time they saw the turbulent sea.
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
Statistics Referring to Foreign-Born Offenders Committed to New York State Prisons and Penitentiaries During 1904.
Total Number of Prisoners Committed
| Major Offenses. | Minor Offenses. | Total. | |
| Aggregate | 3,679 | 26,136 | 29,815 |
| Total white | 3,345 | 24,969 | 28,314 |
| Native white | 2,266 | 16,759 | 19,025 |
| Native white of native parentage | 1,223 | 10,266 | 11,489 |
| Native white of foreign parentage | 732 | 4,500 | 5,232 |
| Native white of mixed parentage | 263 | 1,505 | 1,768 |
| Native white of unknown parentage | 48 | 488 | 536 |
| Foreign-born whites | 1,075 | 8,158 | 9,233 |
| Whites of unknown nativity | 4 | 52 | 56 |
| Negroes | 330 | 1,139 | 1,469 |
| Mongolians | ... | 1 | 1 |
| Indians | 4 | 27 | 31 |
Foreign-Born White Offenders by Nativity
| Major Offenses. | Per cent. | Minor Offenses. | Per cent. | |
| Austria | 48 | 4.5 | 259 | 3.2 |
| Canada | 68 | 6.3 | 435 | 5.3 |
| Denmark | 5 | 0.5 | 28 | 0.3 |
| England and Wales | 67 | 6.2 | 655 | 8.1 |
| France | 19 | 1.8 | 119 | 1.4 |
| Germany | 212 | 19.7 | 1,136 | 13.9 |
| Hungary | 15 | 1.4 | 83 | 1.0 |
| Ireland | 148 | 13.7 | 3,569 | 43.9 |
| Italy | 255 | 23.7 | 601 | 7.3 |
| Mexico | ... | ... | 6 | 0.1 |
| Norway | 7 | 0.7 | 46 | 0.5 |
| Poland | 30 | 2.8 | 232 | 2.8 |
| Russia | 119 | 11.0 | 392 | 4.9 |
| Scotland | 17 | 1.6 | 220 | 2.7 |
| Sweden | 14 | 1.3 | 163 | 2.0 |
| Switzerland | 4 | 0.4 | 43 | 0.5 |
| Other countries | 47 | 4.4 | 171 | 2.1 |
| Totals | 1,075 | 100.0 | 8,158 | 100.0 |
Paupers Admitted to Almshouses in New York State During Year 1904. by Nativity and Length of Residence in the United States.
| All paupers admitted | 10,272 |
| Per cent. of white paupers admitted: | |
| Native | 44.0 per cent. |
| Foreign-born | 56.0 per cent. |
Foreign-Born White Paupers Admitted in 1904, by Nativity
| Country of Birth | Per cent. | Per cent. |
| Ireland | 54.3 | |
| Germany | 18.7 | |
| England and Wales | 6.4 | |
| Canada (including Newfoundland) | 4.3 | |
| Scandinavia | 2.0 | |
| France | 0.9 | |
| Scotland | 2.0 | |
| ——— | 88.6 | |
| Italy | 3.5 | |
| Hungary and Bohemia | 0.6 | |
| Russia and Poland | 3.3 | |
| Unknown | 4.0 | |
| —— | 11.4 | |
| Grand total | 100.0 |
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
Foreign-Born Offenders According to Years of
Residence in the United States
| Years | Major Offenses. | Per cent. | Minor Offenses. | Per cent. |
| Under one year | 36 | 3.3 | 86 | 1.0 |
| One year | 79 | 7.2 | 229 | 2.8 |
| Two years | 63 | 5.8 | 297 | 3.6 |
| Three years | 52 | 4.8 | 285 | 3.4 |
| Four years | 40 | 3.6 | 177 | 2.2 |
| Over four years | 824 | 75.3 | 7,143 | 87.0 |
| Totals | 1,094 | 100.0 | 8,217 | 100.0 |
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.