Part 12

Unfortunately they have imported into this country their racial prejudices which are keenest towards their closest kin, and each mining camp becomes the battle-ground on which ancient wrongs are made new issues by repeated quarrels and fights which become bloody at times, although premeditated murder is rather infrequent. In a large number of cases these unfortunate divisions are intermingled by religious differences, although the Slovak and the Pole do not speak well of one another even if they belong to the same church. The Pole regards himself as the especial guardian of the Roman Catholic Church, and while a majority of the Slovaks are of the same Church, Protestantism has made some inroads and the Greek Church claims many loyal adherents. Many of the Catholics belong to the Greek Catholic Church which is that portion of the Greek Church in Austria which united with Rome after the division of Poland, and which was permitted to use its own Slavonic ritual and retain its married clergy. Only a portion of the Greek Church entered this union so that nearly every large Slovak community has a number of Russian Greeks, who look upon the Roman Greeks with a great deal of scorn. In Marblehead, on Lake Erie, where these Slovaks are engaged in the limestone quarries, this division was discovered after all the Greeks had built one church, that of the Roman Greeks. A few of the wiser ones who arrived in this country later were dreadfully shocked when they saw this, and in Peter Shigalinsky’s saloon plans were made to gain possession of the church for the only true Greeks, the Russian; many pitched battles were fought, a long and fruitless litigation followed, and finally Peter Shigalinsky built next to his saloon a new church, whose orthodoxy is emphasized by one of the horizontal pieces of the cross slanting at a more acute angle than that of the Roman Greek church, in which of course there can be no salvation.

Where they have no church of their own they are usually found worshipping with the English or Germans, if they are Romanists, but in many cases the priests told me that they are not wanted and must keep to one corner of the building. There are not priests enough to shepherd them, and those they have are in many cases unfitted for the task. It is asserted that the Lutheran pastors are no better, and count for little or nothing in making these people Christians and citizens. They are naturally suspicious of strangers, but grateful for every kindness, and once a door is opened to their hearts it is never closed again. Unfortunately, their speech shuts them out from the touch with American people of the same community, but there are avenues of approach in which only one language is spoken--the language of love and kindness; one noble American woman whom I know ministers to them by nursing them and suggesting simple remedies when they are ill, and has thus become no small factor in their social and religious redemption.

Of literature little or nothing enters the mining villages, although among the Poles the hunger for it grows and many papers and magazines are coming into existence. The Slovak lives an isolated life, sublimely ignorant of “wars and rumours of wars”; his breakfast is not spoiled by the glaring head-lines of the daily paper, nor does the magazine or novel press upon him the problems of human society. He knows his camp, his mine, his shop, and though he lives in America and in the most busy States in the Union, his world now is not much bigger than it was when its horizon touched his village pastures.

As yet he is not a factor politically, though the political “boss” finds him the best kind of material, for he is bought and sold without knowing it, and votes for he knows not whom. At Braddock, Pa., it was told me that he is sold first to the Democrats and then to the Republicans, and afterwards is naïve enough to come back to the Democrats and tell of his bargain, willing to be bought back into his political family. Like almost all foreigners, he is a Democrat by instinct or by association, one scarcely knows which, although he is usually anything that a drink of liquor makes him. I asked one his political faith, “Are you a Democrat?” “No, me Catholic--Greek, not Russian,” was the reply. “What are your politics?” I asked a number. “Slovak,” was the invariable answer. Not twenty per cent. of those I interviewed knew the name of our President, not two per cent. the name of the Governor of the State in which they were residing. The Slovak does not know the meaning of the word citizen, and the limited franchise in Hungary is exercised for him by those shrewder than himself; he is just force and muscle, with all the roots of his heart in the little village across the sea, and with his brain wherever the stronger brain leads him.

At a recent election in Hungary, a district where the Slovaks were in a large majority, they were, nevertheless, defeated by the Magyar element which knew how to manage them; so that they may be said to have had just enough political training to fit them into the political life of the average American community.

Although the Slovak is a quiet and peaceful citizen, on feast day he does not consider his religious nature sufficiently stirred without a fight, which is usually a crude, bungling affair, devoid of the science which accompanies such an episode among the Irish, and also without the deadly results of an Italian fracas.

On the wedding day of Yanko and Katshka, the silence of the camp is broken by the sound of a screeching violin, followed by the wailing of a clarinet and the grunting of a bass viol. Above the discord of noise made by these instruments is heard the voice of the bridegroom, who leads the dances with the song: “I am so glad I have you, I have you, and I wouldn’t sell you to any one.” If you enter the house of the bride, you will find it full of sweltering humanity, all of it dancing up and down, down and up, while the fiddlers play and the bridegroom sings about “The sweetheart he is glad to have and wouldn’t sell to any one.”

Usually the Slav dancers provide the notes and the bank notes also; for at the end of the piece half a dozen stalwart men will throw themselves in front of the musicians, each one of them demanding in exchange for the money tossed upon the table, his favourite tune to which he sings his native song. The result is, half a dozen men, each singing or trying to sing, a different song, all of them pushing, crowding, and at last fighting, until in the middle of the room you will find an entanglement of human beings which beats itself into an unrecognizable mass. The wedding lasts three days, the ceremony often taking place after the first day’s festivities. The order of proceedings and the length of the feast vary, according to imported traditions which among the Slavs are different in every district.

Of course the whole mining camp is an interested spectator and guests usually do not wait for a formal invitation. The ceremony over, the wedding dinner is served, and never in all the Carpathian Mountains was there such feasting as there is in the Alleghanies. “Polak” steak, cabbage with raisins, beets, slices of bacon, links of sausages, sweet potatoes, and, “last but not least,” the great American dish, conqueror of all foreign tastes--pie; huge, luscious and full of unheard-of delicacies. Beer flows as freely as milk and honey flowed in the promised land; again the musicians play and if the bridegroom has voice enough left he will sing the song of “The sweetheart he is so glad to have and wouldn’t sell to any one, no, not to any one.” Barrel after barrel is emptied until the pyramids of Egypt have small rivals in those built entirely of beer barrels in the little mining town in Pennsylvania. Many of the drinkers fall asleep as soundly as Rameses ever did before he was embalmed, while others are making ready for the end of the feast--the fight, for “no fight, no feast” is the proverb. Somebody calls a Slovak a Polak, or vice versa; some young man casts glances at some young maiden otherwise engaged--and the fight is on. I have never discovered just the reason for the fight, and one might as well search for the cause of a cyclone, but the results are nearly the same: furniture, heads, and glasses all in the same condition--broken; everybody on the ground like twisted forest trees, while one hears between long black curses the peaceful snores of the unconscious drunk. The next day and the next the programme is repeated, and this is the Slovak’s only diversion, unless it be a saint’s day, when history repeats itself and he once more practices his two vices, drinking and fighting.

As a rule the Slav is virtuous although this depends largely upon local conditions in the village or district from which he comes. One could prove him in certain regions the most virtuous of men while in others he is just the reverse. Almost without exception where one woman cooks for fifteen or twenty men as is often the case in mining camps, they respect her as the wife of one man, while she respects her own virtue and would fight if necessary to remain loyal to her husband. There is much coarse, indelicate talk and much crudeness, for the Slav is a realist in speech and action; therefore that which would seem to us immoral, is simply his way of expressing himself, accustomed as he is to call “a spade a spade.”

The Pole who emigrates to this country comes from nearly the same region as the Slovak, and lives very much the same life, although in many things he is his superior. He has greater self-assertion, is not so submissive to the church, chafes more under restraint, has a greater racial and national consciousness, and is by virtue of his historic development both better and worse than the Slovak. He becomes more identified with American life and will remain an important part of it whether for good or evil, while a large portion of the Slovaks will return to the villages and the peaceful acres from which they came. The Polish community is consequently more of an entity and looks towards permanence. The centralizing power is usually the church; around it, and stimulated by it, grows the Polish town which not unfrequently occupies the best location to be had, with its agencies well organized and controlled.

Perhaps the best example of such a Polish town completely governed and controlled by the church is in New Britain, Conn., where the population is engaged in manufacturing hardware. With rare foresight the best situation in the city was bought, and facing the still undeveloped part of this real estate holding, the church, a magnificent white stone structure, was built; a church which might well be the pride of any community. Their priest, who is both Czar and Pope, is a strong, wise monarch who holds in his keeping the destinies of thousands who trust and obey him implicitly. The houses built are rather rude tenements, evidently built to bring large and quick results; but the sanitary condition must be good if it can be judged by the cleanliness and wholesomeness of the children. Indeed, this part of the city of New Britain is as clean and orderly as one might reasonably expect among a population imported to do the roughest kind of labour.

One is likely to be apprehensive as to the future when one realizes that nearly all the children go to a parochial school, in which only a minimum of the English language is taught; that the men are all organized into patriotic and religious brotherhoods which march armed through the streets. One cannot yet determine how much these things will do to prevent Americanization and assimilation, two things which are exceedingly desirable and which these and other agencies seem to prevent.

Besides Slavs and Poles, lesser groups of Crainers from the Austrian Alps, Croatians and Servians, have gathered in the larger Slav centres and around them, and while in a great measure they live the same life as do their more numerous kindred, there are minor differences which are somewhat accentuated by the abnormal conditions under which they all live.

XIV

DRIFTING WITH THE “HUNKIES”

THE great city had not been kind to them. For three weeks they had been beaten back and forth all the length and breadth of its hot and inhospitable streets until their little money and their courage were exhausted, and they had drifted back to the Battery, the place nearest home which they could reach “without money and without price.”

They had come here for work and had sought it from shop to shop, wherever men with a fair share of muscle were wanted; but they always found that some stronger man had come before them so they were left, like the sick man at the Pool of Bethesda, unhealed at the edge of the water.

They had been my travelling companions across the sea, and I felt some responsibility for them, besides being anxious to know what becomes of men in America who have neither our speech which might be silver, nor the silent gold which serves as power. So I cast my lot and my small change among them. We travelled as far as a five cent fare would take us and began looking for work among the large mansions and fancy farms which line the shore of Long Island Sound. Barking dogs, frightened house maids and discourteous lackeys we found everywhere, but neither work nor food for the four of us. We did not look like tramps, although our clothes were shabby and the dust and grime of the city did not tend to improve our appearance; yet we spent a whole day looking unsuccessfully for work, and when night came upon us nothing remained but to return to the city, as bankrupt in our stock of courage as in our finances.

That blessed and famous bread line, where the Lord answers His poor people’s prayer for daily bread, kept us from starving, and there was enough free ice water to be had to wash down the bread and benumb our digestive organs into silence.

Union and Madison square park benches were our beds a few minutes at a time, for the watchful policeman kept us moving as if we were drunk from laudanum. We went the length of lower Broadway, to City Hall park, and finally to the Battery where the next morning’s gray found us, wearier and shabbier than ever. Twenty-four such hours as we lived were enough to push us down the social scale to the level of the tramp, and we were greeted as such by those birds of passage, one of whom proved to be a “friend in need.” He really pitied my speechless companions and after sharing with us his begged buns, he told us of the New Jersey paradise where orchards and truck gardens were waiting for the toil of our hands.

He promised to accompany us, and was generous enough to offer to pay our way across the river. He seemed to enjoy the task of leadership and unfolded his great plans for us as he led us along the railroad track by the salt marshes of New Jersey, where we nearly perished from the attacks of mosquitoes. The New Jersey mosquito is enough of a factor to prevent the distribution of the immigrant. I certainly should not blame any one who preferred the stenches of Rivington Street to the sting of the mosquitoes on the New Jersey marshes. Nowhere was work given us, although we were treated less rudely, and in a few cases were offered food in exchange for a few chores; our travelled friend diligently instructing us to do as little as possible in return for the kind of food which we generally received. The day’s earning of food included: smoked sturgeon, which was wormy, and ham bones to which clung a minimum of meat and a maximum of tough skin. On the whole, we were soon made to realize that the New Jersey farmer knew how to drive a good bargain, in connection with what he was pleased to consider his charities.

When night came, our friend suggested an empty freight car as our lodging place, and in lieu of a better one, we went to sleep for the first time in this country, where the bed cost us nothing, and where some one’s else property became temporarily our own. We slept, in spite of the soreness of our muscles and the continued attacks of mosquitoes, and when we awoke it was still dark; at least in the car, into which neither starlight nor sunshine could penetrate,--for we were locked in, our guide and guardian gone, and with him three watches, four coats and our shoes.

After a long, long time, in answer to our cries, a railroad man opened the car and found us more destitute than we had yet been, and in need of a better friend(?) than the one we had lost. I told him our story, and he directed us to a farmer on the Trenton road who always needed labourers, and who he was quite sure would take us in, notwithstanding our denuded condition.

Barefoot and coatless we reached the farm which we recognized by the fact that a sign was tacked to the gate post, stating in four languages that “Labourers are wanted within.” In the rear of the house we were received by a be-aproned gentleman who proved to be the cook and housekeeper of this strange establishment. After I had told him the story of our adventures, we were invited to breakfast to which we did ample justice, in spite of the fact that it was prepared by a man who evidently knew little or nothing about the art of cooking. He told me that he too, had drifted from the great city, an immigrant who had found no standing room in the crowded shops. He told me also that every man at work here was a “Green-horn,” as he expressed it, and that not one of them had been longer than six months away from the Old Country.

At last the “Boss” came from the field; a rather portly man, red faced, hard headed and with small, beady eyes. He made a poor impression upon me, especially when he began to speak German, a language which he had acquired to be able to deal with his help. He offered us the hospitality of his farm and $10.00 a month, beside which he was ready to advance us the necessary farm clothing which he kept in stock for such emergencies. The clothing consisted of overalls, jacket, a straw hat and very coarse shoes.

We were not told what he charged us for them, but I began to suspect the man when that evening he drove me to the village to buy a pair of shoes, none of those in his stock fitting me.

When we reached the store, he told the proprietor in English which I was not supposed to understand, to tell me that the shoes were hand made and cost $3.50. They were common, roughly made shoes which could be bought in any store for $1.25 and I have no doubt that the profit was to be divided between these gentlemen.

At night in the loft of the barn, a dozen men, representing about ten nationalities met, and after looking at one another in stolid silence for a time, went to sleep. In the morning we were initiated into our task, which consisted of the customary chores, and finally, the field work in the patches of garden stuff, where hoeing and pulling weeds were the order of the twelve hours labour, with the beady eyes of the “Boss” ever upon us. He grew more and more impatient with our unskillful ways, and swore loudly in English and German, terrifying my Slavic friends beyond my ability to calm them.

Each day was the same as the one just past; hard work in the field, poor food in the kitchen, a hay bed at night, and the impatience of the “Boss” manifesting itself in personal violence against those of us who were the weaker among his slaves. Each day one or the other man disappeared, some of them leaving behind the little bundle of clothing bought from the farmer. This he immediately appropriated and sold to the next comer; for one or more new men of the same type were sure to drift in, to begin the labour which brought no wages.

According to the cook, the four of us broke the record, having stayed nearly a month. About two days before pay day I came in at evening with a broken cultivator. Whether running it into a tree stump had wrecked it, or whether it had been ready to fall to pieces at the slightest provocation I do not know; but the “Boss” grew violent in his anger and attacked me with a pitchfork, driving me out of the very gate through which I had come twenty-nine days before.

I went to the village and after finding a justice of the peace, laid before him my complaint, but he discouraged any legal action on my part because I did not have money enough to back it. When night came, I returned to the farm and calling out my men, who were only too ready to follow, we cut through a tall corn-field, and climbing a wire fence were again on the Trenton road. We walked the whole night, into Trenton and out of it, and far on our way to Pennsylvania. The next day we found that our labour was indeed wanted, and a few weeks in the tobacco fields of a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer put money into our purses and flesh upon our muscle. Upon finishing our work we started again upon our journey and soon entered the industrial region of Pennsylvania, where steel furnaces lined the highway and coke ovens illumined the landscape, making the air heavy by their fumes. Here for the first time my companions saw labour in America at its highest tension. They were frightened by the pots of glowing metal and made dizzy by the roar of the furnaces.

Opportunity for labour was soon secured, but my companions entered into it so timidly that I tried to dissuade them from it, but could not, as here alone was steady employment offered to men of their class. I can still see them in the great yard of one of the steel mills, pale and trembling, as if facing the dangers of war. Half naked, savage looking creatures darted about in the glare of molten metal, which now was white, “Like the bitten lip of hate,” then grew red and dark as it flowed into the waiting moulds. Close to these hot moulds the men were stationed to carry away the bars still full of the heat of the furnace, and they became part of a vast army of men who came and went, bending their backs uncomplainingly to the hot burden.

I watched them day after day coming from their work, wet, dirty, and blistered by the heat; dropping into their bunks at night, breathing in the pestilential air of a room crowded by fifteen sleepers, and in the morning crawling listlessly back to their slavish task.

No song escaped their parched lips, attuned to their native melodies, and the only cheer came on pay day, when the silver dollars looked twice as big as they were, when a barrel of beer was tapped at the boarding house and this hard world was forgotten. Then they tried to sing from throats made hoarse by the heat,

“Chervene Pivo Bile Kolatshe.”

With the song came memories of their native village, the inn and the fiddlers, the notes of the mazurka and krakowyan, and visions of the wives and children who awaited their return. To the town they went that day and sent $20 each, out of the month’s earnings, to Katshka and Susanka and Marinka, the anticipation of their gladness making them happy too.