Part 17

Outwardly the changes will be the same as those which have taken place among the older immigrants, accomplished with the same dispatch, even where the foreigners are segregated in their own quarters. I have in mind a Polish colony of some six thousand souls in a New England town where there are Polish churches, Polish schools, Polish “butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers”; and yet if you walk through that section of the city you will see the women who a few years ago, when they landed, wore the numberless short skirts and picturesque waists of their own making, now sweeping the dust with long trailing skirts, their ample forms encased in corsets and shirt-waists; while here and there you will hear even the rustle of the silk lining.

The boys who upon landing wore coarse linen trousers and shirts have long ago rebelled against these marks of their Old Country lineage, and their fathers have bought them the short trousers and shirt-waists, which make them look like young Americans.

If you are careful to observe, you will see that the children wear stockings and underwear; luxuries undreamed of in the Old World, where boots and shoes were the signs of manhood or womanhood, and where stockings were unknown to the peasantry, being the marks of a high calling and fine breeding.

Especially on Sunday that quarter of the town looks resplendent in its newness, and the latest American fashions are reflected by the women who are never a season behind in expanding or reducing to proper proportions, their sleeves, which they wear short or long, very nearly as the ladies do, who at that moment have entered the portals of the great meeting house, the bulwark of American ideals in New England. It is true that they all still eat black bread, drink vodka, and say: “Pshas creff” when angry; but in eating, drinking and swearing, the whole colony is on the way to complete Americanization, and one need have no fear that externally the Slav, Italian and Jew will not “eat of the fruit of the tree of the garden and become like one of us.”

The same thing is a fact in the matter of external racial characteristics. The things which seem to us the most ineradicable and written as if by an “iron pen upon the rock” are in most cases but chalk marks on a blackboard, so easily are they washed away.

These things created by long ages of neglect, hunger, persecution and climate, are often lost within one generation. The crowd on Rivington Street in New York looks less Jewish than that in Warsaw, and the Bohemians in Chicago look so like “us,” that in spite of the fact that I have some training in detecting racial marks, I am often puzzled and mistaken.

Give me the immigrant on board of ship, and I will distinguish without hesitation the Bulgarian from the Servian, the Slovak from the Russian, and the Northern Italian from the Sicilian; but as I have said, I often have the greatest difficulty in accomplishing such a feat, two or three years after the men have landed. It is true that in the first generation, the old racial marks still lie in the foreground, and that even in the second generation, the blood will speak out here and there; but it will require a very sharp scrutiny to detect this, and in the most cases there will be no hint of the past.

In Chicago, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, St. Louis and St. Paul I have addressed audiences composed of Slavs and of native Americans; and I have vainly tried to distinguish them one from the other in the mass, although of course when I had a very close and long look, I could make my differentiation. These racial marks are most tenacious among certain Orientals where strange strains of blood have accentuated the difference; but I have seen some Armenians, people bearing the mark of their race most strongly, who after ten years of life in America, had lost the peculiar sharpness of their features and were in that stage of transition where the American image was being imprinted upon them.

Scarcely a foreigner returns home after a long sojourn in America without hearing at every step that he looks different. The Jew on board of ship, to whom I have previously referred, who was warned not to wear an American flag because it might cost him money in Europe, was right when he said: “They will see it in mine face that I am from America.”

I do not wish to be as dogmatic in my assertions as Mr. Prescott F. Hall, the Secretary of the Restriction Immigration League is in his. He believes that we shall be the inheritors of all the disagreeable racial characteristics which the immigrant brings with him. It is still too early to foretell; the new American has not been long enough with us, and moreover the whole question of racial characteristics is still an open one.

Nevertheless in face of the undisputed fact that these outward racial marks disappear, may we not also believe that with them go the peculiar racial qualities which mark and mar the life of the stranger?

Mr. Hall has many figures with which to prove his side of the case; I have but a few facts gathered from rather intimate association with certain groups of foreigners.

Take for instance the Polish peasant. It is a fact that in the Old World he is known for his inability to distinguish between “mine and thine,” and between truth and falsehood. The Polish proverb says: “The peasant will steal anything except millstones and hot iron,” and I know of instances where the only thing untrue about the saying was the last saving clause. In this country I have been in nearly every one of the Polish communities and neither thieving nor lying is laid to their charge. The little town of Marblehead, Ohio, located in a peninsula in Lake Erie is peopled largely by Poles and Slovaks who find employment in the large stone quarries. Around them are prosperous farms, large orchards and vineyards. I took pains to inquire especially what was the attitude of these Slavs towards stock, chickens, and fruit which did not belong to them; and not one of the neighbouring farmers complained of having had anything stolen from his premises, although these Slavs have lived in that neighbourhood nearly twenty years.

In the Old World pigs had to be locked in their sties; they were not safe even after they were butchered. Grain disappeared, even when it was vigilantly guarded from the time it was a blade of grass until it was in the barn. The Polish and Slovak peasants were thievish in the Old Country because they were hungry, and their wage was not sufficient to buy enough bread. In Marblehead they have bread enough and to spare, as well as meat and fruit for little money--they do not have to steal.

In the Old World they lied and stole because they were driven by necessity. When a Polish regiment came to any town in Austria, women had to be especially guarded against their lust; but no such charge has been brought against the regiments of young labourers who have come to American cities, and who are everywhere regarded as chaste as their American brothers. In the matter of intemperance they have so far remained as bad as their reputation; but the average mining camp is rarely in a Prohibition district and the example set by the Americans they meet is not conducive to sobriety.

The Jew is certainly distinctive; his faith and fate alike have guarded his racial qualities; yet he must be blind indeed, who does not see a vast change going on, within as well as without. The Jew is still a sharp bargainer, but in that peculiarity the Yankee is giving him “pointers,” and he will have to grow sharper still if he wishes to keep up in the race. His business talent is likely to increase because he is in a business atmosphere; but his business methods will change and have changed, because his inner being is undergoing a transformation. Subtle as these changes are I have traced them and can detect them even in the crowd which is a far different mass from that of the Jews of Europe, a fact which recently I saw very clearly illustrated.

It was the Jewish anniversary of the death of the great Zionist leader, Theodore Hertzl. In front of the Grand Opera House in Hartford, Conn., were large Yiddish placards announcing the fact, and all the evening crowds of men, women and children passed into the building filling every available space on floor and in galleries. The dignitaries of Hartford’s Jewry sat in the boxes, and young men and women passed through the crowd, securing members for the various Jewish societies. It was an orderly assembly, more orderly than any synagogue meeting I ever attended in Russia. America had toned them down, they were less excited, although even here a policeman had quite a hard task in disposing of one man who insisted upon entering, in spite of the fact that he had lost his ticket.

These people had learned the first lesson in self-government--self-control; or rather, they were in the way of learning it. They still swayed to and fro with the movement of the speaker, a habit acquired in the Talmud schools and practiced at their worship; but one could see the younger element holding the older in check, and the older keeping itself in check for the sake of its children who had learned American ways. There was an indescribable gain in their looks, in those faces where greed, suffering and brutal hate had left their deep traces.

It was a look of hope akin to joy, some such triumphant gladness as the Jew would feel if the portals of his New Jerusalem were to open again to the King of Glory. My own heart throbbed gladly when I beheld them for I saw the gain they had made in manhood and womanhood.

The program was also a hopeful thing. It was long enough for the meeting of one of our learned societies and the men had the habit of stealing one another’s text and time; but whether they were apt learners or had imported the habit I do not know. The first address was by the mayor of the city and he was greeted like a friend and spoke like one. It was not the flattering speech of a politician but a scholarly, sympathetic address, of one who knew Israel’s past and who sympathized with her aspirations. He knew all about the Zionist movement and about Dr. Hertzl and spoke as one who was thoroughly acquainted with his subject. After he had finished speaking the chairman said, “Whenever I hear a Christian speak of Israel as this man has spoken, I feel like saying, ‘Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.’”

On the whole it may be said that these new Americans are in that stage of cultural development or undevelopment, which makes it probable that so strong and virile a people as that among whom their lot is cast, will impress them so forcibly, that those things which we call racial characteristics will after a while disappear.

Whether we shall enrich this New American by our own ideals, whether we shall implant in him the broad culture of our own spiritual and intellectual heritage, is a real problem whose solving may puzzle even future generations.

I do not believe that any of the people who come to us, speaking of races and nationalities as a whole, are degenerate, or so hardened that they are not capable of assimilation and transformation. Although as I have said, this cannot yet be proved by our own experience, we can reason with some assurance from the experience of countries in which these strangers who come to us are also regarded as aliens and subjects; and where their way upward is retarded rather than helped as it is on this side of the great sea.

Let me take as an example the Slovak, one of the crudest Slavic types, who bears all the marks of the Slav in his features and in all his inner being. In his own home he belonged to a subject race; for the Magyar being more powerful and more warlike, was his ruler. In the villages where this Slovak lives he has been in touch with the Magyar and also with the Germanic element, to a greater or less degree. I have noticed this: That wherever he has had a chance, wherever political and economic difficulties were not too great, he grew into the full stature of the man above him; and in the long struggle for racial supremacy in Hungary, the Slav has not yet said the last word. Physically, morally and spiritually, he equals the Magyar or the German; that is, wherever the opportunity is not taken from him by wrong economic and political adjustment.

I hold no brief for the Slovak or for any Slav; there are many things in his nature which are repellent. He is too much of a realist by nature for my taste, and there is a certain kind of crudeness and cruelty in his make up, from both of which I have had occasion to suffer. Yet in spite of these handicaps I believe that, given the proper environment and the proper example, or if you please the proper masters, he will develop into that kind of American which we, the average, are. He usually takes more than he leaves behind; he inherits more than he bequeaths; he is human material in the rough; very, very rough but human material nevertheless. Made of as good clay as any of us, although perhaps not yet fashioned into the best mould. The moulding will be the problem; for the New American is more Slavic than anything else.

The Jews, a subject race everywhere, have suffered so much from friends and foes alike, that to defend or accuse them would be a work of supererogation. It is, however, undeniably true, that Judaism in America faces a greater crisis than it faced in the captivity of Babylon. There Judaism was made, here it is being unmade; there foes tried to make the Jews forget Jerusalem, here their friends have difficulty in making them remember it; there a hope of the Messiah grew up within them, here the term is so strange to them that it needs reiteration and interpretation. The loss to Judaism in America amounts to a catastrophe, and from the present outlook its complete dissolution is merely a matter of time, only retarded by the constant influx of immigrants from Russia and Poland. The average Jew in America has become so American that he does not remember the hole from which he was dug, or that Abraham was his father and that Sarah bore him.

A certain vague racial fealty holds one Jew to the other; but a strong and mighty passion holds him to America, making him so much an American and so little a Jew. It may be true that the leopard does not change his spots; but even the leopard may lose his spots when he does not need them. Many of the racial marks of Jew and Gentile alike will disappear when the need of them passes away; and they will take on readily other marks which fit them for a better environment.

The problem with the Jew is not how to make him less a Jew; but how to make him a better Jew, and consequently a better American; for Judaism properly interpreted has in it all the elements to make of men good citizens, good neighbours and good friends.

At the conclusion of a lecture recently, a rather stupid but zealous man asked me regarding the Jews. “Can we trust them with the Constitution?” It was a stupid question asked by a stupid man. God trusted them with the oracles, the Commandments and the prophecies; the richest spiritual gifts in the keeping of the Deity. To be sure, they broke nearly all the Commandments and killed their prophets; but we have done the same thing; and the Constitution is as safe in the hands of the Jew, as the Bible is in the hands of the Gentile.

Granting that each one of these races will bequeath us something evil, let us take the standpoint of the secretary of the Immigration Restriction League and see to what we shall fall heir. We shall get from the Slav his crudity, from the Jew his sharpness, from the Italian his mobility, from the Armenian his Oriental shrewdness, which is akin to lying, from the Magyar a fiery temper; from each of them something which we call ill. When these disagreeable qualities are properly proportioned and balanced, they may so counteract one another, that in the sum total we may after all be the gainers. It seems absurd to go about this matter mathematically, whether one traces the possible gain or loss.

The truth is, that up to this date, in spite of the fact that already Slav, Jewish and Italian blood flows in the veins of some of us: in spite of the fact that these people fill the cities almost to overflowing, there is no perceptible physical or moral degeneration visible which can be traced to the foreigner.

The quarters of American cities where the foreigners live are not the worst quarters; and I would rather trust myself in the dark, to the mysteries of Hester Street than to certain portions of the West side exclusively populated by a certain type of degenerate Americans. Recently a professor of economics in one of our universities asked me to show him those terrible parts of New York where the foreigners live; where the children are said to be so unhappy, the men so oppressed by poverty; and where the women have not enough to wear. I took him across the Bowery, which has lost its terrors since it became foreign territory, across the streets of the Ghetto and along its avenues. We found the supposed unhappy children, well dressed and well fed, dancing to the notes of the hurdy-gurdy grinder, as happy as children naturally are, who do not have many “manners to mind,” whose playground is the street, and who have music from morning till nightfall. We walked through endless rows of tenements and saw men engaged in lawful pursuits; from the garret to the cellars the Ghetto was a beehive of industry. We saw no street loafers, drunkards or idlers. In “Little Hungary,” where we ate and enjoyed a daintily served dinner, we loitered until evening, when we met a vast army of men and women who came pouring in from Broadway’s stores and shops, walking with that pride and happiness which comes from the consciousness of having done a day’s work, and done it well. My friend was very much disappointed because he saw no horrors, no unhappy children or unhappy men.

Again we passed the Bowery, going on to the American section of New York, the Rialto. Here were horrors enough; whole blocks where there were no children; for both the very wicked and the very rich are not blessed by them. Young and old men, fashionably dressed and properly tipsy, went in to cheap shows, saloons and brothels, to have a “good time.” These young men, rich sons of rich fathers, and these old men, are idlers and perverters of their own passions. They and they alone are the great problem which we have need to fear; for it is a problem which cannot be solved. In the fashionable restaurants of Fifth Avenue and Upper Broadway, we saw the women “who toil not neither do they spin,” and who, with all the Heavenly Father’s care, were not properly clothed. They too, more than the women of the Ghetto, are the problem we need to study; for among them and by them are lost our democracy, our purity and our virtue.

I fear more from a certain type of Jew on Upper Broadway, than I do from the Jew of the Ghetto; even as I fear more from a certain type of over-ripe Americans than I do from this undeveloped peasantry. The question which the American faces is not whether the foreigner can be assimilated, but who will do the assimilating. Not even the question whether the foreigner is the inferior need concern us; for in the race which is now on and at its height, the American just described is left behind; and those of us who are watching the race are not at all amazed.

In nearly all the manufacturing towns of New England, the Swede and the German are forging to the front, while the Pole and the Italian are following closely; but the sons of the shrewd and inventive Yankees are keeping fast company, riding in fast automobiles, and drinking strong cocktails. They will soon be in the rear because of physical, mental and spiritual bankruptcy.

It does not follow that these New Americans do not present a racial problem; but the problem is largely one of assimilating power on our part. The real problem is: Whether the American is virile enough and not so much whether the foreign material is of the proper quality. I have no doubt as to either proposition; I believe that there is still remarkable assimilating power left which increases rather than decreases with the mixture of blood. I also believe that the average New American is like wax, hard wax sometimes,--perhaps more like lead or steel; but he will be moulded into our image and bear the marks of our characteristics whatever they may be.

As I write this I realize that I am saying “us” and “our” as if I were not a New American myself and one of those who make up the racial problem. Yet when I recall to myself the fact that I too belong to an alien race, it comes to me like a shock; when I realize that I was born beneath another flag and that this is but my adopted country, it gives me almost a sense of shame that I have in a great degree, if not altogether, forgotten these facts, and I am so completely and absorbingly an American, that I can write “us” and “our,” speak of my own people as foreigners, and of my own native country as a strange land. Something has so wrought upon me that in spite of the fact that I came to this country in my young manhood, I look upon America as my Fatherland. That same power is still active; still strong enough to repeat the miracle of the yesterday; for I am no better than these millions who are regarded as a menace. I came here with the same blood as theirs and the same heritage of good or ill, bequeathed by my race; yet I feel myself completely one with all which this country possesses, that is worth living for and dying for. With millions of these New Americans I say to-day that which we shall continue to say, whether it fares well or ill with our adopted country: “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

XXI

THE NEW AMERICAN AND OLD PROBLEMS

“Competition is the life of prejudice” is an old truth, in a somewhat new setting. Back of the prejudice against Jew, Italian and Slav, is this fact: they are monopolizing certain departments of labour and trades, and in nearly every activity they are beginning to be felt in competition. The Swede is regarded as treacherous by the man whose place he has taken in the machine shops East and West; the Slovak and Pole are called dirty and unreliable by the miners whom they have supplanted in Pennsylvania, and the Jew is accused of trickery by the American who has a clothing store on the next corner. Under whatever name the feeling against the foreigner hides itself, it usually is in substance the fear of competition; and every law restricting immigration has been with the idea of protecting American labour.

Nevertheless the economic problem presented by the New American is ill-defined, largely formulated by conflicting business interests, and is still only a question of the labour market. As a rule it may be said that the immigrant is willing to work only for the standard rate of wage; and whether that rate has been lowered by the recent influx of immigrants remains an undecided question. There are as reliable figures to prove that it has increased, as that it has decreased. The reports and resolutions of Labour Unions are coloured by self-interest as much as are the reports of Manufacturers’ Associations.