Part 10

This young Italian, ambitious to become a lawyer and finding it impossible in Italy to get employment with an opportunity to study, decided to try his luck in America, where he was willing to “shovel coal,” “wash dishes,” or “do anything to get up.” In a little more than five years after landing at Ellis Island he was admitted to the New York bar.

The following selection is reprinted from his article, “America as a Place to Make Money,” published in the issue of _The World’s Work_ for December, 1920.

SOME OBSTACLES TO AMERICANIZATION

I was about twenty years old when I first thought of going to America. But it is not so easy to leave one’s native land: it was not until three years later that I said good-by to my father and mother and our neighbors. I did not think for a moment that it was for the last time--I was only going to America to make money and then return to Baiano and the old folks.

My father gave me a little money so that I could buy a second-class ticket. But I was young; I was starting on my first big adventure; and--in Naples my money went, this way, that way--I came in the steerage. It was no great hardship. My fellow-passengers were Italians, most of them laborers, men used to hard work. They were very happy--laughing, singing, playing--full of dreams, ambitions.

Then came Ellis Island!

Every one crowded--discomfort--lice--dirt--harshness--the officers shouting “Come here,” “Go there,” as though they were driving animals. And then the uncertain period of detention--sometimes a week, sometimes two, three, or even four weeks--it is as though a man were in prison. Ellis Island does not give the immigrant a good first lesson in Americanization.

America wants the immigrant as a worker; but does it make any effort to direct him, to distribute him to the places where workers are needed? No; it leaves the immigrant to go here, there, any place. If the immigrant were a horse instead of a human being, America would be more careful of him; if it loses a horse, it feels it loses something; if it loses an immigrant, it feels it loses nothing. At any rate, that is the way it seems to the immigrant; and it strengthens his natural disposition to settle among people of his own race.

A man needs to be a fighter to come to America without friends. I was more fortunate than many: I had a brother in America. He worked in a private bank. He met me when I landed and took me to his home in Brooklyn. I looked for a job for about a month. I tried to get work on the Italian newspapers; I tried to get work in a law office. Finally a friend took me to a Jewish law office, and I was employed--I was to get 25 per cent. of the fees from any clients that I brought in. I stayed there two months and got $5. Three months after I arrived in New York I was given the kind of a place that I had looked for in vain in my native land--one that would enable me to support myself and study my chosen profession. I was given a place on an Italian religious newspaper. I worked from eight in the morning to six in the evening, and attended the night course of the New York Law School.

It was about August when I landed in America, and already there was election talk. (It was the year McClellan ran for Mayor.) I met some of the Italian-American politicians. It is said that I have a gift for oratory. The politicians asked what would be my price to talk in the Italian sections of the city. I said that I did not want anything. I made speeches for McClellan, and I have made speeches in every campaign since.

That was one of the first things that struck me in America--that every one working in politics was working for his own pocket. Another thing that also amazed me was that most of the men elected to an office, in which they are supposed to deliberate and legislate, were in reality only figureheads taking orders from some one else. They had no independence, no individuality. Another discovery was that the Italians with most political influence were men of low morality, of low type. Then I discovered the reason: the politicians needed repeaters and guerillas, and that was why “the boss had to be seen” through a saloon- or dive-keeper.

A thing that seemed very strange was the way the American newspapers magnified crime in Italian districts, how they made sensational stories out of what were really little happenings, how they gave the Italians as a people a character for criminality and violence. No less strange was the way the Italian newspapers answered the American press. They were both building up a barrier of prejudice. If I were to judge America through the American newspapers, I would not have become an American citizen; or if I could know America only through the Italian-American newspapers, I would say that the Americans are our enemies.

It must be frankly admitted, however, that there is a change in the second generation, a change that is too frequently not for the better. As I have said, the majority of Italian immigrants come from the rural districts of Italy, and, because there is no policy of distribution, most of them settle in the big cities. They are not prepared to meet the situation presented in a big industrial centre. They think to apply the same principle in bringing up children that had been applied in the little village or on the farm in Italy. They let the children run loose. And in the streets of the crowded tenement districts the children see graft, pocketpicking, street-walking, easy money here, easy money there; they see the chance to make money without working. The remedy is to be found in distributing the newly arrived immigrants.

Most of what I have said has been of the faults of America. I have spoken of them because they are things that hold back Americanization.

America has been good to me. I have prospered here as I could not have prospered in Italy. I came to make money and return; I have made money and stayed. A little more than five years after I had landed at Ellis Island I was admitted to the New York bar. I have already had greater success than I dreamed, when I left Italy, that I should have. And I look forward to still greater success. For me, America has proved itself, and promises to continue to prove itself, the land of opportunity, but I have not forgotten Italy--it is foolish to tell any Italian to forget Italy. I say Italy; but for me, as for the others, Italy is the little village where I was raised--the little hills, the little church, the little garden, the little celebrations. I am forty years old, but Christmas and Easter never come around but what I want to return to Baiano. In my mind I become a little child again. But I know enough to realize that I see all those scenes from a distance and with the eye of childhood.

But even if I wanted to return to Italy, my children would not let me. America is their country. My father is dead. I have brought my mother here. When an Italian brings his parents to America, he is here to stay.

America is a wonderful nation. But we make a mistake if we assume that the Anglo-Saxon is the perfect human being. He has splendid qualities, but he also has faults. The same thing is true of the Latins. The Anglo-Saxon is pre-eminently a business man, an executive, an organizer, energetic, dogged. But in the Anglo-Saxon’s civilization the Latin finds a lack of the things that go to make life worth living. I remember the returned Italians, the “Americans,” that I used to see at Baiano: they had made money in America and were prosperous and independent, but they had also lost something--a certain light-heartedness, a joy in the little things--the old jests no longer made them laugh. The Latin has the artistic, the emotional temperament, a gift for making little things put sunshine into life, a gift for the social graces. If the Latin could get the qualities that the Anglo-Saxon has, and give to the Anglo-Saxon those that he lacks,--if all the nationalities that make up America could participate in this give-and-take process,--then we would have a real Americanization.

JOHN KULAMER

John Kulamer was born on May 3, 1876, at Spisske Podhradie, Spisska Zupa, Czecho-Slovak Republic, and came to this country in 1891, alone. In June, 1909, he was admitted to the bar in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

In an article, entitled “Americanization: the Other Side of the Case,” contributed to the _Atlantic Monthly_, March, 1920, he says: “Although born in far-off Czecho-Slovakia, under the shadow of the snow-capped Tatra, I can without boasting say that I yield to no one in my loyalty to the Stars and Stripes; and if I differ in my views as to the methods to be used in Americanizing those who, like me, were born in other countries, I do it out of love for my adopted country, and because I am anxious to see these efforts crowned with success.”

Mr. Kulamer has favored us with the following essay, in which he further presents his ideas on this subject.

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT AND AMERICANIZATION

No matter how uncouth in appearance the immigrant when he sets foot on American soil, the criminal fleeing from the hands of justice excepted, there burns in his soul an intense love for the country of his nativity, inherited from generations of his ancestors; the more primitive his heart, the simpler and stronger is this love. He may have come to this country only to earn sufficient money to relieve his wants at home or to enlarge his means of living, or he may have come here as to a land of promise of whose great opportunities and larger freedom he has heard, still his heart remains in the land of his birth where the ashes of his forefathers are resting and to which the memories of his happiest childhood days are clinging. Leaving his home-nest, forsaking friends and family and turning his face to a strange land to mix with people whose customs and language he knows not, is a thrilling and tragic adventure to every immigrant. And it is well that his soul is so constituted, because he has the capacity to become a true patriot. Your cosmopolite is of different stuff; he is callous and incapable of those noble sentiments which urge the patriot to sacrifice even his life for his country, either of birth or adoption. A man who pays no homage to any land is incapable of harboring those feelings of brotherly love and kinship on which the solidarity of a nation rests. If Americanizers wish to wean the immigrant from the old to the new, they must have genuine respect for his feelings and not wound them; he must be wooed, he cannot be forced.

What is the object of this Americanization which is so much talked about and on which so much energy and money is spent? Is it simply to wipe out the difference between the customs and habits of the older and newer settlers; or is it to amalgamate the various human elements into one homogeneous mass, into one nation? If it is the former, it is wasted energy; time will accomplish it. If it is the latter, then the aliens must be considered as human beings whose souls are made of the same material as those of the Pilgrim Fathers. Nations do not appear on the earth spontaneously; they are the result of historical growth, lasting for centuries. Many factors exert their influences upon a nation in the formative stage. Stop immigration, if you can get along without it, and in another generation the inhabitants of this country will be such Americans as America will have made them. If they should not turn out to be true Americans, it will be America’s fault. Even now the children of alien parents speak the same language, dress the same way, dance the same dances, sing the same songs, have the same good qualities and the same faults as the children whose ancestors came here sooner. If you want to convert the old folks into Americans, then it is necessary to handle the situation with tact. Love is a tender plant; it does not take root easily, and the least inclement weather will blast it; but it is very sturdy when full grown, nothing less than a thunderbolt will shatter it. Furthermore, it is of a spiritual essence, and money cannot buy it.

To succeed in this purpose it is, first of all, necessary to study each nationality separately. The very fact that all of them are treated alike is detrimental. It is unfair to class them all alike. They all have their good and bad qualities; and justice demands that the latter be not attributed to those who do not possess them. There is not one nationality that would admit its inferiority to the others, and every one of them considers itself equal to, if not better than, many others. Consequently, to be classed with races looked down upon is a humiliation to which no one with self-respect will submit without protest. This is a fact which must not be lost sight of; it is rooted in human nature. It is further necessary to study the habits, customs, prejudices and inclinations of every nationality separately, so that such as are too deeply rooted may not be violently antagonized.

Take, for example, the matter of language. The Swede or the Spaniard may not object to being forced by law to learn English, because in his mother country this question never arose, it did not enter into his daily life. It is different with the Slovak or the Pole, whose soul was stirred to its very depths because the Magyar or the Prussian wanted by law to force a strange tongue on him. It was a tradition with him to resist such an attempt; he looked upon it as an oppression in his mother country, and he is likely to look upon it in the same light here. The conditions in Europe and here may be different; he may be justified in objecting there and not here; but his mind is habituated to opposing the ruling powers in their efforts to force upon him a strange language. A common workingman is not used to psychological self-analysis or to studying archæology; he is controlled mainly by his impulses. He will note only that he is required to submit here to laws which he considered oppressive and tyrannical in the old country.

The glories and advantages of this country should not be fed to the immigrant in excessive doses, but presented tactfully. He is liable to look upon it as an attempt to humiliate him, as unwarranted boasting. It is not difficult to pick flaws in the armor of American complacency. Every man is a hero-worshipper at heart, and every man has his childhood heroes to whom he clings. Judged by an absolute standard, if there is such a standard, the American heroes may stand on a higher plane; but if rude hands are placed upon the childhood heroes of the alien he is likely to resent it. The skies are just as blue, the fields are carpeted just as beautifully with flowers and the nights are illuminated with the same glorious stars on the Eastern as on the Western Hemisphere. The majority of the aliens enjoyed more of these beauties at home than they do in the mines and smoke-infested atmosphere of the industrial American cities. It is true that they earn more money here in dollars and cents; but they work harder for it and sometimes under the most cruel taskmasters.

Teaching aliens the English language, American customs, ideals, political institutions and history, will, of course, go a great way in making them formal Americans, and, in some cases, it may awaken in them a love for their new home; but it is indispensably necessary that in their daily contact with the older Americans they see that these ideals are put into practice. They have a very high idea of Americanism, and they scrutinize very critically the conduct of the Americans with whom they come into contact, to see whether it squares with these ideals. They watch the manner in which the laws are enforced by the officials, and compare it with the way in which they are enforced in their native land; and, if they find out that the Americans do not practice what they preach, that the administration of public affairs is not essentially different here from what they know it to be at home, their opinion of America is not exalted. They look upon all the loud protestations as bluff and hypocrisy, and no amount of Americanization work will change their views. They are on trial here, but they also put the Americans to a test.

This Americanization work must be looked upon as the molding of human souls. When men’s habits of thought and action have become fixed by age, when they have lost their youthful plasticity, to recast their souls into predetermined molds without subjecting them first to the gentle heat of sympathy is like forging cold steel into new shapes. It can be done, but it requires enormous energy and the results are never as satisfactory as when the steel is first heated into a flux and then cast.

If Americanization is to accomplish its purpose,--the amalgamation of all the races and nationalities that inhabit the United States into one nation, the transformation of the aliens into one hundred per cent. Americans,--if it is to be beneficial and not harmful, it must be looked upon as a spiritual regeneration. Naturalization makes a citizen out of an alien; learning the English language makes him more efficient both for good and evil; conformity to American habits and customs wipes out social differences; knowledge of American institutions and laws enables him to live up to them or to break them consciously; but none of these nor all combined will make him an enthusiastic American unless his heart has been alienated from his mother country and his affections transferred to his adopted home. Not until the alien will love America above all, not until he will boast of it and defend its faults, can he be considered a true American. And he will do neither unless he has placed America above his mother country in his estimation. This means a re-birth in his soul.

ENRICO C. SARTORIO

“The Social and Religious Life of Italians in America,” by Enrico C. Sartorio, is written from the viewpoint of one who came as a foreigner to America when he was already a young man. It aims to show how a foreigner really feels. In the words of Dean George Hodges, who writes the Introduction to the book, it “is a timely revelation of the width and depth of a racial gulf which must first be bridged and then filled. His suggestions as to the accomplishing of this necessary work are definite and practical inferences from his own successful experience.”

Mr. Sartorio studied at the Cambridge Episcopal Theological School and has since been successfully engaged in pastoral work in the city of Boston.

PATRONIZING THE FOREIGNER

Among certain people there still exists the old prejudice that there must be something the matter with a foreigner. Exclusiveness on one side, loneliness on the other, do not help to interpret American life in the right spirit to the foreigner. If educated Italians thus do not know the real America, you can easily imagine what the immigrant’s conception of America may be. My barber, who has been in this country twenty-eight years, was dumbfounded when I told him the other day that six people out of seven in America are Protestant. The poor fellow had gone about for twenty-eight years tipping his hat to every church, thinking that they were all Roman Catholic churches. I have found over and over again Italian couples living together in the belief that they were husband and wife, because they misunderstood American law. They had been told that in America a civil marriage was as valid as a religious one, so they went to the City Hall, and by going through the process of answering questions in taking out the marriage license, they thought they had been married and went happily home to live together as husband and wife. An Italian tried to explain to me the meaning of Thanksgiving Day. “You see,” he said, “the word explains itself, ‘Tacchins-giving Day’”; “tacchin” meaning turkey in Italian, it was, according to this man, the day on which Americans gave away turkeys.

And what opportunity has an immigrant to know this country when he sees America only at its worst? Through the gum-chewing girls whom he meets in factories, through the hard-drinking and hard-swearing “boss” who orders him about, through the dubious type of youth whom he meets at the saloon and in the dance hall, through the descriptions given in Italian newspapers and by cheap orators he comes to know America. Add to that poor wages, quarters in the slums, policemen, car conductors and ushers who laugh at him when he asks for information, “bosses” who claim a fee for securing him a job, and the sweet names of “Dago” and “Guinea” by which the supposed American thinks himself entitled to call him, and you can imagine what a delightful feeling the average Italian has toward this country.

Where does the fault lie? In prejudice and indifference, and in the spirit of patronage. Americans who judge by appearances, who have not travelled in Italy or studied modern Italian life, scornfully turn away from the Italian immigrant because he is not as clean-shaven or as well-kempt as the American workingman. Other Americans do not concern themselves with foreigners. They have a vague knowledge that there is somewhere, in some God-forsaken corner of the city, a foreign population, and that is all. Still others take a sentimental view of the matter; they have somewhat the feeling that existed in the bosom of an Irishwoman, a neighbor of mine. On Saturday night,--she was always affectionate on that special night,--she would wipe her eyes and say, “Thim poor Eyetalians.” This kind of person means well, but generally has zeal without knowledge.

A lady of refinement, born in a leading city of Italy, married to an Italian Protestant minister who is now at the head of an important religious movement in Italy, one day received the following letter:--

“_Dear Madam_:

“We are going to have a bazaar for the benefit of Italians. Please come to help us, _dressed in the national costume that you used to wear in Italy_.”

A son of a leading lawyer of Naples came to this country and was soon holding a fine position and making a good living. He met at church an American lady, who told him that she would be very glad to see him the next day at her house. At the appointed hour our young gentleman went there and handed his card to the servant. “Oh, yes,” she said, “the lady gave me something for you,” and she thrust into his hand a dilapidated suitcase and a note. The note read:--

“_Dear Sir_:

“I have been called away suddenly, but my maid will give you the article which I intended to present to you in asking you to call. As I no longer have use for this suitcase, perhaps it would serve you on your next trip to Italy.

“Trusting to see you at church next Sunday,

“Sincerely yours, ---- ----.”

On another occasion an Italian minister was sent to a new field. A few days after he had settled down he had a telephone call from the wife of a minister of the town, who invited him to call at her house. At the appointed hour he went and was met by the servant, who gave him a newspaper bundle. The young man protested, saying that he had come to call in response to an invitation. The servant went upstairs, but came back, saying there was no mistake, that the lady wished that given to him. On reaching home he found that the contents consisted of cast-off clothing for his children. He bought a handsome edition of an Italian book for children, translated into English, and sent it with his regards to the patronizing lady.

TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP