Part 7

What more could America give a child? Ah, much more! As I read how the patriots planned the Revolution, and the women gave their sons to die in battle, and the heroes led to victory, and the rejoicing people set up the Republic, it dawned on me gradually what was meant by _my country_. The people all desiring noble things, and striving for them together, defying their oppressors, giving their lives for each other,--all this it was that made _my country_. It was not a thing that I _understood_; I could not go home and tell Frieda about it, as I told her other things I learned at school. But I knew one could say “my country” and _feel_ it, as one felt “God” or “myself.” My teacher, my schoolmates, Miss Dillingham, George Washington himself, could not mean more than I when they said “my country,” after I had once felt it. For the Country was for all the Citizens, and _I was a citizen_. And when we stood up to sing “America,” I shouted the words with all my might. I was in very earnest proclaiming to the world my love for my new-found country.

“I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills.”

Boston Harbor, Crescent Beach, Chelsea Square,--all was hallowed ground to me. As the day approached when the school was to hold exercises in honor of Washington’s Birthday, the halls resounded at all hours with the strains of patriotic songs; and I, who was a model of the attentive pupil, more than once lost my place in the lesson as I strained to hear, through closed doors, some neighboring class rehearsing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” If the doors happened to open, and the chorus broke out unveiled,--

“O! say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?”

delicious tremors ran up and down my spine, and I was faint with suppressed enthusiasm.

Where had been my country until now? What flag had I loved? What heroes had I worshipped? The very names of these things had been unknown to me. Well I knew that Polotzk was not my country. It was _goluth_--exile. On many occasions in the year we prayed to God to lead us out of exile. The beautiful Passover service closed with the words, “Next year, may we be in Jerusalem.” On childish lips, indeed, those words were no conscious aspiration; we repeated the Hebrew syllables after our elders, but without their hope and longing. Still not a child among us was too young to feel in his own flesh the lash of the oppressor. We knew what it was to be Jews in exile, from the spiteful treatment we suffered at the hands of the smallest urchin who crossed himself; and thence we knew that Israel had good reason to pray for deliverance. But the story of the Exodus was not history to me in the sense that the story of the American Revolution was. It was more like a glorious myth, a belief in which had the effect of cutting me off from the actual world, by linking me with a world of phantoms. Those moments of exaltation which the contemplation of the Biblical past afforded us, allowing us to call ourselves the children of princes, served but to tinge with a more poignant sense of disinheritance the long humdrum stretches of our life. In very truth we were a people without a country. Surrounded by mocking foes and detractors, it was difficult for me to realize the persons of my people’s heroes or the events in which they moved. Except in moments of abstraction from the world around me, I scarcely understood that Jerusalem was an actual spot on the earth, where once the Kings of the Bible, real people, like my neighbors in Polotzk, ruled in puissant majesty. For the conditions of our civil life did not permit us to cultivate a spirit of nationalism. The freedom of worship that was grudgingly granted within the narrow limits of the Pale by no means included the right to set up openly any ideal of a Hebrew State, any hero other than the Czar. What we children picked up of our ancient political history was confused with the miraculous story of the Creation, with the supernatural legends and hazy associations of Bible lore. As to our future, we Jews in Polotzk had no national expectations; only a life-worn dreamer here and there hoped to die in Palestine. If Fetchke and I sang, with my father, first making sure of our audience, “Zion, Zion, Holy Zion, not forever is it lost,” we did not really picture to ourselves Judæa restored.

So it came to pass that we did not know what _my country_ could mean to a man. And as we had no country, so we had no flag to love. It was by no far-fetched symbolism that the banner of the House of Romanoff became the emblem of our latter-day bondage in our eyes. Even a child would know how to hate the flag that we were forced, on pain of severe penalties, to hoist above our housetops, in celebration of the advent of one of our oppressors. And as it was with country and flag, so it was with heroes of war. We hated the uniform of the soldier, to the last brass button. On the person of a Gentile, it was the symbol of tyranny; on the person of a Jew, it was the emblem of shame.

So a little Jewish girl in Polotzk was apt to grow up hungry-minded and empty-hearted; and if, still in her outreaching youth, she was set down in a land of outspoken patriotism, she was likely to love her new country with a great love, and to embrace its heroes in a great worship. Naturalization, with us Russian Jews, may mean more than the adoption of the immigrant by America. It may mean the adoption of America by the immigrant.

THE LAW OF THE FATHERS: A VIEW OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

If I ask an American what is the fundamental American law, and he does not answer me promptly, “That which is contained in the Declaration of Independence,” I put him down for a poor citizen. He who is ignorant of the law is likely to disobey it. And there cannot be two minds about the position of the Declaration among our documents of State. What the Mosaic Law is to the Jews, the Declaration is to the American people. It affords us a starting-point in history and defines our mission among the nations. Without it, we should not differ greatly from other nations who achieved a constitutional form of government and various democratic institutions. What marks us out from other advanced nations is the origin of our liberties in one supreme act of political innovation, prompted by a conscious sense of the dignity of manhood. In other countries advances have been made by favor of hereditary rulers and aristocratic parliaments, each successive reform being grudgingly handed down to the people from above. Not so in America. At one bold stroke we shattered the monarchical tradition, and installed the people in the seats of government, substituting the gospel of the sovereignty of the masses for the superstition of the divine right of kings.

And even more notable than the boldness of the act was the dignity with which it was entered upon. In terms befitting a philosophical discourse, we gave notice to the world that what we were about to do, we would do in the name of humanity, in the conviction that as justice is the end of government, so should manhood be its source.

It is this insistence on the philosophic sanction of our revolt that gives the sublime touch to our political performance. Up to the moment of our declaration of independence, our struggle with our English rulers did not differ from other popular struggles against despotic governments. Again and again we respectfully petitioned for redress of specific grievances, as the governed, from time immemorial, have petitioned their governors. But one day we abandoned our suit for petty damages, and instituted a suit for the recovery of our entire human heritage of freedom; and by basing our claim on the fundamental principles of the brotherhood of man and the sovereignty of the masses, we assumed the championship of the oppressed against their oppressors, wherever found.

It was thus, by sinking our particular quarrel with George of England in the universal quarrel of humanity with injustice, that we emerged a distinct nation, with a unique mission in the world. And we revealed ourselves to the world in the Declaration of Independence, even as the Israelites revealed themselves in the Law of Moses. From the Declaration flows our race consciousness, our sense of what is and what is not American. Our laws, our policies, the successive steps of our progress,--all must conform to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, the source of our national being.

The American confession of faith, therefore, is a recital of the doctrines of liberty and equality. A faithful American is one who understands these doctrines and applies them in his life.

ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY

An intense seriousness is one of the prominent characteristics of the writings of the immigrant; for immigration is a serious and often a hazardous undertaking, as the immigrant best knows. But that he has not failed to appreciate the amusing side of the readjustment period is evidenced by the many touches of humor in his accounts of his relation to his new environment. One of the most pleasing and inspiriting of these accounts is “A Far Journey,” by Abraham M. Rihbany, who was born in Syria in the year 1869, and who came to the United States with little money, but with much native intelligence and an open and receptive mind and soul, eager for the very best that America has to give.

The bad effects of the gregariousness of the foreigner in America have frequently been pointed out and deplored; most writers on immigration have failed to see or mention any of its benefits. It is interesting to know the opinion on this vexing question of one who has himself passed safely through a critical transition period. Speaking of his own experience he says that the Syrian colony in New York “was a habitat so much like the one I had left behind me in Syria that its home atmosphere enabled me to maintain a firm hold on life in the face of the many difficulties which confronted me in those days, and just different enough to awaken my curiosity to know more about the surrounding American influences.” Impelled by the question, “Where is America?” and longing for “something more in the life of America than the mere loaves and fishes,” he determined to leave New York and “seek the smaller centers of population, where men came in friendly touch with one another, daily.”

AMERICA OFFERS SOMETHING BETTER THAN MONEY

I was told while in Syria that in America money could be picked up everywhere. That was not true. But I found that infinitely better things than money--knowledge, freedom, self-reliance, order, cleanliness, sovereign human rights, self-government, and all that these great accomplishments imply--can be picked up everywhere in America by whosoever earnestly seeks them. And those among Americans who are exerting the largest influence toward the solution of the “immigration problem” are, in my opinion, not those who are writing books on “good citizenship,” but those who stand before the foreigner as the embodiment of these great ideals.

The occasions on which I was made to feel that I was a foreigner--an alien--were so rare that they are not worth mentioning. My purpose in life, and the large, warm heart of America which opens to every person who aspires to be a good and useful citizen, made me forget that there was an “immigration problem” within the borders of this great Commonwealth. When I think of the thousand noble impulses which were poured into my soul in my early years in this country by good men and women in all walks of life; when I think of the many homes in which I was received with my uncomely appearance and with my crude manners, where women who were visions of elegance served me as an honored guest, of the many counsels of men of affairs which fed my strength and taught me the lasting value of personal achievements, and that America is the land of not only great privileges, but great responsibilities, I feel like saying (and I do say whenever I have the opportunity) to every foreigner, “When you really know what America is, when you are willing to share in its sorrows, as well as its joys, then you will cease to be a whining malcontent, will take your harp down from the willows, and will not call such a country ‘a strange land.’”

Of all the means of improvement other than personal associations with good men and women, the churches and the public schools gripped most strongly at the strings of my heart. Upon coming into town, the sight of the church spires rising above the houses and the trees as witnesses to man’s desire for God, always gave me inward delight. True, religion in America lacks to a certain extent the depth of Oriental mysticism; yet it is much more closely related than in the Orient to the vital issues of “the life which now is.” Often would I go and stand on the opposite side of the street from a public-school building at the hour of dismissal (and this passion still remains with me) just for the purpose of feasting my eyes on seeing the pupils pour out in squads, so clean and so orderly, and seemingly animated by all that is noblest in the life of this great nation. My soul would revel in the thought that no distinctions were made in those temples of learning between Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic, the churched and the unchurched; all enjoyed the equality of privileges, shared equally in the intellectual and moral feast, and drank freely the spirit of the noblest patriotism.

AN IMMIGRANT TELLS HIS STRUGGLES WITH THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

My struggles with the English language (which have not yet ceased) were at times very hard. It is not at all difficult for me to realize the agonizing inward struggles of a person who has lost the power of speech. When I was first compelled to set aside my mother-tongue and use English exclusively as my medium of expression, the sphere of my life seemed to shrink to a very small disk. My pretentious purpose of suddenly becoming a lecturer on Oriental customs, in a language in which practically I had never conversed, might have seemed to any one who knew me like an act of faith in the miraculous gift of tongues. My youthful desire was not only to inform but to _move_ my hearers. Consequently, my groping before an audience for suitable diction within the narrow limits of my uncertain vocabulary was often pitiable.

The exceptions in English grammar seemed to be more than the rules. The difference between the conventional and the actual sounds of such words as “victuals” and “colonel” seemed to me to be perfectly scandalous. The letter _c_ is certainly a superfluity in the English language; it is never anything else but either _k_ or _s_. In my native language, the Arabic, the accent is always put as near the end of the word as possible; in the English, as near the beginning as possible. Therefore, in using my adopted tongue, I was tossed between the two extremes and very often “split the difference” by taking a middle course. The sounds of the letters, _v_, _p_, and the hard _g_, are not represented in the Arabic. They are symbolized in transliteration by the equivalents of _f_, _b_, and _k_. On numerous occasions, therefore, and especially when I waxed eloquent, my tongue would mix these sounds hopelessly, to the amused surprise of my hearers. I would say “coal” when I meant “goal,” “pig man” for “big man,” “buy” for “pie,” “ferry” for “very,” and _vice versa_. For some time I had, of course, to think in Arabic and try to translate my thoughts _literally_ into English, which practice caused me many troubles, especially in the use of the connectives. On one occasion, when an American gentleman told me that he was a Presbyterian, and I, rejoicing to claim fellowship with him, sought to say what should have been, “We are brethren in Christ,” I said, “We are brothers, by Jesus.” My Presbyterian friend put his finger on his lip in pious fashion, and, with elevated brows and a most sympathetic smile, said, “That is swearing!”

But in my early struggles with English, I derived much negative consolation from the mistakes Americans made in pronouncing my name. None of them could pronounce it correctly--Rih-bá-ny--without my assistance. I have been called Rib-beny, Richbany, Ribary, Laborny, Rabonie, and many other names. An enterprising Sunday School superintendent in the Presbyterian Church at Mansfield, Ohio, introduced me to his school by saying, “Now we have the pleasure of listening to Mr. Rehoboam!” The prefixing of “Mr.” to the name of the scion of King Solomon seemed to me to annihilate time and space, and showed me plainly how the past might be brought forward and made to serve the present.

EDWARD ALFRED STEINER

None of our immigrant authors has written with more earnestness of America and things American than Edward A. Steiner, who was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1866. Unlike the average immigrant, before coming to the United States he had received considerable education in the public schools of his native city, in the gymnasium at Pilsen, Bohemia, and at the University of Heidelberg. After passing through most of the hardships incident to the life of an alien, he was graduated from the Oberlin Theological Seminary and was ordained a minister of the Congregational Church. Several years were then spent in pastoral work, and in 1903 he was elected to the Chair of Applied Christianity at Grinnell College, Iowa. He is widely known both as a lecturer and an author, and among his numerous books may be mentioned “On the Trail of the Immigrant,” 1906; “Against the Current,” 1910; “From Alien to Citizen,” 1914; “Introducing the American Spirit,” 1915; “Nationalizing America,” 1916; “Confession of a Hyphenated American,” 1916. This last voices the sensitiveness so commonly felt by Americans of foreign and particularly German birth in the face of much unreasonable suspicion and prejudice prior to and at the entrance of the United States into the European War. “Nationalizing America” is perhaps his most searching book; for in this almost every American institution is scrutinized, the State, the Church, the school, and the industrial life being examined in their relation to the immigrant.

Selections from two chapters of this book (“The Stomach Line” and “History and the Nation”) have been combined under one title, “Industrialism and the Immigrant.” “The Criminal Immigrant” is taken from chapter fourteen of the autobiographical volume, “From Alien to Citizen.”[7]

THE CRIMINAL IMMIGRANT

To recall prison experiences is not pleasant, and would not be profitable, if this were merely a narration of what happened to one individual, a quarter of a century ago. Conditions are not sufficiently changed, either in judicial procedure or in methods of punishment, to make this account of _historic_ importance. Its value lies only in the fact that _no changes_ have occurred, and that my experience then is still the common fate of multitudes of immigrants, who swell the criminal records of their race or group, and are therefore looked upon with dislike and apprehension.

The jail in which I found myself was an unredeemed, vermin-infested building, crowded by a motley multitude of strikers and strike breakers,--bitter enemies all, their animosity begotten in the elemental struggle for bread, and hating one another with an unmodified, primitive passion.[8]

The strikers had the advantage over us, for they were more numerous and were acquainted with the ways of American officials. This gave them the opportunity (which they improved) to make it unpleasant for the “Hunkies.”

The straw mattress upon which I slept the first night was missing the second; salt more completely spoiled the mixture called by courtesy coffee, and the only thing which saved me from bodily hurt was the fact that there was no spot on me which was not already suffering.

I mention without malice and merely as a fact in race psychology, that the Irish were the most cruel to us, with the Germans a close second, while the Welsh were not only inoffensive, but sometimes kind.

One of them, David Hill--smaller than the ordinary Welshman, but with the courage of his Biblical namesake--stood between me and a burly Irish Goliath who wanted to thrash this particular “furriner, who came over here to take away the bread from the lips of _dacent, law-abiding_ Americans.”

The jailer maintained no discipline and heeded no complaints. His task was to keep us locked up; the bars were strong and the key invariably turned.

The strikers gradually drifted from the jail, being bailed out or released, and I was not sorry to see them go.

Poor food, vermin of many varieties and the various small tortures endured, were all as nothing to me compared with the fact that for more than six weeks I was permitted to be in that jail without a hearing; without even the slightest knowledge on my part as to why I had forfeited my liberty.

From the barred jail window I could see the workmen going unhindered to their tasks; on Sunday pastor and people passed, as they went to worship their Lord who, too, was once a prisoner. None, seemingly, gave us a thought or even responded by a smile to the hunger for sympathy which I know my face must have expressed.

My letters to the Austro-Hungarian Consul remained unanswered, and the jailer gave my repeated questionings only oaths for reply.

The day of my hearing finally came, and I was dragged before the judge. The proceedings were shockingly disorderly, irreverent and unjust. I was charged with shooting to kill. The weapon which had been found in my pocket was the revolver bequeathed me by the dying man in the Pittsburgh boarding house. As all its six cartridges were safely embedded in rust, the charge was changed to “carrying concealed weapons.” I think my readers will agree with me that the sentence of one hundred dollars fine and three months in the county jail was out of all proportion to the offence.

The court wasted exactly ten minutes on my case, and then I was returned to my quarters in the jail, an accredited prisoner. Let me here record the fact that I carried back to my cell a fierce sense of injustice and a contempt for the laws of this land and its officials, feelings that later ripened into active sympathy with anarchy, which at that time occupied the attention of the American people. My knowledge of that subject came to me through old newspapers which drifted as waste around the jail.

In all those months, more than six, for my fine had to be worked out, or rather idled out, no one came to me to comfort or explain. For more than six months I was with thugs, tramps, thieves and vermin. I was a criminal immigrant, a component element of the new immigration problem.

I recall all this now in no spirit of vengeance; as far as my memory is concerned, I have purged it of all hate. I recall my experience because those same conditions exist to-day in more aggravated form, while multitudes of ignorant, innocent men suffer and die in our jails and penitentiaries.

Since then I have visited most of the county jails, prisons and penitentiaries in which immigrants are likely to be found. Intelligent and humane wardens, of whom there are a few, have told me that more than half the alien prisoners are suffering innocently, from transgressing laws of which they were ignorant, and that their punishment is too often much more severe than necessary.

The following narration of several incidents which recently came under my observation will be pardoned, I hope, when their full import is seen.