With Poor Immigrants to America

I wish to express my thanks to Mrs. James Muirhead, Miss M. A. Best, and to Mr. J. Cotton Dana, who, with unsparing energy and hospitality, helped me to see America as she is.

At midnight I returned to the station and took my seat in the last train for Liverpool. Till the moment before departure I had a compartment to myself; but away down at the back...

Only two of the Russians went through the storm happily, Alexy and Yoosha. They had worked for nights and months on the Caspian Sea in a little boat, almost capsizing each momen...

We carried our luggage out at eight, and in a pushing crowd prepared to disembark. At 8.30 we were quick-marched out of the ship to the Customs Wharf and there ranged in six or...

"Yes, some go and smash windows and get sent to gaol, some become tramps, and some come to America. In Giant Despair's dungeon poor Christian exclaims, 'What a fool I am to rema...

What a sight was Delancey Street, with its five lines of naphtha-lit stalls, its array of tubs of fish and heaps of cranberries, its pavements slippery with scales, the air heav...

Once more to the road. The American high-road differs considerably from any way in Europe. Every farm-house has a white letter-box on a post outside its main entrance, and the f...

Then every man is considered a booster. Boosting is accepted as a national and individual function. Towns are placarded: "Boost for your own city and its own industries. Make a...

A touching thing about this lady's house was a ruined chapel I found on the lawn--a broken-down wooden hut with a cross above it, built when the Slav tradition had been strong,...

"No, only on the section of the railway; there are six of us. We have charge of this section. Where are you going to? To Chicago? Looking for a job? Going to friends there? Wher...

We composed ourselves to sleep, but with his head resting on my feet I was too uncomfortable. "Presently I'll make a fire," said I, "and we'll have hot tea and some bread and bu...

I sit tending my fire, and watching and balancing the kettle upon it; or I sit beside the cheerful blaze on which I have cooked my breakfast or my dinner, and I hold my mug of c...

"I reckon God can break any will," said the boy. "Once I ran away from home with five hundred dollars. You're walking? I can walk. I walked a hundred miles in five days and five...

In many districts men bathing naked have been arrested as a sort of breach of the peace. Naked statues in public have been clothed or locked away. In several towns women wearing...

They had been out three nights seine-fishing on the lake, were very tired, and rewarded themselves with swigs of rum every now and then, passing the bottle from one to the other...

"It's a good business," said he; "no expense of keeping a shop, double profit,--profit on the goods and profit on the eggs; it pays all right. But I'm tired of it, and I think I...

America will have to guide the flow of the immigrants, and learn to irrigate with it and make fertile the Middle and the Far West. It is over-commercialisation and near-sightedn...

He told me the history of two villages in Kiefsky Government in Russia. They had heard of America, but thought it was a place in a fairy-tale--not a real place at all. They were...