Some Immigrant Neighbors

Part 1

SOME IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORS

Interdenominational Home Mission Study Course

Each Volume 12mo, cloth, 50c. net: paper, 30c. net.

1. Under Our Flag By Alice M. Guernsey

2. The Burden of the City By Isabelle Horton

3. Indian and Spanish Neighbours By Julia H. Johnston

4. The Incoming Millions By Howard B. Grose, D.D.

5. Citizens of To-Morrow By Alice M. Guernsey

6. The Call of the Waters By Katharine R. Crowell

7. From Darkness to Light By Mary Helm

8. Conservation of National Ideals A Symposium

9. Mormonism, The Islam of America By Bruce Kinney, D.D.

JUNIOR COURSE

Cloth, net 40c.; paper, net 25c.

Best Things in America By Katharine R. Crowell

Some Immigrant Neighbours By John R. Henry, D.D.

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York City]

Issued under the direction of the Council of Women for Home Missions

SOME IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORS

BY JOHN R. HENRY

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH

Copyright, 1912, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 123 North Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

To Eloise Elizabeth Henry

FOREWORD

This little book for Junior Home Mission Study classes has been written from the point of view of a New York City pastor. The races that have been selected for study are so chosen because the writer knows them at first hand through having labored among them in institutional and church work.

The book is an invitation to become acquainted with the immigrant and be his friend and good neighbor.

Part 2

The thanks of the author are due the many writers whose works he has freely used, the members of his staff, and Miss Alice M. Guernsey for helpful suggestions, and the Rev. F. Mason North, D.D., for reading the manuscript and for valuable criticisms.

J. R. H.

CHURCH OF ALL NATIONS, New York City, April, 1912

ILLUSTRATIONS

Page

“Where Us Fellows Has to Play” Frontispiece

A Jewish Immigrant Boy 17

A Little Maid of Italy 17

The Home of a Russian Peasant 48

A Russian Moujik and His Family 48

From the “Church of All Nations,” New York City 66

An Italian Kindergarten (Penn.) 74

How the Chinese Babies Ride 82

Rescued Slave Girls (New York City) 82

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. Who Are They? 13

II. Why Do They Come? 21

III. Our Jewish Neighbor 35

IV. Our Russian Neighbor 43

V. Our Italian Neighbor 51

VI. Our Chinese Neighbor 59

VII. Makers of Good Neighbors 69

VIII. Good Neighbors and Bad 77

IX. Neighbors to the World 87

WHO ARE THEY?

“Dago,” and “Sheeney,” and “Chink,” “Greaser,” and “Nigger,” and “Jap.” The Devil invented these terms, I think, To hurl at each hopeful chap Who comes so far over the foam To this land of his heart’s desire To rear his brood, to build his home, And to kindle his hearthstone fire. While the eyes with joy are blurred, Lo! we make the strong man sink, And stab the soul, with the hateful word, “Dago,” and “Sheeney,” and “Chink.”

—Bishop McIntyre.

Part 3

WHO ARE THEY?

Since we are going to study about “Some Immigrant Neighbors,” it is well to know just what we mean by the words “Immigrant” and “Neighbor.”

Immigrant. The word Immigrant is confusing because it looks and sounds so much like the word “Emigrant,” but they are quite different. An Immigrant is one who comes into a country, generally with the intention of settling there. An Emigrant is one that goes out of a country, with the intention of settling in some other land.

The people we are to study are the Immigrants who have come, and are coming, into America.

Neighbor. Every one knows the meaning of the word neighbor. A neighbor is one who lives near another, across the street, or next door, or maybe in our own village or town. If you live in a large city it is not so easy to feel that the people who live near you are your neighbors. It was much easier years ago, when all that are now cities were only towns and villages, and many cities now well known were simply prairie with waving grass and flowers, roamed over by bands of Indians and trampled by the hoofs of countless bison.

The word neighbor has a larger meaning than merely one who lives near another. There is a wonderful description of a neighbor, given by One who is the World’s Good Neighbor. He tells of the traveler who found a stranger lying by the roadside, wounded and helpless. At personal inconvenience and expense the traveler cared for the half dead man, and continued his aid until the stranger was again able to care for himself.

We shall have gained a great deal from the study of this book, if we learn not only to look on these immigrants as neighbors, those who live near us, but if we seriously ask ourselves how we may be Good Neighbors to the strangers from across the sea.

The Neighbors to be Studied. We are not going to talk about all of the thirty-nine races of immigrants that are separately listed by our government, but only about four of them. Some one says, “I hope you will tell about the ones I like.” Well, we hope before we are through you will like the ones we shall tell about, and we are sure you will, for you will be better acquainted, and it is wonderful how much more likable the immigrant is when you know him.

Numbers. Although we are to study only Chinese, Jews, Russians and Italians, 333,694 of these four classes of immigrants landed in America in 1911; 920,299, almost a million, landed in the three years last past, and that is a large falling off as compared with some previous periods. In 1911 the Jews and Italians numbered thirty-five out of every hundred that came. You see that while we discuss but four classes, two of these are more than one-fourth of all that come.

These numbers may suggest very little to us, but how they would have startled the fathers of our country. The warlike Miles Standish, or, in later years, the peppery Peter Stuyvesant, would have declared no such numbers could be brought across the sea in a year. The only ships our fathers knew were small wooden sailing vessels like our coasting schooners; the giant, floating hotels that we call steamships, that carry a big village every trip, were not dreamed of in those days. The sailing vessel took weeks and months to make the voyage; now we can reckon, almost to the hour, the time of the arrival of a great liner.

It might be well if these numbers did startle us more and if we better realized how great is this invading army of strangers, friendly as it may be.

Dislike of Foreigners. Many people do not like the immigrants simply because they are foreigners. This prejudice is as old as the world, and its origin is a most interesting study. Perhaps some high school boy or girl can give a reason for this early dislike.

“The reasons for disliking the foreigner in early times were that no one traveled much and there were no newspapers, consequently neighboring tribes, or nations, did not get to know each other. Nearby tribes were suspicious of each other and were much at war, continually robbing and killing. Every stranger was a possible enemy.”

Yes, that is a good answer. Now, give a reason for present dislike of the immigrant.

“I have a reason,” one boy says. “My father lost his job because an ‘Eyetalian’ offered to work for less.”

Yes, I am sorry to say that is a very real cause of dislike. That is also war, although it is now called by a different name. To take a man’s position, by which he earns his bread, or to steal a man’s cattle, from which he and his family were fed, amounts to about the same in the end. Give some other reasons for disliking immigrants.

“They talk such funny English.” “They don’t dress like us.” “They don’t eat like us.” “They can’t play ball.”

Yes, undoubtedly all these are reasons for feeling that foreigners differ from Americans, but are they good reasons for disliking the foreigner?

I saw a “grown-up” show this hostile feeling one day as I was passing along a crowded street on the East Side of New York. An American youth of about eighteen years of age snatched some fruit from the push cart of a young Italian of the same age. The Italian grappled with the young thief and was giving him a sound thrashing when a policeman, leisurely swinging his club, turned the corner. With one glance he took in the scene of the Italian-American war. Raising his club and shouting, “You Dago,” he charged full at the Italian. The young fellow saw him coming and took off down the street as hard as he could run, dodging as he went the flying club the policeman had hurled. When the tempest had calmed I stepped up to the officer and said, “Officer, what did the Italian do?” “Do?” said he with supreme disgust, “he was a Dago.” Evidently the sole crime of the Italian consisted in being a “Dago,” a foreigner.

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