Part 10

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York City]

One Christmas night a great company of Chinese and their friends had gathered to celebrate the birth of Christ. Chinese women were there who had never before been in a public gathering; bound-feet women were there who are never seen on the streets. The platform was thronged with Chinese children in their quaint, beautiful, and becoming Oriental costumes. The first Christmas was long, long ago. Scripture tells us that on that night a song so full of joy that it startled the shepherds rang through the wintry sky. Poets and other people say that as Christmas time comes round again they can still catch faint echoes of the angels’ song. Perhaps the angels still sing it each glad Christmas Eve; anyway, at no other time does a child seem so beautiful and so holy.

When the exercises were over I said a parting word to our guests. One Chinese woman, carrying in her arms a beautiful little baby girl, came up to say good night. “Why, Mrs. Sun,” I exclaimed, “I did not know you had a little girl.” “Oh,” she said, “I hadn’t, but Mrs. Wu had one girl and when this baby was born she didn’t want it because one girl was enough, so she gave it to me.” This in New York on Christmas night, 1911. Can you imagine a Christian mother glad to give away her little girl? The Chinese need Christ.

The Russian needs something other than shorter hours and larger wages. Many of them are seeking the higher things. A Russian pastor told me of making an engagement with one of his hearers at a Russian open air service to discuss and explain Christianity to a Russian in his home. When the night came this Russian revolutionist had gathered a group of his fellows in his tenement quarters and there pastor and men discussed the Christian faith from 8 o’clock in the evening till midnight and would have kept the discussion up all night, could the pastor have remained. Christ and the church are needed by the Russian.

You see that some people have misrepresented our Lord and His church. We must try to right this wrong done the foreigner and we must be patient and loving in doing it. The immigrants are in need of many things—we must endeavor to supply these needs. We must do it for the sake of Christ. We must do it in the name of Christ. We must do it as if our Lord Himself sat weary and thirsty before us and it was given us to hand Him the cup of water. How glad we would be for such an honor!

BAD NEIGHBORS

The Saloon. It is sad to see so many bright Italian boys with their fruit stands and shoe polishing chairs hard by saloon doors. They do not know how great an enemy is pretending to be their friend.

The saloon is a bad neighbor to the immigrant. It wastes his money and his time. It unfits him for work, starves his family and makes them feel ashamed of husband and father. It leads to disease and often to prison, for the saloon is the mother of innumerable crimes. It helps make weak-minded and deformed children and is an evil organization whose destruction has already been determined upon by the truest and best Christian people in our land. For the sake of the immigrant, for the sake of the fair name of America, let us unite to shut its doors and banish it from our country.

Ignorance. Ignorance keeps the immigrant un-American. One who cannot read is at a serious disadvantage. When it is remembered that of the Italians sixty out of one hundred of all those over fourteen years of age who come to America belong to this class, we see the need of the work of night schools to overcome this ignorance. The case is made still worse by the fact that the immigrants crowd together into colonies, as “Little Italy,” “Little Russia,” and “the Ghetto,” where the English language is not spoken and there are no broadening American influences.

Injurious Employment. The work in which the immigrant is generally employed helps keep him un-American. He has no opportunity to know America or to know Americans. Much of the work is wearying and disheartening. Men bound for the coal mines are packed in cars and hurried away, often through the night, to the distant coal fields; underground all day and sleeping in wretched quarters above ground at night, they have little opportunity to see or know anything of their adopted land. I stepped up to a stone house alongside a railroad excavation in the country part of Connecticut once to have a look at the occupants. There were two floors in the old tumble-down house and both were packed with mattresses and makeshifts for beds until practically the whole floor space was covered. It was a wet day and all the men were crowded indoors. A handsome young fellow lay sick on one of the mattresses. I put my head in the door and said: “Io parlo un poco Italiano ma non bene.” “I speak a little Italian, but not well.” Immediately there was a laugh, probably at the “not well,” and they rose to greet me as courteously as if all were trained gentlemen. The sick boy began to talk and the group was friendly with me in a moment.

The day will come when we shall find that these people can do something other than dig ditches and mix concrete. The Italians who are now employed as our hewers of wood and drawers of water, are of the race of painters and sculptors and silk makers of earlier days.

We must help the immigrant to overcome his bad neighbors, and to know who are his true friends.

NEIGHBORS TO THE WORLD

For lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day; The saints triumphant rise in bright array; The King of glory passes on His way.

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast, Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, Singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, “Hallelujah, Hallelujah!”

NEIGHBORS TO THE WORLD

THOSE WHO GO BACK. “Do these immigrants ever go back home?” asks some one. “If I went away from home and made my fortune I would want to go back home to spend it.”

I am glad to hear that question and some of you may be surprised at the answer.

We have all heard of the incoming immigrant army, and small wonder when we know that in some years it numbers over a million human beings. But we have heard little about the returning army. How large is it? How many of our immigrant neighbors prefer to spend their savings at home? How many go home because fortune has not smiled upon them in America, or because their mothers write, “I am getting old and it is very lonesome with my son far across the sea”?

Let us lay on the table nine, bright, new, copper pennies. Now suppose each penny represents one hundred thousand immigrants. Then the nine pennies would represent nine times one hundred thousand, or the nine hundred thousand immigrants that landed in 1911. Since almost three hundred thousand immigrants went back home in 1911 how many of these nine pennies shall we have to remove to show the actual immigrant increase for that year?

For 1908 we would have to use eight pennies to represent those who came, and to remove six of these pennies to represent the numbers that returned home that year.

I am sure this will surprise some of you. You did not know so great a multitude returned to Italy, or Russia, or elsewhere, yet every year anywhere from two hundred thousand to six hundred thousand leave our shores for home. That makes us feel the truth of the song we all know,

“Be it ever so humble, There’s no place like home.”

Influence of the Returned Immigrant. What effect has this home-coming multitude upon towns and villages all over the world?

When Stefano came to America he could neither read nor write. One day a friend said, “I know a church where Italians are taught to read free of all expense.” Stefano was sending money home to his mother each month, so he was glad to know of a free school. One night the leader of the school said, “We shall have a short session to-night because we are to have a prayer-meeting after school.” Stefano and fifty other young Italians remained for the prayer-meeting. At home Stefano had ceased going to church after he had been confirmed, except sometimes on feast days. He remained to the prayer-meeting, not because he wanted to but because all the others stayed. He listened with great attention to the speaker; he had never heard such an earnest address as the pastor gave that night. It seemed as if some one must have told the preacher all about him. All through the week he thought of the prayer-meeting and after he had attended a few times more he came to the preaching service on Sundays, and then Stefano became converted.

When he returned home he was on fire with the new religion he had found. His heart was full of love for everybody. But he was saddened when he saw how little the people of his village knew about God. One night he determined to tell them how he had found Christ in America, and so he called them together in his mother’s home and told his story. When he had finished what was his surprise and delight to have three other men rise and tell how they had found the same Christ in golden America.

Every one was interested. The villagers said, “Some of these men were bad men when they went away; they are now good men.” You will be glad to know that whole villages in Sicily have become Protestant and Christian by the preaching of just such returned immigrants as Stefano. Last year eighteen Protestant Churches of one denomination were founded in Sicily by returned immigrants converted in America.

This shows us the wonderful opportunity we have of being a good neighbor to one part of the world by being good neighbors to the Italians who live near us.