Part 5

Nor is the Chinese boy so great an exception. The standard of living among the peasants in Russia is also very low; the same is true among the great mass of peasants in Sicily, and remember these peasants form the large majority of the population. That our standard is not the standard of living of some nations may be gathered from the question of the great Chinese viceroy, Li Hung Chang, when visiting America. After seeing the ever-present throngs of prosperous-looking people on the streets, he asked in great surprise, “But where are your working people?” He did not know that the happy-faced, well-dressed people he was looking at were working people practising the American standard of living.

The immigrant provides the cheap, unskilled labor. As he becomes influenced by American customs, he requires better clothes, a room for himself instead of sharing his room with ten other men, more pay as he becomes more skilled. He wants shoes for his wife. The American law compels him to send his children to school instead of making them wage-earners while little children. As his expenses increase he demands more money that he may live as the people about him live. Then the employer begins to replace him by labor costing what he formerly cost. Herein is a remarkable story that would fill many little books like this. It accounts for the procession of the Welsh, Scotch, Irish, Germans, and Huns in the coal regions. It accounts for practically all the civil war, in the form of bloody strikes, carried on in the Pennsylvania coal fields, and much of that which occurs in other industries throughout the country, this method of the employer seeking to replace those demanding higher wages by those willing to work more cheaply.

OPPRESSION

The Sicilian. Many come because of oppression in the home land. The Sicilian lives in a beautiful country, but while the sea and the mountains are good to look upon, the people are very poor. The farm worker cannot send his boy to school as boys go in America, for the rural schools are few. He must pay such heavy taxes he has little left for himself. Then, a few rich people own almost all the land and he must work for them, or starve. They pay him such small wages he cannot buy good, nourishing food for his children and they often suffer greatly in consequence. You draw a long breath when you are told his wages are from eight to thirty-two cents per day. Many of us use more each day in car-fare than a laborer in Sicily receives though he works from the time the top of Etna is crimson with morning, until the birds go to sleep. Even salt, so cheap with us, is taxed so heavily he cannot use it and when he cooks his corn meal in the salt water from the sea he is accused of smuggling. Oppression is what makes many of these people our neighbors.

The Jew. Let us step in and visit an old Jewish tailor, a saintly man who worships devoutly after the manner of his fathers. I am very careful not to give him any work on Saturday as it grieves him to disoblige his friends, and yet he will not work on his Sabbath day. He says, as do many others of the Jewish race: “I pray every day; my son prays once a week; my grandson does not pray at all.” This old tailor speaks such broken English, we will let his daughter tell the story. “My father is almost eighty years of age; he never worked with his own hands until he came to America. He was for many years the tailor of a Russian regiment, making all the uniforms for the officers and having a number of men employed under him; we were well-to-do, the officers loved my father, but when the riots arose it was all they could do to save his life and all we had was destroyed. Now he is an old man, he should not toil any more, but,” as she shrugs her shoulders, “who will give us bread?”

A kindly-faced man is sitting in my office. He speaks such good English you can tell he is a foreigner only by the peculiar way he pronounces some words. He says “dough” for though. Just imagine yourself sitting quietly by and listening, then you will know why many thousands come to us from one part of Europe. “We were friendly with all the people of our town. My ancestors had been in the same business for generations. All the Russians trusted us and although we were Jews they would rather deal with us than with their own countrymen. One day there had been many murmurs around us; the people had looked less friendly; they were ignorant, superstitious people, and they were miserably poor. Few of them could read or write. The nobility had fleeced them for centuries, but the nobility was too strong to be reached and so as scapegoats for the nobles we were pointed out as the cause of their wretchedness. We went to sleep that night, peaceful, prosperous and unsuspecting. At midnight our house was in flames. I never again saw father, mother, brothers, or sisters alive. I escaped in the night and was hidden by some friendly Russians. High above the roar of the flames and the din and slaughter rose the hoarse cry of the peasants—Our Daddy, the Tzar, wants it. Our Daddy, the Tzar, wants it.” Multiply that scene by thousands and you have a Russian pogrom. Oppression brings many Jews.

The Russian. The Russian does not leave his land because of the winter cold. He leaves it because he dare not speak out against the wrong he sees. He is always fearful of some police spy making charges against him, shutting him up in prison, and sending him to Siberia. No one is safe from these spies. The Russian comes to America because here he can think aloud and here he can worship according to the voice of his own conscience. America is his hope.

One of our poets pictures America as she really is, a refuge for these fleeing, hunted people. He shows how the tyrant must give up the chase and return empty-handed when once these poor people have reached our friendly shores.

“There’s freedom at thy gate, and rest For earth’s down-trodden and opprest, A shelter for the hunted head, For the starved laborer toil and bread, Power, at thy bounds, Stops, and calls back his baffled hounds.”

III

OUR JEWISH NEIGHBOR

“O God-head, give me Truth!” the Hebrew cried. His prayer was granted, he became the slave Of “Truth,” a pilgrim far and wide. Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged, with none to save. Seek him to-day, and find in every land. No fire consumes him, neither floods devour; Immortal through the lamp within his hand.

III

OUR JEWISH NEIGHBOR

THE NUMBERS THAT COME. So great has been the volume of Jewish immigration that the eyes of the country have been turned upon it in anxiety and question. In the ten years last past 1,012,721 have come. The largest number in any one year was in 1896, when 154,748 passed through the various ports. In 1911, 94,556 arrived. To better understand the meaning of these figures let us take a large map of the United States. Now be ready with a blue pencil and draw a circle around the cities I name. Perhaps I shall name the place in which some of you live. We will start with a city right on the Eastern coast of the United States, where you could step on board a steamer and sail away for Europe and see the homes of some of these people we are studying. The first city is Bridgeport, Connecticut, on Long Island Sound. The next is the capital of New York State, the city of Albany. The third city to get a blue circle is where a famous university stands, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then we will journey away West and draw a blue pencil mark around the name of a city that stands near a famous lake out of which no one ever drinks. Yes, that is the name, Salt Lake City, Utah. While we are West we will mark Spokane, Washington. Then we will move South and place a circle about San Antonio, Texas; then come East to Reading, Pennsylvania, and Trenton, New Jersey. Michigan is a big state with beautiful forests, and we will blue pencil the city of Grand Rapids. One more city is needed to make the ten. If none of you lives in the cities I have named perhaps you may live in the last one we mark, Kansas City, Kansas. I hear some one say, “Why do you ask us to place a circle about these cities?” Because I want you to know that in the last ten years enough Jews entered the United States to make ten as populous cities as the ones we have just marked.

From Where Does the Jew Come? Five-sixths of the Jewish immigration comes from Russia. While the Jews number probably 11,000,000 in the world, about 5,000,000 of them live in that empire, mostly in what is called the Jewish Pale of Settlement. Why there are so many in Russia needs a brief statement. Poland invited the Jews to settle within her borders in order to build up her cities. Here was gathered the largest population of Jews since the destruction of Jerusalem. In some of the provinces of Poland the Jews number one-sixth, and in some of the cities one-half of the population. When Poland was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria, fifteen provinces fell to the share of Russia. These form the Pale of Settlement, for there the Jew is allowed to dwell and there he is engaged in all forms of industry, including farming.

Why They Come. We have learned some reasons why the Jew leaves Russia. Other reasons are his desire for a better education for his children, freedom to engage in any business he may choose, and the privilege of worshipping God and of saying what he thinks without danger of arrest and imprisonment. Strange as it seems to us, there are still many places in the world where if a man thinks the judge or the ruler has done wrong he dares not say so openly. If he were heard to criticise them he would be in danger of prison. Sometimes when we complain of our own country we forget how fortunate we are to live in such a land of liberty.

Let us now find some of the reasons for the Russian hatred of the Jew. There could be no such merciless persecution of any race without some cause, and it is pretty well understood that the Russian government encourages and often provokes the attacks upon these people. The Russians dislike the Jews because the Jews are not Christians, and because they are much smarter business men than the average Russian, and would soon own all the land of the ignorant peasants if they were allowed to live among them and loan them money; the American Indian was cheated in this way by the smarter and better educated white man. Then the government does not like the Jew because the Russian government is corrupt and does not want the people to have a voice in governing themselves, and the Jew stands for the rights of the common people. Thus we see that while there is some just cause for dislike of the Jew, there are other reasons why he should be praised and commended.

As a Good Citizen. The Jew, having no country of his own has yet always been loyal to that of his adoption. The records show that when war came the Jew was willing to shed his blood for his adopted land. They are good to their own poor, providing hospitals for their sick, and homes for children who are without father or mother. The Bible tells us of the love of David for Absalom and the Hebrew king’s prayer for the recovery of his little sick son. The Jew is no different to-day, he is kind and affectionate in his home. We know the evil the saloon does in every city and town and village in America where it exists. The Jew is generally an enemy of the saloon. The liquor business does not prosper where he lives. The Jews are lovers of books and education, and some of the greatest scholars, musicians, artists, and writers of the world have been Jews. Some of the noblest people who come to America are to be found among the Hebrew immigrants.

Not All Money Lovers. Jewish people are often accused of prizing money more highly than any other race and of setting a greater value upon it than they do upon either truth or justice. Some years ago a great strike took place in New York among the garment workers, who were mostly Jews. It lasted till the savings of the workers were exhausted. I was talking with one of the strike leaders one day and he produced a letter he had just received from his former employer. It said, “If you will come back I will make you foreman and double your salary.” I knew the man was without any money, and I asked, “What will you reply?” “There is only one reply,” he said as he tore up the letter, “I couldn’t accept because I couldn’t be a traitor.”

The cheerful suffering that goes on among many East Side Jewish strikers is heroic, for they feel that they are fighting for principle and these battles that mean less food, thinner garments for the winter winds to pierce, and less fire in the homes, are fought with astonishing cheerfulness. In fact, it would be well for old as well as young folks to remember that the great battles being fought in these days are not with machine guns; these settle no principle. But the right to live, the right to live better than the brutes, the conviction that all one’s time should not be required in the struggle for bread, for shelter and for clothes, that the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment,—for these things the Jews fight by enduring hunger, sorrow and even death for the sake of simple justice. They are the preachers of world brotherhood.

We do not mean that all Jews can be placed in this exalted class. Among them are the hardest and most merciless task-masters. Just the other day I heard a Russian complain bitterly because the Jews for whom he had been expelled from Russia were paying him the pitiful salary of $4.00 per week for his toil. But among them are a great multitude of noble men and women battling for a better day.

The Jew Intellectually. If I were to ask the question, “Are Jewish boys and girls at the head or at the foot of their classes in school?” I know the answer would be, “They are at the head.” The Jew is delighted at the boundless opportunities for education in America. He is like one long locked out from a treasure which he could see but could not touch.

As a Business Man. As a money getter the Jew is without a peer in the world to-day; he seems to possess the golden touch we read of in the Wonder Book. But when we know how it is done there is little mystery about it. A Jewish family sent their children to my Sunday-school. They were poorly dressed and had the appearance of being ill-fed. After a year or two these signs of poverty disappeared and there was every evidence of comfort. I wondered what the cause might be and said to the children. “Your father is doing better, is he not?” “Oh, yes,” they said, “he has gotten over the hard times he had when he went into business. He always used to get up at four o’clock in the morning and go to the factory and get the work ready before the tailors came. Then after they were gone he used to work until eight or nine o’clock every night, but he has a good business now and doesn’t work so hard.” Most men would succeed if they worked such long hours.

The Jew Spiritually. The Jew is a religious man but he seems to be losing his religion in America. In Europe the synagogue was a rallying point, in America the rallying place is the Labor Union, and many have turned away from the old faith. Family life, once loyal and beautiful, now shows many desertions, the father leaving the family to care for itself. The streets at night are trodden by too many Jewish girls, and the criminal courts are thronged with too many Jewish boys. Contempt for old age is one of the saddest products of American life. I have frequently seen young Jewish boys, twelve and fifteen years of age, mocking Jews as venerable as Abraham, both by pulling their beards and by sundry insults. The ignorance of Jewish children on sacred things is widespread. It is a question if any religious body has a more solemn festival than the Day of Atonement. It is supposed to be a day of fasting and prayer, but the restaurants are full, and numerous Jewish organizations use the day to make money by hiring a hall and selling the seats at a good profit to all who can be induced to buy. Many Jews who are members of congregations never attend service except on two or three of the principal fast days.

And yet, careless as the Jew may be of his old time religious faith, Christianity calls forth the bitterest opposition. He cannot forget the many things he has suffered in the name of the Christian church.

OUR RUSSIAN NEIGHBOR

“Come, clear the way, then, clear the way: Blind creeds and kings have had their day. Break the dead branches from the path: Our hope is in the aftermath; Our hope is in heroic men, Star-led, to build the world again. To this event the ages ran: Make way for Brotherhood—make way for man.”