Part 8

How They Were Received. The Chinese were received in California with open arms, so to speak. “Industrial necessity” overlooked the visually present race prejudice, and the Chinese turned their hands to anything that would fill the gap the American gold-seeker had created. They became cooks, restaurant keepers, laborers, household servants—there were no women on the Pacific Coast then, willing to do the last named work—carpenters, farmers of neglected land. Governor McDougall, in 1852, recommended a series of land grants to induce their further coming; editors praised their industry, their cheerfulness, and personal cleanliness; the Chinamen must have thought the Golden Age was come again.

The Rude Awakening. In 1854 came the collapse of the California boom; placer mines gave out; men from the mines seeking employment were coming to the city in droves; the wage of $10 per day for skilled and $3.50 to $5 for unskilled labor was over; then came the cry of America for Americans. The Chinese were ill-treated and many lost their lives. Committees were formed by the better class of Americans to protect them, but the cry against them never ceased in California until the Chinese exclusion law of 1888 was enacted, barring them from the country.

The Chinese Intellectually. The Chinese rank high intellectually. Their age-long reverence for learning—for a knowledge of the Chinese classics opened the door to the highest positions—has undoubtedly had a marked effect upon the mental side of the nation. The Chinese hero has been the one who passed successfully through the various examinations in the classics and finally, after many difficulties, attained the coveted degree. Their “highways are spanned with arches erected, not to great soldiers, but to great scholars.”

The nature of the outings that the average young American of the East Side conducts is pretty well known throughout the city of New York. They are usually anything but orderly and thoughtful. But on a Christian Chinese picnic I have gone from the bow to the stern of the boat and found numerous games of Chinese chess in progress, each game surrounded by an excited group of advisers telling the players what move to make to checkmate their opponents. The playing of a good game of chess is not a childish task. The Chinese are a thoughtful people.

Generosity. Few favors done the Chinese pass unrewarded. I have seen many touching examples of sympathetic helpfulness. A few years ago a beautiful Chinese woman was helped to escape from worse than slavery. To save her from the sworn vengeance of her master, it was necessary to send her clear across the continent in company with a missionary. This we did. Like Nicodemus, who came to our Lord under cover of darkness, there came to us later a woman from Chinatown. Her husband is one of the most notorious gamblers in the country, but his wife had a woman’s sympathy with the kindly service rendered, and she left a hundred dollars as her gift toward the safety of her unfortunate countrywoman.

Spiritually. I am repeatedly asked, “Do the Chinese ever become Christians?” Their spiritual nature is as keen as that of any foreign-speaking people that come to us. The spirit that changes the life of a wicked, gambling, drinking American performs a like office in a wicked, gambling, opium-smoking Chinese. The Christ that attracts little American boys and girls is a like magnet to these little Chinese lads and lassies. We had in our school for some years a little Chinese boy named Guy. He was bright and courageous, and accompanied our missionary on many of her visits among the Chinese. He said one day, with great earnestness, “There are three things I want. First, I want to become a Christian and get my heart right; second, I want to be baptized so that all the Chinese may know that I am separated from paganism, and third, I want to be a preacher of the Gospel so that many may hear the glad news.” You will agree that these are good wishes for even an American boy. One night he dreamed that his father, who was in China, had returned to America and that he and Guy stood together at the altar of a church while Guy was being baptized.

Wong Sing came into our night school seven years ago. He hated the name of “Jesus.” When he heard in America that Christ was being preached in his native village, he said, “Hot anger rose within me.” One reason for this was that Wong Sing knew only the Christianity of Mexico, and this is cruel and disdainful toward the Chinese. It has taken the world many centuries to learn that the Christianity of Jesus is best extended not by sword or force, or even by argument, but by loving-kindness.

(Church of All Nations, New York City)]

One day Wong Sing went home from our school with a Chinese New Testament, and to him it was the Word of God from heaven. He read it all night, getting an hour’s sleep in the early morning before he went to work. He was converted by the reading, and then he threw himself, with all his soul, into the work of the church. He was all for Christ. In the last four years he was with us he did not miss one session of the school.

Finally, business called him home. His mother in China was greatly grieved at his conversion. She said, “My son has deserted the old faith. When I die, who will worship at my tablet? My son went away a good boy, he comes back possessed of a devil.” Wong was the only Christian in the village. He tried to show his mother the better way he had found in Christ, but without success, and in great bitterness of heart over the loss of her boy’s faith in the old religion, she ended her own life. On this young Christian has fallen the curses and revilings of the entire village, but he has “kept the faith.”

When You Toy, a little Chinese slave girl whom we had rescued, told us her dream, we felt that there was a relation between it and her own life and thinking. “Oh,” she said, “I had such a wonderful dream; I saw God and He had a great book, and He called me to Him and said, ‘Here, You Toy, look in this book,’ and I looked and there was my name, and after it in bright letters was written, ‘You are my precious one.’” I believe that a little orphan girl from a far country, trained in ancestor worship, could never have had that dream if God were not a known and near friend. What do you think about it?

The Russians, Hebrews, Italians and Americans—none of these people surpasses the Chinese in loyalty and in labors, once they become followers of Christ.

VII

MAKERS OF GOOD NEIGHBORS

“Fear not, we cannot fail: The message must prevail; Truth is the oath of God, And sure and fast, Through death and hell, Holds, onward, to the last.”

VII

MAKERS OF GOOD NEIGHBORS

TO BEGIN WITH. Who and what are the good neighbors in our country that are most powerful in changing this many-tongued multitude into Americans? Who are influencing them so that they understand us and we understand them? What forces are welding these many fragments into one nation?

To receive into one great common home millions of sons and daughters strange to that home and to one another in speech, custom and land, and to blend them into one people, this seems an impossible task. And yet it is being accomplished.

The Public School. Among the good neighbors that are grappling with this great task most effectively I place the public school first, because I believe it the most useful neighbor in making young Americans. Frequently the foreign-born parents see the New World largely through the eyes of their children, so that the school is a good neighbor to the whole family.

The public school makes different nationalities friendly. All school boys know how by studying together, reciting together and playing together they acquire respect for one another, and learn to look over the barriers of race. A public school near my church which is made up almost wholly of Jews and Italians, elected one of my Sunday-school scholars, a Japanese boy, president of the class, simply because his ability and good manners had won their respect.

Manual Training. By manual training classes the public school promotes respect for work with the hands. We cannot understand the foreigners’ contempt for this kind of work, but it is very strong. I once took an Armenian, who had come all the way to America in the hope of getting an education, to the president of a preparatory school in the hope that he might be admitted free of expense by doing some work about the institution. The president stated that the school was overcrowded, but he would take him in if he would work in the field a couple of hours a day. The Armenian, who was really an earnest man, felt the work would too greatly degrade him, and declined.

Teaching in the English Language. The English language is of course another great help in Americanization.

The City and the Immigrant Child. The child of the immigrant is in special need of the help and sympathy of all American boys and girls. Frequently he is the sole person in the home who speaks English, and so is called upon for advice and is consulted in many things upon which American fathers and mothers never need to consult their children. This is unfortunate for him, as we can readily see. He often despises the language and customs of his parents and then ends by despising the parents themselves. He cannot understand the love his parents feel for their homeland; he cannot see the blue skies and green hills and mountains so dear to them; he cannot feel the home attachments.

“I recall a certain Italian girl,” writes Miss Jane Addams, “who came every Saturday evening to a cooking class in the same building in which her mother spun in the Labor Museum Exhibit; and yet Angelina always left her mother at the front door while she herself went round to a side door, because she did not wish to be too closely identified in the eyes of the rest of the cooking class with an Italian woman who wore a kerchief over her head, uncouth boots, and short petticoats. One evening, however, Angelina saw her mother surrounded by a group of visitors from the School of Education who much admired her spinning ability, and she concluded from their conversation that her mother was the ‘best stick spindle spinner in America.’

“When she inquired from me as to the truth of this deduction I took occasion to describe the Italian village in which her mother had lived, something of her free life, and how because of the opportunity she and other women had had to drop their spindles over the edge of a precipice they had developed a skill in spinning beyond that of the neighboring towns. I dilated somewhat upon the freedom and beauty of that life, how hard it must be to exchange it all for a two-room tenement and to give up a beautiful homespun kerchief for an ugly department store hat. It was easy to see that the thought of the mother with any other background than that of the tenement was new to Angelina, and at least two things resulted; she allowed her mother to pull out of the big box under the bed the beautiful homespun garments which had previously been hidden away as uncouth, and she openly came into the Labor Museum by the same door as did her mother, proud at least of the mastery of the craft which had been so much admired.”

While it might seem that the child represents the most precious future wealth of our cities, he evidently is not so valued. Real estate is worth more than he is. Dirty, disease-breeding blocks that should be parks and playgrounds are worth more than he is. Even where grass grows, big signs everywhere indicate that grass is sacred and of more account than he is. In planning our American cities the child seems to have been entirely left out. When tenements became profitable, and the tenements are the homes of the immigrant children, the backyard playground disappeared. The street is the only playground left and, cursed by drivers because the horses stumble over them, and by chauffeurs because they limit their speed, and chased by the police as a general nuisance, the children of the tenements are surely to be pitied.

A young Italian girl fifteen years of age was being sworn in a Brooklyn court. Before swearing her the Judge told the clerk to inquire if she knew the meaning of an oath in court. He asked, “Do you know who God is?” She replied, “God, who is he?” He said, “Do you know anything about Christ?” She replied, “Christ, where does he live?”