The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow

PART I. With the Outgoing Tide

WITH THE OUTGOING TIDE

I. "THEY THAT GO OUT IN SHIPS" 15

II. THE PRICE THEY PAY 34

III. A MURDERER, MARY AND AN HONORARY DEGREE 46

IV. REFLEX INFLUENCES 62

V. OUR CRITICS 77

VI. THE DOCTOR OF THE KOPANICZE 93

VII. "MOSCHELE AMERIKANSKY" 102

VIII. "NOCH IST POLEN NICHT VERLOREN" 112

IX. THE DISCIPLES IN THE CARPATHIANS 124

X. THE GUSLAR OF RAGUSA 138

XI. WHERE THE ANGEL DROPPED THE STONES 152

XII. "THE HOLE FROM WHICH YE WERE DIGGED" 165

PART II. With the Incoming Tide

WITH THE INCOMING TIDE

XIII. PROBLEMS OF THE TIDE 185

XIV. THE SLAV IN THE IMMIGRANT PROBLEM 203

XV. THE SLAV IN HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY 215

XVI. FROM EPHRATA TO WHISKEY HILL 227

XVII. FROM THE LOVCZIN TO GUINEA HILL 242

XVIII. THE JEW AND THE CHRISTIAN 259

XIX. THE JEW IN THE IMMIGRANT PROBLEM 276

XX. FROM FIFTH AVENUE TO THE GHETTO 290

XXI. FROM LAKE SKUTARI TO LAKE CHAUTAUQUA 300

XXII. THE PROTESTANT CHURCH AND THE IMMIGRANT 311

XXIII. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH THE NEW IMMIGRANT 329

XXIV. FROM CHAOS TO COSMOS 348

Appendix I (classification of the New Immigrant Groups) 359

APPENDIX II (Net Immigration to the United States 1899-1908) 362

APPENDIX III (Industrial Depression and Immigration) 364

APPENDIX IV (Suggested Changes in Immigration Laws) 366

INDEX 368

ILLUSTRATIONS

Facing page

A CZAR IN EMBRYO Title

DIRTY MARY DURING THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION 50

TRIEST 62

A CONTRAST IN HOMES 71

THE MARKET SQUARE IN CRACOW 112

AT THE FOOT OF THE TATRA MOUNTAINS 135

COAST OF DALMATIA 138

WHERE THE ANGEL DROPPED THE STONES AND NOW DROPS DOLLARS 158

TWO TYPES OF POLES 207

RUTHENIANS 224

THE SLAVIC HOME IN HUNGARY 236

THE SLAVIC HOME ON WHISKEY HILL 236

A JEW OF THE POORER TYPE 276

A JEW OF THE FINER TYPE 276

ALBANIANS 300

FACULTY AND AMERICAN STUDENTS AT MISSIONS-HAUS, KATTOWITZ 318

SLAVIC WOMEN 352

GENERAL AND MRS. RICIOTTO GARIBALDI AT THE FOOT OF HIS FATHER'S MONUMENT IN ROME 356

PART I. With the Outgoing Tide

With the Outgoing Tide

"THEY THAT GO OUT IN SHIPS"

"Do really nice ladies smoke cigarettes, papa?" my young daughter asked of me perplexedly, awaiting an answer.

"No, I don't think they do," I replied hesitatingly, the passing of severe judgments not being much to my liking.

"Do really nice ladies drink whiskey?" the young interrogator continued. This time I answered with more assurance.

"No. Really nice ladies do not drink whiskey."

"But, papa dear, so many ladies in our cabin either drink or smoke, and I think they are very nice."

My little woman is perhaps a better judge of human nature than her Puritanized papa; for going into the smoking-room of the Italian steamer on which we had embarked, I saw, indeed, a number of women smoking and drinking and pretending to enjoy both, with that pharisaic air of abandon which convinced me that they were "really nice" ladies. They were "sailing away for a year and a day," and were celebrating their liberation from the conventionalities of their environment by "being quite European," as one of them expressed it.

Ladies who smoke cigarettes and drink cocktails in the smoking-room of an ocean steamer cannot expect that the gentlemen, whose domain they have invaded, will wait for an introduction before beginning a conversation, and soon I was deep in the discussion of the aforesaid cigarettes and cocktails, as pertaining to ladies who are "really nice." One of these ladies was from "ye ancient and godly town" of Hartford, Conn., and her revered ancestors sleep in the Center Church cemetery, all unconscious of the fact that "The better set, to which I belong," quoting the descendant of the revered ancestors, "smokes and drinks and breaks the Sabbath." "And swears?" I asked.

"No; but we do say: Dum it," she replied, inhaling the smoke as if she were a veteran, but betraying her novitiate by the severe attack of coughing which followed.

"Well, I am not up to it, quite," she remarked. "You see I didn't begin till my senior year in college, and gave it up during the earlier years of my married life."

Then I, a college professor, who has lived these many deluded years in the belief that not even his senior boys smoked, except perhaps when no one was looking--gasped and became speechless. Seeing me so easily shocked, she tried to shock me more by telling tales of social depravity, of divorces, remarriages and more divorces, of which she had one; until my speechlessness nearly ended in vocal paralysis.

I did not find my voice again until a gentleman from Boston who "never drank in Boston," but who, it seemed, departed from that custom to an alarming degree on shipboard, helped me to recover my lost organ, by launching forth into a tirade against the immigrant, that ready scapegoat for all our national sins.

Upon the immigrant the Boston man laid the blame for the degeneration of America and the Americans.

"What can you expect of our country with this scum of the earth coming in by the million? Black Hands, Socialists, and Anarchists? What can you expect?

"The Sabbath is broken down by them as if it had never been a day of rest. They drink like fish, they live on nothing----" and he went on with his contradictory statements until the well-known end, in which he saw our country ruined, our flag in the dust, liberty dethroned and the Constitution of the United States trampled under the feet of these infuriated Black Hands, Socialists and Anarchists.

Through the open door from the steerage below came the murmur of voices from a thousand or more passengers, crowded in their narrow space, too narrow for even scant comforts; yet in the murmur were long, cheerful notes.

A mixture of sounds it was. Weird snatches of songs from the Greeks, the mandatory call of the Italian lotto players who seem never to tire of their half innocent gambling, and the deep, guttural notes of various Slavic groups, telling the story of the hard fight for money in the strange country.

Above these sounds came the wailing notes of a lonely violin, played by an Hungarian gypsy, who was artist, vagabond, business man, beggar and thief. His playing was intended to lure pennies out of the pockets of the poor; failing in that, he meant to help himself. It would not have been the steerage if the voices of children had not been heard in all their crescendos and diminuendos; nor, indeed, would it have been the steerage if bitter cries had not come from those who could not restrain their grief, although long ago they had ceased to be children. This ship carried not a few such, who had left our land beaten by many stripes; poor and sick and ready to die.

A Boston man who has once broken through his icy crust, especially if that crust be melted by hot drink, can speak long and unctuously, and my wrath had time to gather, and grow thick as a cloud around my brain. Even before he had quite finished speaking, I blurted out in very unacademic language:

"I'll bet you five dollars, that among the thousand steerage passengers on this ship, you will not find one woman who smokes cigarettes, drinks cocktails, has had a divorce or contemplates having one."

It was a reckless challenge to make, but my wrath was kindled.

Confusion was added to my anger, however, when the man from Boston said, with a reproachful glance: "I am no sport and I don't bet. I am a church-member." Then he called for another cocktail, and I sought the lower deck, over which hung the afterglow of a sunset, rare on the Northern Atlantic, even in June.

The noises on the steerage deck had almost ceased. Most of the children were in their bunks, the lotto players found the light too dim to read the numbers on their cards, the gypsy fiddler continued to wail out lamentations on his instrument; while the Greeks squatted unpicturesquely on the very edge of the forecastle, watching the waves. No doubt the gentle, bluish green held some distant promise of the glory of their Mediterranean.

As I descended the steps I looked into a sea of faces, friendly faces, all. To my "Buon Giorno," there was a chorus of "How do you do?" from Slavs, Latins and Greeks alike, and in but a few moments there was a rather vital relation established between the man from the cabin and the men in the steerage.

That is to me a perpetual wonder; this opening of their lives to the inquisitive eyes of the stranger. Why should they so readily disclose to me all their inmost thoughts, tell me of what they left behind, what they carry home and what awaits them? There is no magic in this, even as there is no effort. All I am sure of is that I want to know--not for the mere knowing, but because somehow the disclosure of a life is to me something so sacred, as if knowing men, I learned to know more of God.

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