IV. THE NEW IMMIGRATION

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH THE NEW IMMIGRANT EDWARD C. STEINER, PROFESSOR OF APPLIED CHRISTIANITY, GRINNELL COLLEGE

T IS now twenty-five years since I landed in the United States

Hungary.

I followed them across the sea and watched this historic movement of the Slavs, who until then had remained practically dormant where they had been left by the glacier-like movement of their race, the pressure of the invader, or the fate which governed Eastern European politics.

It was a fascinating experience to see these forgotten children of an unresponsive soil coming in touch with a civilization of which they had never dreamed; to see the struggle of emotions in their usually impassive faces, as they saw the evidences of European culture and wealth in the Northern cities through which we passed.

What fear crept into their hearts and drove the healthy blood from their cheeks when for the first time they saw the turbulent sea.

The ocean was vaster and the fear of it most real to us who sailed out of Bremerhaven in the steerage of the steamer Fulda; for we were the forerunners of a vast army of men which had scarcely begun to think of leaving its age-long bivouac. The Slav has never taken kindly to the sea, and the more held unconquered terrors.

It is difficult now to describe the incidents of that first landing in New York, for in rapid succession the experience has been so often repeated; and all the joys, fears, and hopes which repeatedly I have shared with hundreds and thousands of men are so blended in my memory into one great wonder, that either analysis or description seems vain.

It is strange and yet natural, no doubt, that I remember the trivial incidents of that first landing. The attempt on the part of some of my Slovaks to eat bananas without removing the skins; their first acquaintance with mince pie, which they declared a barbarous dish; our first meal on American soil, in a third-rate boarding-house for immigrants, and the injunction of one of the earlier comers: "Don't wait for anybody, but grab all you can. In this country the motto is: 'Happy is the man who can help himself!'"

I remember the lonely feeling that crept over us as we found ourselves like driftwood in the great current of humanity in the city of New York, and the fear we had of every one who was at all friendly; for we had been warned against sharpers. I remember our pleasure in the picturesque ferryboat which carried us to New Jersey, its walking beam seeming like the limbs of some great monster crossing the water.

Then crowding fast upon one another come memories of hard tasks in gruesome mines and ghostly breakers; the sight of licking flames like fiery tongues darting out at us, from furnaces full of bubbling, boiling metal; the circling camps of the coke burners who kept their night's vigil by the altars of the Fire God. There are memories of dark ravines and mud banks, choked by refuse of mill and mine; the miners' huts, close together, as if space were as scarce on the earth as compassion for the stranger. I remember the kindness of the poor, the hospitality of the crowded, the hostility of the richer and stronger, who feared that we would drive them from their diggings; and the unbelief of those to whom I early began preaching the humanity of the Slav rough and uncouth, but human still, although he has scarcely ever had a fair chance to prove it.

Of the names of the various towns through which I passed, in which I worked and watched, I particularly remember four: Connellsville, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and Streator, Illinois, all of them typical coal towns. In none of them were my people received with open arms, although they rarely met with organized hostility.

In Scranton and in Streator, they still remember our coming and our staying. Since then, I have repeatedly visited all these four places upon errands of investigation and interpretation.

I always dreaded going back to them; not only because it would revive painful memories of a very hard apprenticeship, but because I could not avoid asking myself if the optimism with which I have treated the problem of immigration, by voice and pen, would be justified.

What if the Americans in these cities should say:

We have lived with these Slavs for twenty-five years and more; we have been with them day after day, while you have flitted about the country. We know better than you do. We told you the "Hunkey" was a menace when he came, and he is a menace still.

I well know that my readers and my auditors have often criticized my optimism, and especially the sympathetic note with which I approach this problem, regarding which they are always more skeptical the more remote they are from it.

I have tried to modify my view of the problem by facing it in all its bearings; I have not shrunk from seeing the worst of it. In fact I know American cities best from that dark and clouded side. I know the Little Italies, the Ghettos, the Patches around the mines, the East Side of New York and the West Side of Chicago; although I have never been the full length of Fifth Avenue and have never seen the famous North Shore drive.

I am familiar with penitentiaries, jails, police courts, and even worse places; for I wanted to know to what depths these leaden souls can sink, and I fear that I have more anxiety as to their nativity than their destiny. Yet, having seen the worst of the bad, I never lost my faith in these lesser folk and my optimism remained unclouded. One fear alone assailed me; that what my critics said to me and of me was true. "He is an immigrant himself, and of course it is natural that he should see the brighter side of the problem." To me, that was the severest and most cutting criticism, just because I feared it might be true; yet I have honestly tried to see the darkest side of this question, both as it affected the immigrant and the country that received him. I have listened patiently to jeremiads of home mission secretaries about these "Godless foreigners." I have read the reports of Immigrant Commissions, and all the literature written the last few years upon this subject, and I am still optimistic, and

disagree with much that I have heard and read. Many authors who have written regarding this question had no first-hand information about it. They knew neither the speech nor the genius of these new people; they had a fixed belief that all civilization, culture, and virtue, belong to the north of Europe and that the east and southeast of that continent are its limbo; and they relied upon statistics, which at best are misleading, when used to estimate human conduct and human influences.

Typical of this class of literature is a recent pamphlet upon the subject, which, judging from the excellent bibliography appended, must be based upon extensive reading; yet the author comes to this conclusion:

Assimilation in the twentieth century is a very different matter from assimilation in the nineteenth. In many respects, the new immigration is as bad as the old was good.1

There are several facts which this author has forgotten, as have those from whom he draws. First, the older immigrant is not yet assimilated. In the agricultural counties of Mr. Edwards' own state, there are townships in which the English language is a foreign tongue, although the second generation of Germans already plows the fertile fields of Wisconsin; and there are cities where the Germans have thoroughly assimilated the Americans.

There are places of no mean size in Pennsylvania, which are as German as they were 200 years ago, and as far as the Irish everywhere are concerned, it is still a question what we shall be when they have done with us.

I venture to predict that the twentieth century immigrant will assimilate much more quickly and completely than the immigrants of the eighteenth and the early half of the nineteenth centuries assimilated.

Beside the fact that the process is going on much more rapidly than ever before, as I asserted, my theories are corroborated by Professor Ross of the University of Wisconsin, whose book is suggestive if not conclusive. Speaking of the assimilation of the immigrant, he says:

1"Studies on American Social Conditions- Immigration." By Richard Henry Edwards, p. 9.

On the whole, those who come now Americanize much more readily than did the non-English immigrants of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Not only do they come from lesser peoples and from humbler social strata, but, thanks to the great rôle the United States plays in the world, the American culture meets with far more prestige than it had then. Although we have ever greater masses to assimilate, let us comfort ourselves with the fact that the vortical suction of our civilization is stronger now than even before.

Neither is any one prepared to prove that the "new immigrant is as bad as the old was good."

It is very interesting that when authors and speakers quote statistics, as they usually do, to prove the criminal nature of the new immigrant, they do not differentiate between the older and the newer groups. If they did, and would let statistics determine the issue, they would find that the new immigrant is good and the old bad; yes, very bad.

The following tables, quoted from the Report of the Commission of Immigration of the State of New York, are worthy the close study of Mr. Edwards and the authors upon whom he has relied.2

STATISTICS REFERRING TO FOREIGN-BORN OFFENDERS COMMITTED TO NEW YORK STATE PRISONS AND PENITENTIARIES DURING 1904

TOTAL NUMBER OF PRISONERS COMMITTED

185.

1" Social Psychology," Ross, p. 140.

2 Report of Commission of Immigration of the State of New York, pp. 182 and