imoN |!l!l||i BV 2785 .G8 1906 Grose, Howard B. 1851-1939 The incoming millions THE INCOMING MILLIONS HOME MISSION STUDY COURSE Each volume 12mo, cloth 50c. net; paper 30c. net I. Under Our Flag A study of conditions in America from the standpoint of Woman's Home Misionary work, by ALICE M. GUERNSEY. "A text-book of sifted studies for home miEsion classes and meetings, with suggestions for various uses of the material it contains." — Congre^atioiialist. 1. The Burden of the City By ISABEIvLE HORTON. "Settlement Work, the Modern Church and its Methods, the Deaconess in City Missions, Children's Work, and Co-operation. It constitutes a wanual nf practical philanthrophy worthy cf study iu all churches." — The Outlook. 3. Indian and Spanish Neighbors By JULIA H. JOHNSTON. "Full of information with which every Chii.stifn patriot should be familiar in regaid to the Indiar.s; origin, tribes, characteristics, ti viiri n er.t, 1:7- guage. religion, wrongs and rights etc; plsi> 1 f the Spanish speaking people in New Mexico, Arizona, California, Porto Rico." — Olive Trees. JUST ISSUED 4. The Incoming Millions By HOWARD B. GROSE, D. D. To the spiritual need of these incomers and their influence upon us as individuals and as a uation Dr. Grose has given much study. Fleming H. Revell Company PUBLISHERS THE IXCOMIXG FLOOD OF ALIENS // pj-pi^ Home Mission Study Course \Inter-denominational~\ The Incoming Millions BY y HOWARD B. GROSE " The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one bom among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself." New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyriglit, 1906, by FLEMING H. KHVHLL COMPANY Second Edition. New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicai^o : 80 Wabash Avenue Toronto : 25 Richmond Street, W. London : 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh : 100 Princes Street TO THE CHRISTIAN WOMEN OF AMERICA, WHOSE MISSION IT IS TO HELP SAVE OUR COUNTRY BY EVANGELIZING THE ALIEN WOMEN AND TEACHING THEM THE IDEALS OF THE AMERICAN HOME NOTE The author wishes to acknowledge his spe- cial obligations to his son, Howard Bristol Grose, whose valued collaboration has made the produc- tion of this volume possible. PREFACE A MINISTER from a western city, on the return voyage from Europe, was sitting one morning on the deck with a company of friends. As the bells sounded for eleven o'clock, a cultured lady of the party rose and excused herself on the ground of an engagement. He noted that she passed down to the steerage deck, and his curiosity was aroused. The next day, at the same hour, she left the company with the same excuse, and was not seen again until dinner time. This became a daily occurrence, until the last day of the voy- age, which had been prolonged by head winds. When the bells struck, the lady did not leave, and there was a look of sadness on her face. He ven- tured to ask what the strange engagement was that had called her away so regularly, and she told him her story. Watching the steerage passengers as they boarded the steamship, the lady saw an aged woman, evidenlly an invalid, brought on board in a wheel chair. Something in the sweet and pa- tient face attracted her, and as she thought of the many lonely hours the invalid would probably pass in the trying conditions of the steerage, she resolved to go down and see if she could be of 3 4 PREFACE service, perhaps by reading a little while each day. She found that the invalid was an Italian and knew no English ; she was alone, on her way to join her sons in America, who had sent for her. The lady knew very little Italian, but made up her mind to learn at least enough to speak some words of comfort and sympathy. She managed to find an Italian Testament and a lesson book, and began her studies. The next day the invalid's face beamed with delight as she heard herself saluted in Italian, and a new bond of sympathy was at once established. Then there began an exchange of languages, each acting as teacher and pupil. The lady read a verse in the Italian Testament, then in the English, and soon taught the Italian to repeat the verse, "For God so loved the world." Each day the lessons continued, with ever growing interest to both. Suddenly the in- valid grew worse, and in a few hours she passed away. Her body was buried at sea, and the lady was the only first-class passenger who knew of the circumstance. But, as she told the minister, she had the unspeakable satisfaction of having been able, in those few days, not only to cheer the heart of a lonely woman, but to learn enough Italian to make known to her the love of Jesus; and she saw her die with firm faith in him as her Saviour. It was, said the lady, the most beautiful and blessed experience of her life. "That," said the minister, "was the example of unselfish Christian service that put me to shame. PREFACE 5 What thought had I given to the immigrants packed in the steerage? This woman had been a ministering angel, and had led a soul to life, while the rest of us had followed only our own pleasure." If the alien women among the incoming mil- lions are evangelized, it will be done by American women who are filled with this Christlike spirit of personal service. Howard B. Grose. "Briarcliff Manor, N. Y,, September, 1906. FROM THE EDITORIAL COMMITTEE For this, the fourth volume of the Inter-de- nominational series of Home Mission text-books, the Committee in charge expects a welcome even beyond that given to preceding issues. The theme that it presents, one of vital importance to every American citizen, is of intense interest to Home Missionary women, whether or not the society with which they are connected is engaged in definite immigrant work. More and more it is becoming evident that we must "save America to save the world." The Committee takes special pleasure in intro- ducing the author of this book — Rev. Howard B. Grose, the Editorial Secretary of the American Baptist Home Mission Society — to the large con- stituency of Home Mission workers that it repre- sents. The value of the work done by Mr. Grose needs no commendation from us. It speaks for itself. With other and admirable text-books prepared for the young people and the children, surely the Christian thought of the nation may be focussed upon the problems of immigration. If these thoughts are followed by commensurate effort, personal and public, private and official, to "cast up a highway for our King," we can ask no more. 6 CONTENTS I. The Invading Army 9 II. Letting In and Shutting Out ... 33 III. The Immigrants in Their New Home . 56 IV. Americanizing the Aliens . . . .82 V. Woman's Wo;;k for Alien Women . . 106 VI. The America of To-morrow . . .129 VII. Work of Women's Home Missionary So- cieties ^50 Appendix ^73 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE The Incoming Flood of Aliens .... Title The Making of Americans in Our Mission Schools 36 A Culture Class in a New York Mission . 62 A Mission Industrial Club— The Cooking Class iro A Russian Wedding in a Protestant Mission in Pennsylvania 124 An Italian Missionary and His Family . . 136 Sunday School Picnic of an Italian Protestant Church in Buffalo 156 An Italian Church Built on the Roof of a Workman's House in Massachusetts . . 162 THE INVADING ARMT I. AT THE GATEWAY OF THE REPUBLIC THE casual sightseer who takes the govern- ment ferry from the Battery to Ellis Island* finds little in the outward ap- pearance of the immigrant station to excite his curiosity or admiration. The florid brick pavilion with its little roof-gardens and its four oriental towers might be, so far as looks go, a skating- rink, a riding academy, or a palace of machinery at a State fair. It seems almost too great a stretch of the imagination to call this the Gate- way of the Republic. But once inside, comfortably seated in the lofty gallery which commands a full view of the main floor, the visitor begins to reconstruct his opinion. In the centre of the hall is a landing whence stairs lead up from the floor below, and across this landing he sees file a continuous procession of men, women, and children. His eye travels along the line to where the marchers are divided alter- nately into two thinner lines. Here he sees alert, * The place where immigrant arrivals at the port of New York are inspected. 9 10 THE INCOMING MILLIONS keen-eyed surgeons and inspectors whose business is to sort out the physically unfit. They do a deal of poking and prodding in a very short space of time, and run their hands rapidly through the immigrant's hair to detect favus, the contagious scalp disease. If things are not quite to the in- spector's liking he puts a chalk mark on the im- migrant's coat or shawl. A little farther on, stand surgeons in the uniform of the United States Marine Hospital Service, who very deftly turn up the immigrant's eyelids to see if they can discover trachoma, the eye scourge of south- eastern Europe and Asia.* At this point the lines are again divided : those who bear the chalk marks are turned to the left and herded together in a "pen" at the end of the hall (with its steel netting it somewhat resembles a huge seine and the visitor decides that it might not inaptly be called Uncle Sam's drag-net) ; the main stream passes on to the right by a matron who searches the faces of the women and girls. She is there to discover, if possible, and turn back the woman of loose character. The procession moves past her and at last is divided and dispersed through the dozen or so long lanes which lead to the desks of the inspectors who put the immigrants through an oral examination as to age, occupation, desti- nation, ability to earn a livelihood, etc. For a list of the questions, see the Manifest, in Appen- dix II. * Commonly known as granulated eyelids. THE INVADING ARMY H Up to the gallery there floats the wailing of babies, the prattle of children, a snatch or two of an Armenian or Russian cradle-song, and a confused murmur of many dialects and tongues. The visitor gazes fascinated at the lively and en- thralling scene below him. In the "detention pen" he sees an aged couple. The wife sits upon a bench, her head bent forward and the slow tears dropping unnoticed in her lap. The hus- band shifts aimlessly from one foot to the other, staring blankly and constantly rubbing his great, scarred, toil-misshapen hands. They sold their tiny homestead back in the quiet Sicilian valley to pay their passage to America, But they are too old to be allowed to try for a fresh foothold in the New World, and will be sent back poorer than they came, to face anew the grinding poverty or, perhaps, to become paupers. Near by sits a smiling Swedish woman surrounded by curious- looking parcels and a scrambling mass of tow- headed youngsters. Her husband came over two years ago, acquired a farm in South Dakota, and turning over a hundred acres of wheat last fall has sent for his family, in consequence. And so the visitor's eye wanders from group to group, as he feels that here the tragedy and comedy of life are so clearly spread before him that he cannot afford to miss a single movement of the vast and variegated throng. His gaze, however, inevitably returns to the tireless line which comes shuffling up the entrance 12 THE INCOMING MILLIONS stairway. It arouses his curiosity. He wonders when it will stop. He begins to count the march- ers, but his attention flags — drawn away by the vague and chaotic ideas which come crowding into his brain — and he misses his count by scores. His guide tells him that on May 7, 1905, twelve thousand persons passed up those stairs; that during the past year nearly a million immigrants crossed the well-worn threshold. He sees the uselessness of counting, and begins to realize that before him is the main current of that great stream of peoples constantly moving westward from the crowded and downtrodden quarters of the globe to the freer lands and the breathing spaces where life promises brighter possibilities. The stream is forced onward, for the most part, by the hope of better things which centuries of dreary poverty, spiritless toil, and unending op- pression have failed to crush. It begins way back in the hamlets of Asia, of Russia, of Hun- gary, the villages of Italy, Poland, Finland, from the shores of the Black Sea and the Mediter- ranean to the shores of the Baltic. Urged along in its current are men of many races and nations : the Slav, the Kelt, the Teuton march shoulder to shoulder ; Bohemians, Slovaks, Poles, Dalmatians, Norwegians, Germans, Servians, Greeks, Bos- nians, Italians, Portuguese, and a score of others are herded together in the steerage and rub elbows in the great hall at Ellis Island. Its elements are equally and as bewilderingly diverse in other re- THE INVADING ARMY 13 spects, and the great westward tide carries with it the good and the bad, the old and the young, the strong and the weak, the prosperous and the needy. A sneak-thief from the gutters of Naples jogs beside a simple-hearted Lithuanian peasant, and behind a whining Armenian beggar walks a thrifty Scotch engineer. When our visitor at last boards the ferry which will carry him back to New York, he still sees in imagination that swarming immigrant stream which is so potent for good or ill to the nation he loves. He finds himself wondering as to the future of the throngs who daily pass through the Gateway of the Republic, and wondering as to the future of the nation which admits them. 2. A MILLION A YEAR Radical changes in the volume and character of the immigrant stream have been going on dur- ing the last quarter century. The earlier immi- grants came in comparatively small numbers, and the bulk of them were from northwestern Europe, Up to 1880 only one immigrant out of a hundred came from Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia or Poland ; the remaining ninety-nine came from England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries. That is, with the excep- tion of the Irish, they were of the Teutonic race, and were closely allied by blood and language, religion and ideals to the colonists who established 14 THE INCOMING MILLIONS our institutions and government. It was com- paratively easy for them to learn American ways and become Americans. About twenty-five years ago the number of im- migrants suddenly rose to over half a million. The inpouring stream fluctuated back and forth, according to prosperity or panic here, and pres- sure of poverty or persecution abroad. Reference to the table in Appendix I, which gives the immi- gration for each year since 1820, will show how the fluctuation continued, but with a tendency to- ward increase, until by 1903 the number had risen to 857,046. In 1905 it overtopped the million mark by 26,499 (i>026,499); and in the year ending June 30, 1906, it reached the highest recorded point, with a total of 1,100,735. There is no reason to suppose that this enormous rate will diminish, so long as our prosperity continues to invite. Of the 1,100,000 in round numbers, 935,000 entered through the port of New York. Of this total, 609,714 were males; 106,990 were under fourteen years of age; 38,296 were over forty- five; leaving the great majority in the working age. The leading races were thus represented : Italians, 221,696; Russian Jews, 125,000; Mag- yars, 42,000; the various Slav peoples nearly 259,000; Germans, 71,916, Ellis Island received 99,075 more immigrants than in 1905, and the proportions as to races were not greatly changed. Those who are interested in statistics will find THE INVADING ARMY 15 in Appendix I a table showing the immigration of 1905 in detail. The point of especial interest to us here is that of numbers. Eleven hundred thousand immigrants in 1906; a million in 1905 ; almost a million in 1903. More than five millions since 1900. That is something to make an American pause and ponder, if he have the welfare of his country at heart. What does it mean? If you would make the total a living reality, localize it. How many people are there in your city, town, or village? Divide that into a million, and see how many times over you could repopulate your place of residence with the immi- grant host of 1906 or 1905. How many towns of Italians and Russian Jews and Slavs and Germans and Scandinavians would you have? Take the illiterates of 1905 (230,886 of them), and how many times would they settle your town anew? The immigration of the last year exceeds the population of Connecticut. Imagine the Nutmeg State depopulated and then repopulated with the new peoples. Would not that be a field for the missionaries ? Would we not, in such a case, real- ize vividly what must be done to Americanize such a section? The whole country would stand aghast at the sight, if it were possible to segre- gate in Connecticut the immigration of a single year. But it is somewhere in the country, and just as much in need of Americanization and evangelization as though it were grouped all to- gether. The following table will help us to ap- 16 THE INCOMING MILLIONS preciate the increase of immigration and its pres- ent extent: IMMIGRATION BY DECADES SINCE 182O 1821 to 1830 143,439 1901 487.918 1831101840 599,125 1902 648,743 184110x850 1,713,251 1903 857.046 185 1 to i860 2,598,214 1904 812,870 1861 to 1870 2,314,824 1905 1,026,499 1871 to 1880 2,812,191 1906 1,106,000 1881 to 1890 5.246.613 1901 to 1906 4.939,076 1891 to 1900 3,687,564 1897 to 1906 6,159,494 Grand total since 1820 24.054,297 Adding the 250,000 immigrants, who are estimated to have come before 1820, when the official records begin, we have a total of 24,304,297. If we go a step further, and select certain periods, we shall find some very interesting results. For example, here are four periods with totals nearly alike : IMMIGRATION FOR CERTAIN PERIODS 1820 to i860 5.054,023 1881 to 1890 5,246,613 1861 to 1880 5,126,915 1900 to 1906 5,387,648 That is, the immigration of the twenty years, 1861-1880, was about the same as that of the forty years, 1820- 1860. That of the ten years, 1881-1890, was larger than that of the twenty years preceding: and that of the last seven years exceeds the total for the decade i88i-i89oby 141,- 035, and surpasses that of the decade 1891-1900 by more than two inillions. This indicates the vast increase that makes immigration a cause of THE INVADING ARMY H solicitude. Think of it ! Since the dawn of the twentieth century Europe has poured in upon us five and a third millions (5,387,648) of aliens — men, women, and children. The number is slightly larger than the entire population of Canada (5,371,315). It exceeds that of Sweden by 100,000, and almost equals that of Norway and Switzerland combined ; it equals the popu- lation of Australia and New Zealand, and ex- ceeds by a million the population of Ireland ; while it does not fall much below that of Scotland. If all the people of the Nether- lands (5,347,182) came over to this country in a body, they would fall below the total immigra- tion since 1900. Coming home to our own con- tinents, our immigration equalled the combined population of Argentina and Paraguay, or that of Chili and Venezuela. In our own country, it equalled the population of Illinois, far exceeded that of Ohio, would repeople Massachusetts and Michigan, and if the census of 1900 served as standard, would equal the total population of the fifteen States of Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Hamp- shire, North and South Dakota, Rhode Island, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, and Oklahoma. All this with the immigration of the past seven years only. Well may we speak of the incom- ing millions, and wonder what we are to do with them or they with us. A feature of the new immigration that espe- 18 THE INCOMING MILLIONS cially concerns us is the proportion of women and children, and the kind of family life that is being imported. The family is the source of our national strength and soundness, and has been a matter of just pride with us. The American husband and father is known everywhere for the reverence in which he holds womanhood, and for his devotion to the family. The American woman holds a unique place, as compared with her European sister, in the home life and manage- ment. Anything that tends to the deterioration of the American home life is fraught with evil. We are interested to know, therefore, what the family ideals and habits of the newcomers are. One thing that arrests attention at once, in the immigration tables, is the large proportion of males among the immigrants. Taking the statis- tics of 1905, for example, we find that of the total 1,026,499 aliens admitted, 724,914 were males, and 301,585 females ; while there were in the total number 114,668 children under fourteen years of age. This makes the total of women and children, therefore, 416,253, or considerably more than one-third of the million. The large propor- tion of men is explained by the fact that with most of the races from southeastern Europe it is the custom for the men to come first alone, the common idea being to save a few hundred dol- lars and return home again. The outcome is that many do go back, but only to emigrate again, and this time with the idea of staying in America. THE INVADING ARMY 19 Then the wife and children are brought along, or sent for later, and the home is estabUshed here. In the case of single men, in numerous in- stances the money will be sent from this country to pay the passage hither of the young woman across the seas, who will respond to the sum- mons and come to be married here. The follow- ing table shows the sex proportions of the leading peoples : Children Race or people Male Female under 14 Bohemian and Moravian. . 6,662 S.095 2,620 Bulgarian and Servian... 5.562 261 97 Croatian and Slovenian... 30,253 4,851 1,383 Finnish ii,907 S.ios 1,483 Dalmatian. Bosnian 2,489 150 62 Dutch and Flemish 5.693 2,805 1.699 Greek 11,386 5S8 446 Hebrew 82,076 47,834 28,553 Italian 186,702 39,618 20,484 Lithuanian 13,842 4,762 1.474 Magyar 34,232 11,788 3,864 Polish 72.452 29,985 9,867 Roumanian 7,244 574 I53 Russian 22,700 1,046 591 Ruthenian 10,820 3,653 661 Slovak 38,038 14.330 4,582 Irish 24,640 29,626 2,580 English 31,965 18,900 6,956 Scandinavian 37,202 25,082 6,597 These figures tell their story. The Bohemians and Moravians come in families to a large extent. There are five Italian men to every Italian woman. Of the Slavs from the Balkan States 96 out of 100 are males. The Poles and Magyars bring a goodly proportion of women and children. The Jews have the largest proportion of women 20 THE INCOMING MILLIONS and children among the peoples of southeastern Europe. The Irish women outnumber the men; but this indicates the domestic service of the im- migrants rather than family life, as the number of children is relatively small. The English and Scandinavians show how large a proportion of families come together. As to the type of home life which the Slavs and Italians bring with them, that will be treated in a later chapter. If the new immigration showed merely a growth in numbers, the problem of absorbing and assimilating the newcomers would be a compara- tively simple one. But the inflow of to-day is no longer predominantly Teutonic. The proportion of English, Scandinavians, and Germans has been constantly growing less. Instead, we are now receiving vast numbers of Poles, Italians, Hun- garians, Russians, and allied peoples. Up to 1902 one-quarter of the total number of immi- grants came from Germany; in 1903, less than one-twentieth were Germans. Formerly Eng- land sent us 13.4 per cent, of our immigrants; to-day she sends us only about 3 per cent. On the other hand, in 1903 fully half of the immi- grants were from Italy and Austria-Hungary ; in 1904 slightly over a third were Slavs; in 1905 there were 220,000 Italians and 230,000 Slavs out of the million newcomers. These peoples whom we are now so largely drawing constitute a real invading army. They bring with them standards and ideals which are THE INVADING ARMY 21 vastly different from our own. Their habits, customs, institutions, ways of living, are alto- gether un-American. It is interesting to try to imagine what kind of a place the United States would now be if the Poles had founded Boston, if the Italians had settled Virginia, if the Slovaks had colonized New York, the Lithuanians estab- lished Philadelphia, and the Jews been pioneers in the Great West. Such flights of fancy may help us to imagine what the United States is liable to become if the present order of affairs continues. 3. WHY THEY COME After watching a newly arrived shipload of immigrants, weary and bedraggled from the hard- ships of a voyage in the crowded steerage, or after walking through the teeming streets of New York's foreign colonies where thousands of men, women, and children are herded in loathsome poverty, one of the first questions to arise is, "Why do these people come ?" It is not possible to give all the reasons, for, of course, they vary with individual men and women. But we can suggest broadly the chief reasons which bring to our gates every year hun- dreds of thousands of aliens clamoring for ad- mission. It will give us a clearer idea of the sub- ject if we divide the immigrants into two distinct classes : first, the natural class, made up of those who come on their own initiative and at their own 22 THE INCOMING MILLIONS expense; and second, the artificial class, who are induced to come by steamship agents, employers of labor, and officials of foreign countries. In the first class are to be found those who desire to escape from political oppression and intolerable social conditions. Their motives are much the same, in part, as those which prompted our Huguenot and Puritan ancestors to seek these new shores. Something of the genuineness and strength of these motives to-day may be gathered from the following account given by a Lithuanian now at work in the Chicago stock-yards :* "I can never forget that evening four years ago. It was a cold December. We were in a big room in our log house in Lithuania. My good, kind, thin old mother sat near the wide fireplace, working her brown spinning wheel, with which she made cloth for our shirts and coats and pants. I leaned my head on her dress and kept yawning and thinking about my big goose-feather bed. My father sat and smoked his pipe across the fire- place. Between was a kerosene lamp on a table, and under it sat the ugly shoemaker on a stool finishing a big yellow boot. "At last the boot was finished. My father stopped smoking and looked at it. 'That's a good boot,' said my father. The shoemaker grunted. 'That's a poor boot,' he replied, 'a rough boot like all your boots, and so when you grow old you are lame. You have only poor things, for rich Rus- * UndistingiHshed Americans, p. 9. THE INVADING ARMY 23 sians get your good things, and yet you will not kick up against them. Bah !' " 'What good will such talk do me ?' said my father. " 'You !' cried the shoemaker. 'It's not you at all. It's the boy — that boy there !' and he pointed at me. 'That boy must go to America!' "Now I quickly stopped yawning and I looked at him all the time after this. My mother looked frightened and she put her hand on my head. 'No, no ; he is only a boy,' she said. 'Bah !' cried the shoemaker. 'He is eighteen and a man. You know where he must go in three years more.' We all knew he meant my five years in the army. 'Where is your oldest son? Dead. Oh, I know the Russians — ^the man-wolves ! I served my term, I know how it is. Your son served in Tur- key in the mountains. Why not here? Because they want foreign soldiers here to beat us. They let him soak in rain ; standing guard all night in the snow and ice he froze ; the food was God's food, the vodka was cheap and rotten ! Then he died. The wolves — the man-wolves ! Look at this book.' He jerked a Roman Catholic prayer book from his bag on the floor. 'Where would I go if they found this on me? Where is Wil- helm Birbell?' "We all knew. Birbell was a rich farmer who smuggled in prayer books from Germany so that we could all pray as we liked, instead of the Rus- sian Church way. He was caught one night and 24 THE INCOMING MILLIONS they kept him two years in the St. Petersburg jail, in a cell so narrow and short that he could not stretch his legs, for they were very long. This made him lame for life. " 'And what is this ?' he cried and pulled out an old American newspaper, printed in the Lithu- anian language, and I remember he tore it he was so angry. 'The world's good news is all kept away. We can read only what the Russian offi- cials print in their papers. Read ? No, you can't read or write your own language, because there is no Lithuanian school — only the Russian school — you can only read and write Russian. Can you ? No, you can c ! Because even those Rus- sian schools make you pay to learn, and you have no money to pay. Will you never be ashamed — all you?' "Now I looked at my mother and her face looked frightened, but the shoemaker cried still louder. 'Why can't you have your own Lithu- anian school ? Because you are like dogs — you have nothing to say — you have no town meetings or province meetings, no elections. And why can't you even pay to go to the Russian school? Because they get all your money. And so your boy must never read or write, or think like a man should think.' "He kept looking at me, but he opened the newspaper and held it up. 'Some day,' he said, 'I will be caught and sent to jail, but I don't care. I got this from my son in Chicago, who THE INVADING ARMY 25 reads all he can find, at night. My son got it in the night school and he put it in Lithuanian for me to see.' Then he bent over the paper a long time and his lips moved. At last he looked into the fire, and then his voice was shaking and very low : " 'We know that these are true things — that all men are born free and equal — ^that God gives them rights which no man can take away — that among these rights are life, liberty, and the getting of happiness.' "He stopped, I remember, and looked at me, and I was not breathing." As a result of this talk the boy came to America, not long afterward, when it was time for his military service to begin. His mother would rather have him in America than in the army. In the first class, also, are to be found the large numbers of immigrants who come to better their financial condition. Commissioner Watch- orn's statement that "American wages are the honey-pot that brings the alien flies" is unques- tionably true in a majority of cases. America is known throughout Europe as the land of prom- ise where work is plentiful and wages are almost unbelievably high. Aliens who return home to stay or visit spread the news of boundless pros- perity. A Swede who is relating the story of how he happened to come to America says : "A man who had been living in America once came to 26 THE INCOMING MILLIONS visit the little village that was near our cottage. He wore gold rings set with jewels and had a fine watch. He said that food was cheap in America and that a man could earn nearly ten times as much there as in Sweden. There seemed to be no end to his money." Such news travels quickly from town to town and fills the pinched countryfolk with longings for such blissful pros- perity. Profits which in America seem modest loom very big when translated into Swedish, Austrian, or Italian money. The relative cost of living does not often enter into considera- tion. Lack of industries, burdensome taxes, poor soil, and overcrowding are among the chief fac- tors which send European peasants on their rough journey over seas. In 1901, for example, the population of Italy was 294 to the square mile. Throughout the larger part of the kingdom there has been but little development of indus- tries to keep pace with the growth of population. Farming is still the leading occupation and is car- ried on, for the most part, in very primitive ways and on a very small scale. The Italian uses the spade where an American would use the plow. Taxes are heavy and bear hardest on the peasant farmers who can least support the burden. "The landlord's saddle horse is exempt, while a tax is assessed on the peasant's donkey." The govern- ment has a monopoly of the salt and various other trades, and armed guards have been known THE INVADING ARMY 27 to patrol the coast to prevent the peasants from stealing a few buckets of seawater to obtain the salt. Is it any wonder that under such conditions mothers, wives, and sweethearts bid their loved ones godspeed for America? In the second, or artificial class, are to be found numerous immigrants who have been induced or browbeaten by steamship agents into making the journey to America. Competition between the great steamship lines is very keen, and for a long time the different companies have been raking Europe with a fine-toothed comb in quest of steerage passengers. They have agents in every community. Many of these agents employ sub- agents, or "runners," to drum up trade. Their one object is to secure the commission for sell- ing a passage to America and they are apt to be unscrupulous in their methods. To the ignorant peasant they tell Arabian Nights' tales of our prosperity and lead him to believe that he has only to cross the ocean to become a wealthy man. Immigrants thus deluded have been known to throw their cooking utensils overboard on reach- ing an American harbor, thinking that they could pick up new ones when they got ashore. The following is a typical example of the results of this kind of enterprise : * "A family, consisting of husband, wife, and five children, had been located in Hungary, the hus- band being engaged as a barber and the wife as * Immigration Report for 1905, p. 41. 28 THE INCOMING MILLIONS a hairdresser. They were in much better cir- cumstances than the average Hungarian peasant, and were both prosperous and happy. A repre- sentative of one of the steamship companies called upon the father, and represented to him that while he was doing nicely in his present situation he could do twice as well in America. Believing this story, he left his wife and children and came to Baltimore. Finding that the wages paid to barbers in Baltimore were scarcely adequate to his own support, he came to Washington and secured a position at $io a week. "The wife, thinking that her husband was real- izing the expectations createdin their minds by the steamship agent, disposed of their business and household effects and came to Baltimore without having notified her husband, evidently thinking it would be a pleasant surprise to him. She im- mediately realized the serious error into which she had fallen and became almost crazed through dis- tress and homesickness, and, in the opinion of the lady who narrated the story, it will be only a short time before she will be confined in some institu- tion for the insane. Thus, a happy and pros- perous family of Europe have been thrown into physical and mental distress and induced to sacri- fice their business and household effects because of the desire of a steamship agent to increase his business by selling the several passages involved in moving the family to America." It was through the efforts of Christian women of Wash- THE INVADING ARMY 29 ington that money was raised to send the family back to Hungary. Most of the immigrants from eastern Europe come through Germany. Along the Russian and Austrian frontiers the Germans have established "control stations" where immigrants are gathered together, for the Germans do not propose to keep them, or suffer by them. The usual method is to arrest all third and fourth class passengers who appear to be foreigners and bring them to the steamship agents at the "control stations." Here the immigrant too often finds himself in a hope- less struggle with the combined forces of agent and special police officer. The sorry plight of the immigrant is well illustrated in the following words of Inspector Fishberg, who made a thor- ough study of emigrant conditions : * "They (the steamship agents) look upon every eastern European emigrant as one who must go to the United States whether he desires to or not. Many of the emigrants arriving in Germany who are brought by the police to the 'control sta- tions,' on being asked where they are bound for, say England. The agent sees very little com- mission in the sale of the ticket for London, and besides this suspects that the emigrant intends upon his arrival in England to embark on a ves- sel owned by one of the English or American companies. The emigrant passing through Ger- many is considered the legitimate prey of the * Immigration Report for 1905, p. 53. 30 THE INCOMING MILLIONS German steamship companies and their agents. Conversations such as the following have often been overheard in 'control stations' : "Agent: 'Where are you bound for?' Emi- grant : 'To America.' Agent : 'How much money have you ?' Emigrant : 'How is that your busi- ness?' Gendarme : 'Don't talk back ; show all the money you have. If you don't I will at once take you back to Russia and hand you over to the authorities.' "Some on being asked where they are bound for state : 'To England ;' 'To Belgium ;' 'To France.' The agent will never believe it. He looks at every one as an 'American' (the techni- cal term applied to emigrants bound for the United States), and at once tells him : 'You are a liar,' insisting that his victim is bound for an American port and should buy a steamship ticket at once. "I have personally witnessed at Thorn the case of a man, his wife, and four grown-up children who stated to the agent, Mr. Caro, that they had sold everything in their native home in Warsaw and got together sufficient money to go to Eng- land. But Caro insisted that they ought to go to America and refused to sell tickets to England. The gendarme sided with the agent. 'Either go to New York or return to Poland,' was the ver- dict. The poor man at last decided to send his wife and two daughters back to Poland and he and his two sons bought tickets for New York. THE INVADING ARMY 31 This is no isolated case. Many who honestly want to settle in England thus find themselves travelling to the United States. No amount of pleading is of avail. He is not sold a ticket to England, France, or any other country. 'America or home' is the verdict of the steamship company's agent, and the gendarme concurs." In addition to the foregoing are the criminals and paupers who are aided and encouraged to come to America. At one time we were made a veritable dumping-ground, especially by the Eng- lish. But, thanks to repeated protests on the part of the government and the passage of strict laws, this state of affairs has been remedied to a large extent. There is no doubt, however, that criminals and ne'er-do-wells in many cases still find the path to America a comparatively easy one to follow. The third and largest division of the artificial class is made up of laborers who are "imported" in defiance of the Contract Labor Law. Said Mr. Jacob Riis a short while ago: "Scarce a Greek comes here, man or boy, who is not under contract. A hundred dollars a year is the price, so it is said by those who know, though the padrone's cunning has put the legal proof be- yond their reach. And the Armenian and Syrian hucksters are 'worked' by some peddling trust that traffics in human labor as do other mer- chants in foodstuffs and coal and oil." This de- fiance of the law is the result, in great degree, of 32 THE INCOMING MILLIONS the demand for cheap labor on the part of con- tractors, railroad and mining companies, and other large employers of unskilled labor. Th^ evasion of the law and the workings of the pa^ drone system will be described later, and illus trations are given in Appendix I. II LETTING IN AND SHUTTING OUT I. OPENING THE GATES A GRAPHIC description of entering Amer- ica as an immigrant is given by a writer* who had the great advantage of being not a mere observer, but a part of what he describes. Disguised as an ItaHan peasant he made the voy- age in the steerage in order to know conditions at first hand and be able to speak with authority. Accompanied by his brave wife, he first studied the Itahans in their own home environment, and then became leader of a party of them bound for America. His story is freely adapted and used here, including his revelation of the unnecessary roughness of the steamship employes, from which the immigrants suffered all the way over. He was on one of the largest and best steamships of a German line, so that he fared better than thou- sands of others. After a trying ten days at sea, his narrative begins at Sandy Hook : MR. Brandenburg's description When the quarantine inspection was finished, the great steamer got under way once more, and * Broughton Brandenburg, Imported Americans, chap, xvii. 33 34 THE INCOMING MILLIONS in the glorious sunlight of mid-forenoon we steamed up between South Brooklyn and Staten Island, with the shipping, the houses, and the general contour of the harbor very plainly to be seen. On every hand were exclamations among the immigrants over the oddity of wooden-built houses, over the beauty of the Staten Island shore places : and when the gigantic sky-scrapers of lower Manhattan came into view, a strange, ser- rated line against the sky, the people who had been to America before cried out in joyful tones and pointed. Then there was a rush to see the Statue of Liberty, and when all had seen it they stood with their eyes fixed for some minutes on the great beacon whose significance is so much to them, standing within the portals of the New World, and proclaiming the liberty, justice, and equality they had never known, proclaiming a life in which they have an opportunity such as could never come to them elsewhere. In a short space of time we had steamed up the harbor, up North River, and were being warped into the piers in Hoboken. What seemed to the eager immigrants an unreasonably long time of waiting passed while the customs officers were looking after the first-class passengers. When the way was clear, word was passed forward to get the immigrants ready to debark. First, how- ever. Boarding Inspector Vance held a little tri- bunal at the rail forward on the hurricane deck, at which all persons who had citizens' papers LETTING IN— SHUTTING OUT 35 were to present them. I watched him carefully as he proceeded with his task of picking out genuine citizens from the other sort and allowing them to leave the ship at the docks. Here again I could not help seeing that deceit, evasion, and trickery were possible, inasmuch as the inspector can only take the papers on the face of them, to- gether with the immigrant's own statement : and if the gangs who smuggle aliens in on borrowed, transferred, or forged citizens' papers have been careful enough in preparing their pupils, there is no way of apprehending the fraud at the port of arrival; but there would be no chance for any such practices if the examinations were made in the community of the immigrant's residence. At last we were summoned to pass aft and ashore. One torrent of humanity poured up each companion-way to the hurricane deck and aft, while a third stream went through the main deck alley-way, all lugging the preposterous bundles. The children, being by this time very hungry, began to yell with vigor. A frenzy seemed to possess some of the people as the groups became separated. For a time the hulla- baloo was frightful. The steerage stewards kept up their brutality to the last. One woman was trying to get up the companion-way with a child in one arm, her deck chair brought from home hung on the other, which also supported a large bundle. She blocked the passage for a moment. One of the stewards stationed by it reached up. 36 THE INCOMING MILLIONS dragged her down, tore the chair off her arm, splitting her sleeve as he did so and scraping the skin off her wrist, and in his rage he broke the chair into a dozen pieces. The woman passed on sobbing, but cowed and without a threat. As we passed down the gangway an official stood there with a mechanical checker numbering the passengers, and uniformed dock watchmen directed the human flood pouring off the ship where to set down the baggage to await customs inspection. While the dock employes' plan of keeping the immigrants in line in order to facil- itate the inspection of baggage was good and proper, the brutal method in which they enforced it was nothing short of reprehensible. The natural family and neighborhood groups were separated, and a part of the baggage was dumped in one place and a part in another. It was natu- ral for the parties to begin to hunt for each other. Women ran about, seeking their children. The dock men exhorted the people, in German, to stay where they were, and when the eager Italians did not understand, pushed them about, belabored them with sticks, or thrust them back forcibly into place. In the work of hustling the immigrants aboard the barges the men displayed great unnecessary roughness, sometimes shoving them violently, prodding them with sticks, etc. As one young Apulian paused an instant to look around for his father, a violent kick and oaths from a dock man LETTING IN— SHUTTING OUT 37 taught him haste. The waits were long, the im- migrants hungry, having had no food since early breakfast : children cried, the musically inclined sang or played, and the long hours wore away in waiting — for Ellis Island was having a big 10,000 day. All the races of Europe seemed to be repre- sented in the crowds on the ferryboat as it passed close to us when bound back to the Battery. At last the doors of the barge were opened. The weary hundreds, shouldering their baggage once again, poured out of the barge on to the wharf. Knowing the way, I led those of our group straight to the covered approach to the grand entrance to the building, and the strange assem- blage of Old World humanity streamed along be- hind us. Half-way up the stairs an interpreter stood, telling the immigrants to get their health tickets ready. The majority of the people, hav- ing their hands full of bags, boxes, bundles, and children, carried their tickets in their teeth, and just at the head of the stairs stood a young doctor in the Marine Hospital Service uniform, who took them, looked at them, and stamped them with the Ellis Island stamp. Considering the frauds in connection with these tickets at Naples, the thoroughness used with them now was indeed futile. Passing straight east from the head of the stairs, we turned into the south half of the great registry floor, which is divided, like the human 38 THE INCOMING MILLIONS body, into two great parts nearly alike, so that one ship's load can be handled on one side and another ship's load on the other. Turning into a narrow railed-off lane, we encountered another doctor in uniform, who lifted hats or pushed shawls back to look for favus (contagious skin disease) heads, keenly scrutinized the face and body for signs of disease or deformity, and passed us on. An old man who limped in front of me, he marked with a bit of chalk on the coat lapel. At the end of the railed lane was a third uniformed doctor, a towel hanging beside him, a small instrument over which to turn up eyelids in his hand, and back of him basins of disinfectants. As we approached he was examining a Molise woman and her two children. The youngest screamed with fear when he endeavored to touch her, but with a pat on the cheek and a kindly word the child was quieted while he examined its eyes, looking for trachoma, or purulent ophthal- mia. The second child was so obstinate that it took some minutes to get it examined, and then, hav- ing found suspicious conditions, he marked the woman with a bit of chalk, and a uniformed offi- cial led her and the little ones to the left into the rooms for special medical examination. The old man who limped went the same way, as well as many others. Those who are found to be suffer- ing from trachoma are frequently sent to the hos- pital on the Island and held and treated until "cured." The powers at Washington have ruled LETTING I N— S HUTTINGOUT39 that immigrants may be thus held and cured, al- though there are surgeons at Ellis Island who do not believe in it, and the best specialists in New York contend that months or years are necessary to eliminate any danger of contagion, while the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary experi- ments in Boston have convinced the doctors that cures are the exception. Just where we turned to the right, a stern-look- ing woman inspector, with the badge, stood look- ing at all the women who came up to select any whose moral character might be questioned, and one of her procedures was to ask each party as to the various relationships of the men and women in it. Passing west, we came to the waiting- rooms, in which the groups entered on each sheet of the manifest are held until K sheet or L sheet, whatever their letter may be, is reached. We sank down on the wooden benches, thankful to get seats once more. Our eyes pained severely for some minutes as a result of the turning up of the lids, but the pain passed. . . . Presently an official came by and hurried out U group and passed it up into line along the railed way which led up to the inspector who had U sheet. Our papers were all straight, we were correctly entered on the manifest, and had abun- dant money, had been passed by the doctors, and were properly "destined" to New York, and so were passed in less than one minute. We were classed as "New York Outsides" to distinguish 40 THE INCOMING MILLIONS us from the "New York Detained," who await the arrival of friends to receive them ; "Rail- roads," who go to the stations for shipment ; and "S. I.'s," by which is meant the unfortunates who are subjected to Special Inquiry in the semi- secret Special Inquiry Court. A fellow passenger who came through marked "Railroad" was passed along to get his railroad- ticket order stamped, his money exchanged at the stand kept beside the stairs, and in a minute more he had been moved on down the stairs to the rail- road room. We began to see why the three stair- ways are called "The Stairs of Separation." To their right is the money exchange, to the left are the Special Inquiry Room and the telegraph offices. Here family parties with different des- tinations are separated, without a minute's warn- ing, and often never to see each other again. It seems heartless, but it is the only practical sys- tem, for if allowance was made for good-byes the examination and distribution process would be blocked then and there by a dreadful crush. The stairs to the right lead to the railroad room, where tickets are arranged, baggage checked and cleared from customs, and the immigrants loaded on boats to be taken to the various railroad sta- tions for shipment to various parts of the country. The central stairs lead to the detention rooms, where immigrants are held pending the arrival of friends. The left descent is for those free to go out to the ferry. LETTING IN— SHUTTING OUT 41 Those in the last class are landed at the Bat- tery, and then must shift for themselves, so far as the government is concerned. The protective societies, however, have their agents at hand to render aid, and save the newcomers from being victimized as they were in former times. There are homes for girls and women who come alone, and employment bureaus secure places for many. And in this way it is that the alien gains his chance to become American. 2. SHUTTING THE GATES Having seen how the aliens get into the United States, let us see how they are kept out. A knowledge of the laws which regulate immigra- tion at the present time is very helpful when we come to form our opinions as to whether further restrictive legislation is, or is not, necessary. And this is one point at which woman's influence can be used effectively, in the formation of opin- ion. The classes of aliens who are now excluded from admission to the United States are as fol- lows : (i) Idiots; (2) insane persons, or per- sons who have been insane within five years of the time of arrival, or have had two or more at- tacks of insanity at any time previous; (3) epi- leptics; (4) paupers; (5) persons likely to be- come public charges; (6) professional beggars; (7) persons afflicted with a loathsome or with a dangerous contagious disease; (8) persons who 42 THE INCOMING MILLIONS have been convicted of a felony or other crime in- volving moral depravity; (9) polygamists ; (10) anarchists, or persons who believe in the violent overthrow of government or the assassination of public officials; (11) prostitutes; (12) persons who attempt to bring in prostitutes or women for the purpose of prostitution; (13) persons who come under offers, solicitations, promises or agreements of employment, not including skilled laborers if others of like kind cannot be found unemployed in this country, professional actors, artists, lecturers, singers, ministers of any reli- gious denomination, professors for colleges or seminaries, persons belonging to any recognized learned profession, and persons employed solely as personal and domestic servants ; ( 14) any per- son whose passage is paid for by another or who is assisted by others to come, unless it is satis- factorily shown that such person does not belong to one of the above excluded classes. The provision regarding those liable to be- come public charges is made very elastic, and under it many morally undesirable immigrants are excluded. In order to carry out these pro- visions of the immigration laws the government has established stations at the seaports where im- migrants are likely to arrive and at various con- venient points along the Canadian and Mexican borders. The divisions of the immigrant stream and the importance of the different stations may be seen in the accompanying table : LETTING IN— SHUTTING OUT 43 Port 1904 1905 New York 606,019 788,219 Boston 60,278 65,107 Baltimore 55.940 62,314 Philadelphia 19.467 23.824 Honolulu 9054 11.997 San Francisco 9.036 6,377 Other Ports 23,702 24.447 Through Canada 30,374 44.214 The immigration inspectors deserve great praise for the way they perform their difficult task of sorting out those who deserve to be sent back. They soon become expert judges of hu- man nature and acquire the knack of forming a pretty just estimate of an immigrant's character at a keen glance or two. The work of the medi- cal inspector is comparatively simple and sure, for it is not easy for the diseased immigrant to hide his malady from the skilled surgeon. The inspector whose business it is to stop the contract laborer, the criminal, the assisted pauper, the prostitute, has a more difficult task, for he has to rely largely on his own judgment and the state- ments of the immigrant. It is easy to see how, under such conditions, many immigrants who should be excluded are able to gain admittance to the country. The man with a criminal record, the man who is deserting his wife and children, the man who comes under contract of employment, if he is of fair appearance and can answer the questions which are put to him with some show of honesty, stands a good chance of deceiving the inspector. This is clearly not the fault of the in- 44 THE INCOMING MILLIONS spector; the trouble lies in the incompleteness of our inspection system — a system which gives such tempting opportunities for violating the law. Violations of the law are undoubtedly frequent and constant. The greed of the steamship com- panies and of American corporations that em- ploy cheap labor is at the bottom of much of the deception. There is a law which provides that steamship companies which bring over diseased aliens whose disease might have been noted by a medical examination at the time of sailing shall pay a fine of one hundred dollars for every such alien. The companies endeavor to cheat the law in two ways. To the intending immigrant whose affliction is of such a nature that no concealment is possible they offer the opportunity to get into the United States by means of fraudulent natu- ralization papers. A circular recently issued by one of the companies states that it will accept for passage diseased persons who claim to be able to prove American citizenship, provided that they deposit with the company $150 — that is, a suf- ficient sum to insure the company against loss if the persons are deported.* As there are great numbers of fraudulent naturalization papers in existence and as they may be obtained readily, an easy way of evading the law is pointed out to those who are willing to make a false claim of citizenship. In cases where the diseased person * Immigration, by P. F. Hall, p. 281. LETTING IN— SHUTTING OUT 45 can be "patched up" in such a way as to make de- tection more difficult, many of the companies pro- vide opportunities for such "cures" to be under- taken. This is especially true in the case of trachoma. In Marseilles, for example, the "treatment" of trachoma has assumed remarkable dimensions. Here most of the emigrants from the Orient come on their way to the United States, and as is well known the Armenians, Syrians, and like peoples are very prone to trachoma. These emigrants are examined and those who are found to have the disease are turned over to a man named Anton Fares, who represents the French transportation company. He gives them the choice either of going to Mex- ico via St. Nazaire and being escorted across the American frontier by guides whom he claims to furnish, or of undergoing a course of "treat- ment" with a certain doctor. This doctor does a flourishing business and treats upwards of a hun- dred patients a day. Many aliens who would be denied admission at regular points of entry are encouraged to go to Canada and be smuggled over the border into the United States. Says the Immigration Com- missioner at Montreal : "The Canadian route to the United States is known to every unscrupulous agent in Europe and is by that means made known to the very dregs of society, many of whom, having been rejected at the United States ports, seek this easy mode of escaping the effect of offi- 46 THE INCOMING MILLIONS cial vigilance. Aliens classified as Canadian im- migrants, simply to conceal their real intention, furnish a greater amount of specific disease and general inadmissibility than all the immigrants examined at all the United States ports of entry combined."* The contract labor law, which was intended to protect our American workmen in much the same way that the tariff protects the manufacturers, is extremely difficult to enforce and is continually violated. This is largely due to American greed. Many of our corporations are willing to break the law in order to secure the added profit of charg- ing American prices and paying foreign wages. It is practically impossible to punish them under the present laws, for "the offenders are generally wealthy corporations, and have, as a rule, so shifted the responsibility for the offence from their own shoulders upon some minor employe without property, that it is almost impossible to establish the relation of principal and agent be- tween the offenders." In cases where the proof of guilt is convincing, the corporations are gener- ally able to escape punishment by delaying trial until the important witnesses are dispersed and "the Government is compelled to choose between two equally futile courses of dismissing the pro- ceedings or submitting to defeat."f * Immigration Report for 1905. f Commissioner-General Sargent, in Annual Report for 1905. LETTING IN— SHUTTING OUT 47 Is it to be wondered at that many of our immi- grants begin their hfe here with a contempt for American law ? An Itahan woman, whose hus- band was on his way to Italy to hire for a Pitts- burg contractor a large gang of laborers, said that many of her neighbors in Pittsburg had come into the country as contract laborers and that they held the law in great contempt. The Commissioner-General gives a needed warning when he says : "It is not reasonable to anticipate that if the great transportation lines do not re- spect the laws of this country their alien passen- gers will do so, nor can it be conceded that those aliens whose entrance to the United States is effected in spite of the law are desirable or even safe additions to our population." 3. THE EXCLUDED When an inspector decides that an immigrant needs further examination, he sends him to the Board of Special Inquiry, where he undergoes a searching cross-examination. If his case goes against him, the immigrant is given the right to appeal to higher authorities at Washington, un- less his exclusion is due to idiocy or some danger- ous contagious disease. The table on page 48 shows the number of persons debarred during the past fourteen years, together with the causes. For the unfortunates who are excluded there is much grim tragedy. Coming here with high 48 THE INCOMING MILLIONS THE DEBARRED FOR THE YEARS 1892-igos >.u , a « « 11 •SiSiS u •0 C " 0, ^- E iS 1) M-i Year Immi- u ° s S8S « J3 u <4 V grants in ■5 (U c « c C S bo ^5 c« u *-» c J3 bo c 746 Dalmatians, Bosnians, and Herzegovin- ians 2,639 Servians, Bulgarians, and Montene- grins 2,043 IN THEIR NEW HOME 69 lower the tone of the community, and are pos- sessed of but one virtue — courage. Most of the pictures that we get of them are not prepossessing. Says Dr. F. J. Warne, in writing on "The Slav Invasion" : "These Slavs come not along the high- way, with their household effects in wagons, but by trail across the mountains from the railway station at Hazleton, with their belongings, few in number, in blanketed bundles and trunk-like boxes slung across their backs. The women, of whom there were but few, carried with seeming ease huge bundles, one on top of the head and one under each arm, and, like the men, represented a beast-of-burden adaptability to the most exact- ing physical labor. Eight men and one woman took up their abode in the house in which the families of the Scotchmen had resided. The cooking utensils of the newcomers were indicative of their hard necessities, being meager in quan- tity and of poorest quality. Chairs and bureaus were conspicuous by their absence ; nor were beds or carpets among their household effects, the new occupants being content with rolling themselves in semblances of blankets and sleeping upon the uncarpeted floor. Their supply of clothing was limited to the clothing they wore." It is easy to see how men willing to live in such fashion could crowd out English-speaking labor, for the American workman, as a rule, demands wages which will give him a home and a fair de- gree of comfort for his wife and children. He 70 THE INCOMING MILLIONS doesn't want his wife to dress in rags, to go about the streets barefoot, to forage the countryside and railroad tracks for fuel, and bring home heavy bundles of coal or wood upon her head. He is ambitious for his children and likes to have them go to school. But this is not the case with a Slav. He expects his wife to do manual labor and puts his children to work as soon as they are able to earn the merest pittance. The unmarried Slavs usually live together in groups of from five or six to twenty. Their mode of life is described by Dr. Warne: "In a certain mining town there are fourteen Slavs, all un- married and with only themselves to support, who rent one large, formerly abandoned, store- room. This is taken care of by a housekeeper, who also prepares the meals for the men. Each man has his own tin plate, tin knife, fork, and cup ; he has his own ham and bread and a place in which to keep them. Some things they buy in common, the distribution being made by the housekeeper. For beds the men sleep on bunks arranged along the walls and resembling shelves in a grocery store. Each has his own blanket ; each carries it out of doors to air when he gets up in the morning and back again when he returns from his work at night. The monthly cost of liv- ing to each of these men is not over four dollars. They spend but little on clothes the year round, contenting themselves with the cheapest kind of material and not infrequently wearing cast-off IN THEIR NEW HOME n garments purchased of some second-hand dealer. For fuel they burn coal from the culm-banks or wood from along the highway, which costs them nothing but their labor in gathering it. In many cases the unmarried Slav mine-worker 'boards' at a cost of from five dollars to twelve dollars a month." His wants tend to increase, however, and his condition to improve. American ways are not altogether lost upon the Slav. Here is an example of how the civilizing process is going on wherever he is brought into contact with American modes of living. A Slav who had been attending the services held by a Protestant missionary in a dismal slum neighbor- hood told the missionary one evening that he had had a christening at his house the night before and that there had been a good deal of drinking; but he vowed that no more liquor should come into his house. He gave notice of this to the eighteen boarders who in day and night shifts occupied the two upstairs rooms of his little dwelling. They might go to the saloon, but if they continued to live with him they must bring no drink home. Most of the boarders agreed to this and remained with him. Shortly afterwards he joined the church, and through his influence sixteen of his boarders did the same. The civiliz- ing process went on, and one day he came to the missionary and asked him if he thought it would do to take fewer boarders. He wanted his wife to find time to go to church. He gradually re- 72 THE INCOMING MILLIONS duced the number of boarders until there were only four to be taken care of. This gave his wife time in which to learn to read. At last he de- cided that he wanted to "live like the Americans," with no boarders and a parlor where no one slept. And so it has come about that the man, his wife, and their little children live by themselves in a tiny three-room cottage. This is what the Gospel does. To know the Slav at his best, and to appreciate his possibilities as an American, we must know him in his home land. The conditions under which he lives in America are not favorable to him. They preserve most of his bad characteris- tics and give but little opportunity for the display of his better ones. The life from which most of our Slavic immigrants come is the old peasant life that has persisted in parts of Europe since feudal times. The peasants live in little villages, from which they go out to till their tiny farms. The women assist in the ploughing, the gathering of crops, as well as in other forms of outdoor labor. The boys and girls look after the herds of sheep and cattle. In the winter there are spinning bees at which young and old are busied with loom and distaff while songs and legends help to make the time pass swiftly. There are frequent festivals and pretty traditional observances at Christmas and Easter, at midsummer and harvest home. The Slav's wonderful gift for music and color fills the whole primitive life with poetry. "Every IN THEIR NEW HOME V3 occasion and act, every wood and hill and stream has its adornment of custom, superstition, or legend which, with its glamour, veils the hard and sordid sides." Here in America there is as yet little or no outlet for the Slav's imagination or genius of expression. The Slav is blessed with a sturdy body. He can endure long hours of severe toil and can withstand the extremes of heat and cold. Noth- ing seems too heavy for the women to carry. In addition to the huge burdens which they bear on their heads they will frequently carry a two- or three-year-old child hung over their backs by means of linen clothes. "They marry young," writes Miss Balch, "bear a child a year and age fast. In Pennsylvania I heard the other day of a Slav woman, whose child was born about mid- night, who afterward got up and prepared an early breakfast, and at 9 a. m. was out barefoot in the snow hanging up a wash done since the meal." Dr. Peter Roberts, in his exhaustive study. The Anthracite Coal Communities, gives us many in- teresting side-lights on Slav character and modes of living. The difference between the domestic life of the English-speaking miner and the Slav is significant ; a comparison of the homes of newly married couples reveals this difference. Says Dr. Roberts : In the houses of "white people" the front room is carpeted and comfortably furnished. Here they en- tertain their friends. In the next room, which is 74 THE INCOMING T^TTLLIONS generally large and serving as a kitchen and dining room, the floor is covered with rag-carpet and a large strip of oil-cloth or linoleum under the stove. The cooking stove and all utensils are new — nothing else will do for "young America." A plentiful supply of crockery, a dining room table and half a dozen chairs, give the room a comfortable appearance. The stairs leading to the second story are generally carpeted. The front bedroom is carpeted and furnished with a bed- room suite of eight pieces. One other bedroom will generally contain a bed so that the family may enter- tain a friend in case of need. The third bedroom — a small room generally — is used for storage. Add a heat- ing stove, and a home where the average native-born young people of mining communities begin life is complete. The Slav discards carpet and oil-cloth. If a few strips of rag carpet are used, it is a sign of an advance above the ordinary racial standards of living. The cooking stove is generally bought at a junk shop. The cooking utensils are few and tinware often serves as a substitute for crockery. A common kitchen table and chairs to match complete the furnishings on the first floor, if made up of one room. If there are two rooms, then the front room has one or two beds in it ; no carpet and no bedroom suite of "eight pieces." When shown one of these rooms we had to sit on the trunk of one of the boarders, for there were no chairs there. The room or rooms on the second floor have beds in them and a few trunks. If a heating stove is purchased, it is the old- fashioned bell-shaped kind, bought secondhand, which is a good heater, and the practical Slav wants heat and not nickel-plate and polish. All here are articles of necessity, not a trace of luxury seen anywhere. There is little room for sentiment in these homes. The husband is lord of the house and the wife must hold herself in strict subjection to him. Division of labor is carried out to the smallest detail, and all work in the home belongs to the wife. Napoleon's saying, "A husband ought to have absolute rule over the actions of his wife," IN THEIR NEW HOME 75 is the code by which most of these Slav famihes are governed. The domestic ethics which pre- vail among the men savor very largely of that of marriage by purchase. According to this view the wife is the property of her husband, for which he has paid a price and which may be used accord- ing to his will. Being considered as more of a beast of burden than her husband's partner, the lot of the wife is a hard one. Large families are the rule and the strain of bearing and rearing ten or a dozen children, when added to the other heavy domestic duties, often breaks the women down while their husbands are still in the vigor of manhood. It is common in the mining regions to see these prematurely old women, worn out, their frames shattered, their spirits dead to rap- ture or despair. There are exceptions to the domestic lordship of the Slav men, however. Dr. Roberts relates this instance : "Last summer, while in an office of a justice of the peace, a Slav was brought in by the constable charged with attempt to defraud. He was passive, as many of them are. But sud- denly his wife came on the scene and immediately the affair became dramatic. She argued with much vim and turned from constable to creditor and again to the justice of the peace with dramatic action worthy of a Terry or a Siddons. She saved two dollars in costs. When the storm was over, the constable said: 'She's a holy terror.' 'Yes/ added the justice, 'two years ago she killed 76 THE INCOMING MILLIONS her liusband by throwing the boiling contents of a coffee pot into his face, and six months after that sheep-head of a man married her.' Evi- dently that man lived under muliocracy." When under the influence of liquor, or when their passions are otherwise aroused, the Slavs fight with a brutality and savagery that is foreign to Americans. The Slavs choose the first weapon that lies within reach — a list of weapons used in assaults includes stones, knives, revolvers, razors, chains, dinner-pails, axes, lead-pipes, cuspidors, hammers, picks, shovels, etc. — or, if no object is handy, they use their teeth and boots. The women, too, when they are enraged, are quite as fierce and savage as the men. Slav women and mothers are adepts at Billingsgate, and threaten to commit outrages in language which would shock an ordinary American community. Squab- bles between neighbors usually bring forth threats of violence : one neighbor proposes to break the other's leg and is threatened, in turn, with having her teeth knocked out or her house dynamited. The Slav women, like all women, are suscep- tible to the charms of fashion. On their arrival in this country their heads are covered with silk scarfs of many colors. But within six months, unless she should chance to be an aged grand- mother, the new arrival discards the scarf and dons a hat which is covered with such a profusion of brilliant flowers as to be wholly ludicrous. She also takes to the corset, puts on a silk waist and IN THEIR NEW HOME V7 a gown of American cut. These articles do not become her, for her early life of farm labor has not adapted her figure to the tight-laced require- ments of American fashion. Whenever she buys a gown or hat her husband invariably accom- panies her and his taste, or lack of it, decides the purchase. On her way to and from church, or christen- ings and other festive occasions, the Slav woman may be arrayed in gay attire, but the moment she crosses the threshold of her home the thrift of her ancestors takes hold of her. Hat, waist, and gown are carefully stowed away and the every- day dress, scanty, dirty, and torn, is put on again. The shoes are put aside and she goes about her work barefooted. Her children wear very little clothing in summer. We are told that it is not unusual to see the little tots playing about the streets stark naked. Generally, however, they are covered with a calico dress. "Going bare- foot" is the rule with boys and girls. The Slav wife in the mining towns attempts no decorating of the home. There are no bright ribbons, no fancy work, no curtains, and very few shades. The woman who carries coal on her back to replenish the family store, chops wood, takes care of the house, does the family washing, and gives birth to a dozen children has little leisure for fancy work. It is surprising and cheering to note the improvement and brighten- ing up after the Christian missionary has entered IS THE INCOMING MILLIONS the home and had chance to turn the thought of the wife and mother to something higher. Intemperance is the great Slavic weakness. Holidays are apt to be given over to drinking bouts which are quite likely to break up in a free fight. At home their governments have usually encouraged drinking because of the revenue ; in America the brewers and the politicians take the place of the European governments. The Slavic peoples are easily led and are thus peculiarly open to good or evil influences. The brewers, cheap politicians, and "shyster" lawyers are the pre- dominating influence among them at present. Passiveness, lack of enterprise, are character- istics which have greatly hindered the Slavs in their development. With seemingly inexhaust- ible patience they have borne every kind of civil and religious oppression. Their lack of enter- prise is astonishing to an Anglo-Saxon. When left to themselves they are apparently content to go on doing things as they have been done for hundreds of years. The most primitive methods of farming and the most primitive industrial methods still survive among them. Without doubt, however, close contact with Americans will alter to a great extent these factors which have retarded the advancement of the Slavic peoples. Slow of intellect, unprogressive, and apt to be intemperate as the Slav may be, he is usually gen- erous, honest, and pious. He is hospitable and IN THEIR NEW HOME 79 will share what he has with his neighbor. The Slav peasant never fails to pay his debts. If he is actually unable to do so, his brother or other near relative assumes the debt. Instead of giving a note or mortgage the Slav gives his promise, and among Slavs that is usually considered suffi- cient guarantee. The great majority of the Slavs are intensely religious ; but mingled with their reverence and piety is a deal of superstition born of ignorance. It is the task of American Chris- tianity to lead the Slavs up into a more enlight- ened spirituality. For unless this is done, unless the Slavs are surrounded with ennobling and uplifting influences, they will become a grave menace to the welfare of American civilization. If we leave them to themselves in their labor camps and crowded rookeries, subject to the tender guidance of the political "heeler" and the brewer, we are surely breeding a plague-spot in the RepubHc. Nor can we allow the child labor in the mines and mills without raising up a genera- tion that will hate America and hail anarchy. 4. JEWS FROM THE SLAVIC COUNTRIES Out of the 129,910 Hebrews who were admitted in 1905, 92,388 were from Russia, 17,352 from Austria-Hungary, and 3854 from Roumania ; in other words, the Jewish immigration of to-day is overwhelmingly from the lands of the Slav. These Jews differ considerably from the Jews of northern Europe with whom we are all familiar. 80 THE INCOMING MILLIONS The Russian Jew who flees from persecution is a far more orthodox person than his cousin from Germany who comes to increase his wealth. He regards the commerciaHzed Jew of northern Eu- rope as an apostate. He has clung to the faith of his fathers with bulldog tenacity through long and bloody centuries, while the German Jew has devoted himself more exclusively to getting rich. The number of skilled laborers among them is surprisingly high when we consider the common opinion that Jews are entirely given over to trad- ing. In 1905, for example, 60,135 of these immi- grants were classed as artisans, such as tailors, carpenters, blacksmiths, cabinetmakers, lock- smiths, etc. Their illiteracy averages 23 per cent., and as a rule they are very poor. By far the greater proportion settle in the big cities, espe- cially New York, where they fill the sweatshops. They are an industrious and saving people, pos- sessed of good mental ability, and usually have a strong personal ambition, a passion for getting ahead. They appreciate the value of education to an unusual degree and their children are rapidly pushing to the front in scholarship. Their free- dom from drunkenness and crimes of violence is notable. Such lawbreaking as they do is usually in the violation of sanitary regulations and in try- ing to gain some advantage through deceit or trickery. Qualities which make them unpopular are their contentiousness and greed. The family as an institution has a very strong hold on them. IN THEIR NEW HOME 81 More than any other of our newer immigrants they seek to preserve the home in all its sacred- ness and purity. Their desire for race and reli- gious purity prevents them from intermarrying with other peoples, so that their assimilation is well described as "a. mingling rather than a fusion." So long as they preserve this racial isolation they can hardly become, in the best sense, American citizens. If we study any of these peoples, we shall see how essential it is to discriminate and to discern between things and folks that differ. No race is either bad or hopeless altogether. IV AMERICANIZING THE ALIENS I. THE SOCIAL UNDERTOW THE alien can be Americanized upward or downward. It is well to know what creates the down grade and how the alien gets upon it. It is of casual interest to learn that in New York City there are more Germans than in any city of Germany except Berlin ; that there are enough Irish to make a city twice as large as Dublin ; that there are more Italians than may be found in Naples or Venice. It is significant to learn that these, together with the other peoples of foreign birth, are congregated in well-defined colonies, separated from each other on national or racial lines. It is startling, almost disheartening, to realize that these colonies are un-American not only in language but in customs, habits, and insti- tutions. A short ramble in New York's East Side takes you through several such colonies. By crossing the Bowery you enter first the vast Jewish colony, and then, walking on, find yourself in Italy ; going northeast you enter Germany ; circling around to 83 AMERICANIZING ALIENS 83 the south you pass through a negro settlement and a section of Ireland until you come to Syria ; if you continue your tour you may visit Bohemia, China, and Greece. Nor have you exhausted the list. You will also find these colonies in our other large cities. "In Chicago," writes Robert Hunter, "to my own knowledge there are four Italian colonies, two Polish, a Bohemian, an Irish, a Jewish, a German, a Chinese, a Greek, a Scandi- navian, and other colonies." The same thing is true of Boston, of Philadelphia, of Pittsburg, of Baltimore, of San Francisco, and of many other cities. As Jacob Riis says, the only colony you cannot find in New York is a distinctively Ameri- can colony. An American who lives in one of these foreign communities comes to feel that he is really living on foreign soil. He finds that in the majority of cases the thoughts, the desires, the traditions of the people about him are alien. Their news- papers and literature are of a foreign tongue ; their passions and ideals, "the things which agi- tate the community," are of a foreign world. He finds himself a stranger in his own city. Because of poverty the immigrants generally draw together in the most crowded, the poorest, the most criminal, the most politically corrupt and vicious sections of our cities. Our "slums" are largely peopled by foreigners. A few years ago the foreign element in the Chicago slums was 90 per cent,; in Philadelphia, 91 per cent.; in New 84 THE INCOMING MILLIONS York, 95 per cent. "Already these great foreign cities in our slums have become wildernesses of neglect, almost unexplored and almost unknown to us." And these "cities" within the city are growing at an astonishing rate. Seven out of every ten of our present immigrants settle in our great cities or in certain communities of the four industrial States, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. During the past year not less than half a million new arrivals were added to our tenement population. How are these aliens being Americanized? For the most part the vote-buyer, the saloon- keeper, the bribe-taker, the Jew sweater, the owner or agent of wretched and unsanitary tene- ments, are the ones who are teaching them what America is, what America stands for. If, as a nation, we are apparently indififercnt to their com- ing, we are equally indifferent as to what becomes of them. The truth is, we have not as yet appre- ciated to any great degree the new conditions and problems which their presence has created. The people are just awaking from sleep to discover that during their slumbers the face of our Ameri- can civilization has been undergoing change. 2. LIFE IN A TENEMENT We are not left to guesswork as to the con- ditions in these foreign colonies. Settlement workers and other investigators are subjecting themselves to actual living month in and month AMERICANIZING ALIENS 85 out among the tenement house and slum popula- tion, so as to know by experience and not by hear- say. One of these brave investigators is Mrs. Lillian W. Betts, who has written two most inter- esting books,* besides contributing her social studies to periodicals. She lived for a year in one of the most crowded tenements in one of the most densely populated sections of the Italian quarter in lower New York. The facts which follow, con- densed from one of her latest articles,t give a vivid idea of how the immigrants from Italy are introduced to America — or, rather, to Little Italy in America, for, as is shown, they know prac- tically nothing of American life, and are imper- vious to Americanization so long as their colonies remain intact. MRS. betts' story A year's residence in an Italian tenement in New York taught me first of all the isolation of a foreign quarter ; how completely cut off one may be from everything that makes New York New York. The necessities of life can be bought without leaving the square in which is your home. I found less and less reason for crossing this boundary as the circle of my interest widened within it. If one with every social and business interest outside of this boundary was conscious that life could be lived usefully, even happily ,with- * The Leaven of a Great City, and The Story of an East Side Family. t University Settlement Studies, Jan., 1906. 86 THE INCOMING MILLIONS out coming in contact with the New York outside it, how much truer this is of the people whose every interest, social, business, and church, is within it. After a little it occasioned no surprise to meet grandparents whose own children were born in New York, who had never crossed to the east side of the Bowery, never seen Broadway, nor ever been north of Houston Street, There was no rea- son why they should go. Every interest in life centred within four blocks. I went with a neigh- bor in the next block to St. Vincent's Hospital, where her husband had been taken after an acci- dent. I had to hold her hand in the cars, she was so terrified. The terrors of the journey had driven all thought of the cause out of her mind for the time. She had lived sixteen years in this ward and never had been in a street car before. There were five sons and two daughters in a family which had been in this country fifteen years. None spoke English but the youngest, born here, and she indifferently. She had at- tended school when she felt like it, and was as much an Italian in ideals and habits of life as her father and mother. Every article owned by this family had been bought between Grand and Hous- ton Streets, Mulberry Street, and the Bowery (the Italian quarter). Within this limit of territory all worked, all their social affiliations were estab- lished, and it was all of America they knew. Of curiosity they had none. AMERICANIZING ALIENS 87 This seems almost incredible, but the writer is giving facts, not fiction. The statement which follows concerning the evasion of our school laws and the ignorance of English is equally remark- able : This house in which we lived was built for twenty-eight families ; about fifty-six occupied it. Of those who remained tenants long enough for me to know which rooms they belonged in, I found twenty-three persons over eighteen years of age born in this country who had never at- tended school. Five were young married women. One man who has been in the country twenty- eight years could not speak or understand one word of English. He had four children. A more pathetic sight than this man and his wife with their English-speaking children you cannot imagine. Nothing but compulsion made those children use Italian. The two civilizations were always at war. This was the only family where the leaven was working. The eldest child, a boy of thirteen, was a most enthusiastic American. He knew more of American history, its heroes and its poetry than any other of his age I ever met. He brought me the affidavit of his father made before a notary public that he was fifteen years old. "He paid a dollar for that and we have had a big fight of words about it. I told him I would not go to work, for we'd both get in trouble. I said 'Look at my legs; are those the legs of a boy of fifteen?' I got the face of a 88 THE INCOMING MILLIONS baby yet. He must wait." The law was read to him. He patiently copied it and went back to his father to prove he was right. This boy had never been five blocks from the house in which we lived. He earned an average of about thirty-five cents a day blacking shoes after school. He removed his hat and shoes when he went to bed in winter ; in summer he took off his coat. A brother and two sisters shared the folding bed with this boy. His father hired the three rooms and sublet to a man with a wife and three children. The women quarrelled all the time, but would work in the same room. They finished trousers, earning about forty-five cents a day each. They had the barest necessities of life. Weeks passed and neither breathed outdoor air. The children carried the work back and forth and settled the accounts and did the errands. How do they live ? One woman, with a daugh- ter twenty years old who had never been in school, had three in her own family and took nine boarders — men. A nephew and his wife kept house in the same three rooms, for which $i8 per month were paid. The woman was a widow. The daughter's husband was in prison for coun- terfeiting — "making dirty money," the little wife said, cuddling her two-year-old boy in her arms. "He no ba^.; he good; he just caught." There was not the slightest sense of shame. One of my neighbors, whose own family consisted of four adults and two children, occupied an apartment AMERICANIZING ALIENS 89 of three rooms. She took boarders, or lodgers, having at one time seven. These men owned mattresses, which in the daytime were rolled up ; at night spread on the floor. A few owned boxes, which were piled on top of each other against the wall. One of the boarders, a debonair young man, invited me in to see the preparations he had made to receive his bride, expected on the steamer from Italy, then almost due. The space for the ornate brass and green bedstead, piled high with mat- tresses and pillows, covered with lace-trimmed spread and cases, had been secured by the ejection of two men lodgers and their mattresses. The cords on which the men hung the clothes they were not wearing had been changed to permit of the hanging of gay curtains about the bed. Every member of the family and all the boarders met the bride, escorted her to the church on the block above, where the marriage took place, and brought her home, a little child, with solemn eyes, now startled by the strange scenes through which she had come, but clinging trustfully to the hand of her youthful husband. The next day she was sewing "pants," while her handsome husband lay back in a rocker playing the mandolin. The bride, beamingly happy, sat at her task until her aunt appeared and in tones there was no mistak- ing told the young husband to "get out and hustle for a job." So life began for the two. I found at the end of a month that the bride had not left 90 THE INCOMING MILLIONS those rooms from the moment she entered them, and that she worked, Sundays included, fourteen hours a day. It is no wonder that, in such con- ditions, the men get jealous and frequently mur- der their wives. The Italian woman is not a good housekeeper, but she is a home-maker. She does not fret ; dirt, disorder, noise, company never disturb her. Rarely is the space she occupies her own. She must share everything with those about her. She is gregarious. She lives in the open. A tene- ment-house hall in New York is the substitute for the road of her village. She sits in the doorway with her baby crawling through the hall. Her neighbors do likewise. She cooks one meal a day, and that at night. Pot or pan may be placed in the middle of the table and each help himself from it, but the food is up to the standard of her husband. It is what he wants. She is always at home to receive her husband, and never nervous. Together they will wash the dishes, or he will take the baby out. Rub-a-dub will sound through the watches of the night as the mother, who has sewed all day, washes until midnight and after. The husband sits smoking, dozing, talking. He it is who mounts the tubs to hang the clothes on the pulley. From ten kitchens in this model tene- ment clothes can only be hung out on the lines by mounting the washtubs. They work together, these Italian husbands and wives. Their wants are the barren necessities of life; shelter, food, AMERICANIZING ALIENS 91 clothing to cover nakedness. The children's clothes are washed when they go to bed, and often a woman will wash her one dress, standing in her underclothing. Their lives are so migratory that things are burdensome. Life is reduced to its lowest terms. The high rents and uncertain wages make the establishment of a home on any certain basis im- possible. The home depends on the possession of regular wages, and few of the Italians who come to us have this for years, if ever. I have found them drifting in old age just as they did when they landed, bride and groom, boy or girl. Hardly two months are they in the same rooms. This constant moving destroys the love of home. There is no courage to clean and arrange belong- ings when the end of the month may mean an- other move. Things become a burden, and only things absolutely necessary are owned. Cartage is rarely paid, for the family and friends do the moving. If the Attendance Officer grows trou- blesome, the Factory Inspector too persistent, the Health Board too inquisitive, it is so easy to liter- ally pick up one's bed and walk into another mass of human beings and be lost. They can move as silently as the Arabs, and do so in the night watches. A residence of one year for a tenant is remarkable. So uncertain is their address that Italians living here years have their mail delivered at their banker's and call for it. When the emergency arises you rarely find the 02 THE INCOMING MILLIONS Italian family penniless. It is easy to pauperize them. To draw money from the bank to meet necessities while in health is the height of folly; the Italian will resort to every subterfuge, ably seconded by his neighbors and relatives, to pre- vent this. The new arrival is coached how to avoid calling on the funds he has brought with him from the other side. Housekeeping may drift, the children grow up as untrained as weeds, but the financial future is considered and pro- tected. Children are made wage-earners early, but they share in the life of the family fully. They know how much money is in the bank and where, and the purpose for which it is being ac- cumulated. How do they save money? A daughter mar- ried. She kept house in one of the three rooms occupied by her family, numbering, without the new son-in-law, twelve. Five of these were wage-earners. Each child but the youngest in this family had been put in some institution as soon as weaned, to remain there until twelve or thirteen, when it was brought home to help swell the family income. Recently the father of this family bought a three-story tenement. "It be good for me and the others," said the year-old bride; "we all work for it." This is typical. In spite of such overcrowding, the health of the people was good. There was one crime. The janitor decamped, leaving a wife and baby, who were cared for by AMERICANIZING ALIENS 93 a sister and her husband. One woman attempted suicide and became insane through her husband's unkindness. How thrift gets the better of all other ideas is shown by the fact of a wedding, the bride being the daughter of a popular banker. The wedding was in a three-room apartment hired by the groom. The next day a family of seven moved in. The groom had sublet. Subletting is the Italian habit, because rent is the outlay they resent. The first home of the immigrant is made usually with one of his countrymen who has at least learned how to rent rooms. One of the commonest and saddest sights of an Italian tene- ment is this arrival of the new family in rooms already crowded, to make its first home in America. Their adaptability is marvellous. Within a week they are as settled as they will be at the end of years. The mother is sewing "pants." The neighbor's children have taken the new chil- dren to school. The husband has acquired a brass check, the guarantee of wages, or has begun his rounds with a pack or cart. Two hours after a family has moved in, I have seen the furniture placed and the family life resumed as though never interrupted. This writer, remember, was in the most favor- able conditions, not the worst. She lived in what is known as a model tenement, with sanitary plumbing and light rooms ; built for speculation, as cheaply as the law would allow. As soon as the rooms were all rented the house was sold to 94 THE INCOMING MILLIONS an Italian, who with a wife and five children oc- cupied the rooms back of his store. Within twenty-four hours he leased the house to a coun- trywoman. The lease guaranteed the owner an income of $6000 per year. He made an allow- ance of $30 for repairs. The lessee was re- sponsible for violations. The house must yield profits to her. She was indifferent to the sub- letting, or the treatment of the house, if no ex- pense to her resulted. Her husband attended to all repairs. The destruction of the plumbing was appalling. Nails were driven in walls and wood- work. Wood was chopped on the floor till the ceiling fell ; then chopped on the stone floors of hall and sills. Water spilled on the floor and dripped through to the ceiling below. No one ob- jected. It was the daily experience to be without water on the three upper floors from one to five hours daily, but there was no remedy. Thirty- one appeals to the authorities failed. There were fifty-six families in the house, with an average of five children to each of the twenty- eight apartments. These children used the halls as playrooms, leaving all debris when they went to the street or their rooms. There was never a day when all the children of school age were in school. It was a fight to get the little ones in school and to keep them there. The mother was held to her chair or stool earning money to pay rent. School was a prison house to most of the children. There was something in this country AMERICANIZING ALIENS 95 that made you go to school if you could not hide. So the timid ones went. The classes were over- crowded. Too often the teachers did not realize how little the language they used was understood in their classrooms. It is all a sorry problem, depending for solution on giving these children a command of the language before giving them grade work. They come, thousands of them, from homes where an English word is never spoken. Truancy is common ; why not ? There is not room for them in the schools. I saw one hundred and seventeen boys brought into one school as the re- sult of a truancy ''raid." There were eight vacant seats in the whole building that morning. There is no more disgusting evil in the tene- ments than the filled and overfilled garbage cans at the front door, against which clothing, hands, and faces of the little children rub as they pass in and out. It is degrading to children and adults. I have known garbage cans to stand at the door of a tenement twenty-four hours in hot weather. This is the rallying place of the tenants when work is done. The whole block is poisoned by the odors. It is cruel. This narrative, growing out of actual contact with conditions most of us avoid and do not like even to think possible, should stir a spirit of sym- pathy that will not rest until some civic reforms are under way. 96 THE INCOMING MILLIONS 3. CHANGES IN THE COUNTRY Not only are these conditions found in New York, Chicago, and other great centres, but immi- gration has been rapidly altering the character of many of the smaller cities and industrial com- munities of the North. Such New England manufacturing towns as Lowell, Lawrence, Fall River, New Bedford, and Woonsocket are over- whelmingly foreign in population. In many of the small mill villages the English language has practically been displaced by French and Italian. In Pennsylvania the mining regions have been foreignized. Some idea of the vast changes brought about by the new immigration may be gained from the following account by Dr. Warne : To those who knew it twenty years ago nothing marks more clearly the transformation of the old Pennsylvania mining town than the changes in its churches and its religious observances. The effect upon the religious denominations formerly well established in the anthracite region has been disastrous. Facts and figures in support of this may be had for the asking. It is sufficient to state here, by way of illustration, that within the past ten or fifteen years no less than fifteen Congregational churches have been forced to withdraw from the anthracite regions. At Shenandoah, where the inroads of the Slav appear in their most serious proportions, four once flourishing and largely attended Welsh churches are now so weak that their disbandment seems to be only a question of a very short time. Of these, two are Baptist, one Congregational, and one Presbyterian, the latter now having only eighteen mem- bers. They are but the skeleton remains of once thriv- ing churches. But from the religious, as from the social, view- point the comparative elimination of the Protestant denominations is not more important than that with the AMERICANIZING ALIENS 97 Slav has come a large and insistent element professing atheism. The Continental Sunday is fast becoming an institution in the anthracite fields. Baseball playing is not the only indication of this. The only difference between the saloon on Sunday and on a week-day is that the front door is not wide open. It does not bar admittance, however, and there is very little attempt at secrecy in the towns where the Slav influence is of any political importance. With the advancing tide of Catholicism has come its own system of education — the parochial school. Whatever the value of these schools — and they no doubt have their own merits, which need not be discussed here, — there is strong reason for believing that the parochial school in the anthracite region does not take the place of the public school system in the making of American citizens out of Slav children. In spite of official reports to the contrary, one learns upon good authority that the two parochial schools in an important mining town teach no English to their pupils. On Saturday evenings and Sundays, at weddings, christenings, funerals, and other celebrations and ob- servances, drinking among the Slavs is carried to ex- cess, the occasion not infrequently ending in a free-for- all fight, and sometimes in a small riot, in which par- ticipants are shot and stabbed and not infrequently killed. Many of the most serious crimes among the Slavs are invariably traced, whenever they can be traced at all, to some drunken orgy. These are facts. As to placing the responsibility for them, we should not be too quick in jumping to con- clusions. Nearly every Slav saloon-keeper has had his license secured for him by some one or more of the brewers within the region whose product is sold over the bar. And these brewers are of the English-speaking races. Their influence extends into the ordinance- making bodies of the mining towns; they not in- frequently dictate municipal and even county control of the liquor system. I was told of a case where the Mahanoy City authorities not long ago deprived five or six Slav saloon-keepers of their licenses because of the general disrepute in which the places they conducted were held. The brewer who was "backing" these saloonists put political and other "influences" to work at Pottsville, the county seat, and within a very short time these saloon-keepers were back at their old business. 98 THE INCOMING MILLIONS What Dr. Warne says about the parochial schools is worthy of serious consideration. The parochial schools are un-American, and are di- rectly hostile to the common-school system of this country. Children educated in the parochial schools get a definite religious instruction, but they fail to get instruction in the essential Ameri- can principles of civil and religious liberty. These schools tend to perpetuate foreign ideas and race clannishness. They are the reverse of democratic. One thing the Christian women can do is to keep jealous watch of Roman Catholic attempts to secure appropriations of public moneys for the support of these sectarian schools. We cannot prevent the maintenance of private or church schools, but we can prevent the diver- sion of public funds for their support. A Roman Catholic priest, writing on church extension, tells the Catholics that if they can hold the Catholic immigrants true to their church, this country will have a majority of Catholics within twenty-five years at the present rate of immigration from the Catholic countries. This is true. And who can doubt that if the Catholics obtain a majority of votes, they will proceed to divide the school moneys and replace public schools with the paro- chial school in every part of the land ? In regard to the schools our Christian women have a duty not less urgent than that in regard to the homes. Through evangelization, moreover, we must see to it that the immigrants have an open Bible and are AMERICANIZING ALIENS 99 taught those principles of liberty that will make it impossible to hold them in a spiritual bondage. It is inevitable that in proportion as they become good Americans they will become bad Catholics, for the foundation principles of Protestant Ameri- canism and Roman Catholicism are irreconcilable. The children must be surrounded with influences that make for true Americanism. 4. THE CHILDREN OF THE IMMIGRANTS It is frequently said that however it may be with the immigrants themselves, their children will become good citizens. Under favorable con- ditions these children doubtless do grow up into loyal and progressive Americans. They have shown themselves in numberless cases to be apt scholars in school and quick to absorb American ways. But the very quickness and adaptability of these young Americans becomes dangerous to them and to the country when the conditions sur- rounding them are vicious and degrading. They are just as ready to absorb American influences which work for evil as they are to absorb those which work for good. The sociologists of to- day are well agreed that environment has far more to do with character-product than has heredity. To see that immigrant children, and the chil- dren born in this country of immigrant parents, have every opportunity to come in contact with the elevating forces of Americanism is the clear 100 THE INCOMING MILLIONS duty of Christian men and women. So far we have largely shirked our vast moral responsibility for the welfare of these coming Americans. And what is the result? The statistics of crime in the States where aliens settle in the greatest numbers show that the percentage of crime is greater among the children of immigrants than among the immi- grants themselves. "The number of crimes com- mitted by the foreign-born," writes Robert Hunter, "is only slightly, if at all, above the due proportion. It is, however, among the children of foreign parentage that criminals are found in greatest number. The most vicious, confirmed, incorrigible child criminal is the child of foreign parents. As a tough and outlaw he has few, if any, equals. The tremendous struggle with pov- erty which the foreigner makes in order to survive means, in a great many cases, the sacrifice of the child ; in other words, the ruin of the American- ized foreigner. Vice and crime, inconceivable to the adult immigrant, become habitual to the most neglected children of foreign parentage. It is really appalling to observe the extent of this ruin of childhood. Among all the foreign peoples, and especially among the Jews and the Italians of New York and Chicago, many of the children are developing habits of vice which are revolting in the extreme." A visit to the Juvenile Court in New York or Chicago will convince any one of the truth of this, AMERICANIZING ALIENS lOl and of serious conditions demanding an attention not hitherto given to this matter of juvenile crime. One of the chief reasons for this degeneration is the breaking up of the home Hfe caused by tenement-house conditions. Much of the family life is lost when the family is transferred from the Old World village to the New World slum. The old home may have been the abode of pov- erty, ignorance, and superstition, yet it was a home. The new home in the tenement, shared with the two or three other families or with the inevitable "boarders," is little more than a trav- esty, and often is a place where decency and purity are scarcely possible of preservation. The lessening of parental influence and author- ity is another potent cause. The fathers and mothers who cannot speak English, but whose children have learned it at school or on the street, soon lose control over them. The children come to feel superior to their parents and look down on them as "foreigners." As a result of this they are left with very little religious or moral guid- ance, for our public schools do not supply such training, and the philanthropic institutions and Sunday schools are too few to accomplish so great a task. Another fruitful source of degeneration among the immigrant children is child labor. Immi- grants, through poverty or greed, often put their children to work at ages when humanity, and 102 THE INCOMING MILLIONS even prudence, tells us that they should be at school or at play. Little children are put to work in the tenement sweatshops. "Sickness, unless it be mortal, is no excuse from the drudgery," says Jacob Riis. "When, recently, one little Italian girl, hardly yet in her teens, stayed away from her class in the Mott Street Industrial School so long that her teacher went to her home to look her up, she found the child in a high fever, in bed, sewing on coats, with swollen eyes, though barely able to sit up." "The Commission ap- pointed to settle the anthracite coal strike in 1902 heard the cases of Theresa McDermot and Rosa Zinka. These children represented, though un- known to them, seventeen thousand little girls who were toiling in the great silk-mills and lace factories of the mining districts of Pennsylvania. The chairman could not repress his indignation vvhen these two eleven-year-old children told the Commission how they left their homes to report at the factory at half-past six in the evening and spent at work the long hours of the night until half-past six in the morning." Their brothers work about the mines "as soon as they may be trusted not to fall into the machinery and be killed." "The nation," says Robert Hunter, "is engaged in a traffic for the labor of children. By the introduction of the little ones into mines, fac- tories, and mills, we do a direct evil for which we are definitely responsible. You cannot rob chil- AMERICANIZING ALIENS 103 dren of their play, any more than you can forget and neglect the children at their play, as we now do in the tenement districts, without at some time paying the penalty. When children are robbed of play time, they too often reassert their right to it in manhood, as vagabonds, criminals, and pros- titutes. At this moment, after one hundred years of war has been waged for the abolition of child slavery, over 1,700,000 children under fifteen years of age are toiUng in fields, factories, mines, and workshops. "These figures may mean little to most persons, for, as Margaret MacMillan has said, 'You can- not put tired eyes, pallid cheeks, and languid little limbs into statistics.' But if our legislators could, by any means whatever, be brought to see clearly the meaning of these eight words, — one million seven hundred thousand child wage-earners, — the evil would once for all disappear from this coun- try. We should never forget one sight of a hun- dred of these little ones if they were marched out of the mills, mines, and factories before our eyes, or if we saw them together toiling for ten or twelve hours a day or a night for a pittance of wage ; but that we do not see, and we forget figures. It will be long before I forget the face of a little boy of six years, with his hands stretched forward to rearrange a bit of machinery, his pallid face and spare form showing already the physical effects of labor. This child, six years of age, was working twelve hours a day in 104 THE INCOMING MILLIONS a country which has estabHshed in many indus- tries an eight-hour day for men," So far, child labor in the mills of the South has been largely confined to native children, sons and daughters of the "poor whites." About twenty- five thousand children are being employed in twelve-hour shifts in the cotton-mills of the Southern States, and the conditions under which they work are said to rival those existing in Eng- land during its worst days of cotton-milling. The Southern people have now a splendid opportunity to do away with the evils of child labor before the tide of immigration sets southward, and thus save themselves and their future citizens from some of the problems which are confronting the North. In this reform the Christian women of the South should lead. Women are as yet free from that sordid, selfish greed for wealth that in its making heeds neither the lives of men, women, and little children, nor the welfare of the nation. We have purposely looked upon the darker side of the picture in this chapter. There is a brighter side, and the man or woman who sees both sides clearly and justly need not be a pessimist. Scores of heroic men and women are giving their lives to the cause of social betterment ; thousands of immigrant children are growing up into splendid American manhood and womanhood ; the light of American ideals is penetrating many of the dark places. But as a nation we are not yet fully awake to the pressing need for an active and AMERICANIZING ALIENS 105 vigorous Christian campaign amongst our new neighbors, and until we do realize this and feel that there is a personal call to service for each one of us, we can well afford to dwell upon the ugly facts of immigration. Indifference is both stupid and cowardly, to say nothing of unchristian. Evils must be seen before remedies will be sought. The surgeon cuts to save, and the operation is painful but preservative. V WOMAN'S WORK FOR ALIEN WOMEN* I. FORMING PUBLIC OPINION ALIEN women can be influenced by Ameri- can women as by no other means. The ^foreigners can be readily reached if rightly approached. The approach must be in the spirit that begets confidence. It must be instinct with womanly sympathy and kindness. The gospel of neighborliness must be practised before the gos- pel of faith can be preached. It is the touch of human kindness that makes the whole world kin. If our Christianity had more of this quality, it would easily penetrate the hardest armor of racial and religious prejudice. A loving, sympathetic woman can make her way anywhere. This volume has been written in the profound convic- tion that the Christian women of America have a very large part to play in the saving of America through the saving of the millions of aliens pour- ing in upon us. These millions must be made over into Americans, and into Christian Ameri- * In connection with this chapter, special study should be given to chapter vii, which outlines the organized work of women for alien women, in the several de- nominations. 106 WOMAN'S WORK 107 cans, or they will prove a menace to every high ideal we cherish. Never before had Christian women such an op- portunity as is now presented in this country through immigration. Some noble American women have gone to foreign lands to carry the gospel to women there. Here tens of thousands of women may be missionaries and carry the gos- pel to foreign women in our own land. The work is practicable, pressing, personal. It is to be done through organization, through home mission so- ciety and church, and through individual effort. The women in our churches are at the fore- front in every good work, and their spiritual stimulus is everywhere felt. They are zealous in fostering and extending the missionary spirit. Their response is quick to every recognized need. Now, in regard to immigration, it is theirs to do certain definite and essential things which, if they fail to do, will probably not be done. In the first place, they can, and therefore should, create a new national conscience with respect to some needed reforms. A recent writer, considering a proposed com- bination of eight thousand women's clubs to secure a desired end, asks, "What may not this federation efifect, if moved by a common im- pulse?" Suppose we take the church instead of the club as our centre of influence, and repeat the question : "What purpose of good might not be accomplished if the Christian women of the 108 THE INCOMING MILLIONS Protestant churches in America should combine and move with a common impulse?" Why not have a Protestant Federation of the Women of America? For the preservation of American ideals and institutions, for the enforcement of law, for the protection of the home, for the safeguard- ing of women and children, there is no agency that can do so much as the Christian womanhood of America, once aroused, united, and consecrated. All that is necessary is for the women to become thoroughly conscious of this fact and its attendant responsibility. One of the worst features of immigration is the thrusting of the newcomers into an environ- ment that is demoralizing and detrimental, espe- cially to the women and children. Whether it be in the tenement and slum districts of the great cities, in the unsanitary surroundings of the mill towns, or in the mining regions of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, or Illinois, the conditions are such as tend to immorality, viciousness, and crime. The Christian women can, and therefore should, combine for the creation of a public sentiment sensitive enough and strong enough to demand and secure reforms of such evils as overcrowd- ing, unsanitary tenements, food adulteration, the sweatshop system, child labor, illegal importation of contract labor, and defiant violation of immi- gration and other laws. In moral, ethical, and religious issues, the Christian women should be the exponents of the national conscience, and WOMAN'S WORK 109 should make that conscience a mighty factor that cannot be evaded. The power of a quickened public sentiment is not sufficiently realized or utilized. In temper- ance reforms and legislation the women have demonstrated what union can accomplish. In Boston the sweatshop evil has been practically abolished through the arousing of public senti- ment by a few zealous and determined Settlement workers, who kept up the agitation until an in- dignant public demanded reform legislation and got it. The same thing can be done in New York and Chicago. And it can be done in the matter of child slavery as well as in that of the sweatshop. It is simply a question of combination and deter- mination. If it be desirable to have some further restriction of immigration, such as the reading test, or a system of inspection abroad, or a limita- tion of the number admissible in any given year from a given country, it lies in the power of American women to educate the people to the point where they will demand the proper legisla- tion. 2. WORK THROUGH ORGANIZATION In the religious sphere Christian women can carry out any measures of evangelization to which they resolutely set themselves. Through their societies they can employ the needed missionaries to visit the homes of the foreigners and perform the ministry that woman only can render. They can bring medical missionaries into service, just no THE INCOMING MILLIONS as is done in foreign lands. There is a vast unoc- cupied field waiting for such work as the women's home missionary societies are adapted to do. How this field can be cultivated has been made known by such object lessons as the University Settlement in New York, Hull House in Chicago, the South End House in Boston, and other Set- tlements. These organizations are philanthropic and ethical rather than religious, for they are based upon the principle that since all kinds of religious belief and no belief at all are to be dealt with, the ends desired can best be attained by cultivating the social and moral sense and leaving what is distinctively religious in the background, in order to avoid possible controversy and di- vision. The point here to be made is simply that the Protestant churches abandoned the downtown fields in the great cities, practically leaving the tenement house population to its fate. What the churches failed to do for the welfare of the people, the Settlements have tried to accomplish in their own way, so far as improving the condition of the dwellers in tenements is concerned, and mak- ing cultivation and enjoyment possible to thou- sands of children and in a measure to their parents as well. All honor to the noble men and women who are devoting their lives to social bet- terment, and setting an example of sacrifice that is Christian in the highest sense. What woman can do, not only for other women but for general reform, is well illustrated by one WOMAN'S WORK HI of the leading Settlement workers in America, Jane Addams of Chicago, founder of Hull House and still its head. It is not saying too much to give Miss Addams credit for exerting the most powerful influence of any single individual in the western metropolis. The ward politicians have had good occasion to fear her. The city council- men have been obliged to listen to her protests against tenement house evils. The State legisla- tors have heeded the public opinion created largely through her efforts in behalf of labor and sweat- shop reforms. But this wider influence is sec- ondary to the personal hold she has upon the sec- tion of the city in which the foreign population is most dense and the work of Hull House per- formed. She has been the friend and adviser of thousands of troubled mothers, the inspirer of a multitude of boys and girls, young men and women. She has revealed to the poor, uncul- tured foreigners and Americans alike, what a cultivated American home life is like. Most of all, she has by her own life, lived among these peo- ple, and by the lives of her many assistant workers, drawn from all quarters and circles of society, created an atmosphere that has influenced the entire neighborhood. Jane Addams is a talented woman, it is true ; but she has not done a mar- vellous thing beyond the reach of others. She has shown, rather, what a woman of will, per- severance against great obstacles, dauntless cour- age, and absolute consecration to the service be- 112 THE INCOMING MILLIONS lieved by her to be the highest on earth, can do with her Hfe, when she throws it unreservedly into the doing of the duty next her. What she has done through the Settlement idea, Christian women can do through distinctively religious channels. The experience of improve- ment work in London goes to prove that most successful efforts to uplift those whose environ- ment is evil and wretched are made by institu- tional churches and missions which do not hide but fling out the Christian banner, and boldly de- clare that the Gospel is the only salvation that saves. The Wesleyan movement in London, which is described in a little volume entitled, "The Open Church for the Unchurched," — a volume that every Christian might read with profit, — has demonstrated the possibilities of great institutional evangelical churches in the foreign and downtown districts of our great cities. Our Christian women could aid in the organization of a great interdenominational movement in New York for the purpose of planting a number of these centres of evangelistic and evangelical in- fluence, which should embody the philanthropic features and at the same time maintain a regular ministry, with a constant directing of attention to the needs of the soul and the way of salvation. 3. INDIVIDUAL EFFORT It may come a little closer home to take an illus- tration of personal service from the distinctively WOMAN'S WORK 113 religious sphere. The author is acquainted with this worker and her work, and has felt the inspira- tion of her example. In a New England city where the foreign population was rapidly increasing, and where the Canadian-French, Portuguese, and Ital- ians were crowding one another, a Christian woman felt that something must be done for them in a religious way. She was as busy as other women with homes and a husband to man- age, but her children were grown up, and she had a certain amount of leisure that she consecrated to service. First she visited the foreign districts of her city, and found conditions that made it difficult for her to sleep, as memories of what she had seen pressed upon her. She was a resolute woman, and human need appealed to her prac- tically. She went constantly to the Italian dis- trict, taking delicacies for sick mothers and chil- dren, aiding them in such ways as were possible, securing work for some of the unemployed men whose families were in the depths of poverty, and gradually winning the confidence and love of the people. For a long time her ministry was one of philan- thropy, sympathy, humanity. She always had some Testaments in Italian to give away when the opportunity seemed ripe, always had a smile and word of cheer, and more and more frequently, as she studied away earnestly at the Italian lan- guage, found a chance to pray with the women who were in sorrow or pain. She got some 114 THE INCOMING MILLIONS charitable physicians to look after cases where there was no money for fees ; secured a number of young women helpers in the work of visiting; got her pastor deeply interested in what she was doing; and patiently kept at her beautiful work, regardless of her own comfort. Her objective was a mission chapel, but she had no money for it and no missionary. She could only pray and hope. The missionary came in the most unexpected way. In the Italian colony there was a man of exceptional ability and fine character, a watch repairer by trade, from North Italy. A fellow workman chanced to be a Christian Swede, whose religious conversation and life impressed the Italian and led to his conver- sion. Full of missionary impulse and of the joy of salvation, he made known his new-found hope, and his story was listened to with eagerness by his Italian friends and acquaintances. Working by day and studying his Testament by night, he soon began to gather a company and preach to them the gospel. His influence grew rapidly, and in him the worker found the missionary for whom she had been praying. Presently he had a large following among his people, and a regular place of meeting became a necessity. The good woman put in some of her own money, which she had saved by household economies, then inspired members of her church with interest so that they helped, and after much time and labor she saw a neat mission built and used. The Italian kept WOMAN'S WORK 115 at his trade, for he had a large family to support, but he preached on Sunday and often on weekday evenings, and proved eloquent and effective. The mission grew rapidly, and is to-day a gospel centre in an Italian colony. Its Sunday school is making the right type of Americans out of the children, and the men who have been converted will not sell their votes or beat their wives. All this was not accomplished without opposi- tion from the priests and others whom they in- fluenced. Various forms of petty persecution were practised. Before the chapel was built, the mission was turned out of one house after an- other, because the property was bought by the Roman Catholics in order that it might not be used for a Protestant mission. More than that, the Italian preacher was evicted, and could not find a residence near the mission, since the land- lords had been warned that if they rented him a place they would be boycotted. But the Chris- tian woman was brave and insistent, and her American spirit was aroused by such methods. She stirred up the people until a philanthropic American offered the converted Italian mission- ary quarters where he could be permanent. It be- came a question whether this was a land of the free, and the Christian woman won, as Christian women always will when the issue is squarely joined. Then she set about organizing a second mis- sion in another quarter of the city, where a second 116 THE INCOMING MILLIONS Little Italy was established. As the fruitage of her labors, after a number of years, she can point to two prosperous and largely self-supporting mission churches, with pastors and lay-workers, Sunday schools that are gathering in the children, and ceaseless activities that make for the thor- ough Americanization of the colonies that other- wise would remain foreign. This is woman's work for alien women, in the form of personal missionary effort that is possible not to one only, but to hundreds and thousands of women in our churches throughout the land. The home is the point of approach, where there is a home, and the Christian woman has the key to unlock the door. The instance given above is a conspicuous one but not isolated. The moral of this is plain: Be a missionary. Do not stop with being a member of a missionary society and a contributor to its funds or to the home and foreign mission societies ; do not think your duty is done when you have attended a mis- sionary meeting, or offered a prayer for the mis- sionaries, or aided in making up a missionary box. Do some personal missionary work. This does not involve change of residence or occupation. If you cannot discover any possible opening for such service, if there is no soul unconverted that you can approach, if there is no person in need of any kind that you can help, then you may con- sider yourself absolved from any missionary obli- gation. But your situation will be remarkable, if WOMAN'S WORK ni that is the case. If, on the other hand, you have any families of foreigners in your vicinity or town, if you have never made a visit in the sec- tions where poverty and distress are always pres- ent, then let the joy of unselfish service enter your heart by doing some helpful deed, and bringing yourself into contact with human need. Felix Adler expresses a deep truth when he says: "It is my firm belief that no well-to-do family should be without the bonds of relation, of sympathetic and helpful relation, to some one or more poor families in the neighborhood. I be- lieve that there is no method, no way possible of educating the young child in charity so effec- tively as when two families, the helpful family and the one that requires to be helped, are in social contact with one another. The children can thus be taught to do personal service of the most valuable kind, and the interest which the father and mother display is more illustrative of the real spirit of charity than a thousand gifts of organized institutions for charity." This is un- questionably true. And the effect of such con- tact is not more beneficial to the helped than to the helpers. There is no joy like the joy of doing good, of making others happy, of putting a touch of sunlight into darkened lives. This work is Christian and unselfish, but it is self-protective also. The only way in which American homes can be safeguarded is by doing everything possible to elevate all home life. If 118 THE INCOMING MILLIONS the streets are not properly swept in our neigh- borhood, all suffer. If crime abounds in any sec- tion, the whole section suffers. Common inter- ests imply common duties, and Christian women are working for their own homes and children when they are trying, by person and by proxy, to improve the home conditions of the foreign popu- lation and to surround the children of these aliens with gospel influences. If the philanthropic Settlements can secure corps of volunteer workers from among the up- town residents, as they do,* shall it be said that the Christian church cannot command the same kind of willing and consecrated service for its high purposes? Shall it not be said, rather, that the churches have not organized for this greatly needed work, and have not appealed to the heroic in their young men and women? We cannot for a moment doubt that if our Protestant churches should unite in establishing evangelical centres and should issue a call for workers, there would be instant response. The same spirit that * The University Settlement report for 1906 states that its volunteer workers comprise twenty-two young men and women, uptown residents, who bring with them "gentleness, kindness, culture, knowledge, a rich store of human sympathy, and open eyes to discern the signs of the times." One lady in her own home in- structed a poor but ambitious person in piano playing and singing; another taught a girl in embroidery at her home, thus giving her glimpses into a new world. Would there were more of such intercourse between the fortunate and favored and those whose lives are cast in the disheartening places. WOMAN'S WORK 119 prompts our bright college men and women to en- roll themselves as student volunteers, willing to serve wherever God would have them go, would bring volunteers in ample numbers for this home mission service, which is not less among foreign- ers but is done in our own land. The work that has been done is sufficient to prove the success attendant upon tactful ap- proach. It needs to be indefinitely multiplied. The need is too great to be met by regularly em- ployed missionaries. If we had enough of them, they could not do all the work that must be done. Moreover, the work in the country communities differs from that in the cities. The problems of the country churches would be solved, some of them at least, if the missionary spirit of evangel- ization were to lay hold upon the good women in them, and send them forth upon the errands of love and helpfulness. There are foreigners al- most everywhere ; and some of our local churches have become aware of their presence in the vil- lages and rural communities, and have made laud- able efforts to reach them with the gospel. But there are multitudes of churches that do not seem to be aware as yet of a missionary opportunity. To be a missionary is the surest way to do your part to awaken your church to its duty and to quicken its spiritual life. When a band of consecrated women unite in any church to form a missionary committee that shall not only plan meetings and prepare pro- 120 THE INCOMING MILLIONS grams for them and disseminate missionary in- formation, but shall also engage in systematic personal missionary service, that church will be accounted among the living churches of the living God, and there will be no chasm between it and the working classes. Our Christian women must see to it that the Christian church is kept free from all clannishness and cliques and social dis- tinctions and race prejudices ; that it retain its unique character as the one place on earth where false human distinctions are unrecognized, and where only the spirit of Christ — the spirit of brotherhood and mutual helpfulness and sympathy — obtains. It might be a good test question : "Would my church welcome a company of Ital- ians, if they came?" More pressing question still, "Am I quite sure that I would welcome them, and open my pew to some of them?" It takes grace to be a missionary and do missionary work in person — it is so much easier to do it by proxy. And yet there are multitudes of devoted women who will engage in this home mission task just as soon as they see the opportunity and feel its obligation. 4. TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR WORKERS There are, then, two broad divisions of the work of evangelizing the foreigners in our coun- try. The first is that in which the gospel is to be brought to the newcomers in their own tongue. WOMAN'S WORK 121 This must be done, and done on an increasingly large scale. Thousands of the older immigrants will never be able to understand English suffi- ciently to attend services conducted in our lan- guage, even if we could induce them to do so. They can only be reached in their own language. For this there must be trained missionaries, and as far as possible of their own race. A Polish community can be reached by a Polish missionary where an American missionary who spoke the Polish language would find it impossible to gather a congregation. The same thing is true of the various other peoples. A converted Italian or Jew or Bohemian represents to his race some- thing distinct from an American Christian. The Slovak understands the Slovak, and knows how to approach and influence him. The bonds of race are strong. This point does not need to be argued. The need is to secure the missionaries and support them. The number we have now is but as a drop in the bucket in proportion to the need and the opportunity. Two things the Christian women can do in this matter. First, they can help stimulate the in- crease of benevolence in the churches, so that the home mission societies may have funds to estab- lish the necessary training schools and put mis- sionary preachers and pastors in the field. This interest in the work of the missionary boards our Christian women should not fail to take. It would be fatal to the missionary spirit of the women 122 THE INCOMING MILLIONS themselves if they were to regard the genera) missionary boards as belonging to the men of the churches, and confine their efforts to the specific work of the women's societies. The ideal rela- tion is that where the whole work has place in the thought, prayers, and giving, and the specific work is always regarded as a part of the whole. There could be no greater evil than to have sex lines create division in Christian service. In this missionary work there is no Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, but one purpose in Christ Jesus. Second, the women can enlarge a special work, through their boards, in training and maintain- ing women missionaries and teachers, trained nurses, Bible readers, house to house visitors. The possibilities of this ministry of blessing are bounded only by the numbers which the resources can put in the field. Already there are schools in which these needed workers are educated. The Baptist women have their Training School in Chicago, which has sent many scores of devoted workers into the field, at home and abroad. The Congregationalists have the Bethlehem Bible and Missionary Training School in Cleveland, the outgrowth of Dr. Schauffler's remarkable service, and the students are a convincing proof of the efficiency of this form of evangelization. The Presbyterian women carry on a training work in a number of the Presbyteries, and there is a school in Philadelphia that will probably come under the WOMAN'S WORK 123 care of the Woman's Home Board. The work among foreigners done by the Methodist women is largely through their deaconesses. For the training of these and of missionaries three large schools have been established — in Washington (D. C), Kansas City, and San Francisco — and smaller schools are connected with several of the Deaconess Homes. The work of the Episcopa- lian women is also done through deaconesses, con- nected with the local parishes. There is a good deal of training work done in connection with local churches and city missions, and there is a general awakening of interest that is most en- couraging. There is no form of service that can take the place of this. Beginning with the blessed and effective ministry at Ellis Island, which reaches in its influence throughout the land, the immi- grants must be followed and surrounded with the same sympathetic Christian influence of the women missionaries. No other organized agency touches the home in the same direct and elevating way. The true-hearted Christian woman, giving her life to this work of carrying the gospel of Christ into the homes of the aliens, becomes in their eyes a ministering angel, and exercises an influence immeasurable upon the lives of the women and children, and through them reaches also the men. No missionary service demands more heroism and self-sacrifice than this. None has richer rewards. 124 THE INCOMING MILLIONS Examples of this home ministry and its results are given in Appendix VL 5. PERSONAL SERVICE The second broad division is that of personal service. This, after all, is the heart of the matter. Our justification for returning to this point, and closing with it, must be the conviction that the truth has yet to be realized that individual eflFort is as possible and practicable as organized effort, and that it is as essential. America will never be evangelized until every Christian in America is in a real and true sense an evangelist and a home missionary. When Christians begin to bring themselves into right personal relations with the foreigners, the foreigners will begin the process of Americanization forthwith. But we do not wish to appear unreasonable in this matter. Generalizations seldom hit the in- dividual. To say that every woman is in Chris- tian duty bound to bring herself into immediate sisterly contact with some foreign woman or family is to make so broad a statement that the average woman will simply sweep it aside as absurd and not related to her at all. This is what we do say, that every Christian woman who loves her country and her home, her church and her Saviour, should ask herself what her circle of con- tact is ; whether there are any foreign women and children in it ; and whether, if so, she has any Christian duty in relation to them. Surely that is \ 1 *"^*. H 1 «> liii^ "^#5^ 0, .]^ gt'* r Hi i-*^ •1 sj|*^^3 Um 1 via* ^ "^k ^ JJi IWK^^K^ «»• ^k-<* «■ . ' ^^ _^ tu *.x 111 *'J3l^f ^ 'kt£A A'i)'.S«^y 1 f)