Читать книгу The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow - Edward Alfred Steiner - Страница 6

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“DO really nice ladies smoke cigarettes, papa?” my young daughter asked of me perplexedly, awaiting an answer.

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

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

“No. Really nice ladies do not drink whiskey.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of all the pleasures of that journey; those starry, never-to-be-forgotten nights, the phosphorescent path across the sea; the moonlit way from the deeps to the eternal heights, the first dim outlines of the mighty coasts of Portugal and Spain; Capri and Sorrento in the setting of the Bay of Naples—above them all, is the glory of the first opening of strange, human hearts to me, when “How do you do,” from that gentle chorus of voices answered my “Buon Giorno.”

“What’s your name?” I turned to a friendly Calabrian whose countrymen had encircled me and one after another we had shaken hands.

“My name Tony.”

“Have you been a long time in America?”

“Three year,” he answered in fairly good English, while a friendly smile covered his face.

“Where have you been?”

“Tshicago, Kansas, Eeleenoy, Oheeo.”

In pretty nearly every place where rails had to be strung in that vast, encircling necklace of steel; where powder blasts opened the hidden fissures of the rocks; wherever his sinuous arm could exchange its patient stroke for American dollars.

“Do you like America?”

“Yes!” came a chorus of voices. “Yes!” And the faces beamed.

“Why are you going back?” And I looked into the face of a man whom no one would have taken for an Italian, but who, too, was from Calabria.

“Mia padre and madre is in Calabria. They are old. I am going home to work in the field.”

“How long have you been in America?”

“Twelve years.” That accounts for the changed look.

“Where do you live?”

“In Connecticut. Among the Yankees.”

“Do you like the Yankees?”

“Yes,” and his smile grew broader. “Yes, good men; but they drink too much whiskey—make head go round like wheel. Then Yankee get crazy and swear.” And he shook his head, this critic of ours, who evidently did not believe that “really nice” ladies or even “really nice” gentlemen should drink whiskey, overmuch.

“Why do you go back?” And this time it was a diminutive Neapolitan whom I addressed. His face wore a beatific smile.

“Him sweetheart in Neapoli.” Some one ventured the information, and confusedly he acknowledged his guilt, while everybody laughed. He was going home to marry Pepitta and when times grew better they would come back to Pittsburg.

“Don’t you get homesick for Neapoli in Pittsburg?”

“Nop,” he replied. “Me citizen, American citizen,” he repeated with proud emphasis.

“What is your name?” I asked as I shook hands with my fellow citizen who had foresworn his allegiance to the King of Italy and plighted it to Uncle Sam.

Proudly he pulled out his papers. I looked at them and they almost dropped from my fingers; for they were made out to “John Sullivan.” When he saw my astonishment he said: “I change name. Want to be an American. My name used to be Giovanni Salvini.”

At the edge of the ever-increasing circle I saw my friends, the Slavs, and I reached out my hand to them. It was grasped a dozen times or more, by Poles, Slovenes and “Griners,” as they are called, because they come from the Austrian province of Krain. They were less cheerful than the Italians. They were returning home because of the hard times, many of them with empty pockets, some of them with modest savings.

There were Croatians, a few Dalmatians and many Bulgarians and Serbs, who for some reason are the least successful among our Slavic toilers. They were all in rags, looked pinched and half starved and told their hard luck story with many embellishments.

A great many stalwart young fellows were going back to join the army; for the emperor had declared amnesty to all who had left their country before serving their term in arms. One could well afford to be patriotic when the king forgave and when times were hard in America.

Some of the Southern Slavs had marched up in the scale of social life; had become machinists, petty foremen and taskmasters over their own kinsmen. They knew English fairly well and seemed to have acquired some better things than mere bank accounts.

An old gentleman from Lorain, Ohio, was going home to die, and to die in poverty, because the hard times struck at the roots of his business and he was too old to labour in the mills. Another went back to claim a fortune, and asked me for the loan of a dollar, which he would be sure to send back as soon as his fingers touched the waiting wealth.

The circle received constant additions, for our laughter and banter reached down to the dreary bunks, and many of their occupants came up to listen. Women brought their half-asleep children and I drew on my stock of sweets. Even the more reticent women talked to “the man,” and told him things glad and sad. A Polish woman was the spokesman of her group.

“We are going back to the Stary Kray (the Old Country). America ne dobre” (not good).

“Why is it not good?”

“The air ne dobre, the food ne dobre, the houses ne dobre.”

Nothing was good.

“We came to America with red cheeks, like the cheeks of summer apples, and now look at us. We are going back looking like cucumbers in the autumn.”

Yes, their cheeks were pale and pinched and their skin wrinkled. How could it be otherwise? They had lived for years by the coke ovens of Pennsylvania, breathing sulphur with every breath; their eyes had rarely seen the full daylight and their cheeks had not often felt the warm sunlight. America “ne dobre.”

And yet something must have seemed good to them; for they wore American clothes. Long, trailing skirts, shirt-waists with abbreviated sleeves and belts with showy buckles. All of them had children, many children of varying sizes, and among the children not one said: “America ne dobre.”

The boys had penetrated into the mysteries of baseball vernacular, and one of them was the short-stop on his team.

When I inquired of him just what a short-stop is, he looked at me pityingly and said: “Say, are you a greenhorn?”

I am sure if I had told him that I was a college professor, he would have asked for my credentials.

Some of the girls, besides having gone to our public schools, belonged to clubs, wore pins and buttons and chewed gum most viciously. All were loath to go to the “Stary Kray.”

I surely was in my element, the human element; with babies to cuddle, to guess their ages and their weight; to watch the boisterous, half Americanized, mysterious youth and to ask questions and answer them among these strong, friendly men.

There was one woman who neither smiled at me nor answered my greeting; who held her half-clothed, puny baby close to her breast, giving him his evening meal. Other little ones, seemingly all of one age, huddled close to the mother, who looked like a great, frightened bird hovering over her young.

“Her man been killed in the mine,” the women said, and I found no more questions to ask her. I could only sympathize with her in her grief; for I knew it. I knew it because I had seen her or her kind, by the hundreds at a time, prone on the ground beside the yawning pit, claiming some unrecognizable form as that of husband or son; often of husband and son. I have heard the bitter wails and lamentations of a whole hillside. Out of each hut they came, the heart-broken cries of the living over the dead; and in that grief, the Slovak, the Polish or the Italian women were just like the American woman, who more silently, perhaps, grieved over her husband, the foreman of the mine. In the radiant morning he walked away from her and home; into the mine, his tomb.

The poor Slav woman had paid the price for her American hopes and had a right to say: “America ne dobre”; but she did not say it.

“Lift my boy!” a rather muscular, good-looking man said, in the English of New York’s East Side. He seemed a little jealous of the attention I had paid to these strange children.

“He’s the real stuff,” he continued. “A genuine Yankee boy. Born on the East Side.”

“My! But he’s heavy!”

“You bet he is!” the proud father exclaimed, after my only half successful effort to lift the youngster.

“He’s going to be a prize-fighter, like his daddy;” and before I realized it I was initiated into the technicalities of the prize-ring. My new friend proved to be an aspirant for strange honours, especially strange when sought by a Jew. His ambition was to be a champion.

“I was the foist one,” he said, “to start the fighting business among the Jews. There’s lots of ’em now.”

Why was he going over? His wife, a native of Hungary, had grown homesick for the Magyarland. She was dying of that most dreadful of all diseases, consumption; so her Ike and little Joe were going with her to Budapest.

“Say,” Ike confided, “I don’t know what that Old Country is like; but I’ll be hiking back to the good old Bowery in six weeks unless I’m mighty much mistaken.”

Little Joe, with all his weight, had nestled in my arms and grown quite affectionate. When we parted, he called me “Uncle,” and I was properly proud of being the uncle of a future champion prize-fighter of the world.

By the time the first bugle sounded for dinner I had tasted enough of the joys of this new fellowship; so I said good-night in four languages. Up to the deck and to my cabin door, I could hear little Joe calling after me in a voice like that of a lusty young rooster, “Good-night, uncle!”

Dinner in the first cabin was fashionably quiet; for it was our first evening meal together, and we were measuring and scanning one another after the manner of fashionable folk, trying to decide with whom it was safe to speak.

We reached the point of discussing the dinner and the merits of Italian cooking; we spoke of the weather and hoped it would remain so calm and beautiful all the way. Some of us even went so far as to ask our neighbour if this was the first trip over, which is a rather silly question to ask nowadays when every one has crossed the ocean a dozen times, except a few very extraordinary people.

After dinner, as we lounged on deck, a lady, whose face I could not see, sat down beside me and said: “You don’t approve ladies’ smoking, do you?” With that, she drew from her silver case a cigarette, and put it to her lips.

“I don’t myself,” she continued; “but I smoke because my whole nature is reacting against the Connecticut Puritanism in which I have been steeped. I don’t enjoy smoking, at least my nerves don’t; but my whole self takes pleasure in it because I have been told over and over again that I mustn’t; so now I do.

“I do everything, even drink cocktails, as you have seen. I do love to shock people.”

I told her that I had grown accustomed to shocks, that I had seen something of the world, was fairly well acquainted with the weakness of the flesh and the power of the devil; but that I really thought it strange that an American woman and a mother should smoke and drink. Her daughter, a girl of about sixteen, properly gowned and coldly indifferent, watched her mother and listened to our conversation until her maid came and bore her away, after she had bade her mother an unaffectionate good-night.

I suppose it was the cigarettes that made my neighbour communicative, perhaps it was simply because she wanted to talk, that she told me her story—a story more lamentable than I have ever heard in the steerage.

She was graduated from a college which prides itself more than most colleges, on being an intellectual centre. Immediately after entering society she married a man of her own set, wealthy, cultured and a university graduate. Now, after seventeen years of married life, she had obtained a divorce, because, as she said, they had “had enough of each other.” He had already married, and she was going to Europe to find a husband, a man with braid and gilt buttons; preferably some one connected with an embassy.

Several of her friends, she said, had married into that class and were “perfectly happy.”

“Foreigners are so polite,” she said. “Americans, especially American husbands, are boors. Think of nothing but business, know nothing of music or art, and are absorbed in football, the Board of Trade and fast horses.”

I knew that this woman was not a typical American woman, nor typical of a large class; but she was interesting as a type of many of her class who have grown weary of Democracy and the attendant Puritanisms of America, have crossed the seas and recrossed them, have gambled at Monte Carlo and flirted at Budapest and Vienna, have seen the shady side of Paris by early morning light and have become alienated from the best there is in America.

This particular woman had broken up her home, had left a fourteen-year-old son with his grandparents, and was about to throw herself away on pretty nearly anything that presented itself, if it sported brass buttons and trimmings, and had at least a Von to its name. She belongs to a species which I have often seen in the American quarters of European cities; but one so frank as she, I had never met.

I thought I had known something of American homes and American husbands; but evidently I have lived in the social backwoods, for what she told me was indeed a revelation.

In the course of the conversation we were joined by other husbandless women who were to live abroad, although not divorced nor yet seeking gold braid and brass buttons; by the gentleman from Boston who had confessed to being a church-member, and by a merchant from the West who was eager to make up a pool on the ship’s run—and before we knew it, we were back to my proposition about the steerage.

It was the merchant from the West who said that he noticed how much American clothing these immigrants carried back. That the men had celluloid collars, watches and brass-bound trunks. It was the man from Boston who said that they carried themselves so differently from those who came over, and it was he who began to calculate how much money they carried back, impoverishing our country and enriching theirs.

“One thing,” I ventured in reply, “you have not counted and cannot count. How much of that which is better than money they are carrying back. Ideals filtered into their minds, new aspirations dominating their lives, and all found in the humblest places in America.

“The steerage, as I have said before, and now say again with still more emphasis, carries into Europe more saving ideas than the cabin. What we bring we have borrowed from Europe and bring back in exaggerated forms. Neither Paris nor Berlin, nor Vienna nor Monte Carlo is being blessed by our coming or cares for us at all, but only for our dollars.”

No one contradicted me and I do not think I shall be contradicted.

“Neither Europe nor America is the better for our coming or our going,” I continued. “And you,” turning to the man from Boston, “you who say that the immigrants are to blame for our social and religious deterioration, ask yourself what you and your class bring back to America after a season spent on the frayed edges of the so-called social life of Europe, with which the average American comes in contact. As for the money the immigrants carry back, they have earned every cent of it, and I have no doubt that we in the cabin carry more money over to Europe than they do, and we will spend it there; and I am not so sure that we have earned it.

“Moreover,” waving aside the man from Boston who was about to interrupt me, but I was wound up and could not run down, “they have paid a terrible price for the money they carry home. Shall I tell you what that price is?” And I told the story of the Slavic widow and her orphaned brood. Then my good neighbour, the Puritan rebel, who had heartlessly talked of her deserted home, stretched out her hand and touching mine said: “Please don’t tell us any more. You have already made me think, and I don’t want to.”

Then came four bells from the bridge, and the lonely sailor watching from the crow’s nest called out: “All’s well on board!”

With a sigh my Puritan rebel rose, murmuring what I alone heard:

“Sailor, that isn’t so!” Then she said: “Good-night.”

After that there were more cigarettes and cocktails in the smoking-room; but one woman wasn’t there.