Читать книгу Some Immigrant Neighbors - John Robertson Henry - Страница 5
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WHO ARE THEY?
“Dago,” and “Sheeney,” and “Chink,”
“Greaser,” and “Nigger,” and “Jap.”
The Devil invented these terms, I think,
To hurl at each hopeful chap
Who comes so far over the foam
To this land of his heart’s desire
To rear his brood, to build his home,
And to kindle his hearthstone fire.
While the eyes with joy are blurred,
Lo! we make the strong man sink,
And stab the soul, with the hateful word,
“Dago,” and “Sheeney,” and “Chink.”
—Bishop McIntyre.
I
WHO ARE THEY?
Since we are going to study about “Some Immigrant Neighbors,” it is well to know just what we mean by the words “Immigrant” and “Neighbor.”
Immigrant. The word Immigrant is confusing because it looks and sounds so much like the word “Emigrant,” but they are quite different. An Immigrant is one who comes into a country, generally with the intention of settling there. An Emigrant is one that goes out of a country, with the intention of settling in some other land.
The people we are to study are the Immigrants who have come, and are coming, into America.
Neighbor. Every one knows the meaning of the word neighbor. A neighbor is one who lives near another, across the street, or next door, or maybe in our own village or town. If you live in a large city it is not so easy to feel that the people who live near you are your neighbors. It was much easier years ago, when all that are now cities were only towns and villages, and many cities now well known were simply prairie with waving grass and flowers, roamed over by bands of Indians and trampled by the hoofs of countless bison.
The word neighbor has a larger meaning than merely one who lives near another. There is a wonderful description of a neighbor, given by One who is the World’s Good Neighbor. He tells of the traveler who found a stranger lying by the roadside, wounded and helpless. At personal inconvenience and expense the traveler cared for the half dead man, and continued his aid until the stranger was again able to care for himself.
We shall have gained a great deal from the study of this book, if we learn not only to look on these immigrants as neighbors, those who live near us, but if we seriously ask ourselves how we may be Good Neighbors to the strangers from across the sea.
The Neighbors to be Studied. We are not going to talk about all of the thirty-nine races of immigrants that are separately listed by our government, but only about four of them. Some one says, “I hope you will tell about the ones I like.” Well, we hope before we are through you will like the ones we shall tell about, and we are sure you will, for you will be better acquainted, and it is wonderful how much more likable the immigrant is when you know him.
Numbers. Although we are to study only Chinese, Jews, Russians and Italians, 333,694 of these four classes of immigrants landed in America in 1911; 920,299, almost a million, landed in the three years last past, and that is a large falling off as compared with some previous periods. In 1911 the Jews and Italians numbered thirty-five out of every hundred that came. You see that while we discuss but four classes, two of these are more than one-fourth of all that come.
These numbers may suggest very little to us, but how they would have startled the fathers of our country. The warlike Miles Standish, or, in later years, the peppery Peter Stuyvesant, would have declared no such numbers could be brought across the sea in a year. The only ships our fathers knew were small wooden sailing vessels like our coasting schooners; the giant, floating hotels that we call steamships, that carry a big village every trip, were not dreamed of in those days. The sailing vessel took weeks and months to make the voyage; now we can reckon, almost to the hour, the time of the arrival of a great liner.
A Jewish Immigrant
A Little Maid of Italy
It might be well if these numbers did startle us more and if we better realized how great is this invading army of strangers, friendly as it may be.
Dislike of Foreigners. Many people do not like the immigrants simply because they are foreigners. This prejudice is as old as the world, and its origin is a most interesting study. Perhaps some high school boy or girl can give a reason for this early dislike.
“The reasons for disliking the foreigner in early times were that no one traveled much and there were no newspapers, consequently neighboring tribes, or nations, did not get to know each other. Nearby tribes were suspicious of each other and were much at war, continually robbing and killing. Every stranger was a possible enemy.”
Yes, that is a good answer. Now, give a reason for present dislike of the immigrant.
“I have a reason,” one boy says. “My father lost his job because an ‘Eyetalian’ offered to work for less.”
Yes, I am sorry to say that is a very real cause of dislike. That is also war, although it is now called by a different name. To take a man’s position, by which he earns his bread, or to steal a man’s cattle, from which he and his family were fed, amounts to about the same in the end. Give some other reasons for disliking immigrants.
“They talk such funny English.” “They don’t dress like us.” “They don’t eat like us.” “They can’t play ball.”
Yes, undoubtedly all these are reasons for feeling that foreigners differ from Americans, but are they good reasons for disliking the foreigner?
I saw a “grown-up” show this hostile feeling one day as I was passing along a crowded street on the East Side of New York. An American youth of about eighteen years of age snatched some fruit from the push cart of a young Italian of the same age. The Italian grappled with the young thief and was giving him a sound thrashing when a policeman, leisurely swinging his club, turned the corner. With one glance he took in the scene of the Italian-American war. Raising his club and shouting, “You Dago,” he charged full at the Italian. The young fellow saw him coming and took off down the street as hard as he could run, dodging as he went the flying club the policeman had hurled. When the tempest had calmed I stepped up to the officer and said, “Officer, what did the Italian do?” “Do?” said he with supreme disgust, “he was a Dago.” Evidently the sole crime of the Italian consisted in being a “Dago,” a foreigner.
To some people all Italians are either Dagos, or Guineas, all Jews are Sheenies, all Chinese are Chinks and all Russians are Owskies. They are foreigners, and that is enough. Such people forget that while the language of the immigrant sounds “funny” to us, ours sounds just as strange to him. While we laugh at the pig tail and queer shoes and strange clothes of the Chinese, they follow the American in crowds through Chinese cities and make fun of his absurd dress, and call him names that are not wholly complimentary, all because he is a stranger to them.
Our Debt to the Foreigner. It will help us to cultivate the spirit of a Good Neighbor if we remember that we are hopelessly in debt to all these foreigners.
Our Debt to the Chinese. The Chinese invented the mariner’s compass that enables the sailor to strike boldly out into the deep, sure of not losing his way across the trackless ocean when stars and sun are gone. He is likewise an example to all the world in his reverence and care for old age, for father and mother. A traveler recently returned from China says he has never seen old faces more calm and kindly than those he met among elderly Chinese farmers. They seemed to think of nothing but the welfare of others. The rights of the parent are such that any father or mother with sons or grandsons living is assured in old age of the best care the children can provide. Though the son may be fifty years of age and have a family of his own he will yet give his own salary into the hands of his father week by week. The father need not worry about the future as do many fathers of large families in our own land, hence the calm eyes and care-free faces among old Chinese farmers. The Chinese teach that it is an honor and a duty for the young to toil for those who are old.
“Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,” is an old command and promise. The Chinese Empire is hoary with age. Can one reason for its long life be its obedience to this command?
Our Debt to the Italians. An Italian, Columbus, discovered the New World. Who, then, has a better right to inhabit it than his own countrymen? An Italian captain, Verrazano, was the first man to push the prow of his ship into the harbor of what is now the greatest city of the new world. Roman law rules the world and her treasures of art and literature have enriched every nation on earth. What school boy would like to be without the story of Julius Caesar, or not to have heard of the cackling of the geese high up in the Capitol the night the city was in danger, and how that cackling awoke the citizens and saved Rome?
Our Debt to the Russians. As to the Russian, it is an ungrateful American who forgets the service rendered this country in that saddest war of history, when brothers of the North and South rose in arms against each other. France had determined to found an empire in Mexico. She knew that this could be done only after the American Union had been destroyed. Russia refused to join with France and England in the course that might have made possible this division of our country. In the darkest days of our struggle the Russian fleet appeared at American ports as a pledge of her friendship and a protest against the attitude of these European powers.
Our Debt to the Jew. If we said nothing more than that through the Jew has come the Bible, that gift would place all of us forever in his debt. No other sacred book tells us so clearly of God; no other book shows us so truly how we may obey Him and be useful, strong, and holy. In no other place are we told the secret of that
“City builded by no hand,
And unapproachable by sea or shore,
And unassailable by any band
Of storming soldiery forever more.”
It is true some of the Jewish people did oppose Christianity, but other Jews were the founders of the Christian church.
Through the Jewish nation came our Lord. Upon the streets of Jewish cities “walked those blessed feet that nineteen hundred years ago were nailed, for our advantage, to the bitter cross.”
Kind neighborliness to these strangers is one way of repaying our debt.
