Читать книгу New Homes for Old - Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge - Страница 4

A RAILROAD CAMP FOR IMMIGRANT WORKERS IN A PROSPEROUS SUBURBAN COMMUNITY, 1920

AN IMMIGRANT RAILWAY WORKER LIVES IN THIS CAR WITH HIS WIFE, SIX CHILDREN, AND THREE DOGS

It is like the occasional successful woman who is indifferent to the general disadvantages of her sex, and to the negro who makes for himself a brilliant place and argues that color is no handicap. In talking to women about bringing up their children, it was a significant fact that some of the women who had had no trouble with their own children said that where there is trouble it is the fault of the parents. The following comment, for example, was on the schedule of Mrs. D., a Polish woman who has been in this country since 1894, and has three children, aged twenty-five, twelve, and six. "If a child is not good, Mrs. D. blames his mother, who does not know how to take care of children. She thinks they are too ignorant."

There is also the sense of racial, national, or class superiorities. The virtue of the Anglo-Saxon civilization is assumed; the old, as against the new immigration, is valued. There are many who crave the satisfaction of "looking down" on some one, and it makes life simpler if whole groups—"Dagoes," "Hunkies," "Polacks," what you will—can be regarded as of a different race or group, so that neither one's heartstrings nor one's conscience need be affected by their needs. The difficulty is increased by a similar tendency of immigrants to assume the superiority of their people and culture and so hold aloof from the new life. This assumption of superiority on both sides tends to hinder rather than to further mutual understanding.

Clearly, if we are to build up a united and wholesome national life, such attitudes of aloofness as have persisted will have to be abandoned. If that life is to be enriched and varied—not monotonous and mechanical—the lowly and the simple, as well as the great and the mighty, must be able to make their contribution. This contribution can become possible, not as the result of any compulsory scheme, but of conditions favoring noble, generous, and sympathetic living. The family is an institution based on the affection of the parents and their self-sacrifice for the life and future of their children. Of all institutions it exemplifies the power of co-operative effort, and demands sympathetic and patient understanding. This is perhaps especially true of the foreign-born family.

This discussion of the family problems of the foreign-born groups in relation to the development of a national consciousness and a national unity is based on the belief that no attempts at compulsory adjustment can in the nature of things be successful. Sometimes the interests of the common good and of the weaker groups demand for their own protection the temporary exercise of compulsion, but the real solution lies in policies grounded in social justice and guided by social intelligence.

HOMES STUDIED

The material in this study is of a qualitative sort. No attempt has been made to organize a statistical study. The problems of family life do not lend themselves to the statistical method except at great cost of time and money.

A large body of data with reference to conditions existing during the decade just prior to the Great War, exists in the reports of several special government investigations, especially the report of the United States Immigration Commission, that of the United States Bureau of Labor relating to conditions surrounding women and child wage earners, and that of the British Board of Trade on the "Cost of Living in American Towns." The regular publications of certain government bureaus, especially the United States Children's Bureau, the Bureau of Home Economics in the United States Department of Agriculture, and the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, were found useful. These publications have been studied so far as they discuss the problem of family life. Their contents are presented only in illustration or in confirmation of statements made.

The material collected is of two kinds. First, there are facts dealing with the different agencies organized to help in solving these problems. This information was gathered largely by correspondence. Questionnaires were sent to case-work agencies dealing with family problems, which are members of the American Association for Social Work with Families and Home Service Bureaus of various Red Cross Chapters, asking their methods for attacking these difficulties and their advice as to the best methods worked out. The supervisors of Home Economics under the Federal Board for Vocational Education were asked to what extent they had included foreign-born housewives in their program and the special plans that had been worked out for them; the International Institutes of the Young Women's Christian Association were asked to describe their work with married women.

The methods of certain agencies in Chicago—the United Charities, the Immigrants' Protective League, some of the settlements—were studied more carefully through interviews with their workers and through a study of individual records. Officers of the national racial organizations were interviewed about their work on family problems. In addition to these a limited number of co-operative stores in Illinois were studied. Mining communities in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia were visited, as well as certain of the newer housing projects, such as Yorkship Village in New Jersey, Hilton Village in Virginia, Bridgeport, Connecticut, Lowell and North Billerica, Massachusetts and several towns in New Mexico.

The government investigations already referred to had made certain needs of the foreign born very clear. It seemed unnecessary to go over that ground again, but it was necessary to know whether those needs still existed. An attempt was made to learn this through interviews with leaders of various national groups and by obtaining schedules from a limited number of selected families. A word should be said as to the information obtained from these sources. The leaders selected were, in the first instance, men and women whose leadership in their own group had been recognized by election to important offices in their national organizations. These men and women then frequently suggested others whose position was not so well defined to an outsider, but whose opinion was valued by members of the group.

Most of the persons interviewed were able to speak English readily. They were people who were close enough to the great mass of immigrants to be familiar with their problems, their needs, their shortcomings, and their abilities, and at the same time were sufficiently removed from the problems to be able to view them objectively. Some were persons of more educational and cultural background than the majority of immigrants, some of them had been born in this country or had come when they were young children; but there were more who came to this country from the same Old-World conditions as the majority of their countrymen and had worked their way through the same hard conditions. They were probably exceptional in their native ability.

No attempt was made to fill out a questionnaire from these interviews. An outline was prepared of points to be covered, but frequently no attempt was made to adhere to the outline. Rather, these persons were encouraged to talk on the family problems in which they were most interested, and to which they had given most thought—to enable us to see them as they saw them with their knowledge of the Old-World background from which their people had come. They were also asked to suggest possible ways of meeting the more pressing needs of their people.

Adequate expression can never be given to the obligation under which those busy men and women who gave so generously and graciously their time and their thoughts have placed us. Our very great indebtedness to them is acknowledged, as without their aid this study in the present form would have been impossible. The demand made upon them could be justified only by the hope that the contacts thus established may prove in some slight degree profitable to them if only in giving them assurance that there are those to whom their problems are of real interest.

The women from whom family schedules were obtained were slightly different, and the information sought from them was obtained in a different way. They were for the most part women who did not speak English well enough to carry on an extended conversation in it. While they were not very recent immigrants and hence were not going through the first difficulties of adjustment, most of them were women who had not yet worked their way through to the same place reached by the women with whom the more general interviews were had. They were, in general, very simple people, too absorbed with working out their problems to have had much time for reflection. We asked them to tell us of their early experiences and difficulties as they recalled them, and of their present ways of treating some of the problems. This information was taken in schedule form.

Not enough schedules were obtained to be of statistical value—there were only ninety in all—but the families chosen are believed to be more or less typical. They were selected with the advice of leaders of their group or were known to our foreign-speaking investigators, who had a wide acquaintance in several groups. That is, we have tried so far as possible to see the problem with the persons, if not through the eyes of the persons whose fellow countrymen we wished to know.

We do not mean to suggest that other and very important groups might not have been studied, but we tried to learn of others; and sometimes because we could not find the clew, sometimes for lack of time, it proved impossible to go farther. We feel that we have obtained an insight into the situation among the Polish in Chicago and in Rolling Prairie, Indiana; the Lithuanians, Bohemians, Slovaks, Croatians, Slovenians, nonfamily Mexicans, Russians—both family and nonfamily—and Italians in Chicago; Italians in Herrin and Freeman, Illinois, and Canonsburg and Washington, Pennsylvania; and the Ukrainians in Chicago and in Sun, West Virginia.

Besides the large body of evidence with reference to these groups, we have suggestions from many interested and kindly persons of other groups. The Magyars and the Rumanians, particularly, we should have liked to know better, and we have had most suggestive interviews with certain of their leaders. We were not able, however, to follow the leads they gave, and therefore do not claim to speak for them, except to express the feeling of the need for greater understanding and appreciation.

With reference to those groups discussed, it should be noted that some, such as the Polish, Bohemian, Lithuanian, Italian, are among the largest of the great foreign colonies in Chicago, the growth of a long-continued immigration. They live in the different sections of the city, in crowded tenement districts, or in more recently developed neighborhoods for whose growth they are responsible. The Croatian and Ukrainian groups are newer groups, and are therefore poorer. The Croatians are moving into houses which the Bohemians are vacating. In the Russian and Mexican groups we have the current evidence that the old problem of the nonfamily man is still with us.

The Poles in Rolling Prairie, Indiana, are a prosperous farming community living in modern farmhouses with yards and orchards. There are women still alive who can tell of the earlier days, when just after their arrival they lived in one-room houses made of logs and plastered with mud. Then they helped their husbands to fell trees and clear the land. Like other pioneer women, these women have contributed to the "winning of the West." The grandmothers tell of these things. The mothers remember when, during the winter, the children went to school for a few months, they were laughed at because of their meager lunches, their queer homemade clothes, and their foreign speech. The young people now go to school at least as long as the law requires and sometimes through high school.

The mining towns in Illinois and Pennsylvania need not be described. Their general features are familiar. Although extended information with reference to the life of the various groups was not obtained, mention will be made of certain facts that are of importance to this study.

While the numbers are not great, it is hoped that certain methods may be worked out for approach to the problems of the groups studied, that will prove suggestive in attacking the problems of other groups not included here. No two groups are alike; but the experience with one or with several may develop the open-minded, humble, objective attitude of mind and that democratic habit of approach that will unlock the doorway into the life of the others and exhibit both the points at which community action may be desirable and the direction such action should take.

DISSOLVING BARRIERS

The purpose of this book is to help in the adjustment of immigrant family life in this country. The immigrant will feel America to be his own land largely to the extent that he feels his American home to be as much his home as was his native hearth. To define what makes a home is harder even than to achieve one. Perhaps more than any other human institution the home is a development, the result and component of innumerable adjustments. This growth comes about largely spontaneously, without conscious effort on the part of its members, except that of living together as happily as possible.

There is among most housewives, whether native or foreign born, a certain complacency about housekeeping and bringing up children. Housekeeping is supposed to come by nature, and few women of any station in life are trained to be homemakers and mothers. The native born, in part consciously through their own choice and in part blindly moved by forces they do not understand, have been gradually moving away from the old tradition of subordination on the part of the wife and of strict and unquestioning obedience of children. In the general American atmosphere there are suggestions of a different tradition.

In the old country the mother knew what standards she was to maintain and, moreover, had the backing of a homogeneous group to help her. In this country she is a stranger, neither certain of herself nor sure whether to try to maintain the standards of her home or those that seem to prevail here. As a matter of fact, these difficulties are usually surmounted, so that by the time the foreign-born housewife has lived here long enough to raise her family she has learned to care for her home as systematically and intelligently as most of her native-born neighbors, who have not had her difficulties. Sometimes they have learned from the members of the group who have been here longer; and sometimes they have learned by going into the more comfortable American homes as domestic servants.

In the American domestic evolution a scientific and deliberate factor has been introduced. Students of family life have conducted inquiries into domestic practices, needs, and resources, and applied the researches of physiologists, chemists, economists, and architects. The result has been the discovery of certain standards and requirements for wholesome family life. It must be admitted that the attempt at formulation of standards for family life encounters difficulties not found in the field of education or of health, where the presence and service of the expert are fairly widely recognized. For many reasons the subject of the minima of sound family life has been more recently attacked and is, in the nature of things, more difficult of analysis and especially of formal study. The impossibility, for example, of applying to many aspects of the family problem the laboratory methods of study or of examining many of the questions in a dispassionate and objective manner, must retard the scientific treatment of the subject.

There are, however, some aspects of family life with reference to which there may be said to be fairly general agreement in theory if not in practice in the United States. The content of an adequate food allowance is generally agreed upon by the students of nutrition, and the cost and special features of an adequate diet for any group at any time and place can therefore be described and discussed. In the matter of laying the responsibility for support of the family on the husband and father, at least to the extent of enabling the children to enjoy seven years of school life and fourteen years free from wage-paid work and the resulting exploitation, there is wide agreement embodied in legislation.

Such standards are becoming gradually adopted and incorporated into domestic life through the slow processes of suggestion, imitation, and neighborly talks already mentioned. While the slow establishment of social standards is required for a complete and adequate adjustment of family life on the basis of specialists' discoveries, many systematic and formal efforts can be made which will forward and accelerate the process. These efforts can help to remove the feeling of strangeness, perhaps the greatest obstacle in adjusting home life; they should seek to connect with the appreciations and sense of need already felt by the women who are to be influenced.

There is necessity for thorough inquiry into what are the points of contact in these problems for immigrant women; what are their present customs and standards in which the specialists' knowledge can be planted with the prospect of a promising combination of seed and soil. This study indicates how great is the need of search for the possibilities of just such organic connections. Pending such further studies, this report can do two things:

First, it can exhibit, so far as possible, the difficulties encountered by foreign-born families in attaining in their family relationships such satisfaction as would constitute a genuine feeling of hominess, and make the immigrant home an integral part of the domestic development in this country.

Second, the report can suggest the deliberate and systematic methods which can be effective in introducing the immigrant family and specialists' standards to each other. The services of social agencies have been largely in this field, and it is hoped that they may find in this book lines for increased usefulness. Incidentally, evidence will be presented to show that, in allowing many of these difficulties to develop or to remain, the community suffers real loss, and it is hoped that in the following chapters suggestion will be found of ways by which some of these difficulties may be overcome and some of the waste resulting from their continued existence be eliminated.