Читать книгу With Poor Immigrants in America - Stephen Graham - Страница 5

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At Easter 1912 I was with seven thousand Russian peasants at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. On Easter Day 1913 I arrived with Russian emigrants at New York, and so accomplished in two consecutive years two very different kinds of pilgrimage, following up two very significant life-movements in the history of the world of to-day. One of these belongs to the old life of Europe, showing the Middle Ages as it still survives under the conservative regime of the Tsars; the other is fraught with all the possibilities of the future in the making of the New America.

It was in March that I decided to follow up the movements of the people out of the depths of Europe into America, and with that purpose sought out I—— K——, a well-known immigration agent in the East End of London. He transhipped Russians coming via Libau and London, and could tell me just when he expected the next large detachment of them.

"Have you a letter of introduction?" asked the agent.

"I shouldn't have thought any was necessary," I answered. "A Russian friend advised me to go to you. You don't stand to lose anything by telling me what I want to know."

He would do nothing for me without an introduction, without knowing exactly with whom he had to deal. I might be a political spy. The hand of the Tsar was long, and could ruin men's lives even in America. At least so he thought.

I mentioned the name of a revolutionary anarchist, a militant suffragette. He said a letter from her would suffice. I went to Hampstead and explained my predicament to the lady. She wrote me a note to a mysterious revolutionary who was living above Israel's shop, and this missive, when presented, was promptly taken as a full credential. The mysterious revolutionary was on the point of death, and could not see me, but Israel read the letter, and at once agreed that he was ready to be of any service to me he could. There was a large party of Russians coming soon, not Russian Jews, but real Russian peasants, and he would let me know as soon as he could just when they might be expected. I returned to my ordinary avocations, and every now and then rang up "I. K." on the telephone, and asked, "Had the Russians come?" "When were they coming?" At last the intelligence came, "They are just arriving. Hurry down to Hayes wharf at once."

The news took me in the midst of other things, but I dropped all and rushed to London Bridge. There, at Tooley Street, I witnessed one of the happenings you'd never think was going on in London.

A long procession of Russian peasants was just filing out from the miserable steamship Perm. They were in black, white, and brown sheepskins and in astrakhan hats, some in blue blouses and peak-hats, some in brightly embroidered linen shirts; none wore collars, but some had new shiny bowlers, on which the litter and dust of the port was continually falling—bowlers which they had evidently purchased from German hawkers who had come on board at some point in the journey. The women wore sheepskins also, many of them, and their heads were covered with shawls; they had their babies sewn up in little red quilts. Beside them there were pretty town girls and Jewesses dressed in cottons and serges and cheap hats. There were few old people and many young ones, and they carried under their arms clumsy, red-painted wooden boxes and baskets from which kettles and saucepans dangled. On their backs they had sacks, and in their hands several of them had crusts of bread picked up in their hurry as they were hustled from their berths and through the mess-room. Some of the sacks on their backs, as I afterward saw, contained nothing but crusts of white and black bread, on which, perhaps, they trusted to live during the first weeks in America!

They were all rather bewildered for the moment, and a trifle anxious about the Customs officers.

"What is this town?" they asked.

"For what are the Customs men looking?"

"Where is our agent—the man they said would be here?"

I entered into conversation with them, and over and over again answered the question, "What is this town?" I told them it was London.

"Is it a beautiful town?" they asked.

"Is it a large town?"

"Do we have to go in a train?"

"How far is it?"

"Look at my ticket; what does it say?"

They made a miscellaneous crowd on the quay-side, and I talked to them freely, answered their questions, and in turn put questions of my own. They came from all parts of Russia, even from remote parts, and were going to just as diverse places in America: to villages in Minnesota, in Michigan, in Iowa; to Brooklyn, to Boston, to Chicago. I realised the meaning of the phrase, "the magic word Chicago." I told them how many people there were in London, how much dock labourers get a week, pointed out the Tower Bridge, and calmed them about the non-appearance of their agent. I knew him, and if he didn't turn up I would lead them to him. They might be calm; he knew Russian, he would arrange all for them.

At last a representative of my East End friend appeared—David the Jew. He was known to all the dockers as David, but he had a gilt I. K. on the collar of his coat, wore a collar, had his hair brushed, and was a person of tremendous importance to the eager and humble emigrants. Not a Jew, no! No Jew has authority in Russia. No Jew looked like David, and so the patient Christians thought him an important official when he rated them, and shouted to them, and cursed them like a herdsman driving home a contrary lot of cows and sheep and pigs.

Another Jew appeared, in a green hat and fancy waistcoat, and he produced a sheaf of papers having the names, ages, and destinations of the emigrants all tabulated. He began a roll-call in one of the empty warehouses of the dock. Each peasant as his name was called was ticked off, and was allowed to gather up his belongings and bolt through the warehouse as if to catch a train. I ran to the other side and found a series of vans and brakes, such as take the East-enders to Happy Hampstead on a Bank Holiday. Into these the emigrants were guided, and they took their seats with great satisfaction. They clambered in from all sides, showing a preference for getting up by the wheels, and nearly pulling away the sides of the frail vehicles.

The vanmen jested after their knowledge of jests, and put their arms round the pretty girls' waists. David rushed to and fro, fretting and scolding. Loafers and clerks collected to look at the girls.

"Why does that old man look at us so? he ought to be ashamed of himself," said a pretty Moscow girl to me. "He is dressed like twenty or twenty-five, but he is quite old. How quizzically he looks at us."

"He is forty," said I.

"Sixty!"

"That's a pretty one," said a young man whose firm imported Koslof eggs.

"What does he say?"

"He says that you are pretty."

"Tell him I thank him for the compliment; but he is not interesting—he has not a moustache."

All the vans filled, and there was a noise and a smell of Russia in the grim and dreary dockyard, and such a chatter of young men and women, all very excited. At last David got them all in order. I stepped up myself, and one by one we went off through the East End of the city.

We went to St. Pancras station. On the way one of the peasants stepped down from his brake and, entering a Jewish hat-shop, bought himself a soft green felt and put his astrakhan hat away in his sack. He was the subject of some mirth, and also of some envy in the crowd that sat down to coffee and bread and butter at the Great Midland terminus. Under the terms of their tickets the emigrants were fed all the way from Libau to New York without extra charge.

They were all going from Liverpool, some by the Allan Line, some by the White Star, and others by the Cunard. As by far the greatest number were going on the Cunard boat, I went to I. K. and booked a passage on that line. There was much to arrange and write, my sack to pack, and many good-byes to utter—all in the briefest space of time.

At midnight I returned to the station and took my seat in the last train for Liverpool. Till the moment before departure I had a compartment to myself; but away down at the back of the train were coach after coach of Russians, all stretched on their sheepskins on the narrow seats and on the floor, with their children in the string cradles of the parcel-racks. They were crowded with bundles and baskets and kettles and saucepans, and yet they had disposed themselves to sleep. As I walked along the corridor I heard the chorus of heavy breathing and snoring. In one of the end carriages a woman was on her knees praying—prostrating and crossing herself. As we moved out of St. Pancras I felt as I did when upon the pilgrim boat going to Jerusalem, and I said to myself with a thrill, "We have mysterious passengers on board." The sleeping Russians gave an atmosphere to the English train. It was like the peculiar feeling that comes to the other people in a house when news is given downstairs that a new baby has arrived.

A man stepped into my compartment just as the train was moving—a jovial Briton who asked me to have a cigar, and said, when I refused, that he was glad, for he really wanted to give it to the guard. He wanted the guard to stop the express for him at Wellingborough, and reckoned that the cigar would put him on friendly terms. He inquired whether I was a Mason, and when I said I was not, proceeded to reveal Masonic secrets, unbuttoning his waistcoat to show me a little golden sphere which opened to make a cross.

At St. Albans he gave the guard the cigar, and the charm worked, for he was enabled to alight at Wellingborough. And I was left alone with my dreams.

In a thunderstorm, with a high gale and showers of blinding hail and snow, with occasional flashing forth of amazing sunshine, to be followed by deepest gloom of threatening cloud, we collected on the quay at Liverpool—English, Russians, Jews, Germans, Swedes, Finns—all staring at one another curiously, and trying to understand languages we had never heard before. Three hundred yards out in the harbour stood the red-funnelled Cunarder which was to bear us to America; and we waited impatiently for the boat which should take us alongside. We carried baskets and portmanteaus in our strained hands; most of us were wearing heavy cloaks, and some had sacks upon their backs, so we were all very ready to rush aboard the ferry-boat and dump our burdens on its damp decks. What a stampede there was—people pushing into portmanteaus, baskets pushing into people! At last we had all crossed the little gangway, and all that remained on shore were the few relatives and friends who had come to see the English off. This pathetic little crowd sang ragtime songs, waved their hats and handkerchiefs, and shouted. There was a bandying of farewells:

"Ta-ta, ta-ta-ta!"

"Wish you luck!"

"Ta-ta-a, ole Lloyd George! No more stamp-licking!"

"Good luck, old boy!"

"The last of old England!"

The foreign people looked on and smiled non-comprehendingly; the English and Americans huzzaed and grinned. Then away we went over the water, and thoughts of England passed rapidly away in the interest of coming nearer to civilisation's toy, the great liner. We felt the romance of ocean travel, and also the tremulous fear which the ocean inspires. Then as we lay in the lee of the vast, steep, blood- and soot-coloured liner, each one of us thought of the Titanic and the third-class passengers who went down beneath her into the abyss.

The vastness of the liner made our ferry-boat look like a matchbox. A door opened in the great red wall and a little gangway came out of it like a tongue coming out of a mouth. We all picked up our bags and baggage and pushed and squirmed along this narrow footway that led into the mouth of the steamer and away down into its vast, cavernous, hungry stomach: English, Russians, Jews, Germans, Poles, Swedes, Finns, Flemings, Spaniards, Italians, Canadians, passed along and disappeared—among them all, I myself.

There were fifteen hundred of us; each man and woman, still carrying handbags and baskets, filed past a doctor and two assistants, and was cursorily examined for diseases of the eye or skin.

"Hats and gloves off!" was our first greeting on the liner. We marched slowly up to the medical trio, and each one as he passed had his eyelid seized by the doctor and turned inside out with a little instrument. It was a strange liberty to take with one's person; but doctors are getting their own way nowadays, and they were looking for trachoma. For the rest the passing of hands through our hair and examination of our skin for signs of scabies was not so rough, and the cleaner-looking people were not molested.

Still carrying our things we took our medical-inspection cards and had them stamped by a young man on duty for that purpose. Then we were shown our berths.

There was a spring bed for each person, a towel, a bar of soap, and a life-preserver. The berths were arranged, two, four, and six in a cabin. Married couples could have a room to themselves, but for the rest men and women were kept in different sets of cabins. British were put together, Scandinavians together, Russians and Jews together. It was so arranged that the people in the cabins understood one another's language. Notices on the walls warned that all emigrants would be vaccinated on deck, whether they had been vaccinated before or not; that all couples making love too warmly would be married compulsorily at New York if the authorities deemed it fit, or should be fined or imprisoned; that in case of fire or smoke being seen anywhere we were to report to chief steward, but not to our fellow-passengers; that smoking was not allowed except on the upper deck, and so on. The cabins were a glittering, shining white; they were small and box-like; they possessed wash-basins and water for the first day of the voyage, but not to be replenished on succeeding days. There were general lavatories where you might wash in hot or cold water, and there were bathrooms which were locked and never used. Each cabin had a little mirror. The cabins were steam-heated, and when the passengers were dirty the air was foul. Fresh air was to be found on the fore and after decks, except in time of storm, when we were barred down. In time of storm the smell below was necessarily worse—atrocious, for most of the people were very sick. We had, however, a great quantity of dark space to ourselves, and could prowl into the most lonesome parts of the vessel. The dark recesses were always occupied by spooning couples who looked as if they had embarked on this journey only to make love to one another. There were parts of the ship wholly given over to dancing, other parts to horse-play and feats of strength. There was an immense dining-room with ante-chambers and there, to the sound of the jangling dinner-bell echoing and wandering far or near over the ship, we assembled to meals.

RUSSIAN WOMEN ON BOARD.

The peasant woman. The intellectual and revolutionary type.

The emigrants flocked into the mess-room from the four doors to twenty immense tables spread with knives and forks and toppling platters of bread. Nearly all the men came in in their hats—in black glistening ringlety sheepskin hats, in fur caps, in bowlers, in sombreros, in felt hats with high crowns, in Austrian cloth hats, in caps so green that the wearer could only be Irish. Most of the young men were curious to see what girls there were on board, and looked eagerly to the daintily clad Swedish women, blonde and auburn-haired beauties in tight-fitting, speckless jerseys. The British girls came in in their poor cotton dresses, or old silk ones, things that had once looked grand for Sunday wear but now bore miserable crippled hooks and eyes, threadbare seams, gaping fastenings—cheerful daughters of John Bull trapesing along in the shabbiest of floppy old boots. Then there were the dark and somewhat forward Jewesses, talking animatedly with little Jew men in queer-shaped trousers and skimpy coats; there were slatternly looking Italian women with their children, intent on being at home in whatever circumstances. There was a party of shapely and attractive Austrian girls that attracted attention from the others and a regular scramble to try to sit next to them or near them. No one ever saw a greater miscellaneity and promiscuity of peoples brought together by accident. I sat between a sheepskin-wrapped peasant wife from the depths of Russia and a neat Danish engineer, who looked no different from British or American. Opposite me were two cowboys going back to the Far West, a dandified Spanish Jew sat next them on one hand and two Norwegians in voluminous knitted jackets on the other. At the next table was a row of boisterous Flemings, with huge caps and gaudy scarfs. There were Americans, spruce and smart and polite; there were Italians, swarthy and dirty, having their black felt hats on their heads all through the meal and resting their elbows on the table as if they'd just come into a public-house in their native land. There were gentle youths in shirts which womenfolk had embroidered in Little Russia; there were black-bearded Jewish patriarchs in their gaberdines, tall and gaunt.