Aliens or Americans? Part 19

[Sidenote: A Foreign Importation]

The cheap tailor business is divided among the Italians, Russians, Poles, and Swedes, Germans and Bohemians. The women and children are made to work, and hours are not carefully counted. Long work, poor food, poor light, foul air, bad sanitation--all make this kind of life far worse than any life which the immigrants knew in Europe. Better physical starvation there than the mental and spiritual blight of these modern conditions here. That so much of hopeful humanity is found in these unwholesome and congested wards proves the quality worth saving and elevating.

[Sidenote: Story of a Sweat-shop Girl]

Here is an ill.u.s.tration of the resolute spirit which conditions cannot crush. A young Polish girl was brought by her widowed mother to America, in hope of bettering their condition. The mother died soon afterward, leaving the orphan dependent. Then came the disappointments, one after another, and finally, the almost inevitable result in such cases, the fall into the slums and the sweat-shops. By hard work six days in the week, fourteen or more hours a day, this girl of tender age could make $4 a week! She had to get up at half past five every morning and make herself a cup of coffee, which with a bit of bread and sometimes fruit made her breakfast. Listen to her story:

[Sidenote: Her Own Story]

"The machines go like mad all day, because the faster you work the more money you get. Sometimes in my haste the finger gets caught and the needle goes right through it. We all have accidents like that. Sometimes a finger has to come off.... For the last two winters I have been going to night school. I have learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. I can read quite well in English now, and I look at the newspapers every day.

I am going back to night school again this winter. Some of the women in my cla.s.s are more than forty years of age. Like me, they did not have a chance to learn anything in the old country. It is good to have an education; it makes you feel higher. Ignorant people are all low. People say now that I am clever and fine in conversation. There is a little expense for charity, too. If any worker is injured or sick we all give money to help."[74]

[Sidenote: Possibilities]

Surely this is good material. A changed and Christian environment would make shining lights out of these poor immigrants, who are kept in the subways of American life, instead of being given a fair chance out in the open air and sunlight of decently paid service.

[Sidenote: A Foreign System]

Practically all of the work in tenements is carried on by foreign-born men and women, and more than that, by the latest arrivals and the lowest conditioned of the foreign-born. Tenement-house legislation has been practically forced upon New York, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Pennsylvania, whose ports of entry receive the first impact of immigration, by two of the races that have been crowding into the cities--the Italian and Hebrew.

The Italian woman, working in her close tenement, has by her cheap labor almost driven out all other nationalities from that cla.s.s of work still done in the home, the hand sewing on coats and trousers. Of the 20,000 licenses granted by the New York factory inspector for "home finishing"

in New York City, ninety-five per cent. are held by Italians. This work has to be done because the husband is not making enough to support the family. These men work mostly as street laborers, hucksters, and peddlers. To make both ends meet not only the wife but children have to work.

[Sidenote: A Typical Case]

Here is a typical case of this cla.s.s of worker and the earnings, from an inspector's note-book: "Antonia Scarafino, 235 Mulberry Street; finisher; gets five cents per pair pants, bastes bottoms, puts linings on; one hour to make; two years at this business; four in this country; married, with baby; sister works with her; can both together make $4 per week; husband peddles fish and makes only $1 to $2 a week; got married here; two rooms, $8.50 rent; kitchen 10 x 12; bedroom 8 x 10; gets all the work she wants. No sunlight falls into her squalid rooms, and there is no stopping, from early morning till late at night."

_IV. Three Constant Perils_

[Sidenote: The Naturalization Evil]

Illegal and fraudulent naturalization is another evil to which the foreigner in the city becomes a party, although the blame belongs chiefly to the ward politicians who make him a _particeps criminis_. The recognized managers of the foreign vote of various nationalities--almost always saloonkeepers--hold citizenship cheap, perjury undiscovered as good as truth, and every vote a clear gain for the party and themselves.

So the naturalization mills are kept running night and day preceding a national or munic.i.p.al election. Describing this process, ex-United States Senator Chandler says that in New York during a single month just before election about seven thousand naturalization papers were issued, nearly all by one judge, who examined each applicant and witnesses to his satisfaction, and signed his orders at the rate of two per minute, and as many as 618 in one day. Many cla.s.ses of frauds were committed.

Witnesses were professional perjurers, each swearing in hundreds of cases, testifying to a five years' residence when they had first met the applicants only a few hours before. During the past year some of these professional perjurers and political manipulators were tried and sent to the penitentiary; but the frauds will go on. Here is an ill.u.s.tration:

[Sidenote: Making Citizens]

"Patrick Hefferman, of a given street in New York, was twenty-one years old September 2, 1891, and came to this country August 1, 1888. He was naturalized October 20, 1891. On that day he was introduced by Thomas Keeler to a stranger, who went with him to court and signed a paper; they both went before the judge, who asked the stranger something.

Hefferman signed nothing, said nothing, but kissed a book and came out a citizen, having taken no oath except that of renunciation and allegiance."

[Sidenote: Fraud Abundant]

Thus are the sacred rights of citizenship obtained by thousands upon thousands, not in New York alone, but in all our cities. More than that, fraudulent use is freely made of naturalization papers. The Italian immigrant, for example, finds his vote is wanted, and obtains a false paper. He returns to Italy to spend his earnings, and there is offered a sum of money for the use of his papers. These are given to an emigrant who probably could not pa.s.s the examination at Ellis Island, but who as a naturalized citizen, if he is not detected in the fraud, cannot be shut out. Then he sends the papers back to Italy. It is admitted that there is a regular traffic in naturalization papers. In every way the alien is put on the wrong track, and his American experiences are such as would naturally make him lawless and criminal rather than a good citizen. He needs nothing more than protection against corrupting and venal agencies, which find their origin in politics and the saloon.

[Sidenote: The Saloon and the Immigrant]

The foreign element furnishes the saloons with victims. In his graphic book describing tenement life in New York Mr. Riis shows the rapid multiplication of the saloons in the slums where the foreigners are crowded into tenements, nine per cent. more densely packed than the most densely populated districts of London. In the chapter, "The Reign of Rum,"[75] he says:

[Sidenote: Testimony of Riis]

"'Where G.o.d builds a church the devil builds next door a saloon' is an old saying that has lost its point in New York. Either the devil was on the ground first, or he has been doing a good deal more in the way of building. I tried once to find out how the account stood, and counted to 111 Protestant churches, chapels, and places of worship of every kind below Fourteenth Street, 4,065 saloons. The worst half of the tenement population lives down there, and it has to this day the worst half of the saloons. Up town the account stands a little better, but there are easily ten saloons to every church to-day.

[Sidenote: Hunting for an American]

"As to the motley character of the tenement population, when I asked the agent of a notorious Fourth Ward alley how many people might be living in it, I was told: One hundred and forty families--one hundred Irish, thirty-eight Italian, and two that spoke the German tongue. Barring the agent herself, there was not a native-born individual in the court. The answer was characteristic of the cosmopolitan character of lower New York, very nearly so of the whole of it, wherever it runs to alleys and courts. One may find for the asking an Italian, German, French, African, Spanish, Bohemian, Russian, Scandinavian, Jewish, and Chinese colony.

The one thing you shall ask for in vain in the chief city of America is a distinctively American community."

[Sidenote: The Peril of Poverty]

The immigrant is nearly always poor, and is thrust into the poverty of the city. We must distinguish between pauperism and poverty. As Mr.

Hunter points out, in his stirring chapter on this subject,[76]

"pauperism is dependence without shame, poverty is to live miserable we know not why, to have the dread of hunger, to work sore and yet gain nothing." Fear of pauperism, of the necessity of accepting charity, drives the self-respecting poor insane and to suicide. It is to be said that the majority of the immigrants are not paupers, but self-respecting poor. Moreover, the new immigration is not nearly so ready to accept pauperism as are the Irish, who make up the largest percentage of this cla.s.s, as already shown. But the poor immigrants are compelled, by circ.u.mstances, to come in contact with, if not to dwell directly among this pauper element, lost to sense of degradation. The paupers make up the slums. And because the rents are cheaper in the miserable old rookeries that still defy public decency, the Italians especially crowd into these pestilential quarters, which are the hotbeds of disease, physical and moral filth, drunkenness, and crime. Thus pauperism and poverty dwell too closely together.

[Sidenote: Some Causes of Poverty]

Upon the unskilled ma.s.ses the weight of want is constantly pressing.

Unemployment, sickness, the least stoppage of the scant income, means distress. It is estimated that in our country not less than 4,000,000 persons are dependents or paupers, and not less than 10,000,000 are in poverty. This means that they cannot earn enough regularly to maintain the standard of life that means the highest efficiency, and that at some time they are liable to need aid. Mr. Riis has shown that about one third of the people of New York City were dependent upon charity at some time during the eight years previous to 1890. The report of the United Hebrew Charities for 1901 shows similar conditions existing among the Jewish population of New York. Pauperism is a peril, and poverty is a source of apathy and despair. The unskilled immigrant tends to increase the poverty by creating a surplus of cheap labor, and also falls under the blight of the evil he increases.

[Sidenote: Pauperism and Immigration]

Treating of this subject, the Charities a.s.sociation of Boston reports that it is hopeless to attempt to relieve pauperism so long as its ranks are increased by the great hosts coming into the country, with only a few dollars to depend upon, and no certain work. The statistics of the public almshouses show that the proportion of foreign-born is greatly in excess of the native-born. The pathetic feature of this condition is that what is wanted is not charity but employment at living wages.

Greatly is it to the credit of the immigrants from southeastern Europe that they are eager for work and reluctant to accept charity. The danger is that, if allowed to come and then left without opportunity to work, they will of necessity fall into the careless, shiftless, vicious cla.s.s, already so large and dangerous.

[Sidenote: Peril of the "Great White Plague"]

The immigrants in the city tenements are especially exposed to consumption, that "Great White Plague" which yearly kills its tens of thousands. In New York City alone ten thousand die annually of tuberculosis; and this is the result largely of tenement conditions.

Statisticians estimate that the annual money loss in the United States from tuberculosis, counting the cost of nursing, food, medicines, and attendance, as well as the loss of productive labor, is $330,000,000.

Mr. Hunter instances a case where an entire family was wiped out by this disease within two years and a half. In spite of his efforts to get the father, who was the first one infected with the disease, to go to a hospital, he refused, saying that as he had to die, he was going to die with his family. The Health Board said it had no authority forcibly to compel the man to go to a hospital; and the result was that the whole family died with him. This plague "is the result of our weakness, our ignorance, our selfishness, and our vices; there is no need of its existence, and it is the duty of the state to stamp it out." That is Mr.

Hunter's conclusion, with which we heartily agree.

_V. The Cry of the Children_

[Sidenote: Peril of Child Neglect]

Another peril of the city, and of the entire country as well, that comes through the foreigners is child neglect and labor; which means illiteracy, stunted body and mind, and often wreckage of life. Every foreign neighborhood is full of children, and sad enough is the average child of poverty. What makes the tenement district of the great city so terrible to you as you go into it is the sight of the throngs of children, who know little of home as you know it, have irregular and scanty meals, and surroundings of intemperance, dirt, foul atmosphere and speech, disease and vice. No wonder the police in these districts say that their worst trouble arises from the boys and the gangs of young "toughs." There is every reason for this unwholesome product. Mr. Hunter says there are not less than half a million children in Greater New York whose only playground is the street. Result, the street gang; and this gang is the really vital influence in the life of most boys in the large cities. It is this life, which develops, as Mr. Riis says, "dislike of regular work, physical incapability of sustained effort, gambling propensities, absence of energy, and carelessness of the happiness of others." The great homeless, yardless tenement, where the children of the immigrants are condemned to live, is the nursery of sickness and crime. The child is left for good influence to the school, the settlement, or the mission. For the enormous amount of juvenile crime in the city, which it requires a special court to deal with, the conditions are more responsible than the children, or even than the parents, who are unable to maintain home life, and who, through the pinch of poverty or the impulse of avarice, give over the education of the children to school or street. Here is a picture of the life on its darker side:

[Sidenote: Street Life of Children]

"Crowded in the tenements where the bedrooms are small and often dark, where the living room is also a kitchen, a laundry, and often a garment-making shop, are the growing children whose bodies cry out for exercise and play. They are often an irritant to the busy mother, and likely as not the object of her carping and scolding. The teeming tenements open their doors, and out into the dark pa.s.sageways and courts, through foul alleys and over broken sidewalks, flow ever renewed streams of playing children. Under the feet of pa.s.sing horses, under the wheels of pa.s.sing street-cars, jostled about by the pedestrian, driven on by the policeman, they annoy everyone. They crowd about the music or drunken brawls in the saloons, they play hide-and-seek about the garbage boxes, they shoot 'c.r.a.ps' in the alleys, they seek always and everywhere activity, movement, life."[77]

[Sidenote: Imprisoned Childhood]

But worse than this picture is that of childhood in the sweat-shop, the factory, the mine, and other places of employment. Mr. Hunter has written a chapter on "The Child"[78] that should be studied by every lover of humanity. Its facts ring out a clarion call for reform. This touches our subject most closely because, as he says, "These evils of child life are doubly dangerous and serious because the ma.s.s of people in poverty in our cities are immigrants. The children of immigrants are a remarkable race of little ones."

[Sidenote: Happy Childhood]

Indeed they are, and they give you the bright side of the picture, in spite of all the evil conditions in which they live. The present writer stood recently opposite the entrance to a public school in the congested East Side, where not one of all the thousand or more of scholars was of native stock. As the crowds of little girls poured out at noontime their faces made a fascinating study. The conspicuous thing about them was the smile and fun and brightness. The dress was of every description, and one of the merriest-faced of all had on one shoe and one rubber in place of the second shoe; but from the faces you would never suspect into what kind of places these children were about to go for all they know of home. The hope lies in the children, and the schools are their great blessing and outlet, even if as Mrs. Betts says, many of them of certain cla.s.ses do not think so. Mr. Hunter says: