Home Missions in Action Part 11

Pa.s.sports and letters from prominent Chinese officials were of no avail with this prejudiced crowd which grew constantly more excited and revengeful.

Suddenly through the threatening ma.s.s a man forced his way to the side of Dr. P.----, exclaiming in English, "You Melican man?" "Yes,"

came the reply. Turning to the crowd he explained the friendliness of American foreigners, and turning to Dr. P. again said, "Me Melican man, too, I live San Francisco seven years." Then he said, "You Jesus man? Me Jesus man, too; Mission, San Francisco, made me Jesus man."

Turning again to the crowd he succeeded in persuading them, though protesting and reluctant, to allow Dr. P. to proceed on his way unharmed.

This incident stands for the myriad influences in the ebb and flow of immigration that carry the impulses, the ideals, and the new life of America into the heart of the old world civilizations.

To the great inert ma.s.ses of people in these lands have thus been brought the germs of free thought and action and the sustaining, impelling faith that these might sometime be attained by them and their children. That to them through unceasing struggle might also come the better day when government would stand for freedom, opportunity and progress, rather than the sword, prison, banishment and oppression.

America has been the great inspirer of the world.

Since the dawn of the twentieth century more than 10,500,000 immigrants have entered the United States. Through the pressure of economic conditions a large proportion of immigrants and their children are forced into the centers of poverty, crime and disease, the slum districts of our great cities, and into huge colonies in industrial centers where they both receive and contribute to conditions that have become pathological for the community, real sources of infection, both mental and physical. It is therefore not surprising to find that the children of immigrants reared in American cities contribute twice as many criminals as the sons of native whites of native stock. Our great industrial centers show an enormous aggregation of foreigners. It is said that these contain seven millions of the Slavs, the Latins, and the Asiatics, and those whose racial background makes difficult the conception of a democracy and their a.s.similation into it.

We confront a condition of grave peril to industrial interests as well as to our national well-being when, in addition to the overcoming of racial background, we must add the r.e.t.a.r.ding effect of the segregation of large foreign colonies in mining and industrial centers. Great numbers of these aliens do not expect to become American citizens, but are here only to acc.u.mulate sufficient capital to return. "Of all the immigrants now comingone-third return to Europe and two-thirds of all those who return remain there." These const.i.tute largely a mobile migratory and disturbing, unskilled wage-earning cla.s.s.

They therefore are unfavorable to a.s.similative influences and tend to establish in modified forms the standards and customs of the communities from which they have come. "The town of Windber, in Western Pennsylvania, has a population of 8000 persons and is the center of twelve mining camps. It was founded by the opening of bituminous coal mines, for which purpose 1600 experienced Englishmen and 400 native Americans were brought into the locality. At the present, eighteen races of recent immigration are numbered among its mine workers. The Southern and Eastern Europeans among them have their churches, banks, steamship agencies and business establishments in the town to which they go to transact their affairs and to seek amus.e.m.e.nt."

"Another ill.u.s.tration is the recently established iron and steel manufacturing community at Granite City and Madison, Illinois, which has the distinction of being the largest Bulgarian colony in the United States. These two cities join each other and for practical purposes are one. Fifteen years ago its site was an unbroken stretch of corn fields.

The original wage-earners were English, Irish, Germans, Welsh and Poles; then followed Slovaks, Magyars, a few Croatians. Mixed groups came next, Roumanians, Greeks and Servians, and later Bulgarians, until that group alone numbered 8000; later still, the foreigners were augmented by the arrival of 4000 new immigrants--Armenians, Servians, Lithuanians, Slovaks, Magyars and Poles. Under normal industrial conditions the population of the community is estimated at 20,000 Here the various racial groups live entirely apart from any American influence."

The New York Tribune states: "It is a somewhat startling announcement that more than one-third of the adult male inhabitants of New York City are unnaturalized aliens. There are, according to the census, 1,433,749 males in the city, of twenty-one years or more, and of these more than 500,000 have not become naturalized. In the whole state there are 718,940 foreign-born white men of voting age who have not become citizens. It needs no argument to prove that this is not a desirable state of affairs, and that if perpetuated it would be mischievous, if not disastrous."

From the figures collected in an investigation of four months in New York City Night Court, it appears that 7.7 per cent of the women arrested and convicted for keeping disorderly houses and solicitation were foreign-born.

In New York City all the conditions created by immigration are enormously accentuated, for within itself and its suburbs it has a foreign population exceeding the whole population of Chicago.

"It is at once the largest Catholic city of history and the largest Jewish city of history."

Statistics furnished by the industrial department of the Y.M.C.A., based upon the census of 1910, give the proportion of two out of every three of the inhabitants of the following cities as foreign-born or of foreign-born parentage.

181,511 Columbus 104,402 Spokane 233,650 Indianapolis 213,381 Denver 116,577 Dayton 207,214 Portland 248,381 Kansas City 558,485 Baltimore 319,198 Los Angeles 168,497 Toledo 237,194 Seattle 423,715 Buffalo 100,253 Albany 267,799 Jersey City, N.J.

124,096 Omaha 347,469 Newark, N.J.

137,249 Syracuse 224,326 Providence 687,029 St. Louis 102,054 Bridgeport 1,549,008 Philadelphia 465,766 Detroit 150,174 Oakland 104,839 Cambridge 112,571 Grand Rapids 560,603 Cleveland 218,149 Rochester 670,585 Boston 533,905 Pittsburgh 125,600 Paterson, N.J.

301,408 Minneapolis 373,857 Milwaukee 129,867 Scranton 2,185,283 Chicago 214,744 St. Paul 106,294 Lowell 145,986 Worcester 4,766,883 New York 133,605 New Haven 119,295 Fall River

This tabulation suggests all that these dominant cities represent of congestion of industrial and social pressure, and their powerful effects upon new Americans in their most impressionable period.

"The significant feature of the situation of which the foregoing ill.u.s.trations are typical," say such authorities as Prof. Jeremiah W. Jenks and W. Jett Lanck, "is the almost complete ignorance and indifference of the native American population to the recent immigrant colonies and their condition. This att.i.tude extends even to the native churches. Comparatively few agencies have been established for the Americanization and a.s.similation of Southern and Eastern European wage-earners.

"Not only is a great field open for social and religious work, but vast possibilities are offered for patriotic service in improving these serious conditions which confront a self-governing republic."

That the crowding, struggling foreigner of many races and tongues may take his place as a voting American, in whose hands rests a predominating influence upon the present and future of this nation, it is essential that he catch the vision of those fundamental, inspiring ideals which have made America the hope of the hopeless, the very land of promise, to the oppressed of the world.

He must be touched by an integrating force, a dynamic power, capable of revealing and developing the inherent best in him and contributing to him of the essential best in America.

"Religion alone answers this need in fullest measure. It is the great quickening power which can resolve ancient inheritance of personal and race antagonisms and hatreds into a struggle for higher individual and community welfare."

Eternally true are the Master's words, "Man cannot live by bread alone"; he must have the spiritual communion which can give to him and to society the uplifting conception of the Fatherhood of G.o.d and the brotherhood of man. This is the great integrating, harmonizing power that the church of Christ must bring to the solving of America's insistent immigrant problem.

Before taking up in detail the study of what Home Missions is actually accomplishing as an integrating force, let us turn briefly to consider some of the powerful disintegrating factors operative among immigrants and their children.

Second to the great fact of labor and its demands in our cities is the need and demand for recreation. The reaction from the monotony of factory life, with its exacting, fatiguing tension of machine-tending, and the crowdedness of the tenement home, sends the laboring mult.i.tudes into the streets at night seeking diversion and amus.e.m.e.nt. This is pre-eminently true of the young, who find commercialism waiting at night to "extract from them their petty wages by pandering to their love of pleasure" after having utilized their undeveloped labor power in its factories and shops by day.

Jane Addams says, "The whole apparatus for supplying pleasure is wretchedly inadequate and full of danger to whomsoever may approach it.

"Who is responsible for its inadequacy and dangers? We certainly cannot expect the fathers and mothers who have come to the city from farms or who have immigrated from other lands to appreciate or rectify these dangers of the city.

"We cannot expect the young people themselves to cling to conventions which are totally unsuited to modern city conditions, nor yet to be equal to the task of forming new conventions through which this more agglomerate social life may express itself.

"The ma.s.s of these young people are possessed of good intentions and would respond to amus.e.m.e.nts less demoralizing and dangerous, if such were available at no greater cost than those now offered.

"Our att.i.tude toward music is typical of our carelessness toward all these things which make for common joy."

The vicious, sensuous music of the dance hall, with accompanying words, often indecent and full of vulgar, suggestive appeal, are permitted a vogue throughout the entire country.

No diagnosing of the immigrant city problem or understanding of the task of securing civic righteousness can be obtained by Home Mission women without realizing the place and influence of amus.e.m.e.nts upon the lives of the young people of our land.

A noted English playwright stated that "the theatre is literally making the minds of our urban population to-day. It is a huge factory of sentiment, of character, of points of honor, of conception, of conduct, of everything that finally determines the destiny of a nation."

Hundreds, yes, thousands of young people attend the five-cent theatres every night, including Sunday, receiving the constant effect of vulgar music and a debased and often vulgar and suggestive dramatic art.

"Many immigrant parents," says Jane Addams, "are absolutely bewildered by the keen absorption of their children in the cheap theatres.

"One Sunday evening recently an investigation was made of four hundred and sixty-six theatres in the city of Chicago, and it was discovered that in the majority of them the leading theme was revenge, the lover following his rival, the outraged husband seeking his wife's paramour, or similar themes. It was estimated that one-sixth of the entire population of the city had attended the theatres on that day."

The same would generally be true of other large cities.

Nor is this low and vicious standard of cheap amus.e.m.e.nts confined to large cities; it is bound to prevail also where our backward people come into contact with white villages and communities. The c.o.c.k fights and other demoralizing amus.e.m.e.nts of Spanish-speaking peoples and the dances of the Indians must be superseded by entertainment that is wholesome and helpful.

Through its own agencies and as it co-operates with others for betterment Home Missions must take into account the urgent demand for wholesome amus.e.m.e.nt for those who, on account of the conditions of their environment, are so much in need of the cheer and joy of attractive and elevating forms of entertainment.

Home Missions responds to the cry of the city's need through the ministry of the deaconess, who in turn is nurse, or visitor, or leader of kindergarten, day nursery, rescue home, or orphanage.

A gentle-voiced Italian mother it was whose ten children filled to overflowing the three-room tenement home, one room of which was without means of light or air. She lifted to her arms the youngest child of less than a year, clad in one ragged little garment, while she seated herself to tell in broken English and with many gestures her story to the deaconess who came to see if she could help about the oldest boy, who was giving trouble. The woman said she had been married in Italy when only fourteen years of age and was now thirty-one.

She had come to America when her second child was a baby. Her husband was a longsh.o.r.eman and earned twelve dollars a week for the support of the family of twelve. They were looking forward soon to the help of the earnings of the oldest child, a boy not quite fourteen. This boy was the problem! To escape the uproar and confusion of the crowded rooms he spent his time when he could escape from school, on the street. A gang adopted him. He was ill-nourished, and his teachers suspected him of receiving and using cocaine. Poor little sc.r.a.p of humanity! with a hungry, craving body and no room for soul, mind or body to develop but the corrupting street, with its saloons and its gangs! From such a childhood he is destined soon to join the ranks of labor. Will he add to the number of America's criminals or can he possibly enter the ranks of good citizenship? If he were simply an individual case it would still be inexpressibly sad, but, alas, he stands for thousands in our land.

The deaconess will do her utmost for his rescue, but we cannot wonder at her feeling that great fundamental, preventive measures must be taken by the church and society to wipe out the city slums and all that they stand for of pestilential evil.

Of great significance are the disintegrating efforts of certain groups of socialists and anarchists who by means of Sunday-schools gather children of immigrants largely to inculcate in them the peculiar principles and doctrines of anarchism and their brand of socialism, as well as to crush out of their thought all idea of G.o.d and love and obedience to Him. These Sunday-schools, so destructive of all that is best and highest in the child soul, flourish in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago and other large cities.