Aliens or Americans? Part 14

My people do not live in America. They live underneath America. America goes on over their heads.--_Paul Tymkevich, a Ruthenian Priest._

"My people do not love America. Why should they, from what they see of it?" This is the profoundly suggestive question of a Ruthenian Greek-Catholic priest, of Yonkers, N. Y., who says his people do not come in contact with the better cla.s.ses of Americans, but do come in contact with everyone who hopes to exploit them.

The subject of immigration is the most far-reaching in importance of all those with which this government has to deal. The history of the world offers no precedent for our guidance, since no such peaceful invasion of alien peoples has ever before occurred. It must have great and largely unforeseen effects upon our form of civilization, our social and political inst.i.tutions, and, above all, upon the physical, mental, and moral characteristics of our people. Can such a subject be considered too seriously or too minutely? I cannot think it possible. The danger lies in the opposite direction.--_F. P. Sargent._

It must not be forgotten that the Slav immigrants, and especially their descendants, are impressionable and adaptable; that forces are at work which have already done much for them, and will do more. The results of the public school are sure though slow. The full-grown individual must be brought under the influence of a yet more powerful agency, one which makes also for civilization and for Americanism in the best sense.--_F.

J. Warne._

V

THE EASTERN INVASION

[Sidenote: Mistaken Opinion]

Least known, least liked, and least a.s.similable of all the alien races migrating to America are the Slavs. That expresses the general opinion, based on ignorance and dislike. To the common view they seem to combine all the undesirable elements--low living, low intelligence, low morality, low capacity, low everything, including wages--this explaining in large measure their presence. The very name Slav excites prejudice.

If an exclusion act of any kind were to be pa.s.sed it would probably be easier to aim it at the Slavs than any other cla.s.s of immigrants. We are now to submit this common opinion to the test of investigation, and see whether it is warranted in fact. Nowhere is discrimination based on knowledge more necessary than in dealing with this Slavic race division.

First let us learn who the Slavs are. The following table shows this, and also how many of them entered our ports in 1905:

Poles 102,437 Servians, Bulgarians, and Slovaks 52,368 Montenegrins 5,823 Croatians and Slovenians 35,104 Dalmatians, Bosnians, and Lithuanians 18,604 Herzegovinians 2,639 Ruthenians 14,473 Bohemians and Moravians 11,757 Roumanians 7,818 Russians proper 3,746 Magyars 46,030 Russian Jews[61] 92,388

[Sidenote: A Large Element in Europe]

The Slavs proper number about 125,000,000, or more than one twelfth of the total population of the world. They have been concentrated, until the recent migration began, in the eastern and larger part of Europe.

They make up the bulk of Russia, the great Slav power (numbering about 70,000,000), and of the Balkan States, and form nearly half of the population of Austria-Hungary. The various Slavic languages and dialects are closely related but differ as do German and Swedish, so that the different races cannot understand each other.[62]

[Ill.u.s.tration: COUNTRIES FROM WHICH THE SLAVS COME]

[Sidenote: The Slavs in the Mines]

The Slav immigration is of comparatively recent date. Before 1880 it was unnoticeable. A small number of Bohemians and Poles had come, settling in the larger cities. But suddenly the thousands began to pour in.

Demand for cheap labor in the coal fields of Pennsylvania drew this cla.s.s, and presently the American, Canadian, English, Welsh, Irish, Scotch, and German mine-workers found themselves being supplanted by the men from Austria-Hungary and Russia--men who were mostly single and alone, who could live on little, eat any sort of food, wear any kind of clothes, and sleep in a hut or store-house, fourteen in a room. Of course the home of the English-speaking miner, with its carpet on the best room, its pictures and comforts, had to go, as did the miner and his wife and children, also the school and the church--for how could these stay when the Slav, homeless and familyless, could bunk in with a crowd anywhere, or build himself a hillside hut out of driftwood, and subsist on from four to ten dollars a month. The one conspicuous thing about the Slav was his ability to save money. Dr. Warne gives a graphic and pathetic picture of the struggle caused by the introduction of the Slavs into Pennsylvania, and his investigations may profitably be studied.[63]

[Sidenote: Slav domination]

The results in Pennsylvania thus far are the reverse of satisfactory.

The cheap labor has become dear in more senses than one. Where in 1880 the English-speaking foreign-born composed nearly ninety-four per cent.

of the mine workers, in 1900 they were less than fifty-two per cent., and to-day are much less still. The Slavs dominate in the mines. Strikes are not less frequent, but more difficult to control, and the necessity of frequent state control by militia, the riots and bloodshed, mark the failure to Americanize this growing cla.s.s of aliens. A striking ill.u.s.tration of non-a.s.similation and the attendant perils may be found in Pennsylvania. Fortunately all the Slavs do not go to the mines, and those who follow agriculture or trades afford a pleasanter study. The census of 1900 gave a million and a quarter of foreign-born Slavs and the number has been largely increased. In 1903 221,000 came, not counting the 67,000 Russian and Roumanian Jews. Since these peoples are all prolific, with an oversupply at home, there is every prospect that immigration will increase, unless some check is put upon it. The Slavs will have to be reckoned with, most a.s.suredly, as an element in our civilization.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SLAV DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES]

The maps here given, by the courtesy of _Charities_, show the sections from which the Slavs come and how they disperse in this country.

[Sidenote: Chiefly Unskilled and Illiterate]

An a.n.a.lysis of the official statistics shows that, with the exception of the Bohemians, these newest immigrants are mainly unskilled, illiterate peasants from country districts, and with little money in their pockets when they land. Of the Bohemians and Moravians forty-four per cent. are skilled laborers, and only 1.50 per cent. over fourteen are unable to read and write; but of the Poles eighty-five per cent. are unskilled, and thirty per cent. can neither read nor write; and this represents the average. We are getting in an illiterate ma.s.s, therefore, and the amount of money they bring per capita averages about $10. But on this point a writer says, speaking from a wide observation:[64]

[Sidenote: A Hopeful View]

"This does not necessarily mean that they are undesirable immigrants.

The illiterate, unskilled immigrant may be, in fact, more desirable than the better educated skilled laborer, or the still better educated professional or business man. There may be a great demand here for unskilled labor. Again, the moral qualities of the untaught but industrious, simple-minded, unspoiled countryman may be far more wholesome for the communities to which he comes than those of the educated, town-bred, unsuccessful business or professional man, the misfit skilled laborer, or the actual loafer and sharper of the cities, who comes over here when home gets too hot for him. As to illiteracy, moreover, the peasant is improving. The great ma.s.s of this unskilled labor pushes directly through the great gateway of New York, where unfortunately so many other races stop. They go to the eastern, middle, and northern states, mainly into our coal and iron mines, and our steel mills, but also to the farming regions, where they work patiently and thriftily, first as farm laborers, then as owners of abandoned farming lands or cut-over timber lands, reclaiming and making them fertile to the great advantage of the markets they supply."

Let us now look at this conglomerate immigration a little more in detail, and no longer cla.s.s these peoples indiscriminately as "barbarian Huns."

_I. The Bohemians_

[Sidenote: The Czechs and their History]

We may well begin with the Bohemians, who are among the most skilled, least illiterate, and, to Protestants, most interesting of the Slavs. In studying any group of "strangers within our gates," it is necessary to know its preemigration history. These people, who call themselves Czechs, are a princ.i.p.al branch of the Slav family and one of the large const.i.tuents of the Austria-Hungarian empire, numbering 6,318,697 in 1901. At home they are chiefly agriculturists. In 1900 there were in this country 325,400 persons of Bohemian parentage, of whom 156,991 were born in Bohemia. Since 1900 above 50,000 more have come. Three fourths of them all are in the north central states of the Mississippi Valley, with Chicago as their great center. Cleveland has about 15,000, New York about the same number; while in agriculture there are in round numbers 16,000 in Nebraska, 14,000 in Wisconsin, 11,000 in Iowa, and 9,000 in Texas.

[Sidenote: Stormy National Struggle]

As to their history in the old world, the Bohemians have had such a stormy national struggle, and the bitterness of it has so entered into their lives, that it is impossible rightly to judge them apart from it.

It has some instructive lessons for us. These are the conditions, as Mr.

Nan Mashek, himself a Bohemian, states them:[65]

[Sidenote: John Huss and Jerome of Prague]

"For two hundred and fifty years they have been oppressed by a pitilessly despotic rule. In the day of their independence, before 1620, they were Protestants, and the most glorious and memorable events of their history are connected with their struggle for the faith. The history of their Church is the history of their nation, for on the one hand was Protestantism and independence, on the other, Catholicism and political subjection. For two centuries Bohemia was a b.l.o.o.d.y battleground of Protestant reform. Under the spiritual and military leaders.h.i.+p of such men as Jerome of Prague, John Huss, and Ziska, the Bohemians fought their good fight and lost. After the battle of White Mountains, in 1620, national independence was completely lost, and Catholicism was forcibly imposed upon the country. All Protestant Bibles, books, and songs were burned, thus depriving the nation of a large and rich literature. Those who still clung to their faith publicly were banished, their property becoming forfeited to the state. After 150 years, when Emperor Joseph II. of Austria gave back to the Protestants some measure of their former freedom, many of the churches were reestablished; but Protestantism had lost much of its strength. The political revolution of 1848 led to new subjugation, and emigration was the result. Large numbers left the country in quest of freedom, and some of these found their way to America."

[Sidenote: Farmer Settlers in the West]

The first Bohemian settlers were of the most intelligent and more prosperous cla.s.ses. They went West, chiefly to Wisconsin, where their farms are among the finest in the state. In Kewaunee County they const.i.tute over one third of the population, or 6,000 out of 17,000.

They have developed into an excellent type of American citizens.h.i.+p, have looked well after the education of their children, many of whom have gone to college, and are in every way progressive. Read thoughtfully what Mr. Mashek says:

[Sidenote: Easy a.s.similation Through Religion]

"In the country the a.s.similation of Bohemians is not a problem which offers difficulties. The public school is everywhere so potent an Americanizer that it alone is adequate. There is, however, one other influence which if brought to bear, especially in the large communities, would be helpful. _I refer to the Protestant faith._ For the most part Bohemians conversant with their history as a people are naturally hostile to the Catholic Church, and when the restraints which held them in their own country are removed by emigration, many of the more enlightened quietly drop their allegiance, and, through lack of desire or opportunity, fail to ally themselves with any other. So strong is this non-religious tendency among the Bohemians--especially in the cities--that it has resulted in active unbelief, and hostility to Church influence. _This spiritual isolation_, with its resultant social separation, _is doing great harm in r.e.t.a.r.ding a.s.similation_. Aside from this matter of religion, the Bohemian falls into American customs with surprising readiness."

[Sidenote: Protestant Opportunity]

Thus a member of this race points out to Protestants their opportunity.

Here is a people with inherited Protestant tendencies. They have been driven in Bohemia by an enforced Roman Catholicism into antagonism to the Church as they know it.

[Sidenote: Freethinkers' Society]

In Chicago, where over 100,000 of them make of that city the third largest Bohemian center in the world, they have a strongly organized Freethinkers' Society, with three hundred branches, which issues an atheistic catechism, and has it taught in its numerous Sunday-schools, as they are called. But there are thousands who do not belong to this cult, and who are open to the gospel. The same is true of the Bohemians in New York, Cleveland, and elsewhere who have not advanced to the Chicago infidel standpoint. Their character has not been well understood. They possess excellent qualities for the making of good Americans. Christianity in pure and true form is all they need.

[Sidenote: A Home-loving and Musical People]

The Bohemians are a home people, social, and fond of organizations of every kind. Music is their pa.s.sion, and their clubs, mutual benefit societies, and loan a.s.sociations, successfully run, show large capacity for management. They have forty-two papers, seven of them religious, two Protestant. Their freethinking is not all of it by any means of the dogmatic sort which has its catechism of atheism. There is another cla.s.s, represented by an old woman with a broad brow over which the silvery hair is smoothly parted, who says to the missionary, "I have my G.o.d in my heart, I shall deal with him. I do not want any priest to step between us." That is the cla.s.s which the gospel can reach and ought to reach speedily.

[Sidenote: Where Located]