John Robertson Henry

“ The Jew is a religious man but he seems to be losing his religion in America. In Europe the synagogue was a rallying point, in America the rallying place is the Labor Union, and many have turned away from the old faith. Family life, once loyal and beautiful, now shows many desertions, the father leaving the family to care for itself. The streets at night are trodden by too many Jewish girls, and the criminal courts are thronged with too many Jewish boys. Contempt for old age is one of the saddest products of American life. ”

“ Who and what are the good neighbors in our country that are most powerful in changing this many-tongued multitude into Americans? Who are influencing them so that they understand us and we understand them? What forces are welding these many fragments into one nation? ”

“ In fact, America has little idea of the great riches in heroism, sacrifice and splendid lives that are hidden away in the forbidding tenements of its great cities. The Russians’ dislike of the church is deep seated and intense, for the Church of Russia has been the judge that sentenced them, the jailer that imprisoned them, the knout that whipped them. The Greek Church in many ways is an out-of-date church. It is an enemy of progress and free thought, the greatest ally of a cruel government. ”

“ The American standard of living simply means the way most Americans live. Do you know that we live better than any other people in the world?
“I don’t think we live well,” one boy says, “we don’t have an automobile, or a pony, or a piano, and the people next door to us do.” But automobiles, and ponies and pianos, while pleasant to own, are not real necessities. Let us take a peep into the home of a Chinese boy. It is breakfast time and he is busy with a bowl of rice and a pair of chopsticks. Do you think you could eat rice with chopsticks? ”

“ The Protestant church in America is a good neighbor to the immigrant. The trouble is that many immigrants refuse to permit it to be their friend.
We have seen that the chief reason that the church cannot do what it would among the Jews, Russians, Italians and Chinese, the people we are studying, is because these people do not understand that the church in America is different from the church in their home countries. They do not know that American Christianity is a friend of liberty, and is really trying to aid the common people. ”

“ Ignorance keeps the immigrant un-American. One who cannot read is at a serious disadvantage. When it is remembered that of the Italians sixty out of one hundred of all those over fourteen years of age who come to America belong to this class, we see the need of the work of night schools to overcome this ignorance. The case is made still worse by the fact that [85] the immigrants crowd together into colonies, as “Little Italy,” “Little Russia,” and “the Ghetto,” where the English language is not spoken and there are no broadening American influences. ”

“ In addition to the good neighbors mentioned, many other forces assist in the Americanizing of the foreigner. America itself, the streets, the stores, the factories, the public institutions, [76] the work at which he is employed and the conditions under which he toils, all have a marked effect upon the stranger. Those who have studied the matter say that the Jew is developing a better physical type than at home, while the Italian, used to open air peasant life, is running down in stature.
While the immigrant is a stranger in a strange land he is by no means a stranger in a friendless land. ”

“ They are foreigners, and that is enough. Such people forget that while the language of the immigrant sounds “funny” to us, ours sounds just as strange to him. While we laugh at the pig tail and queer shoes and strange clothes of the Chinese, they follow the American in crowds through Chinese cities and make fun of his absurd dress, and call him names that are not wholly complimentary, all because he is a stranger to them.
Our Debt to the Foreigner. It will help us to cultivate the spirit of a Good Neighbor if we remember that we are hopelessly in debt to all these foreigners. ”

“ Multiply that scene by thousands and you have a Russian pogrom. Oppression brings many Jews.
The Russian. The Russian does not leave his land because of the winter cold. He leaves it because he dare not speak out against the wrong he sees. He is always fearful of some police spy making charges against him, shutting him up in prison, and sending him to Siberia. No one is safe from these spies. The Russian comes to America because here he can think aloud and here he can worship according to the voice of his own conscience. ”

“ The immigrant provides the cheap, unskilled labor. As he becomes influenced by American customs, he requires better clothes, a room for himself instead of sharing his room with ten other men, more pay as he becomes more skilled. He wants shoes for his wife. The American law compels him to send his children to school instead of making them wage-earners while little children. As his expenses increase he demands more money that he may live as the people about him live. Then the employer begins to replace him by labor costing what he formerly cost. ”

“ The Chinese invented the mariner’s compass that enables the sailor to strike boldly out into the deep, sure of not losing his way across the trackless ocean when stars and sun are gone. He is likewise an example to all the world in his reverence and care for old age, for father and mother. A traveler recently returned from China says he has never seen old faces more calm and kindly than those he met among elderly Chinese farmers. ”

“ The work in which the immigrant is generally employed helps keep him un-American. He has no opportunity to know America or to know Americans. Much of the work is wearying and disheartening. Men bound for the coal mines are packed in cars and hurried away, often through the night, to the distant coal fields; underground all day and sleeping in wretched quarters above ground at night, they have little opportunity to see or know anything of their adopted land. I stepped up to a stone house alongside a railroad excavation in the country part of Connecticut once to have a look at the occupants. ”

“ To receive into one great common home millions of sons and daughters strange to that home and to one another in speech, custom and land, and to blend them into one people, this seems an impossible task. ”

“ American boys and girls may think all mothers know how to take care of children, because their mothers took such good care of them. It would surprise them to know that in the fall some of the immigrant mothers sew a suit of clothes on their child and expect that suit to stay on through the winter—it is not to come off at night, either. Many Italian mothers wrap up their little babies until they look like a mummy that you may have seen in a museum. The baby can move its hands but not its feet ”

“ The Sicilian lives in a beautiful country, but while the sea and the mountains are good to look upon, the people are very poor. The farm worker cannot send his boy to school as boys go in America, for the rural schools are few. He must pay such heavy taxes he has little left for himself. Then, a few rich people own almost all the land and he must work for them, or starve. They pay him such small wages he cannot buy good, nourishing food for his children and they often suffer greatly in consequence. You draw a long breath when you are told his wages are from eight to thirty-two cents per day. ”

“ In a barren desert tract in the West, where sage brush and cactus are the only vegetation, the desert blossoms when the rivers of irrigation are let in. So does this returning human flood bring hope and new life to wornout and often hopeless civilizations. ”

“ The immigration of a few years ago, as is well known, was from Northern Europe, bringing the German, the Scotch, the English, the Irish, the Welsh and the Scandinavian. These were races from the temperate zone who had gained culture [55] and the virtues of a Christian civilization, largely Protestant, through long centuries of intelligent struggle. The Italian immigrant of today is from Southern Italy. The Northern Italian, more skilled and better educated, does not come to the United States in any large numbers; his goal is mainly Argentina and Brazil, in South America. ”

“ It was much easier years ago, when all that are now cities were only towns and villages, and many cities now well known were simply prairie with waving grass and flowers, roamed over by bands of Indians and trampled by the hoofs of countless bison. ”

“ In America I want to and can. I am sorry, but ‘Good-bye, Italy.’”
The same opportunity for riches attracts the Chinese. He lives in a land that, labor as he will, is barely able to feed its almost half a billion human mouths. His wages [27] at home are so meagre he can never hope for independence; two cents per day is what the farm laborer in Shantung earns. Since as a laborer he cannot legally enter the United States, he comes in under cover of darkness over the Mexican or Canadian borders, or any other way he can devise. The same hope of wealth attracts the Chinese. ”

“ America is not only rich in dollars, it is rich in kindness and sympathy. Our fathers were pilgrims and strangers; some of us were ourselves strangers. We should, therefore, try to carry out Christ’s story of the good neighbor, and, if we find our immigrant brother in need of help or protection, we should be among the first to have compassion on him. ”

“ OUR RUSSIAN NEIGHBOR I mention the Russian not because large immigration has set in from Russia, but because I am personally acquainted with work among these people and because they are coming in increased numbers. When the Russian wishes to change his home, he is usually directed to some part of his own vast empire, and large numbers are settling in what was one time thought to be ice-bound Siberia, and are there successfully engaged in farming. There is, however, a constantly rising tide of immigration among the Russians. In 1901, 672 entered the United States. ”

“ Among the good neighbors that are grappling with this great task most effectively I place the public school first, because I believe it the most useful neighbor in making young Americans. Frequently the foreign-born parents see the New World largely through the eyes of their children, so that the school is a good neighbor to the whole family. ”

“ He spreads the glowing tale of the New World and you may be sure the reality loses nothing in the telling. Every youthful heart is fired to a like adventure, to seek the golden, western world. As one returned immigrant said:—“It’s a land where all wear shoes, where trains shoot through the air, and shoot through the ground; even the poor ride, no one needs an umbrella, the cars pass everywhere.” It is little wonder they want to come. In America labor is dear and materials are cheap; in Italy labor is cheap and materials are expensive. ”

“ After seeing the ever-present throngs of prosperous-looking people on the streets, he asked in great surprise, “But where are your working people?” He did not know that the happy-faced, well-dressed people he was looking at were working people practising the American standard of living. ”

“ The nature of the outings that the average young American of the East Side conducts is pretty well known throughout the city of New York. They are usually anything but orderly and thoughtful. But on a Christian Chinese picnic I have gone from the bow to the stern of the boat and found numerous games of Chinese chess in progress, each game surrounded by an excited group of advisers telling the players what move to make to checkmate their opponents. The playing of a good game of chess is not a childish task. The Chinese are a thoughtful people. ”

“ The Jew is no different to-day, he is kind and affectionate in his home. We know the evil the saloon does in every city and town and village in America where it exists. The Jew is generally an enemy of the saloon. The liquor business does not prosper [40] where he lives. The Jews are lovers of books and education, and some of the greatest scholars, musicians, artists, and writers of the world have been Jews. ”

“ Why do such vast armies of human beings leave their homes? Why do they travel weary miles over land and sea and suffer such hardships and privations? The causes would indeed be urgent that would induce us to take a like journey and leave behind our pleasant, comfortable homes. Can it be that the home of the immigrant is not pleasant and comfortable? ”

“ A number of the Russians in New York are revolutionists of various classes; they are almost always led by the Jew, who acts as public speaker and general leader in most Russian affairs. About two-thirds of those who come are unskilled farm laborers and common laborers.
Religiously. While a large number of those who land are members of the Russian Greek Church, most of them are members of groups hostile to the church, although many of this latter class are unusually fine men. They are exiles from their country for causes that would often [46] bring them honor in any really enlightened land. ”

“ Many come because the steamship companies are such good advertisers. These companies paint beautiful pictures of the New World, and the peasant sees great farms, busy factories, and wealthy cities. The companies never show any views of dark, unhealthful tenements.
Through this steamship advertising many unfit persons sail for America, persons whom the agents might have known would be rejected, while many of the lowest class are induced to leave their country because their country is glad to get rid of them. ”