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On the Trail of The Immigrant

<h2>XIII THE SLAVIC INVASION</h2> THE Slovak and the Pole, or the “Hunkies” as they are often contemptuously called, are among the most industrious and patient people who come to our shores. I know this because time after time I have followed them from their native villages, across the sea and into the coal mines of Pennsylvania, or the steel mills, coke ovens and lime stone quarries along the lakes, to which they were called because their virtues as labourers were known. Even on board ship they are the most patient passengers, for hardships are not new to them, and the bill of fare, meagre though it is, contains not a few luxuries to which their palates are strangers; if it were not for the seasickness, they would consider their ocean trip as much of a pleasure as do those of us who cross the sea for a wedding trip or a vacation. I have crossed the ocean with them ten times at least, and have never heard a word of complaint, although their more refined travelling companions say much about their untidiness, rudeness, and other marks of semi-civilization. I have never seen one of them read a newspaper; only one man do I remember who read a book, and that was a prayer-book of the Greek Church. They leave their picturesque garb at home, and lie on the deck in all sorts of weather in all kinds of dress and undress, the women being barefooted even in winter. In conversation with the men I can never go beyond the facts that they are going to work, earn money, pay off a mortgage on a piece of land at home, or save enough money to send for Katchka or Anka to be their wedded wife. If the Slovak feels any great emotions when he reaches New York, he never expresses them; he is usually dumb from wonder and half frightened, as he faces this new and busy world in which he will be but an atom or just so much horse-power. In spite of the contract labour law, he is billed to an agent in New York or taken to Pennsylvania, where his new life begins and too often ends in a coal-mine. The home which he will make for himself is one of many, and all alike are painted green or red,—shells of buildings into which crowd from fifteen to twenty people who are taken care of by one woman whose husband may be the foreman of a gang and the chief beneficiary of its labour. In the town of Verbocz, in Hungary, I recently met a man who had returned from America with $2,000 in his pocket, and whose career here is typical of a large number. He came to America fifteen years ago and worked in a mine in Pennsylvania near Pittsburg. He had stayed long enough to learn English, to be able to receive and give orders and have them carried out, so he became a foreman. His wife and children then came, and moved into one of the houses previously described, bringing with them twenty men, boarders. Through much industry and frugality they saved these $2,000 and now in their old age they had returned to spend that money at their pleasure. The wife has permanently put off the peasant garb and has retained in her vocabulary such bits of English as “come on,” “go on” and “how much,” which she displays on every occasion. The children are still in America, one of the sons being in the saloon business, and on the road to greater wealth than that which his father accumulated. Their competitors in the field of labour accuse them of filthiness, yet, after having walked through hundreds of these shanties, I can say that the report of untidiness among them is exaggerated; for the majority of homes are cleaner than their crowded condition would warrant, while there are not a few in which the floors are scrubbed daily, and fairly shine from cleanliness. Just as uncomplainingly as into the life on board ship, the Slovak fits into the new work, whatever it may be, and no animal ever took its burden more patiently than he does his, as he faces unflinchingly the hot blasts of a furnace or the dark depths of mines. He can be worked only in gangs directed by one of his number who has gathered a few crumbs of English, and who seasons them freely by those words which are usually printed in dashes. Such a thing as rebellion he does not know, as his whole past history testifies; in our strikes he is a very convenient scapegoat and not seldom a sheep, led to deeds whose consequences he has not measured. In nearly every case of violence which I could trace and in which he took an active part, he was inflamed by drink which interested persons had given him. He is considered by the tradesmen of his town to be their most honest customer, and one merchant who has dealt with the Slovaks for twelve years, who has carried them from pay-day to pay-day, and through strikes and lay-offs, told me that he had not lost one cent through them, while his losses from the other miners were from fifteen to thirty-five per cent.; and, with but slight variations, this is the testimony of all the merchants. In no small measure this is due to their fear of law, for in Hungary every debt is collectible, and not even the homestead is exempt from the executioner. There is also no petty thieving in communities where they have lived for twenty years, and they have never been accused or even suspected of theft. As one common accusation against them is that they spend very little in this country and send most of their earnings abroad, I examined this matter very carefully, interviewing every merchant and every class of merchants, the postmasters, and even the saloon-keepers, and they all agree that these people are fairly good customers. In visiting their homes I found that usually they are not lavish as to house-furnishings; the front room, which in the American household would answer for the parlour, is filled by the trunks of the boarders, and in a few cases has that beginning of American civilization, the rocking-chair. A stand with a white cloth cover holding a few knickknacks is a rarity, but exists in about five per cent. of the houses I have visited; carpets I have seen only twice, but the lace-curtain fashion has not a few imitators. Upon his bed the Slovak lavishes a great deal of money, making it his costliest piece of furniture, while his imported feather-beds keep out entirely the more sanitary mattress and blankets. He does not stint himself in his food, as is commonly supposed, for he eats a good deal, although his steak, being cut from the shoulder, is cheap, and is always called “Polak steak.” He eats quantities of beans, cabbage, and potatoes, and about eight dollars a month covers the board bill of an adult. He drinks too much, but drinks economically, preferring a barrel of beer for the crowd to the more expensive glass, and he carries a bottle in his hip pocket as invariably as the cowboy is supposed to carry a pistol. Instead of whiskey he sometimes takes alcohol and water, which may, after all, be the same rose by another name. In buying clothing I am told that he buys the best which is fitted for his work and for his station, and to see him after working hours, cleanly washed and dressed in American fashion from the boots up to the choking collar, one would not suspect him of miserliness. He does save money, for out of an average earning of forty dollars a month he will send at least fifteen dollars to Hungary, and on pay-day the money-order window in the little post-office is crowded by these industrious toilers who have not forgotten wife, children, old parents, and old debts. Many of them claim that they would buy houses in this country if they were assured of steady work, and in many places they plead that they cannot buy property because the company owns all the real estate and prefers to rent all the houses falsely called homes. Unfortunately they have imported into this country their racial prejudices which are keenest towards their closest kin, and each mining camp becomes the battle-ground on which ancient wrongs are made new issues by repeated quarrels and fights which become bloody at times, although premeditated murder is rather infrequent. In a large number of cases these unfortunate divisions are intermingled by religious differences, although the Slovak and the Pole do not speak well of one another even if they belong to the same church. The Pole regards himself as the especial guardian of the Roman Catholic Church, and while a majority of the Slovaks are of the same Church, Protestantism has made some inroads and the Greek Church claims many loyal adherents. Many of the Catholics belong to the Greek Catholic Church which is that portion of the Greek Church in Austria which united with Rome after the division of Poland, and which was permitted to use its own Slavonic ritual and retain its married clergy. Only a portion of the Greek Church entered this union so that nearly every large Slovak community has a number of Russian Greeks, who look upon the Roman Greeks with a great deal of scorn. In Marblehead, on Lake Erie, where these Slovaks are engaged in the limestone quarries, this division was discovered after all the Greeks had built one church, that of the Roman Greeks. A few of the wiser ones who arrived in this country later were dreadfully shocked when they saw this, and in Peter Shigalinsky’s saloon plans were made to gain possession of the church for the only true Greeks, the Russian; many pitched battles were fought, a long and fruitless litigation followed, and finally Peter Shigalinsky built next to his saloon a new church, whose orthodoxy is emphasized by one of the horizontal pieces of the cross slanting at a more acute angle than that of the Roman Greek church, in which of course there can be no salvation. Where they have no church of their own they are usually found worshipping with the English or Germans, if they are Romanists, but in many cases the priests told me that they are not wanted and must keep to one corner of the building. There are not priests enough to shepherd them, and those they have are in many cases unfitted for the task. It is asserted that the Lutheran pastors are no better, and count for little or nothing in making these people Christians and citizens. They are naturally suspicious of strangers, but grateful for every kindness, and once a door is opened to their hearts it is never closed again. Unfortunately, their speech shuts them out from the touch with American people of the same community, but there are avenues of approach in which only one language is spoken—the language of love and kindness; one noble American woman whom I know ministers to them by nursing them and suggesting simple remedies when they are ill, and has thus become no small factor in their social and religious redemption. Of literature little or nothing enters the mining villages, although among the Poles the hunger for it grows and many papers and magazines are coming into existence. The Slovak lives an isolated life, sublimely ignorant of “wars and rumours of wars”; his breakfast is not spoiled by the glaring head-lines of the daily paper, nor does the magazine or novel press upon him the problems of human society. He knows his camp, his mine, his shop, and though he lives in America and in the most busy States in the Union, his world now is not much bigger than it was when its horizon touched his village pastures. As yet he is not a factor politically, though the political “boss” finds him the best kind of material, for he is bought and sold without knowing it, and votes for he knows not whom. At Braddock, Pa., it was told me that he is sold first to the Democrats and then to the Republicans, and afterwards is naïve enough to come back to the Democrats and tell of his bargain, willing to be bought back into his political family. Like almost all foreigners, he is a Democrat by instinct or by association, one scarcely knows which, although he is usually anything that a drink of liquor makes him. I asked one his political faith, “Are you a Democrat?” “No, me Catholic—Greek, not Russian,” was the reply. “What are your politics?” I asked a number. “Slovak,” was the invariable answer. Not twenty per cent. of those I interviewed knew the name of our President, not two per cent. the name of the Governor of the State in which they were residing. The Slovak does not know the meaning of the word citizen, and the limited franchise in Hungary is exercised for him by those shrewder than himself; he is just force and muscle, with all the roots of his heart in the little village across the sea, and with his brain wherever the stronger brain leads him. At a recent election in Hungary, a district where the Slovaks were in a large majority, they were, nevertheless, defeated by the Magyar element which knew how to manage them; so that they may be said to have had just enough political training to fit them into the political life of the average American community. Although the Slovak is a quiet and peaceful citizen, on feast day he does not consider his religious nature sufficiently stirred without a fight, which is usually a crude, bungling affair, devoid of the science which accompanies such an episode among the Irish, and also without the deadly results of an Italian fracas. On the wedding day of Yanko and Katshka, the silence of the camp is broken by the sound of a screeching violin, followed by the wailing of a clarinet and the grunting of a bass viol. Above the discord of noise made by these instruments is heard the voice of the bridegroom, who leads the dances with the song: “I am so glad I have you, I have you, and I wouldn’t sell you to any one.” If you enter the house of the bride, you will find it full of sweltering humanity, all of it dancing up and down, down and up, while the fiddlers play and the bridegroom sings about “The sweetheart he is glad to have and wouldn’t sell to any one.” Usually the Slav dancers provide the notes and the bank notes also; for at the end of the piece half a dozen stalwart men will throw themselves in front of the musicians, each one of them demanding in exchange for the money tossed upon the table, his favourite tune to which he sings his native song. The result is, half a dozen men, each singing or trying to sing, a different song, all of them pushing, crowding, and at last fighting, until in the middle of the room you will find an entanglement of human beings which beats itself into an unrecognizable mass. The wedding lasts three days, the ceremony often taking place after the first day’s festivities. The order of proceedings and the length of the feast vary, according to imported traditions which among the Slavs are different in every district. <ANTIMG src="images/ill_pg_208_sml.jpg" width-obs="500" height-obs="350" alt="WITHOUT THE PALE. Not always is the adverse decision of the Commissioner so easy as in the case of some Servian gypsies who, deported from New York, found their way to Canada and quickly made police records." title="WITHOUT THE PALE" /> WITHOUT THE PALE. Not always is the adverse decision of the Commissioner so easy as in the case of some Servian gypsies who, deported from New York, found their way to Canada and quickly made police records. Of course the whole mining camp is an interested spectator and guests usually do not wait for a formal invitation. The ceremony over, the wedding dinner is served, and never in all the Carpathian Mountains was there such feasting as there is in the Alleghanies. “Polak” steak, cabbage with raisins, beets, slices of bacon, links of sausages, sweet potatoes, and, “last but not least,” the great American dish, conqueror of all foreign tastes—pie; huge, luscious and full of unheard-of delicacies. Beer flows as freely as milk and honey flowed in the promised land; again the musicians play and if the bridegroom has voice enough left he will sing the song of “The sweetheart he is so glad to have and wouldn’t sell to any one, no, not to any one.” Barrel after barrel is emptied until the pyramids of Egypt have small rivals in those built entirely of beer barrels in the little mining town in Pennsylvania. Many of the drinkers fall asleep as soundly as Rameses ever did before he was embalmed, while others are making ready for the end of the feast—the fight, for “no fight, no feast” is the proverb. Somebody calls a Slovak a Polak, or vice versa; some young man casts glances at some young maiden otherwise engaged—and the fight is on. I have never discovered just the reason for the fight, and one might as well search for the cause of a cyclone, but the results are nearly the same: furniture, heads, and glasses all in the same condition—broken; everybody on the ground like twisted forest trees, while one hears between long black curses the peaceful snores of the unconscious drunk. The next day and the next the programme is repeated, and this is the Slovak’s only diversion, unless it be a saint’s day, when history repeats itself and he once more practices his two vices, drinking and fighting. As a rule the Slav is virtuous although this depends largely upon local conditions in the village or district from which he comes. One could prove him in certain regions the most virtuous of men while in others he is just the reverse. Almost without exception where one woman cooks for fifteen or twenty men as is often the case in mining camps, they respect her as the wife of one man, while she respects her own virtue and would fight if necessary to remain loyal to her husband. There is much coarse, indelicate talk and much crudeness, for the Slav is a realist in speech and action; therefore that which would seem to us immoral, is simply his way of expressing himself, accustomed as he is to call “a spade a spade.” The Pole who emigrates to this country comes from nearly the same region as the Slovak, and lives very much the same life, although in many things he is his superior. He has greater self-assertion, is not so submissive to the church, chafes more under restraint, has a greater racial and national consciousness, and is by virtue of his historic development both better and worse than the Slovak. He becomes more identified with American life and will remain an important part of it whether for good or evil, while a large portion of the Slovaks will return to the villages and the peaceful acres from which they came. The Polish community is consequently more of an entity and looks towards permanence. The centralizing power is usually the church; around it, and stimulated by it, grows the Polish town which not unfrequently occupies the best location to be had, with its agencies well organized and controlled. Perhaps the best example of such a Polish town completely governed and controlled by the church is in New Britain, Conn., where the population is engaged in manufacturing hardware. With rare foresight the best situation in the city was bought, and facing the still undeveloped part of this real estate holding, the church, a magnificent white stone structure, was built; a church which might well be the pride of any community. Their priest, who is both Czar and Pope, is a strong, wise monarch who holds in his keeping the destinies of thousands who trust and obey him implicitly. The houses built are rather rude tenements, evidently built to bring large and quick results; but the sanitary condition must be good if it can be judged by the cleanliness and wholesomeness of the children. Indeed, this part of the city of New Britain is as clean and orderly as one might reasonably expect among a population imported to do the roughest kind of labour. One is likely to be apprehensive as to the future when one realizes that nearly all the children go to a parochial school, in which only a minimum of the English language is taught; that the men are all organized into patriotic and religious brotherhoods which march armed through the streets. One cannot yet determine how much these things will do to prevent Americanization and assimilation, two things which are exceedingly desirable and which these and other agencies seem to prevent. Besides Slavs and Poles, lesser groups of Crainers from the Austrian Alps, Croatians and Servians, have gathered in the larger Slav centres and around them, and while in a great measure they live the same life as do their more numerous kindred, there are minor differences which are somewhat accentuated by the abnormal conditions under which they all live. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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