With Poor Immigrants in America. Stephen Graham
Читать онлайн книгу.
were fifteen hundred of us; each man and woman, still carrying handbags and baskets, filed past a doctor and two assistants, and was cursorily examined for diseases of the eye or skin.
"Hats and gloves off!" was our first greeting on the liner. We marched slowly up to the medical trio, and each one as he passed had his eyelid seized by the doctor and turned inside out with a little instrument. It was a strange liberty to take with one's person; but doctors are getting their own way nowadays, and they were looking for trachoma. For the rest the passing of hands through our hair and examination of our skin for signs of scabies was not so rough, and the cleaner-looking people were not molested.
Still carrying our things we took our medical-inspection cards and had them stamped by a young man on duty for that purpose. Then we were shown our berths.
There was a spring bed for each person, a towel, a bar of soap, and a life-preserver. The berths were arranged, two, four, and six in a cabin. Married couples could have a room to themselves, but for the rest men and women were kept in different sets of cabins. British were put together, Scandinavians together, Russians and Jews together. It was so arranged that the people in the cabins understood one another's language. Notices on the walls warned that all emigrants would be vaccinated on deck, whether they had been vaccinated before or not; that all couples making love too warmly would be married compulsorily at New York if the authorities deemed it fit, or should be fined or imprisoned; that in case of fire or smoke being seen anywhere we were to report to chief steward, but not to our fellow-passengers; that smoking was not allowed except on the upper deck, and so on. The cabins were a glittering, shining white; they were small and box-like; they possessed wash-basins and water for the first day of the voyage, but not to be replenished on succeeding days. There were general lavatories where you might wash in hot or cold water, and there were bathrooms which were locked and never used. Each cabin had a little mirror. The cabins were steam-heated, and when the passengers were dirty the air was foul. Fresh air was to be found on the fore and after decks, except in time of storm, when we were barred down. In time of storm the smell below was necessarily worse—atrocious, for most of the people were very sick. We had, however, a great quantity of dark space to ourselves, and could prowl into the most lonesome parts of the vessel. The dark recesses were always occupied by spooning couples who looked as if they had embarked on this journey only to make love to one another. There were parts of the ship wholly given over to dancing, other parts to horse-play and feats of strength. There was an immense dining-room with ante-chambers and there, to the sound of the jangling dinner-bell echoing and wandering far or near over the ship, we assembled to meals.
RUSSIAN WOMEN ON BOARD.
The peasant woman. The intellectual and revolutionary type.
The emigrants flocked into the mess-room from the four doors to twenty immense tables spread with knives and forks and toppling platters of bread. Nearly all the men came in in their hats—in black glistening ringlety sheepskin hats, in fur caps, in bowlers, in sombreros, in felt hats with high crowns, in Austrian cloth hats, in caps so green that the wearer could only be Irish. Most of the young men were curious to see what girls there were on board, and looked eagerly to the daintily clad Swedish women, blonde and auburn-haired beauties in tight-fitting, speckless jerseys. The British girls came in in their poor cotton dresses, or old silk ones, things that had once looked grand for Sunday wear but now bore miserable crippled hooks and eyes, threadbare seams, gaping fastenings—cheerful daughters of John Bull trapesing along in the shabbiest of floppy old boots. Then there were the dark and somewhat forward Jewesses, talking animatedly with little Jew men in queer-shaped trousers and skimpy coats; there were slatternly looking Italian women with their children, intent on being at home in whatever circumstances. There was a party of shapely and attractive Austrian girls that attracted attention from the others and a regular scramble to try to sit next to them or near them. No one ever saw a greater miscellaneity and promiscuity of peoples brought together by accident. I sat between a sheepskin-wrapped peasant wife from the depths of Russia and a neat Danish engineer, who looked no different from British or American. Opposite me were two cowboys going back to the Far West, a dandified Spanish Jew sat next them on one hand and two Norwegians in voluminous knitted jackets on the other. At the next table was a row of boisterous Flemings, with huge caps and gaudy scarfs. There were Americans, spruce and smart and polite; there were Italians, swarthy and dirty, having their black felt hats on their heads all through the meal and resting their elbows on the table as if they'd just come into a public-house in their native land. There were gentle youths in shirts which womenfolk had embroidered in Little Russia; there were black-bearded Jewish patriarchs in their gaberdines, tall and gaunt.
THE BOISTEROUS FLEMINGS.
A strange gathering of seekers, despairers, wanderers, pioneers, criminals, scapegoats. I thought of all the reasons that had brought these various folk together to make a community, that had brought them all together to form a Little America. From Great Britain it is so often the drunkard who is sent. Some young fellow turns out to be wilder than the rest of his family; he won't settle down to the sober, righteous, and godly life that has been the destiny of the others; he is likely to disgrace respectability, so parents or friends give him his passage-money and a little capital and send him away across the sea. Henceforth his name is mentioned at home with a 'ssh, or with a tear—till the day that he makes his fortune. With the drunkard go the young forger or embezzler whose shame has been covered up and hidden, but who can get no "character" from his last employer. Then there are the unemployed, and those discontented with their jobs, the out-of-works, the men who have seen no prospect in the old land and felt no freedom. There are the wanderers, the rovers, the wastrels, so called, who have never been able to settle down; there are also the prudent and thoughtful men who have read of better conditions and go simply to take advantage of them. There are those who are there almost against their will, persuaded by the agents of the shipping companies and the various people interested to keep up the flow of people into America. There are the women who are going out to their sweethearts to be married, and the wives who are going to the husbands who have "made good"; there are the girls who have got into trouble at home and have slid away to America to hide their shame; there are girls going to be domestic servants, and girls doomed to walk the streets—all sitting down together, equals, at a table where no grace is said but the whisper of hope which rises from each heart.
But it is not only just these people whom I have so materially and separately indicated. The cheerful lad who is beginning to flirt with his first girl acquaintance on the boat has only a few hours since dried the tears off his cheeks; they are nearly all young people on the boat, and they mostly have loving mothers and fathers in the background, and friends and sweethearts, some of them. And there are some lonely ones who have none who care for them in all the world. There are young men who are following a lucky star, and who will never be so poor again in their lives, boys who have guardian angels who will never let them injure their foot on the ground, boys who have in their favour good fairies, boys and girls who have old folk praying for them. And there is the prodigal son, as well as the too-prodigal daughter. There are youngest brothers in plenty, going to win the princess in a way their elder brothers never thought of; young Hans is there, Aladdin, Norwegian Ashepattle, Ivan Durak—the Angel of Life is there; there is also the Angel of Death.
We sat down together to our first meal—the whole company of the emigrant passengers broke bread together and became thereby one body—a little American nation in ourselves. I am sure that had the rest of the world's people been lost we could have run a civilization by ourselves. We had peasants to till the soil, colliers to give us fuel, weavers and spinners to make cloth, tailors to sew it into garments, comely girls of all nations to be our wives; we had clerks and shop-keepers and Jews with which to make cities; musicians and music-hall artists to divert us, and an author to write about it all.
Mugs half-full of celery soup were whisked along the tables; not a chunk of bread on the platters was less