With Poor Immigrants in America. Stephen Graham
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inch thick; the hash of gristly beef and warm potato was what would not have been tolerated in the poorest restaurant, but we set ourselves to eat it, knowing that trials in plenty awaited us and that the time might come when we should have worse things than these to bear. The Swedes and the British were finicky; the Russians and the Jews ate voraciously as if they'd never seen anything so good in their lives.
The peasant woman next to me crossed herself before and after the meal; her Russian compatriots removed their hats and some of them said grace in a whisper to themselves. But most ate even with their hats on, and most with their hands dirty. You would not say we ate as if in the presence of God and with the memories, in the mind, of prayers for the future and heart-break at parting with home; yet this meal was for the seeing eye a wonderful religious ceremony, a very real first communion service. The rough food so roughly dispensed was the bread and wine, making them all of one body and of one spirit in America. Henceforth all these people will come nearer and nearer to one another, and drift farther and farther from the old nations to which they belonged. They will marry one another, British and Jewish, Swedish and Irish, Russian and German; they will be always eating at America's board; they will be speaking the one language, their children will learn America's ideals in America's school. Even from the most aboriginal, illiterate peasant on board, there must come one day a little child, his grandson or great-grandson, who will have forgotten the old country and the old customs, whose heart will thrill to America's idea as if he had himself begotten it.
On Sunday morning when we came upstairs from our stuffy little cabin we were gliding past the green coast of Ireland, and shortly after breakfast-time we entered the beautiful harbour of Queenstown, blue-green, gleaming, and perfect under a bright spring sun. Hawkers came aboard with apples, knotted sticks, and green favours—the day following would be St. Patrick's. And we shipped a score of Irish passengers.
Outside Queenstown a different weather raged over the Atlantic, and as we steamed out of the lagoon it came forward to meet us. The clouds came drifting toward us, and the wind rattled in the masts. The ocean was full of glorious life and wash of wave and sea. A crowd of emigrants stood in the aft and watched the surf thundering away behind us; the great hillsides of green water rose into being and then fell out of being in grand prodigality. Gulls hung over us as we rushed forward and poised themselves with gentle feet outstretched, or flew about us, skirling and crying, or went forward and overtook us. Meanwhile Ireland and Britain passed out of view, and we were left alone with the wide ocean. We knew that for a week we should not see land again, and when we did see land that land would be America.
THE DREAMY NORWEGIAN WITH THE CONCERTINA. THE ENDLESS DANCING.
Then we all began to know one another, to talk, to dance, to sing, to play together. All the cabins were a-buzz with chatter, and along the decks young couples began to find one another out and to walk arm and arm. Two dreamy Norwegians produced concertinas, and without persuasion sat down in dark corners and played dance music for hours, for days. Rough men danced with one another, and the more fortunate danced with the girls, dance after dance, endlessly. The buffets were crowded with navvies clamouring for beer; the smoking-rooms were full of excited gamblers thumbing filthy cards. The first deck was wholly in electric light, you mounted to the second and it was all in shadow, you went higher still and you came to daylight. You could spend your waking hours on any of these levels, but the lower you went the warmer it was. On the electric-light deck were to be found the cleaner and more respectable passengers; they sat and talked in the mess-room, played the piano, sang songs. Up above them all the hooligans rushed about, and there also, in the shadow, in the many recesses and dark empty corners young men and women were making love, looking moonily at one another, kissing furtively and giving by suggestion an unwonted atmosphere to the ship. It was also on this deck that the wild couples danced and the card-players shuffled and dealt. Up on the open deck were the sad people, and those who loved to pace to and fro to the march music of the racing steamer and the breaking waves.
I wandered from deck to deck, everywhere; opened many doors, peered into many faces, sat at the card-table, crushed my way into the bar, entered into the mob of dancers, found a Russian girl and talked to her. But I was soon much sought for. When the Russian-speaking people found out I had their language they followed me everywhere, asking elementary questions about life and work and wages in America. Even after I had gone to bed and was fast asleep my cabin door would open and some woolly-faced Little Russian would cry out, "Gospodin Graham, forgive me, please, I have a little prayer to make you; write me also a letter to a farmer."
I had written for several of them notes which they might present at their journey's end.
All day long I was in converse with Russians, Poles, Jews, Georgians, Lithuanians, Finns.
"Look at these Russian fatheads (duraki)," said a young Jew. "Why do they go to America? Why do they leave their native land to go to a country where they will be exploited by every one?"
"Why do you leave it, then?" asked a Russian.
"Because I have no rights there," replied the Jew.
"Have we rights?" the Russian retorted.
"If I had your rights in Russia I'd never leave that country. I'd find something to do that would make me richer than I could ever be in America."
There were three or four peasants around, and another rejoined. "But you could have our rights if you wished."
Whereupon I broke in:
"But only by renouncing the Jewish faith."
"That is exactly the truth," said the Jew.
"Yes," said a Russian called Alexy Mitrophanovitch, "he can have all our rights if he renounces his faith."
"If I am baptized to get your rights what use is that to you? Why do Christians ask for such an empty thing?"
"All the same," said another Russian, "in going to America you will break your faith, and so will we. I have heard how it happens. They don't keep the Saints' days there."
Alexy Mitrophanovitch was a fine, tall, healthy-looking peasant workman in a black sheepskin. With him, and as an inseparable, walked a broad-faced Gorky-like tramp in a dusty peak-hat. The latter was called Yoosha.
"You see, all I've got," said Alexy to me, "is just what I stand up in. Not a copeck of my own in my pocket, and not a basket of clothes. My friend Yoosha is lending me eighty roubles so as to pass the officials at New York, but of course I give it back to him when we pass the barrier. We worked together at Astrakhan."
"Have you a bride in Russia?"
No, he was alone. He did not think to marry; but he had a father and a mother. At Astrakhan he had been three thousand versts away from his village home, so he wouldn't be so much farther away in America.
He was going to a village in Wisconsin. A mate of his had written that work was good there, and he and Yoosha had decided to go. They would seek the same farmer, a German, Mr. Joseph Stamb—would I perhaps write a letter in English to Mr. Stamb? …
Both he and Yoosha took communion before leaving Astrakhan. I asked Alexy whether he thought he was going to break his faith as the other Russians had said to the Jew. How was he going to live without his Tsar and his Church?
He struck his breast and said, "There, that is where my Church is! However far away I go I am no farther from God!"
Would he go back to Russia?
He would like to go back to die there.
"Tell me," said he, "do they burn dead bodies in America? I would not like my body to be burned. It was made of earth, and should return to the earth."
The man who slept parallel with me in my cabin was an English collier from the North Country. He had been a bad boy in the old country, and his father had helped him off to America. Whenever he had a chance to talk to me,