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 classes 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 institutions, 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.

THE EASTERN INVASION

Least known, least liked, and least assimilable 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 passed it would probably be easier to aim it at the Slavs than any other class 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
Slovaks	52,368
Croatians and Slovenians	35,104
Lithuanians	18,604
Ruthenians	14,473
Roumanians	7,818
Magyars	46,030
Servians, Bulgarians, and Montenegrins	5,823
Dalmatians, Bosnians, and Herzegovinians	2,639
Bohemians and Moravians	11,757
Russians proper	3,746
Russian Jews[61]	92,388

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]

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 class, 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]

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 class of aliens. A striking illustration of non-assimilation 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 assuredly, as an element in our civilization.

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

An analysis 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 mass, 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]

"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 mass 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 class these peoples indiscriminately as "barbarian Huns."

I. The Bohemians

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 preËmigration history. These people, who call themselves Czechs, are a principal branch of the Slav family and one of the large constituents 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.

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]

"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 bloody battleground of Protestant reform. Under the spiritual and military leadership 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 reËstablished; 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."

The first Bohemian settlers were of the most intelligent and more prosperous classes. They went West, chiefly to Wisconsin, where their farms are among the finest in the state. In Kewaunee County they constitute over one third of the population, or 6,000 out of 17,000. They have developed into an excellent type of American citizenship, 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:

"In the country the assimilation 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 retarding assimilation. Aside from this matter of religion, the Bohemian falls into American customs with surprising readiness."

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.

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.

The Bohemians are a home people, social, and fond of organizations of every kind. Music is their passion, and their clubs, mutual benefit societies, and loan associations, 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 class, 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 God in my heart, I shall deal with him. I do not want any priest to step between us." That is the class which the gospel can reach and ought to reach speedily.

About seventy-five per cent, of the Bohemians live in the northwest. In Cleveland they have entered into various industries. In New York they are largely employed in cigar-making, at which the women and girls work under conditions not calculated to inspire them with regard for God or man. The home life cannot be what it should when the mothers are compelled to work in the factories, besides having all the home cares and work. The testimony of the tenement inspectors is that the Bohemians are perhaps the cleanest of the poor people in the city, and are struggling heroically against the pitiful conditions of the tenement-houses in which they are compelled to exist.

II. The Poles

The Poles form one of the oldest and largest elements of the Slav immigration. In 1900 the census gave 668,536 persons whose parents were born in Poland, and of these 383,510 were themselves born there. Nearly a quarter of a million of the latter came to this country between 1890 and 1900, and in the five years following, 1900-5, about 350,000 more arrived. A third of a million Poles now in America do not understand English. The Polish strength is indicated by the Polish National Alliance, with 50,000 members, and by a list of fifty newspapers published in the Polish tongue, four of them dailies, printed in Chicago, Buffalo, and Milwaukee, the largest centers.

Reproduced by special permission of "The World's Work." Copyright 1909.

"The higher classes of Poland were touched by the pre-Reformation movement of Huss at Prague, where they were generally educated. Reformation ideas did not gain as great currency as in Bohemia, but both Calvin and Luther were interested in their progress in Poland. A Jesuit authority complained that two thousand Romanist churches had become Protestant. A Union Synod was formed and consensus of doctrine adopted. Poland is described as the most tolerant country of Europe in the sixteenth century. It became an asylum for the persecuted Protestants of other lands, notably the Bohemian brethren. Later on, under the influence of Protestantism, literature and education were stimulated. But under succeeding Swedish and Saxon dynasties, and through Jesuit instrumentality, religious liberty and national independence were lost, and Poland disappeared from the map of Europe. As a race the Poles boast such names as Copernicus the astronomer, Kosciusko the patriot warrior, and Chopin the composer."[66]

The distribution in America in 1904 was as follows: Illinois, 123,887, of whom 107,669 were in the vicinity of the Chicago stockyards; Pennsylvania, 118,203, mainly in the anthracite coal regions and about Pittsburg, with 11,000 in Philadelphia; New York, 115,046, 50,000 of them in New York City and 35,000 in Buffalo; Wisconsin, 70,000, 36,000 in Milwaukee; Michigan, 59,075, 26,869 in Detroit; Ohio, 31,136, 15,000 in Cleveland and 9,000 in Toledo; in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Jersey, between 20,000 and 30,000 each; in Connecticut and Indiana, over 10,000 each; and in smaller numbers widely distributed. Their preference for the larger cities is shown by these figures. Recent immigrants are going more into the New England States. Already there is a second generation of them in the cities and the farming country of the Middle West, and they have their own teachers and doctors. In New England they are spreading in the factory towns, and Chicopee, Massachusetts, has six thousand of them; while in the tobacco belt of Connecticut they furnish a majority of the farm hands. Ten years ago Hartford had only three or four hundred Polish families; to-day there is a parish of a thousand people, and they have built a Catholic church and given $20,000 toward a school.

Like most of the Slavs, the Poles who come here are commonly poor, and of the peasant class; about one third of them are illiterate. They are clannish, and clash with the Lithuanians and other races. Lovers of liberty, they clash also with the Catholic authorities, going so far even as organized rebellion to obtain control of their church properties and freedom in the choice of priests. They have a superstitious dread of Protestantism, which has been misrepresented to them as extremely difficult. "Polish priests about Pittsburg are said to boast of the number of Bibles, distributed by Protestants, which they gather from the people and burn." If once Protestantism gets a grip upon them, rapid defection from ecclesiastical tyranny will follow. Dr. H. K. Carroll figures that the Polish Catholics as distinct from Roman Catholics, have forty-three churches and 42,859 communicants, with thirty-three priests—this representing the extent of revolt against the Romish Church. It must be granted that comparatively little has been done to reach this people, and it is not strange that as yet the number of Protestant Poles is small. It takes a larger and more imposing movement to make a definite impression upon those accustomed to the size and strength of the Catholic organizations.

III. The Slovaks

The Slovaks of northern Hungary number about two millions, and are closely akin to the Bohemians and Moravians. According to Mr. Rovinanek, editor of the Pittsburg Slovak Daily, they constitute the trunk of the great Slavonic national tree, from which have branched so many of the Slav people, at the head of whom now stands the powerful Russian empire. From prehistoric time they were celebrated as a peaceful, industrious people, fond of agricultural and pastoral life. The immigration has been from the agricultural class, and at first settlement was made in the mining regions of Pennsylvania. Farming had its inherited attractions, however, and there are hundreds of Slovak farmers in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Ohio; while in Minnesota, Arkansas, Virginia, and Wisconsin there are colonies of them, where for many miles on every side the land is entirely in their possession. Kossuth was a Slovak, to their lasting pride. Over 100,000 of them have come to America since 1900, one fourth of them illiterates. They had little opportunity to be otherwise at home, but since coming here their advancement educationally has been marked.

"This is due," says Mr. Rovinanek, "largely to the intensely religious spirit which prevails among the Slavic peoples, and to the fact that here they have been able to combine schools with their churches." The total number now in the country is estimated at 250,000, of whom 150,000 are in Pennsylvania. Two thirds of the immigrants are men.

They live usually in very poor and crowded quarters, one family having sometimes from fifteen to twenty boarders, and under conditions far from cleanly or sanitary. There are nearly as many newspapers in the United States in the Slovak language as in Hungary, with a much larger total circulation. This press has stimulated industrial and business enterprises in the Slovak communities. There are numerous small mercantile establishments. In Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago, wire and tinware factories established with Slovak capital and conducted with Slovak labor are securing the cream of this trade in the country. For centuries the tinware of Europe was made largely by the Slovaks. They have a high position also for electrical designs and other skilled work.

They are a great people for organization. The National Slavonic Society was organized in Pittsburg in 1890, with 250 members; it now has 20,000 active members and 512 lodges. It is primarily a beneficial organization, but has done a valuable work in educating its members and inducing them to become American citizens. The society requires its members, after a reasonable time, to obtain naturalization papers and thus promotes Americanization. It has paid out nearly a million dollars in death benefits, and much more in sick benefits; has aided students in this country and Hungary, and national literary and patriotic workers as well, besides coming to the rescue of Slavs in Hungary persecuted by the government. Many other societies have sprung from this parent organization, including a Presbyterian Slavistic Union, and hundreds of literary, benevolent, and political clubs, so that there are between 100,000 and 125,000 organized Slovaks in the United States.

IV. The Magyars or Hungarians

The Magyars belong properly in a division by themselves. These people, who are Hungarians proper, do not class strictly with the Germans and Slavs of Hungary. They drove out their Slavic predecessors or subjugated them in the ninth century, and became masters of the Danubian plains. Roman Catholicism became the state religion about the year 1000, but during the Reformation period the Lutheran and Reformed types of Protestantism gained a large following and were granted liberty. This was afterward denied them, and bloody struggles followed, as in Bohemia. Protestants were again placed on equal footing with Roman Catholics in 1791. The Magyars number over eight millions and comprise a little more than one half the population of Hungary.

There are at present between 250,000 and 300,000 Hungarians in America. They have a fair degree of education, are generally reputed to be honest, and as compared with the Slavs (with whom they are commonly confused) are more intelligent and less industrious, "more agile in limb and temper." Many are addicted to drink and quarreling. It is noticeable that the Protestants are morally and intellectually superior to the Catholics. The bulk of the Magyars (eighty-six per cent.) are in the Pennsylvania mining regions, in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. At home chiefly agriculturists, here they work mostly in mines, mills, and factories. The Roman Catholic Hungarians are said to lapse easily from the Church, going into indifferentism and nothingism. This gives opening for Protestant mission work.

A writer who has made special investigations, in the line of social settlement studies,[67] says that eighty per cent. of the Magyars arriving in New York go at once to the farms and mines. The New York colony numbers 50,000 to 60,000, including the Hungarian Jews, who are scarcely distinguishable from the Gentiles. The life of their quarter is one continuous whirl of excitement. Pleasure seems the chief end. The cafÉ is their club room. Intensely social, fond of conviviality and gaiety, bright, polished, graceful, the Magyar soon learns English, and adapts himself to his new surroundings. The newspaper, literary society, and charitable organization are the only institutions he cares to support. Pride, independence, fertility of resource, lack of perseverance, love of ease rather than of a strenuous life—these are his qualities. Tailoring is the chief occupation in New York, though Hungarians are also furriers, workers in hotels and restaurants and various kinds of light factories, and some are shopkeepers and merchants. Those who speak from close knowledge call them excellent "citizen-material." In one of these typical East Side Hungarian cafÉs, as a guest of the Hungarian Republican Club, President Roosevelt spent the evening and made a noteworthy address on February 14, 1905. Among other things, he told them that "Americanism is not a matter of birthplace or race, but of the spirit that is in the man."

V. The Lithuanians and Letts

The Lithuanians in Russia number about two millions. They began to come in 1868, driven out by famine at home, and the first comers went to the northern Pennsylvania mines. At present there are about 200,000 in America; 50,000 of them in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania, 25,000 in the soft coal mines of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia; 10,000 in Philadelphia and Baltimore; 15,000 in New York; 25,000 in New England; mainly in Boston, Worcester, Brockton, Hartford, and Bridgeport; 10,000 in Ohio and Michigan; 50,000 in Illinois and Wisconsin; while several thousand are scattered over the western states. Though nearly all raised on farms, they do not take to farming here, nor do they like open air work, preferring the mines, factories, foundries, and closed shops. In the cities many of them are tailors, and many are found in packing-houses, steel plants, hat and shoe factories, and mills. Their chief curse is intemperance, and they are not of strong character, having little of the quality of leadership. Generally they are devout Roman Catholics; when not they are apt to become freethinkers, and a freethinkers' alliance has been formed among them. They are described as commonly peaceable, well dressed, and good-natured. Their children are mostly in public schools. Little Protestant work has been done among them.

The Lettish people, like the Lithuanians, their neighbors and kinsmen, are among the oldest races of Europe. They are clearly distinguished from the southern Slavs, being tall and fair, like the Swede, in complexion. The Letts at home number about a million and a half. Since 1900 nearly 35,000 of them have come to America, settling mostly in the anthracite coal regions. They are also found in New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, and New Jersey. About one half are illiterate, and in the coal fields both Lithuanians and Letts have a poor reputation. In Boston, however, there is an encouraging mission work among the Lettish people.

VI. The Ruthenians

The Ruthenians, or Ukrainians, called also the Little Russians, at home occupy the southern part of Russia, eastern and southwestern Galicia, and part of Bukovina in Austria-Hungary. Their number in Europe is computed at over 30,000,000. They are darker and smaller than the typical Slav. Roman Catholic in religion, they are generally poor, illiterate, backward in civilization, and oppressed. Immigration began perhaps thirty years ago, but not in appreciable numbers until recent years. In the four years ending in June, 1903, there were 26,496 arrivals, two thirds men, nearly all unskilled laborers, and one half unable to read or write. The number in 1905 was 14,473. Pennsylvania is their common destination. Estimates as to their present numbers in the country vary from 160,000 to 350,000, the latter figures given by Ivan Ardan, editor of their paper, Svoboda, at Scranton. He says there are 60,000 more in Canada, and as many in Brazil and other South American republics, or about half a million altogether in the new world. Probably there are 90,000 of them in Pennsylvania. They are said to be accessible to missionary influences, but their ignorance and crowded conditions of living make work difficult.

About eight tenths of the Ruthenians here are laborers, chiefly in the mines; and about one tenth are farmers. The young women work in shops and factories, but prefer domestic service, and are efficient. The people are very saving, and scarcely one but has from $50 to $200 at least saved and put away in some hidden corner or in a bank. They buy lots and build houses, or take up farming. They have beneficial societies for sickness, injury, and death, including wife and mother as well as husband and father. Mr. Ardan says Ruthenian men and women drink, "farmers and Protestants being exceptions." What a notable exception and testimony that is.

Superstitious, devout, attached to their churches, the majority are Greek Catholics, with a few Protestants from Russian Ukraine, where Protestants are bitterly persecuted. There are 108 Ruthenian churches, composed of eighty Greek Catholic, twenty-six Greek Orthodox (Russian State Church), and two Protestant, besides several Protestant missions.

The people are as a rule very eager to learn both their native and the English language. They have their adult schools for this purpose. Their children go to the public schools. There are four Ruthenian weeklies and one monthly published in this country, and some books. Education is prompted by reading circles, lectures, and societies for self-improvement. The race has a fine physique, with great physical endurance. Individuality is more marked in it than in many Slavonic races, and assimilation is comparatively rapid. In this country they rapidly wake up to a new life and promise to make a worthy addition to citizenship. Such missionary opportunities should move our Christian churches to active efforts.

VII. Other Nationalities

We can only mention the remaining nationalities of the Slavic group. The Croatians and Dalmatians, unable to make a living at home, are fleeing from starvation and mismanagement, and seeking work in America. Croatia is a kingdom of Austria-Hungary. Dalmatia is the seacoast province of Austria.

The Slovenians come from the provinces northwest of Croatia. The three nationalities have probably sent between 200,000 and 300,000 persons to America. Dalmatians are oyster fishermen at New Orleans, make staves in Mississippi, are wine dealers in San Francisco, and vine growers and miners in other parts of California. The Slovenians are chiefly found in the Pennsylvania mines and other mining regions. The Croatians are mostly in the same regions and work, although in New York there are about 15,000 of them engaged as longshoremen and mechanics, and a small number are farmers out West. They are Roman Catholic, largely illiterate and unskilled. The Catholics do little for them, and the Protestant denominations have undertaken no specific work in their behalf.

The Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Bulgarians, Servians, and Montenegrins are just beginning to come in appreciable numbers. They represent much the same home conditions as the nationalities mentioned more in detail. Catholicism, Greek or Roman, has cast them pretty much in the same mold. Ignorant, semi-civilized many of them, they have everything to get and learn in their new home, and afford still larger opportunity for Protestant Christianity in its mighty work of making and keeping America the land of righteousness and progress.

An interesting series of articles appeared in 1906 in a magazine devoted to social betterment,[68] the writer having spent a year in studying conditions in the Slav districts of Austria-Hungary. Living among the people, she has become profoundly interested in them, and takes a most hopeful view of their possibilities in America. She says the life from which the peasants mostly come to us is the old peasant life, but a little way removed from feudalism and serfdom. Each little village is a tiny world in itself, with its own traditions and ways, its own dress, perhaps even its own dialect. The amazing gift of the Slav for color and music permeates the whole home life with poetry. The Slav immigrants have the virtues and faults of their primitive world. They come to America to make money. The majority come with intent to earn money to take back home, rather than with expectation to settle here permanently. Unenterprising, unlettered, they are at the same time hardy, thrifty and shrewd, honest and pious. They are undoubtedly highly endowed with gifts of imagination and artistic expression for which in their American conditions they find little or no outlet.

And here again is the point we are constantly having impressed upon us. What the immigrant shall become, for good or ill, depends chiefly upon what conditions are made for him, and whether he is given a chance to express his best self in this country. Grinding monopoly, harsh treatment, prejudice that drives into clannishness and race hatred—these will make of the Slavs a peril. A genuinely Christian environment and treatment will find them receptive and ready for Americanization through evangelization.

VIII. The Russian Jews

In some respects the most interesting immigrants from the Slav countries are the Jews from Russia and Roumania. The German Jew and the Russian Jew must not be confounded; they are as distinct as any two races in the entire immigrant group. The German Jew came to America to make more money, and is making it. The Russian Jew, who comes from persecution, is rigidly orthodox, and regards the commercial German class as apostate. He forms a picturesque, vigorous, sui generis member of the alien procession.

Since the year 1881 not less than 750,000 Jewish immigrants have arrived at the port of New York alone. On Manhattan Island more than every fourth person you meet is a Jew. The Jews admitted at Ellis Island during the past five years outnumbered all the communicants in the Protestant churches in Greater New York.

Of the 106,000 Jews admitted in 1904, a large proportion of whom settled in New York, 77,000 came from the Russian Empire, 20,000 from Austria-Hungary, and 6,000 from Roumania. Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe are all one people.

They show a larger proportion with skilled, professional and commercial training and experience than do any of the other newer immigrants except the Finns. Nearly twenty per cent. of the Hebrew immigrants are tailors, nearly five per cent. mechanics, merchants, or clerks, and almost one per cent. follow the professions. Of the remainder a very considerable proportion, though not a majority, are skilled workers such as bakers, tobacco workers, carpenters, painters, and butchers. The garment trades, to which they find themselves adapted, and for which New York is the world center, engages perhaps 100,000 of them, men, women, and children, many of them in the sweat-shops, which they created. For the first time in their history, the Jews have built up a great industrial class, this being an American development. According to a Jewish authority,[69] the "unspeakable evils of the tenements and sweat-shops" of the ghetto are undermining their physical and moral health.

The newly arrived Russian Jew is kept in the ghetto of the larger cities—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston—not only by his poverty and ignorance but by his orthodoxy. In this district the rules of his religion can more certainly be followed. Here can be found the lawful food, here the orthodox places of worship, here neighbors and friends can be visited within "a sabbath day's journey." The young people, however, rapidly shake off such trammels, and in the endeavor to be like Americans urge their parents to move away from this "foreign" district. When they succeed, the Americanizing process may be considered well under way. Concerning the religious change that comes over the young Jew after he reaches this country, a writer says:[70]

"Many a young man, who was firm in his religious convictions in his native village, having heard of the religious laxity prevalent in America, had fully made up his mind not to be misled by the temptation and allurements of the free country, but he succumbed in his struggle and renounced his Judaism when first submitting his chin to the barber's razor, at the entreaties and persuasions of his Americanized friends and relatives. Religion then appeared to him not only distinct from life, but antagonistic to it, and since it was life, a free, full, undisturbed life he sought in coming here, he felt compelled to divorce himself from all the religious ties that had hitherto encompassed him. Thus it is that the immigrant Jewish youth, even those faithful and loyal to the institutions of old and who desired to conduct their lives in accordance with the precepts of their religion, became estranged from Judaism and suffered themselves to be swept along by the tide. Thus the immigrant Jew in America has frequently become callous and indifferent, and sometimes cynical and antagonistic to everything pertaining to Judaism." While they are thus lost to Judaism they are not won to Christianity, but they ought to be. The older people become reconciled with difficulty to this irreligious attitude and "the old Jewess still curses Columbus for his great transgression in discovering America, where her children have lost their religion."

The Russian Jews usually come in great poverty, but do not stay poor very long. In New York's East Side many tenements in Jewish quarters are owned by persons who formerly lived in crowded corners of others like them; and from this population comes many a Broadway merchant, and professional men in plenty. It is certain that the adult Hebrew immigrant has definite aspirations toward social, economic, and educational advancement. The poorest among them will make all possible sacrifices to keep his children in school; and one of the most striking social phenomena in New York City is the way in which the Jews have taken possession of the public schools, in the highest as well as lowest grades. The city college is practically filled with Jewish pupils. In the lower schools Jewish children are the delight of their teachers for cleverness at their books, obedience, and general good conduct; and the vacation schools, night schools, social settlements, libraries, bathing places, parks, and playgrounds of the East Side are fairly besieged with Jewish children. Jewish boys are especially ambitious to enter professions or go into business. For example, the head of one of the largest institutions of the East Side tells a story of a long interview with a class of boys in which all spoke of the work they intended to do. Law, medicine, journalism, and teaching came first. There were even some who intended to become engineers. A smaller number were going into business, and not one intended to learn any manual trade. Some were going in for music, and occasionally one is found who intends to make his living by art. But above all, the young Jew is ambitious and intends to rise. This is true in all cities.

The strong good qualities of the Jews are absence of the drink evil, love of home, desire to preserve the purity of the family, and remarkable eagerness for self-improvement. They easily adapt themselves to the new environment and assimilate the customs and language of the new country. This leads to the danger of readily falling in with the vices found in the tenement districts—the children showing this in the large numbers of them that appear in the Juvenile Court. The remedy is removal, and this the Jewish parents seek as soon as they are able.

With decent environment and a fair chance, the Russian Jew promises to become a good citizen, intellectually keen, commercially shrewd, professionally bound to shine. But that he will ever, except in rare instances, imbibe the real American spirit or understand the American ideals is a question. At the same time, the Jews are believers in the principle of democracy, and in case of an issue arising on the separation of Church and State, would be found standing with American Protestantism for the religious liberties of the American people.