VIII
GOOD NEIGHBORS AND BAD

The Church. 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.

When the Irish immigrants came in such multitudes to America they thronged the Catholic Churches. Their church had been their loyal champion in Ireland, and they knew it would be the same friend in America. The same loyalty was shown by the Lutheran to his church when he came from Germany to America.

But the million and more Jews that have flowed into America want to have nothing to do with the church, and the multitudes of Italians, when loyal to any church, belong to the Church of Rome. The Russians are often exiled from home because of the church.

To be the best of good neighbors to these people, it is necessary, first, for the church to know their history. Only in that way can church people understand how the foreigner feels toward the church and how most wisely to approach him.

The Jew and the Church. What does the Jew regard as the cause of the sorrow which has sent him to America? I have seen old Russian Jews stand in front of a Christian church at night, when they thought no eye saw them, and shake their fist at the cross over the door, spit at it, curse it, and go their way. “If,” said a Jewish woman, “the Christians want to be friends with the Jews why do they forever preach that the Jews killed Jesus? We know our nation was the cause of His death, but how many Christians have died in the religious wars between themselves?” She laid the persecution of her race at the door of Christianity.

Speaking one day of the religious fervor of an old Hebrew, his daughter said: “Yes, he is religious, but none of the rest of us have any use for it. I think it is through religion that most trouble comes into the world.” “Now,” she continued, “the best friend I have in America has just gone out angry because when she came in she found a fire in my house, and this is a Jewish fast day. Religion drove us out of Poland with the loss of everything. I believe we would be better off if religion was out of the world.” I tried to show her that true Christianity was not guilty of these cruel persecutions of her people, that it was the lack of true Christianity that caused them; yet I doubt if I convinced her.

Even when Jewish children are allowed to attend Christian religious institutions to get them off the streets they are often forewarned. I noticed one day that a boy who sang lustily some of the hymns stopped at the word “Jesus,” or else substituted the word, “Moses.” “Curley,” I said, “why don’t you sing the name Jesus?” “My mother told me not to say it or my tongue would turn black,” came the prompt reply. Another boy attending our classes reached up and kissed a gold cross that hung on a chain around the neck of one of our workers. He had no sooner done so than he cried across the room to his sister, “It never hurt me.” “What did you expect would hurt you?” said the teacher. “My mother told me I could come to class but if I said the name of ‘Jesus’ it would turn my tongue black, and if I touched the cross, it would kill me, and I didn’t believe her.” This was especially sad, for the boy said his mother had told him a falsehood.

The Russian and the Church. The Russian dislikes the church. He does not know the Protestant church of America. All he knows is that the church of Russia is at least no friend of liberty. He wants nothing to do with what he considers a similar enemy in America.

The Chinese and the Church. The most devoted Chinese we ever had in our work after he became a Christian, had a similar feeling. His idea of Christianity came from the Catholics of Mexico, who have treated the Chinese very cruelly. He came to our school because he hoped to learn English and not because he wanted to hear of Christ.

The Italian and the Church. The church in Italy is more or less a political machine. The Italian knows how the Roman church opposed the liberty of Italy and this makes him fear or hate all churches. Great churches in Italy are often found with but a baker’s dozen in attendance. The only times on which they are thronged are when a “festa” is being held, a festival in honor of some saint.

Brave Christians. Numbers of the immigrants who become Christians are real heroes. The story of the persecutions they suffer would be a surprise to most Christian Americans. The Jewish daily papers sometimes publish the names of the Jewish attendants at Christian meetings that they may incite their Jewish neighbors against them, and the tenement has so bitter a tongue that it often drives the family out of the neighborhood.

Young people who are baptized are mourned for as dead, cast out of their homes, and made practically orphans, and Christian workers must find homes for them. Spies are sent into Christian meetings to secure the names and addresses of Hebrews present, and then letters, or visits, or both, follow. Bibles of young converts are taken from them and burned. While the streets are filled with children with no religious instruction, the whole Ghetto is stirred over one convert to Christ.

One leading Russian revolutionist told me that if he were to come out openly in favor of the Christian church his business would be ruined.

The country founded by men who sought it for liberty of conscience is not a free country to every one and men who have found an asylum here from the oppressor of Europe become in turn oppressors themselves.

The greatest need of all these people is Christ.

The Need of Christ. The non-Christian Chinese are at times cruel and merciless beyond description. Slavery is common among them, women being bought and sold like merchandise. The treatment of little “servant” girls is sometimes so inhuman that they commit suicide. These little girls are bought by the Chinese and then frequently sold by them when 12 or 15 years of age. The picture of two of these little “servant” girls, rescued by the Church of All Nations, appears opposite this page.

One Christmas night a great company of Chinese and their friends had gathered to celebrate the birth of Christ. Chinese women were there who had never before been in a public gathering; bound-feet women were there who are never seen on the streets. The platform was thronged with Chinese children in their quaint, beautiful, and becoming Oriental costumes. The first Christmas was long, long ago. Scripture tells us that on that night a song so full of joy that it startled the shepherds rang through the wintry sky. Poets and other people say that as Christmas time comes round again they can still catch faint echoes of the angels’ song. Perhaps the angels still sing it each glad Christmas Eve; anyway, at no other time does a child seem so beautiful and so holy.

When the exercises were over I said a parting word to our guests. One Chinese woman, carrying in her arms a beautiful little baby girl, came up to say good night. “Why, Mrs. Sun,” I exclaimed, “I did not know you had a little girl.” “Oh,” she said, “I hadn’t, but Mrs. Wu had one girl and when this baby was born she didn’t want it because one girl was enough, so she gave it to me.” This in New York on Christmas night, 1911. Can you imagine a Christian mother glad to give away her little girl? The Chinese need Christ.

The Russian needs something other than shorter hours and larger wages. Many of them are seeking the higher things. A Russian pastor told me of making an engagement with one of his hearers at a Russian open air service to discuss and explain Christianity to a Russian in his home. When the night came this Russian revolutionist had gathered a group of his fellows in his tenement quarters and there pastor and men discussed the Christian faith from 8 o’clock in the evening till midnight and would have kept the discussion up all night, could the pastor have remained. Christ and the church are needed by the Russian.

You see that some people have misrepresented our Lord and His church. We must try to right this wrong done the foreigner and we must be patient and loving in doing it. The immigrants are in need of many things—we must endeavor to supply these needs. We must do it for the sake of Christ. We must do it in the name of Christ. We must do it as if our Lord Himself sat weary and thirsty before us and it was given us to hand Him the cup of water. How glad we would be for such an honor!

Bad Neighbors

The Saloon. It is sad to see so many bright Italian boys with their fruit stands and shoe polishing chairs hard by saloon doors. They do not know how great an enemy is pretending to be their friend.

The saloon is a bad neighbor to the immigrant. It wastes his money and his time. It unfits him for work, starves his family and makes them feel ashamed of husband and father. It leads to disease and often to prison, for the saloon is the mother of innumerable crimes. It helps make weak-minded and deformed children and is an evil organization whose destruction has already been determined upon by the truest and best Christian people in our land. For the sake of the immigrant, for the sake of the fair name of America, let us unite to shut its doors and banish it from our country.

Ignorance. 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 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.

Injurious Employment. 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. There were two floors in the old tumble-down house and both were packed with mattresses and makeshifts for beds until practically the whole floor space was covered. It was a wet day and all the men were crowded indoors. A handsome young fellow lay sick on one of the mattresses. I put my head in the door and said: “Io parlo un poco Italiano ma non bene.” “I speak a little Italian, but not well.” Immediately there was a laugh, probably at the “not well,” and they rose to greet me as courteously as if all were trained gentlemen. The sick boy began to talk and the group was friendly with me in a moment.

The day will come when we shall find that these people can do something other than dig ditches and mix concrete. The Italians who are now employed as our hewers of wood and drawers of water, are of the race of painters and sculptors and silk makers of earlier days.

We must help the immigrant to overcome his bad neighbors, and to know who are his true friends.