THE NEW STEERAGE
Francis Byrne Hackett
Eleven hundred of us, perhaps twelve hundred, were booked steerage from Liverpool to New York. We had been brought to the dock at noon, away from our friends, though we heard the vessel was not to leave till five. On the other side of a stone pier rose the huge Lusitania with her four funnels. Everyone on our tender moved expectantly forward. There was an official cry: “Britishers first!” The chosen of the Lord! But the horde of ignorant foreigners came surging ahead. Miscellaneously we crowded up the gangway. Another gangway sloped for us on to the Lusitania. Several British policemen and stewards faced us to keep us in line. At so many guardian angels we began to feel depressed.
Medical inspection. The instant we put foot on the deck of the Lusitania, this was our first business.
“Have your Inspection Tickets ready.” Before we could inquire what was going to happen, it was happening. We were passed in a slow trickle between two officials. “Take off your hat.” “Take off your glasses.” I stood blinking while the doctor deftly plucked up my eyelids. He waved me ahead, my ungranulated eyelids made harsh by the handling. Hundreds were before us on the deck, and those from behind began to press on our heels with the inevitable “myself first” impulse of human beings. We were a medley of races, Swedes, Greek, English and Welsh, Irish, Russian Jews, Poles, mute Lithuanian peasants, and men from a Northern race who turned out to be Finns. It was almost as cosmopolitan as the Third Avenue Elevated. We advanced with repeated hesitations and conscious slowness. A woman turned white in the crush and had to be helped to a seat near an open porthole. In front of me, a 12-year-old boy, dead beat, leaned against his big brother—and under his arm, if you please, wearily hugged a camp stool. “Why doesn’t he sit on the stool?” The mother, a thin, strained, admirable creature, whose face showed the fine wrinkles of a life too intent, allowed me to open the stool for him. From his low seat he rewarded me more
than once with a look of confidence and smiling good-nature. They had travelled by rail all night, the mother volunteered, from a town in Wales. They were on their way at last to join the father in California. “I have two more in California”—the mother pointed to her children, who cheerfully smiled.
Women and children. During that weary wait I observed them here and there, standing submissively for three-quarters of an hour. At length, after the long halt, the tension was relieved, and we moved again, this time past another doctor. “Take off your hat.” The doctor had apparently to inspect the unnaturalized polls on which that morning we had paid a four dollar tax. He was a man of great perception, the doctor, and the actual examination was an affair of split seconds. On completing the circuit of the deck our yellow Inspection Tickets (given to us at the office in the morning when we had paid our $37.50 for the passage) received their first stamp. The Cunard Line accepted us as healthy live stock.
My Inspection Ticket said Room H 22, and a steward took me there. There were seven other occupants. Most of them were taking their ease in their berths and smoking. They were all English or American. I responded to their cheery hello, but their carbonic gas was strong, and the portholes proved to be immovable. I sat down on a lower berth, bumped my head against the top one, and had hardly room for my knees in the aisle. My carbonic gas did not improve the air. I felt discouraged, and went out. Nearby I saw a most capacious 4-berth room, and there was a vacancy in it. Henri Bergson says that “life proceeds by insinuation.” I felt less gloomy. I found the bedroom steward and asked him whether I could be changed. He was amicable but not quite concrete, a bit of a Jesuit. About this time word flashed by that we were back at the Landing Stage for the cabin passengers: deferring the affairs of moment, I went on deck.
We all pushed aft for a good view, only to find a rope stretched across the deck, and a grim sailor guarding it. “That’s all the scope you get.” We flattened back against one another. And they let down a beautiful canopied gangway for the upper classes.
Braided officers stood in a row to receive, on a nice clear deck. All the stewards were lined up in fresh white coats. Against the sky line we studied the new angles of hat plumes. On they stepped with leisured gait, with an air of distinguished fatigue. “The daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched forth necks, walking and mincing as they go.” Indifferently they handed their light burdens to the now demure stewards. I looked around at my comrades back of the rope. A child in arms next to me chortled as he bandaged his mother’s eyes. She gently removed the bandage, only to be blinded again. Behind me, a buxom Swede looked open-eyed at her feathered sisters abaft. Everywhere the interest was intense and simple. I turned again to envisage the daughters of Zion. As in another world they moved—a world where policemen are unnecessary, where stewards are spring-heeled, where officers stand in line, where eyelids are not officially scrutinized nor polls inspected, where the gangway has a canopy and weariness is consoled. I admired “the bravery of their anklets, and the cauls and the crescents; the pendants, and the bracelets and the mufflers.” Must it not be delightful, said I to myself, to merit so much attention from everyone, and to be so prettily arrayed? Must it not be pleasant to have eyelids so immune, and to have a quite uninspected poll?
The last piece of first-class baggage rolled aboard. Giant hawsers strained, and were released. It was departure. From my coign at a deck porthole the Landing Stage came into focus. I confess I exclaimed. As far as the eye could reach, on the water and street levels, the glance of thousands on thousands was rivetted on the vessel as she cautiously edged away. It was a beautiful afternoon, the sky innocently blue. All indifferent to us in the background stood the massive city of Liverpool, concentrated on affairs, but no less indifferent to the city itself ranged this childlike, almost awestruck, army of curiosity, silently intent on us as we receded into the river. From our porthole (I was joined by a Syrian) we could not help a glow of pride. My companion was not able to vent his feelings in English, but he was quite moved. His was an Indian-like head—high cheekbones, thin lips, hard, beady eyes. He dwelt on the vast crowd, ejaculating “ah-ye-ye-ye,” and clucking his tongue. I smiled at his
solid wonderment. Then he craned out of the porthole to view the water far, far below. I followed suit. He pointed down, and gave a significant, cheerfully reckless laugh. I laughed, too. We were in for it, and no mistake.
The steamer’s first evening was spent, doing nothing, out in the Mersey. The tide was in some way blameworthy. It seemed inefficient of nature, but as we lay opposite Liverpool the night-lights came out, definite and serene and friendly, and I took out my mental clutch.
Time came for supper. I reserved for the morning the mysteries of the cuisine. I had earlier gone below to the pantry, after some talk with a humane steward, and to my surprise I had been allowed to help myself to a cup of tea.
The first evening was one of extraordinary activity. Still in their best clothes, around our half of the entire deck poured streams and streams of passengers. It was almost impossible to tread one’s way. And in several places these streams turned themselves into dancing whorls, where volunteers with a concertina had appeared. I happen to like the concertina, and I enjoyed it during five entire days, though not so much the concertina as the movement of life which it promoted. There were never any deck sports, nor games, nor organized distraction. But, except for one awful seasick period, there was endless dancing and singing. On this first evening I stood in the rings that framed the waltzers, and my blood raced with their pleasure. The Swedes in particular took part much and well. They occasionally ventured on those new forms, but only for dancing reasons. When Swedes really want to hug each other, they do it openly and for its own sake.
To increase the friendliness of the evening, everyone was willing to talk a little. I chatted with a Russian, a Greek, an Englishwoman and an Englishman. He was a young and unhappy Englishman, and in disgust at the ignorant foreigner. I later learned that he made up the difference and was allowed to go second class.
At 9 p.m., tired of repeated searches for my bedroom steward (he was dishing out in the pantry most of the time), I went to the assistant chief steward of the third class to see if I could be
transferred to the 4-berth room. He’d see, he said in a serious bass voice, he’d let me know. At 9.30 p.m. he again told me he’d see. Whether he has yet seen or not I have no means of discovering. At 10 p.m. I took the berth, with the consent of the other men in the cabin. I gave my tip to the bedroom steward, as I guessed he was the less Tammanyized. The assistant chief steward was a strong character, free from numerical superstition. He asked 13 cents for five penny stamps.
In my room the bedding proved simple—a coarse white bag of straw for mattress, and one dark blue horse blanket for clothing. A small pouch of straw served as pillow. No linen, of course, and no frills of any kind. There was an iron spring frame. I found it ascetic but clean. The single blanket was not enough. I used my rug, and my fellow passengers used overcoats and rugs, too. The mattresses, I was told, serve just one trip. They are dumped overboard as soon as the steamer is out to sea on the return voyage. In my bed I was the only living creature present.
Those who rose early had advantages. They had first use of the tin basin in their own room, or of the bowls in the general washing room. They had a bid for the solitary bath tub in male steerage. They were up in time to be allowed to walk all the way aft, and look down the wide lane of jade and white in the wake of the Lusitania. And they were in time for the first sitting.
Those who did not rise early had to listen to the tramplings that began long before sunrise. Despite this, I got up late. Fifty of us waited over half an hour outside an iron grill at the head of the dining room stairs. The dining room is quite inadequate, so there had to be four sittings—first come, first served. When we reached below we took seats where we could. There was an understanding, however, by which Britishers were grouped together. This was made effectual by stewards who stood where the ways parted, and thrust Jews and Poles and mid-Europeans to one side, and Britishers and Scandinavians to the other.
On the whole, the food during the trip was edible. I could not eat the bacon or the beef. I did not try the eggs. The tea was vile and usually not very hot. The coffee was vile. But the bread, served in individual loaves, was most palatable. The
Swedish bread was excellent. The oatmeal was edible, even with the wretchedly thin condensed or dried milk. We had herrings and at another time sausages, and both were fair. The potatoes were always excellently boiled and good of their kind, but the browned potatoes were invariably overcooked and not fit to serve. The cold meats for supper could be eaten. The boiled rice was insipid. The stewed prunes and stewed apricots were palatable. I had very good baked beans and navy beans, good pea soup and fair broth. I had no complaints to make of the food. I never decided whether it was butter or margarine, but I ate it willingly. It certainly had not that callously metallic taste that margarine used to have.
The service was on bold, wholesale lines. Twenty sat at each table, and there were two equipments of bread and butter, sugar, salt, pepper and vinegar. A disconsolate plant decorated each table. One steward took charge of each ten people. I sat at a different table practically every time, and most of my companions were delightfully obliging and unaggressive. Only those who so wished had to stand up and harpoon their bread roll. There were a few tiresome people who damned the food and failed to pass the salt. The stewards were elusive, or rather that one-tenth part of a steward who was your share. I regretted on one occasion to discover egg shells in my dessert, and the next day I was pained to find a knob of beef in my stewed apples. My sympathetic steward remarked: “Puts you a bit off, don’t it?” It do.
From about five in the morning till eleven at night these stewards are working. Work is a good thing. It is strange that the stewards look unhealthy and fatigued. It is due to the inherent inferiority of stewards.
Queenstown was the distraction for several hours on the first day out. The Cunard and White Star Lines have just discerned that the harbor is unsafe for big boats. At what point of profit, I wondered, would Queenstown harbor suddenly and miraculously become safe again?
As we left the coast of Ireland there came an unctuous swell upon the sea. You would not think it could upset anyone, but when I ascended after dinner I was horrified. Rows of passengers lay where they were stricken, all too evidently ill, ghosts of
their braver selves. The stewards were in the dining room and could not come, and did not come, for well over an hour. For well over an hour no effort at all was made to clean the decks. I now understood this grave disadvantage of third class, to which the company itself contributes. But there was much kindness to the decimated, and much tolerance. Later I admired immensely the work of the matrons. I seldom met three more splendid, capable, sympathetic women. There were superior passengers who despised the childishness with which simpler people gave in. I myself laughed when I saw a girl lying with complete abandon plumb on top of another girl. The grim sailor heard me and muttered: “Only an ignorant person’d laugh at anyone was seasick.”
During this distressing hour a Russian came flying to the master at arms. “The doctor! the doctor!” “You can’t have the doctor,” said the man in blue, not unkindly. “We can’t help seasickness. It’s got to be expected.” “The doctor! Not seaseek! dead!” He made a ghastly face. “Oh, all right,” said the master-at-arms, and we went straight below.
Terrific pleading calls shook the cabin. “Sonya! Sonya!” The master-at-arms walked right in, and emerged supporting a sack-like girl, very white and inert. “You could cut the air with a knife,” murmured the weary master-at-arms. He assisted her on deck, and she was wooed to consciousness.
At this time, on the enclosed deck, there was much commotion. A striking red-haired Jewess, clad in green, had fainted and was put sitting on a bench. A venerable Jew appealed to her excitedly while an earnest young soul at the other side cried for water. It made me furious to see the limp woman propped up, but they were evidently playing according to the rules of a different league. The water at last came and much to my surprise the earnest soul put it to her own lips. But not to drink it. In her the Chinese laundryman had an efficient rival. She was the most active geyser I ever saw. After a time there was a feeble motion of protest, to the regret of the delighted spectators.
On the open deck during this weather the Jews monopolized one corner. I counted thirty of them huddled inseparably together in their misery, like snakes coiled in the cold. As they began
to recover, a leg would wiggle from under one blanket, and a head be thrust out from under another. Later they sat up and drank their tea out of glasses, nibbling the sugar. They soon littered the place with apple peels and orange peels. After generations of inhibition they probably needed to be told that they were permitted by a merciful dispensation to use the sea as a waste basket.
As the sea fell slumberously still, life recovered its audacity. Again the decks became clamorous, multitudinous. People thronged the promenade, or swarmed on the benches that do duty for deck chairs. They began smoking everywhere again, and out came the stewards and the Black Crowd to enjoy a sociable cigarette. There was little to do but talk, until the dancing began. The grim sailor looked pityingly on Babel, as he patrolled the Second Class partition. He was for smaller ships. “On a smaller ship,” he deigned to remark, “you can come up and throw your weight around.”
Differences in manners obtruded. The third day out a youth emerged whom I took to be a swineherd from the beech forests of Croatia. He was not handsome. His fringe encroached upon his little eyes. His chin was unformed. Up over his trousers, as if he had just waded through the piggery, his socks were drawn. There he stood, plastic youth, a hand in his pocket, pivotting a heel, surveying the world through his own hirsute thatch. Suddenly, deliberately, he blew his nose Adam-like. A Swedish woman next me turned livid. “De dirty pig.” I felt myself the brother of a Swede. The Croatian saw us but beheld us not. His mouth ajar, he ruminated afresh on the fleshpots of Croatia. Raw material, simple even to the verge of our ancestral slime. I prayed “God be with thee,” and looked elsewhere.
That evening amid the throng which waited for admittance to the dining room appeared a Greek. The glaring electric light concentrated on that swart face, flung-out chest, and bared neck. He was incredibly blasphemous and incredibly self-important. “Seventy-five dollars, see. American money!” He showed his money to us, and gave a chuckle. His lip curled. “They only Hunkies,” indicating his companions who connected themselves with him by slavish eyes. “I in America before, Christ, yes!”
His eye roved boldly, and he showed his white teeth. “I got more money still, you bet your life. When I get over I marry no Hunkie. I marry Henglish girl. Yeh, Christ, you bet!” He antagonized us, and yet we watched him eagerly. He lapped up our interest. Overcome with the savor of attention, he incontinently spat. I drew away. “It’s a’ right,” he said half-obsequiously, “I know what I do. I no’ spit on American.” He felt too much kinship to spit on an American.
So things happen, but only in the steerage. At the door of the café below, you will not find a Polish count informing the steward: “I marry a Henglish girl. No penniless Hunkie for me.” Nor will the first-class steward answer: “Who cares? Who’ll buy a beer?”
In all these days, among all these peoples, there was no friction. Some youths did start to make boisterous fun of two barefooted Italian women, walking up and down in bright petticoat and kerchief. But the Italians smiled and skipped back and sat down, and there was no more “fun.” Between congruous people intercourse was easy and frank. The fresh-hued Scandinavians were exceptionally lively. A little English group revolved quietly together, with a private afternoon teapot for central sun. Another little group, including two girls in service, a cotton spinner and a grocery clerk, often sat in the prow and talked amiably about anything from the food on board to their notion of a God. They say that “sociability proceeds from weakness.” Steerage, at any rate, is highly sociable. In some cases it was also frankly amatory. The attractive girls, so soon well known, seemed to have no fear of the predatory males. They took each other lightly. But at 9.30 p.m., all the feminine kind, even the rebellious, had to leave their conquests and go below. This rule was enforced to the letter.
Two days before landing we had another medical experience. We learned that American citizens in the third class were immune from smallpox and need not be troubled on that score, but that aliens in the third class must all be vaccinated. It was said there were ways of evading this, but I found none. For several hours we were assembled while the women filed in. After an hour in line, our turn came to enter the surgery improvised in the companionway.
On a table flamed a number of small spirit lamps, over which the stewards sterilized the metal scrapers. I bared my arm, as per orders from a pasty youth. The doctor answered my queries by taking my arm, scraping it gently and applying the lymph. “It is not our law,” he said politely. “Take this chap,” motioned a bullet-headed assistant, and I was shoved to another group. “Rub it off,” whispered a friendly scullion, but I let it stay, out of curiosity. The new group crowded around another big table. An additional hour’s standing brought up my turn to answer the clerk’s questions. He recorded on the manifesto that I was destined for Brooklyn and had friends. This was added to the facts I had provided when I engaged passage. I was now catalogued for Ellis Island.
The day before landing there was, I believe, another medical inspection. We got in line for it, but the crowd simply disregarded the stewards, and I never even saw the doctor. On that evening the barriers were partly down, and the Goths and Huns invaded two decks.
It was Friday morning before we came into the yellow waters of the harbor, and passed under the cliffs of Manhattan. Already a fissure had appeared in the steerage. On one side, separated from us more and more, went the naturalized citizens, each armed with his papers. On the other, we aliens congregated, to be shipped in due time to Ellis Island.
It was an inhuman morning, a morning of harrowing strain and confusion. Though the inspection of baggage amounted to nothing in itself, especially as there had been no preliminary declaration, there was the uncertainty, and the three hours’ delay. Searching for baggage, waiting for inspectors, hectored and shouted at, the poorer immigrants reminded one of Laocoön. And then we had to wait for the boat to Ellis Island, and we had to lug our hand baggage with us for the hours that were to come. This fact alone made the day an ordeal for all except the strongest, a brute ordeal to which wealthier folk would not submit for two successive days.
On the Ellis Island boat we were crammed like cattle. “Move up, I say, move up. God! move UP, you damned kike!” So spoke our burly exemplar of American citizenship.
We “moved up” until the last square foot of floor was shut off from sight by close-packed bodies. We coöperated with the U. S. Government as well as we could to provide conditions for another Slocum disaster. When such a disaster does occur on one of these old boats, every editor in the country will demand with magnificent emphasis: “Fix the responsibility!” Let us by all means wait till the steed is stolen.
Ellis Island basked in the sun. It was handsome and trim and restful, after the swarming pier. We entered the fine examination building single file, always lugging our suitcases and bundles and bags and wraps and boxes and babies.
Medical inspection, a real inspection this time. We passed through a cleverly arranged aisle, and at each angle a new doctor in khaki sought for blemishes. I finally impinged on a man who asked me if I could see well without my glasses. I answered: “Not at all.” He leaned over, and made two crosses in blue chalk on my raincoat. At the exit from this trap an attendant wrote another little piece on my raincoat, “Vis.,” short for vision. I was allowed to lay down my bags, and sit and wait for half an hour.
When the special examiners were ready, we were led up a corridor and shown into a bright room. Around the walls were men and boys in all stages of dress and undress, as at a bathing beach.
“Ken you read English?” I said yes. “Read that over there.” A familiar oculist test card hung on the wall. Being already so tired that I would have welcomed deportation, I resentfully choked out: “B, T B R, F E B D,” and so on. “All right, doc.,” said the attendant, and a civil man at a high desk silently handed me an initialled slip. Outside this was taken, and my dilapidated Inspection Ticket was stamped “Specially Examined.” I had passed the test, and went back for my baggage to the ante-room. A woman there, flushed and petulant, commented on her being examined. The attendant turned away contemptuously. “Aw, she’s ben hittin’ the pipe, or somethin’.”
Up the steps into the great hall I proceeded. It resembled a big waiting room, where to my delight benches ran the length of the room. It was now nearly three, and I had neglected to eat
anything all day. In the particular bench decided by my Inspection Ticket, I emphatically sat down.
At the far end of these benches ran a long screen at right angles. In that screen were a number of gates. Each gate was guarded by a seated official with our manifestoes on the desk before him. Through those gates we immigrants were being sieved into the United States.
At last I was in the sieve. The guardian of the gate was kind of voice. “You have a brother in Brooklyn, eh?” “How much money have you got?” I was not asked to show it. “All right, pass on. No, there is nothing further. You can go as far as you like now!” Two of us from the Lusitania whipped down the steps, bags and all, and delivered up our Inspection Tickets at a last, final door. The sun shone outside. The air was fresh. The light danced on the sea. There were no more policemen, stewards, masters-at-arms, doctors, baggage examiners, attendants, inspectors. I drew a deep breath, and tried to forget the benefits of civilization.
On the ferry to New York there mingled future Americans from the Anchor Line and the Red Star Line, as well as from the Cunard. Already I could find only a few of my former companions. Some had gone before. Some were still on the Island. In the present crowd they were absorbed, obliterated. The little world of the Lusitania was already annexed by America, as a little meteor is annexed by the burning star. I regretted this absorption, this obliteration. For six days I had belonged to them, and they had belonged to me. I thought of their geniality, their simplicity, their naturalness, their long-suffering. I was sorry to say good-bye.