When midsummer came it was of course still too hot in southern Italy for us to go there with safety, let alone comfort, and it was becoming every day more onerous to live in the quarter. New Yorkers who dwell up-town and have entire houses, floors or apartments to themselves complain bitterly of the heat in summer, and, if possible, escape from the city. I have passed a whole summer in New York up-town, but, permit me to say that it is life at a seaside resort compared to what the people endure in the down-town tenement districts.
I think that we could have supported the heat, but the conglomerate of smells increased until it was overpowering, and each night the entire quarter was in tumult until well towards dawn. We learned then what we came to know so well thereafter, that when the Italian cannot sleep he fain would sing and play lotto, seven and a half, or mora. At last, in June, my wife became quite sick one day, and two days later we were off on a trip by steamer to Newfoundland, Labrador and Nova Scotia, returning early in August in time to sail on the Lahn of the North German Lloyd line.
The morning of our departure was a beautiful one, and as we crossed by the Hoboken ferry we could see the great German ships lying at the Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd docks. One of them had smoke pouring from her funnels, and a “blue peter” fluttered at her peak,—the signal that she was about to sail.
We were dressed in the plainest and cheapest of clothes, bought and worn previously in the quarter, and everything we owned we had stored except what could be got into a little $1.10 imitation-leather dressing-case, with a shoulder-strap clipped into screw-eyes in the end to make easy porterage. Over half of its contents were photographic and stationery supplies. Instead of a shirt I wore the usual dark jersey such as many Italians in this country wear. Around my waist was a plain leather belt cleverly made of two strips between which reposed several thousand lire, easily put in or taken out through a neatly concealed aperture. Once thereafter a man handled that belt and threw it down as not worth taking, when it had in it a sum that would have gladdened his heart. I bore the one piece of baggage, while my wife carried, slung over her shoulder, the five-by-seven cartridge kodak which was our most jealous ward, our one essential treasure.
We had bought tickets at the Greenwich Street office of the North German Lloyd Company, where the steerage traffic is handled, under the names of Berto and Luiga Brandi and when doing so were asked our ages, places of birth, occupation, etc. On inquiry I found that the Italian law requires this of the ship’s company, and that these sheets are used to keep track of returned emigrants and facilitate apprehension of any men who have avoided military duty.
As we pushed our way through the crowd on the dock, where freight and steerage baggage was being rushed out of the way of the “first-cabiners,” who had not yet begun to arrive, we were startled to find what an enormous number of fellow passengers we were to have compared to the steerage capacity of the ship and the agent’s forecast of the load. He had conjectured 350 four days before. We sailed with more than 750 and certainly had a full house.
As we came up the gangway we were checked off by a short, heavy-set official in a black-lustre coat and dirty piqué cap; and a white-aproned stewardess of massive frame gave us two little red cards which read “Good for One Ration,” while a steerage steward thrust into our hands a piece of horse-blanket goods of very poor material and very scant in dimensions, wrapped around a tin spoon, tin fork and tin cup, as well as a little pan about the pork-and-bean size. As we passed on into the crowd and into an unoccupied corner of the deck, and my wife unrolled her blanket and saw what was inside, a certain startled, stricken look came into her eyes. I knew that for the first time realization of a part of what was before her had come to her. I had often told her as nearly as I could, speaking from my own experiences as a sailor when studying seafaring life, of how steerage passengers lived on emigrant ships; but now any sort of “camping-out glamour” that had hung about it for her was dispelled, and she had a glimpse to the fore where misery, dirt and discomfort lay spread. If she was sorry she had come, she did not say so. I will confess that we had long since made a private bargain about the enterprise, and the consideration was well worth the while, so she showed no sign of wavering from her agreement.
The deck forward was the scene of the wildest commotion. Many people who were returning had been accompanied to the dock by their friends, and these, standing on shore, shouted vainly to their compatriots aboard. The noise was too great for speech except at close range. On every hand was piled baggage of all shapes and sizes; but I remembered it afterwards with envy when I saw the terrible mass of nondescript luggage which smothered the steerage on the return trip. The immigrant comes here with a huge pile of bundles, wooden boxes and flimsy bags; he goes home with good steel-framed valises and good trunks.
The chatter that prevailed about was mostly Italian, and I found that some of the dialects spoken I could not understand at all. I had not even encountered them in the quarter. Then, too, there were aboard, Greeks, Spaniards, Swiss, Germans, Macedonians, Montenegrians, Hungarians, Jews of several sorts, Syrians, etc. All spoke English in stages varying from a complete command down to the ability to swear. American “cuss words” are among the first things picked up and the last forgot. Strange, isn’t it?
We had been promised that we might secure places,—after we were on board, in a closed compartment with four other people, a sort of superior steerage accommodation to be had at the expense of $10 added to the $35 for passage, which we had paid, and, leaving my wife seated in a clean spot on a hatch, I scoured the ship within the limits of the steerage to find those compartments, but all I got was a series of round cursings from the petty officers for bothering them while they were busy. I nosed about every corner of the ship forward, and if there were those compartments for three married couples, which are popularly supposed to exist in the emigrant quarters and had been referred to in serious editorials in notable publications within the past three months as being “all that the ship’s people could be expected to give the third class in the way of comfort and privacy,” I was unable to find them, nor did I see them or hear of them at any time later on the Lahn or any other ship I have inspected.