Life on the Steerage-passengers’ Deck on the Lahn
When I came on deck a stocky Italian, well dressed in American clothes, was holding an umbrella over my wife, for the sun was beating down on the ship’s deck, and it was terrifically hot on board, moored as she was to the south side of the pier. They were chatting in English, and when I came up the stranger introduced himself as John Tury, of Lancaster, Pa., a peanut and fruit seller, who had been in this country five years and was now going home to Terra Nova, his native village in Sicily, for a brief visit. He had with him three cousins, younger men. His English was good though not perfect, and he refused to use Italian either with us or any one else on shipboard except when necessary. We sat talking for an hour or more, and became quite good friends, while waiting for the ship to sail and for a semblance of order to come about.
As yet we had no sleeping quarters. There seemed to be nothing to do but find places in the men’s and women’s compartments, and they were already so well filled when we went aboard that there was not a desirable bed left. I went below, where between decks the long, closely set double tiers of iron bunks were ranged, and looked in vain for a bunk that was not occupied by women and children or a piece of baggage left to signify that it had been pre-empted. There were some empty beds in the men’s compartments, but they were badly located for light and air. There seemed to be nothing to gain by being in a hurry, and it was a long time till evening and bedtime. I knew there was more room on the ship, and I meant to have some of it even if I had to leave the steerage quarters; for our only interest in voyaging to Italy in the steerage was to seek information by association, whereas when coming back to the States it would be to be constantly with the family with which we expected to return.
When I returned to the deck, the big liner had slid out of the slip and was just forging her way down stream. Back on the pier was a black group of people waving handkerchiefs, parasols and hats. One large group of Italians I observed, watching the serrated profile of Manhattan with great interest, and I heard them talking of it as if they had never seen it before. So I said to one of them:
“Have you been in America and have not seen New York?”
“No, we came to Boston and by railroad to Scranton.”
“Have you been at work in the mines?”
“Yes, they are just sending forty of us back home, and one hundred more will go next month.”
I knew at once that the group was one of contract laborers who were being returned to their country, and by questioning him further I learned that they had been employed in the Lackawanna mines and had got employment through an Italian “banker” in Scranton who had sent two men to Italy in October of the year before, and during the winter they had hired in the vicinity of Potenza nearly three hundred men and despatched them in small parties on successive steamers to Boston in the months of March, April and May. Those who were now returning were those who had been hurt, were sick, or were dissatisfied. Ten of them had had accidents and four had lung trouble; one poor fellow, he told me, being even then in the ship’s hospital for steerage passengers dying with consumption, the result of his two years’ work under ground.