On the Trail of the Immigrant

by Edward Alfred Steiner

The language of the Ghetto is Yiddish, a mixture of German, Hebrew, and Russian; but with enough English mixed with it to make the immigrant halt before such words as “gemovet,” “gejumpt,” “getrusted,” which sooner or later will become part of his own vocabulary.

Street signs are written in Hebrew letters, and the passer-by is invited by them to drink a glass of soda for a cent, to buy two “pananas” for the same sum, to purchase a prayer-mantle or “kosher” meat, to enter a beer saloon or a synagogue. Many of these signs are translated into English, and Rabbi Levinson on Cannon Street has in large English letters, “Performer of Matrimony;” in the same house one finds “wedding dresses for hire,” and can have his “picture photographed,” and also may buy “furnitings for pedrooms and barlours.”

Everything is for sale on the street, from pickled cucumbers to feather beds, and almost all the work done in this Ghetto is done by Jewish workmen. There are Jewish plumbers, locksmiths, masons, and of course tailors; and work and trade are the watchwords of the Ghetto, where, in all my wanderings through it, I have not seen that genus Americanum, the corner loafer.

The prevailing type of dwelling, even after tenement-house legislation, is much too crowded and too dirty. The New York Ghetto looks remarkably decent from the outside, but pharisaic landlords have beautified the “outside of the cup and platter,” while within, the house is poorly prepared for human habitation. A good example is the house into which I lead my friend. It is an old fashioned front and rear tenement with fifty families as residents, and on climbing the stairway to the fifth story to which our address directs, our nostrils are greeted by a fragrance which, compared with the well remembered smells of the steerage, is like unto the odours of Araby the blest.

We come into the kitchen, where the family of nine is just at dinner; two of the number, a husband and wife, are regular boarders. I doubt whether anywhere else, under similar circumstances, we would have received so genuinely hearty a welcome, in spite of the fact that we were practically strangers to them, and that I had no claim whatever upon their hospitality.

One of the children has already been dispatched to the nearest store to buy additional dainties, and room is made at the already crowded table for two very hungry adults.

My Russian friend, amazed as he was at the turmoil of the streets and the height of the buildings, is still more awed by the sight of such abundant and wholesome food, to which he may help himself without stint. There are large sweet potatoes which taste better than cake, and are permeated by the delicate flavour of nuts; they are a greater contrast to the small, gnarly, scant portion of potatoes which it has been his lot to eat, than any forty story sky scraper can be to the tumble-down shanty in which his father kept store. Meat,—a huge piece of meat, on his plate,—and in the memory of his palate, only the soft end of a soup bone, as a special delicacy. What a contrast!

“Last, but not least,” the pie, that apple pie, of which he had a whole one for himself and knew not how to attack it; until finally, following good precedent, he took it into his trembling hands and let his joyous face disappear in its juicy depths. After the dinner, he was catechized, all the inhabitants of the far away town were inquired after, and the record of the living and the dead told to the news hungry hearers.

What a marvellous group this is! and typical of thousands. The father is a cloak presser. He is a small, cadaverous looking man of very gentle mien, who knows not much beyond the fact that to-morrow the whistle will blow, and that he will be on the fifteenth floor of a great cloak factory, “doing his allotted task,” (God willing). The enemies that await him are many; the red-headed Irish “Forelady,” who looks hard after the creases in the cloaks, and who in turn, is suspected by him of all the evils in the catalogue of sin; the cloak designer, a Viennese Jew, who hates all Jews, especially Russian Jews, and more especially this particular one with whom, after the fashion of the Viennese, he quarrels for pastime. His fellow cloak presser, whose name was Elijah and who now calls himself Jack, is an ardent Socialist, who “pesters” my host by his economic theories which are obnoxious to him in the extreme. “I yoost haf to led him dalk,” is the refrain of my host’s complaint. Our hostess is corpulent and somewhat untidy; her horizon is even more limited than that of her husband. She, too, works; she is a skillful operator, and from 8 A. M. until 6 P. M. she hears nothing but the whirr of the machine. She does not even have an enemy to vary the monotony by her Socialistic doctrines. The oldest daughter is called Blanche, although she was named Rebecca; she too works, and has worked for several years, albeit she is not past sixteen. She embroiders in a fashionable dressmaking establishment on Broadway, and likes her place; she sees fine ladies and handles fine stuffs, and, “above all,” she says to me in good English, “I don’t have to associate with Russian Jews.” She reads good books,—fiction, biography, history—everything. The two on her shelf that evening, were “Ivanhoe,” and “The Life of Florence Nightingale.” Other children are growing up and going to work soon; so the family is on the up grade, in spite of the fact that work is not always steady, that the wife’s parents who live with them are old and feeble, that the youngest child is threatened by blindness, and that they have paid much money to quack doctors who advertise and to those who do not. It was pathetic in the extreme to see this family crowd together to make room for us for the night. My friend slept on a sofa, the ribs of which protruded like those of Pharaoh’s lean kine, and I slept soundly on the smoother surface of the floor.