The steerage holds numbers who go back because they have not succeeded, and many who are broken in health, who have been burned by the fires, scalded by the steam and parched by our heat. Men and women with spirits broken, who are not going back, but crawling back into the shelter of the Old World home.
“O! panye,” cried one of those to whom I tried to minister: “it is an awful country! You don’t know whether they walk on their heads or on their feet; they do not stop to eat nor sleep, and they drive one as the water drives the village mill. They build a house one minute and tear it down the next; the cities grow like mushrooms and disappear like grass before a swarm of locusts. The air is black in the city where I lived; black as the inside of the chimney in my cabin, and the water they drink looks like cabbage soup. The cars go like a whirlwind over the Puszta (prairie) and I should rather stand among a thousand stampeding horses on the plains, than on one of those dreadful street corners. How terribly those whistles blow in the morning and how dark and dismal are those shops, where they eat up iron and men out of bowls as big as the barn of our ‘Pan’ (master). The heat outside burns and the heat inside blisters, and when it is cold it freezes the blood. No, no,” and he groaned in terror at the remembrance of it; “no more America for me. That’s all I have,” pointing to his scant clothing. “I am going back a beggar.”
Women too there are whose bodies and spirits are nearly broken; and they go back to wait for their release. Among these, there was one Bohemian woman from New York, whose hollow cough and glowing cheeks betrayed the arch destroyer at work. She was one of six thousand cigar makers employed by one firm, and she had laboured five years in that shop and rolled many thousands of cigars into shape. As she had to bite the end of every cigar, she swallowed much tobacco juice, and breathed in much tobacco dust. She had attained great proficiency and could earn twenty dollars a week; but she had ruined her health, had spent all her savings for medicine and now was going home to die. She was in that stage where hope had not left her, and she was bent on making the last great fight for life in the shelter of her “Matushka’s” love.
Two old genteel looking people always stood out from the coarse mass because they kept clean in spite of the odds against them in the steerage, and because they were always together. Up and down the slippery stairs they went, like two lovers. Even seasickness did not separate them and when the sun shone they were on deck, solemnly smiling back to heaven. They had left their all in America; their children were sleeping in the strange soil, and now they were going back to the little town in Austria from which they had gone thirty-seven years before. They felt too rich in one another to rail against their fate, and their complaint was as gentle as their pain was deep. They had come to America full and now they were going home empty; three sons and two daughters they had brought, and childless they were going back; but “The Lord had given and the Lord had taken away,” and they blessed the name of the Lord.
Those who had prospered in America, and they were the majority, carried home with them sums of money which in the aggregate, amounted, among 600, to four thousand dollars, which did not however represent all they had saved; for each week they had sent small sums to their homes, and the money sent from America to Austria and Italy has been a great economic factor in the life of those countries. The total sum must reach into many millions. Nor does this sum represent an entire loss to our country; for the more money there is in a Slav or Italian village the more and better cotton goods are bought. The daily diet contains more American lard, the household is likely to be enriched by an American sewing-machine, and the notes of the phonograph are “heard in the land,”—which too comes from America.
Perhaps the greatest gainers by this constant coming and going are the steamship companies, which for a comparatively large sum of money provide quarters that in a very short time become unfit for human beings. The thrifty passengers, and there are not a few of them, who believe that the steerage going to Europe is not so crowded as coming to America, and that they can risk travelling that way, are very much mistaken. Even moderately rough weather makes the unsheltered deck impossible; the nether decks of the ship become full of sickening odours and seasickness claims nearly all the passengers as victims. There is no escape; even on so large a ship as the Kaiser Wilhelm II all must remain in their bunks. On my last trip I counted five bitter days when not one steerage passenger could go on deck, while the cabin passengers were travelling over comparatively quiet waters.
When the sea has become as smooth as a mill-pond the steerage passengers may venture out; 800 people, crowded in a small space, soon become acquainted and need not wait for an introduction. Less, much less than on the outward journey have the races kept themselves apart; it is true you may still discover groups of Slavs, Italians or Jews; but they have approached the gates of the Kingdom of God and you may find your brotherhoods made up of all the nations of the earth. I had around me a group of forty men who belonged to seventeen nationalities, to four faiths and to many stations in life; yet we felt ourselves bound to one another by a meagre knowledge of the English language and by our common experience in America. Most of these men felt themselves intensely American; and that was what held us together and in a measure separated us from the mass. For the majority of these birds of passage are not yet American, as the following instance will illustrate. In taking a rough census of the politics of the steerage, I asked one man: “How do you like President Roosevelt?” He replied: “I no know him. I guess he good man, I get my pay at shop; I work, I get pay, I guess that all right.” A few expressed both admiration for the President and loyalty to him, and hoped he would run for another term. They had opinions in politics and some even declared themselves neither Republicans nor Democrats, but “Inepenny.” My group of forty men, growing at the end of the journey to nearly fifty, were a loyal set, and an honest one.
Each of the men had earned the little money he had, by hard labour; not one of them by barter, and each had caught a glimpse of the higher life in America.
The Slavs were nearly all Democrats, the Italians were Republicans, and so were the Jews. There were six Social Democrats in the group, nearly evenly divided among the three races; and they were the best educated if not the most companionable of the number. The whole group was eager to know, and the questions asked were as pertinent as numerous. All of them expected to return to America before another year, and each of them will grow into the full stature of the American man.
The touch with the mass in the steerage can be but light; yet I have looked into the smiling faces of little children, I have played with the steerage boys and girls, I have talked with every one of the five hundred adult passengers in the steerage, and I can still say that usually all of them return with some blessing, with some wealth gained, and better for having been in America.