No, what I have learned in the first cabin has not changed my vision in the least; for the world it represents is not closed to me; and I reckoned with it in my story. You know enough about me to realize that I harbour no class or race prejudices, and that I try to “play fair.”
The people of the steerage are in a large measure what I told you they are—primitive, uncultured, untutored people; with all their virtues and vices in the making. They are the best material with which to build a nation materially; they are good stock to be used in replenishing physical depletion; and capable of taking on the highest intellectual and spiritual culture. They are a serious problem in every respect; whether you shut the gates of Ellis Island to-day or to-morrow, those that are here are an equally serious problem.
One thing the journey in the first cabin has done for me; it has made me grateful for my journeys in the steerage; grateful that I could stand among those tangling threads out of which our national life is being woven, and see the woof and the warp, and know that the woof is good. I am conscious of the fact that it will take strong sound warp to hold it together, to fill out our pattern and complete our plan. Oh, my dear lady! What a great country in the making this is! And how close you and I are to the making!
Here are we, living at a time in which the greatest phenomenon of history is taking place. Future generations will wonder at the process and will say: “A new gigantic race was being born between the Atlantic and the Pacific; a race born to build or to destroy, to cry to the world, ‘Ground Arms,’ or cast it into the hell of war; a race in which are welded all kindreds of the people of the earth, or a race which will destroy itself by mutual hate.”
My lady, you and I are here to work at a task which will outstrip all the wonders of the world, and we cannot do it in our own strength; we need to call to each other, as we bend to our task, the greeting which the Slovaks sent after you when you left the ship:
“Z’Boghem, Z’Boghem,”
“The Lord be with thee.”
APPENDIX
IMMIGRATION STATISTICS
THE author has refrained from using statistics in his book, not because he has any objection to figures; but because the statistics of immigration (even those prepared by the United States Government) are misleading.
Professor Walter F. Willcox, Chairman of the Committee on Basal Statistics, appointed by the National Civic Federation, calls attention to this fact in his report, and gives the following reasons for their unreliability.