“A good effect. The returned immigrant is a new man. He carries himself differently, he commands the respect of his fellows, he treats his wife better and he keeps the windows of his isba open.”
The last two facts are exceedingly important, and my observations bear out his testimony. Wherever I saw an open window in the evening, I could with perfect assurance open the door and say: “How do you do?” and I was certain to be greeted by a still more emphatic and cordial, “How do you do?”
For some inexplicable reason, Europeans of all classes are averse to air in sleeping rooms, especially at night. Night air is supposed to hold all sorts of evils, and even the medical profession, progressive as it is, has not yet freed itself from this terrible superstition.
Frequently I have discovered in the returned immigrant a quickening of the moral sense, especially among the men who had come in contact with the better class of American mechanics; and the discovery was as welcome as unexpected. I saw this emphasized during my trip last year. It was on a Sunday’s journey among the villages of the valley of the Waag. Picturesque groups were moving along the highway to and from the church and into the village and out of it. The appearance of my companions and myself always created a great sensation and never a greater one than on Sunday when the peasants were at leisure. They took it as a special privilege to see “genuine Americans,” and those who had been over here were quickly on the scene to air their English and to show their familiarity with our kind.
It was a reciprocal pleasure; for it seemed like a breath from home to hear men talk intelligently of Hazleton, Pittsburg, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre; moreover it gave us a splendid opportunity to test the effect of our civilization upon them.
In one village a husband with his wife and two children came out of their isba, and we could easily imagine ourselves at home; for the whole family looked as if it had just come from a grand bargain sale at one of our department stores. What seemed most delightful to us was the way in which the man spoke of his wife, and no American husband could have been more careful of her than was he; all this in striking contrast to the peasants to whom the woman is still an inferior being.
In conversation with them, I took the returned immigrant as my subject and told them something of our own social order as shown in the relation of husband and wife in America; upon which one of the peasants told a very ugly and realistic story to illustrate what he thought of women. Then it was that the unexpected happened. My immigrant friend blushed—yes, blushed—just as I should expect any well-bred man to blush under similar circumstances, and said to me: “Don’t mind him. He has a dirty mouth. He may after all have a clean heart.”
The man who blushed had been five years in—Pittsburg!
The change brought about through immigration, even in a youth of the better class, whose character had been spoiled by his early training, was shown in a young Magyar in Budapest. That city has the unenviable reputation of being one of the most immoral cities in Europe. The immorality of the great cities is everywhere very much alike in certain respects; still it seems to me that a city is more or less immoral, not according to the size of its tenderloin district, but in how far immorality has been accepted as the norm of life. In that respect Budapest is considerably in the lead; for its youth is nourished in an atmosphere of indolence, false pride and various phases of social impurity.
The family to which this particular young man belonged boasted three sons of whom he is the oldest. He went the road which leads to destruction, and he went with the full knowledge of his parents, for both were going their own gait in the same direction.