Those of us who are not born to lead ought to realize that a good example is very contagious, and that the love of righteousness and justice is not so foreign to these strangers as some of us imagine.
It is in the hope of stimulating both leadership and good example that I have written the following chapters. In that hope I have pointed out how contagiously our example acts upon these groups and how the processes of assimilation are retarded by injustice and prejudice.
I have given special attention to the religious life of these newer groups whose interpretation I have attempted, because not only does religion play a large part in their lives; but because I believe that in the field of religion lie the largest possibilities for that kind of assimilation which can make of all these “tribes and tongues and nations” “fellow citizens with the saints”; and of all the “strangers and sojourners,” members of the “household of God.”
XIV
THE SLAV IN THE IMMIGRANT PROBLEM
IN the three groups which form the bulk of our immigrant population, the Slav is now the strongest and the most interesting factor, and is destined to be for some time to come.
In spite of his being from the least densely populated regions, he is numerically the greatest and will long maintain his supremacy. There are more than 100,000,000 Slavs, and the territory they occupy is vast, covering half the European continent and reaching far into Asia.
These people are scattered in villages, but rarely concentrated in cities; nevertheless, social and political conditions among all of them are now such as to force this most immovable of European races into the great outgoing tide.
The majority of Slavic people is of peasant type, and scarcely anywhere has it developed a middle class strong enough to form a bridge upon which to cross the age-long chasm between it and the upper class. This means that poverty and contempt have been accepted as the reward for hard labour, and as the divinely appointed lot of the peasant, who in but few Slavic countries has escaped serfdom, a condition of semi-slavery from which he emerged with insufficient land, or none, with many limitations as to individual ownership and with practically no limitations as to his share of the burden of government support.
The masses of the peoples of the Slavic countries have never been above economic want, and have been but slowly awakened to the more expensive demands of our civilization.
To the peasant, bread and cabbage to eat, a straw thatched isba to shelter his family, and an occasional pull at the vodka bottle, meant comfort; while to have feather beds, a crowing cock in the barn-yard and a pig killing once a year, was the realization of his wildest dreams.