They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
No one is dissatisfied—not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
III. THE FAMILY AS A CORPORATE PERSON
After the individual’s own person, the most intimate environment to which the person responds is the family. The family is, or was, under earlier and simpler conditions of life, a sort of larger corporate person. Among the Polish peasants, for example, where the family completely dominates the individual, “husband and wife,” we are told, “are not individuals more or less closely connected according to their personal sentiments, but group members, controlled by both the united families.”[[59]] It is on this basis that we can understand completely the letters written by immigrant boys to their parents asking them to send them wives:
Dearest Parents:
Please do not be angry with me for what I shall write. I write you that it is hard to live alone, so please find some girl for me, but an orderly [honest] one, for in America there is not even one single orderly [Polish] girl.... [December 21, 1902.] I thank you kindly for your letter, for it was happy. As to the girl, although I don’t know her, my companion, who knows her, says that she is stately and pretty, and I believe him, as well as you, my parents.... Please inform me which one (of the sisters) is to come, the older or the younger one, whether Aledsandra or Stanislawa.[[60]]