Many of those who come to this country are in debt for their passage. Others have left near relatives at home who must be helped to come over. Some have come, intending to establish themselves and to be married here. Some expect to take back a part of their earnings to better the condition of those left behind. Their coming, whether to stay permanently or to return, often does not relieve them of their obligations to the group in the old country.
One of the strongest impressions that the reader gets from the letters in The Polish Peasant is that of the frequency with which relatives in the old country ask for money from the one who has gone ahead. It is not only his wife and children, or aged parents, that ask for money, but all the members of the wider familial group, and sometimes even friends with no claim on the score of kinship.
The purposes for which they ask money are various; in the Borek series, for example, a son of the family is asked to send money because the family is in debt and has taxes to pay; to send money for the dowry of his sister; for a forge; for a sewing machine, and for a phonograph. He is also told that if he sends money home it will not be wasted, but will be put out at interest. Other claims for money are put forward in other series, possibly the most common one being a request for a steamship ticket. The letters show clearly that it is customary to send money for fête days, "name days," or birthdays, Christmas, Easter, and other occasions. A failure to do so brings reproach coupled with a reminder that others who had gone from the village had sent money. In the Wrobelski series the family ask money from the member in this country for a new church at home. Every Sunday the priest reads aloud the names of those who have contributed. It therefore seems to the immigrant imperative that from his present earnings certain amounts shall be set aside.
When the first hard times are past and the members of the immediate family are reunited, there comes the reaction to the experience of depending on the money wage. There arises the fear of disaster growing out of interruption of the income, or misfortune involving especially heavy expenditure.
The United States Treasury Department in its "Thrift" campaign lays down the doctrine save first and spend afterward.[21] This is what the members of the foreign-born groups have long been doing, and probably this policy is the only possible basis for a rational use of one's resources. Yet doing this gives rise to comment on the "low standard of life." And thrift often seems to border on miserliness.
Indeed, the problem is by no means so simple as the use of the categorical imperative would indicate. The whole question of deciding between the claims of the present and of the future is a very difficult one. The economist gives us little definite help. He lays down the so-called "rule of uses" and tells the housewife so to apply her resources that the utility extracted from any unit may be at least as great as if that unit were applied elsewhere. Now the foreign-born housewife, like other housewives, has certain resources of money and time and strength, and these she wishes to distribute wisely. But she labors under many disadvantages, of which it is only fair to take notice.
UNFAMILIARITY WITH MONEY
In the first place, her income is in an unfamiliar form. There is first the fact that the money units are strange to her. A woman who recently came over, being called on to make an unexpected payment, handed her purse to a fellow traveler, asking that the required amount be taken out. In the second place, for many there is the difficulty growing out of the exclusive dependence upon money payments, when before there were both money and the products of the land.
The fact should always be kept in mind that, to the extent to which the foreign born are from rural districts, they have the difficulty experienced by all who are forced to adjust themselves to an economy built on money, as distinguished from an economy built on kind. In the country where things are grown, there is little opportunity for acquiring a sense of money values.
It is then peculiarly difficult to value in terms of the new measure those articles with which one has been especially familiar under the old economy. For example, when vegetables and fruits have been enjoyed without estimating their value, it is difficult to judge their value in money. While meat was before thought out of reach, it may be purchased at exorbitant rates under the new circumstances, because one has no idea of how much it should cost. Evidence as to this kind of difficulty is found among all groups. It takes the form, sometimes, of apparent parsimony, sometimes of reckless and wasteful buying.