New Homes for Old

by Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge

The suggestion has been frequently made that the immigrant should be the object of certain protective care during the journey across the ocean and on arrival.[53] The proposal here is that the community would gain enormously through the creation of devices for the exercise of a community hospitality. This should include the receiving and distributing of new arrivals in such a way as to assure their being put into touch, not only with their relatives and friends, but with the community resources which could be of special service as well.

Attention has been called to the efforts put forth by organizations among the foreign-speaking groups. The possibility of their more efficient and wider activity should be always kept in mind. But the work of the Immigrants' Protective League of Chicago, in behalf of unaccompanied women and girls, illustrates both the nature of the task and the way in which the development of such services requires a familiarity with the governmental organizations and a capacity for utilizing official agencies not to be found among the groups most needing help.

IMMIGRANTS' PROTECTIVE LEAGUE

The work of this society has been referred to a number of times, and its methods and special objects should perhaps be briefly summarized. Its organization in 1907 grew out of a desire to assist the immigrant girls coming into Chicago, with special reference to their industrial relations. The objects described in the charter of incorporation are, however, much wider than this. They were:

... to apply the civic, social, and philanthropic resources of the city to the needs of foreigners in Chicago, to protect them from exploitation, to co-operate with the Federal, state, and local authorities, and with similar organizations in other localities, and to protect the right of asylum in all proper cases. (By-Laws, Art. II.)

The services of the organization have been taken advantage of by members of all the national groups in Chicago, and these services have included meeting immigrant trains and distributing arriving immigrants to their destination in the city, prosecuting the agencies from which the immigrant suffered especial exploitation, visiting immigrant girls, securing appropriate legislation, and in general making known to the community the special needs of the newly arrived immigrants.

The League has from the beginning made use of the services of foreign-speaking visitors, and the volume and success of its work has varied with the number of these visitors, the extent to which they represented groups in need of special aid, and their skill as social workers. At the time of the publication of the last report, the following languages besides English were spoken by these visitors: German, Bohemian, Italian, Lettish, Lithuanian, Magyar, Polish, Russian, Slovak, and Yiddish. Many aspects of its work do not bear on this discussion, but the following brief passages from the annual reports indicate the way in which the work in behalf of unaccompanied girls developed.

During the past year and a half the League has received from the various ports of arrival the names and addresses of the girls and women destined for Chicago. All of these newly arrived girls and women have been visited by representatives of the League able to speak the language of the immigrant. Four, and part of the time five, women speaking the Slavic languages—German, French, Italian, and Greek—have been employed for this work. In these visits information has been accumulated in regard to the journey to Chicago, the depot situation, the past industrial experience of the girls, their occupation in Chicago, wages, hours of work, their living conditions, the price they pay for board, and whether they are contributing to the support of some one at home. On this basis the League's work for girls has been planned. (Annual Report, 1909-10, p. 13.)

In these visits many girls needing assistance are found. The most difficult ones to help are those for whom the visitor sees a danger which the girl is unable to anticipate. Often a girl is a pioneer, who comes in advance of her family, and the friend or acquaintance whom she knows in Chicago undertakes to help her in finding her first job and a place to live, and then leaves her to solve the future for herself. If she should be out of work or in trouble she has no one whom she can ask for advice or help. In cases of this sort all that the visitor can do is to establish a connection which will make the girl feel that she has some one she can turn to in case of trouble or unemployment. (Annual Report, 1909-10, p. 15.)

Sometimes the League's visitor can do little more than offer the encouragement which the girl so much needs during the first few years in America. Usually she tries to persuade the girl to attend the nearest night school; sometimes she helps her in finding work, or a proper boarding place; sometimes, when the immigrant is educated, she has to quite sternly insist that any kind of work must be accepted until English has been learned. Some girls are discovered only after it is too late to prevent a tragedy. In the cases of two girls, one Polish and the other Bohemian, who had been betrayed by the uncles who had brought them to this country, the results were especially discouraging because the efforts to punish the men failed and one of the girls who had suffered so much from the uncle whom she thought she could trust was deported. (Annual Report for the Year Ending January 1, 1914, p. 11.)

It is clear that such a plan involved the distribution of information from the ports of entry to the places of destination,[54] and the development of instrumentalities through which the immigrant on arrival at his destination can be placed in contact with those from whom help of the kind needed could be expected. A nation-wide network of agencies for such hospitality, with headquarters at the ports of entry, is seen to be necessary from the descriptions of the services to be rendered. The development of such machinery by the Federal Immigration Service, as at present organized, may be unthinkable; but with a change in personnel and with a wider understanding of the nature of the problem, the apparently impossible might be realized.

In the meantime, the service need not wholly wait on this remote possibility. There are agencies, both public and private, which with enlarged resources might undertake a considerable portion of this task and develop more completely both the methods of approach and a body of persons skilled in this particular kind of service. Such work as that done on a small scale by the Immigrants' Protective League is especially instructive. The resources of that organization for all its tasks have been limited, so that visitors have been only to a slight extent specialized, except in the matter of language. But with enlarged resources, so that a larger number and better trained visitors might be employed, this gracious and important hospitality might be widely exercised.