Where so many single men are huddled together the laws of decency and morality are hard to observe. The boarding boss seldom has a family and, in going the round of these houses, the absence of children is conspicuous. A physician among them told me, "The average boarding-boss's wife cannot get any,—the moral condition makes it a physical impossibility." This stands in striking contrast with the average Slavic woman who in her natural environment, is the mother of children. These mid-European peoples are not so passionate as the Italians, but many of the single men, as the case is in all barracks life, fall into vice. A physician told me that gonorrhea is very prevalent among the Croatians and Servians. Another physician said of the Slavs in general, "They frequent cheap houses and come out diseased and robbed." Many bawdy houses are known in Pittsburgh as "Johnny Houses," for the reason that they are frequented by foreigners whose proper names are unpronounceable and who go by the name of "John." The number entering these on a "wide-awake" (pay) Saturday night is large. A man who knows this section fairly well, said, "Sometimes these men have to wait their turn." These are houses of the cheapest kind given over to prostitutes in the last stage.
The presence of young immigrant women in the immigrant lodging houses adds to the seriousness of the situation. Here again it is a question of wages that brings them to this country. They do the drudgery in the hotels and restaurants which English-speaking girls will not do; and they are to be found in factories working under conditions their English-speaking sisters would resent. If any persons need protection, these young women do. There is no adequate inspection of the labor employment agencies in Pittsburgh which solicit patronage among them, often to wrong them. Not only do some of these agencies take their money but they send girls to places unfit for them. An innocent girl may learn the character of the house only when it is too late. And even in the boarding houses their lot is a hard one, especially when the men of the place are on a carouse.
The Slavs and Lithuanians are fond of drink and spend their money freely on it. Some spend more money on beer than they do on food. The evidences of drink in the homes are apparent on all sides; and not only do national customs and national tastes and usages make for drunkenness, but the undeniable fact that the liquor interests are the only American institutions which effectively reach the great mass of the non-English speaking immigrants. Where else does the stranger find opportunity for recreation at his very hand? Empty beer kegs and bottles are to be seen everywhere among the houses of the immigrant lodgers. In Latimore alley, on a September morning, I counted twenty empty kegs in the yard; and in another corner there was a pile of empty bottles. It is nothing unusual for a beer wagon on Saturday to deliver into one of these boarding houses from eight to twelve cases of beer. When a keg is open the boarders feel that they must drain it. "It won't keep," they say. Sunday is the day for drinking. One man often drinks from fifteen to twenty bottles; while he who drinks from the keg does away with from two to three gallons. No social gathering is complete without drink. Marriages, baptisms, social occasions, holidays are all celebrated with beer and liquor. There is no good time and no friendship without it. The Slavs usually rent a hall to celebrate their weddings. The scenes of debauchery with which such festivities sometimes end are discountenanced by the respectable element among these people. Pool rooms afford loafing places for the young men of the worst sort. The cheap vaudeville shows, nickelodeons, and skating rinks are run for profit and not for the sake of clean recreation such as the community should in some way provide. But such places cannot be eliminated unless the craving of young people for amusement is met intelligently and sanely.
SLOVAK GIRL.
Where the environment of the home is unsanitary and repulsive, and where opportunities for recreation are limited and sordid, crime is bound to flourish. Approximately one-fifth of the persons incarcerated in Allegheny county in recent years have been immigrants from southeastern Europe. A visit to the police stations of the South Side on Sunday morning when the police magistrate dispenses justice after a "wide-awake" Saturday night, is a thing never to be forgotten. In such a section the foreigners form a majority of the offenders. On one of my visits to a South Side court, a young Pole was brought up who said he wanted to be arrested just to find out how it felt. The judge asked him, "How do you like it?" "All right," he said laughing. He got a full taste by being sent to jail for ten days. Another young Slav had violated a city ordinance. He could not speak English. The judge asked him how long he had been in the country. "Four years," he replied. "And you cannot talk English?" said the judge. "Don't you know that you ought to learn English that you may know we have laws and ordinances which must be obeyed?" In the judge's remark there was more of a commentary on civic duties unfulfilled than he perhaps realized. But who was to blame? Was it the Slav boy? Or was it the community which had failed to meet him halfway?
Here it is well to point out that the public school authorities have not made any strenuous effort to open evening schools for foreign adults in the city. The notable exception to this rule has been the work carried on by Principal Anthony among the Jewish people of the hill district, which grew out of classes carried on at Columbian Settlement. Another evening school, in the establishment of which a priest was the prime mover, met with fair success, but the foreigners dropped out very quickly. When asked why the school was given up, one of the school officials said that the pupils did not want it to continue; but their hours of work and changing shifts are probably still more important factors. Kingsley House, Woods Run and Columbian Settlement have carried on successful classes for foreigners, and the Y. M. C. A.'s of the districts are entering the field of civic and language instruction. The development of the evening courses of the Carnegie Technical Schools has been significant, but as yet they do not reach many unskilled immigrants, who need a nearby elementary help. The camp schools carried on by the Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants, at Aspinwall and Ambridge, have illustrated what could be done, and the response which comes from the immigrants themselves. More important, they were the means of securing the passage of legislation enabling local school authorities to open classes for adults. But in Greater Pittsburgh, it remains true that the school authorities are not yet awake to the importance of opening schools for foreign-speaking people and inducing them to attend. There could be no greater service rendered these young foreigners (or the city that harbors them) than that of aiding them to form clubs, and of engaging competent men to teach them English and give them some idea of the history and laws of the country.
In police station No. 3 on Penn avenue, the cases averaged four hundred and forty-five a month during the ten months I studied them. Drunkenness and disorderly conduct formed sixty-eight per cent of these cases, and the foreigners from southeastern Europe were charged with twenty-seven per cent of them. Three-quarters of the criminals were single men, and the large number of single men among the foreigners who lack decent homes, doubtless partly accounts for the frequency of their arrests. Similar proportions governed at police station No. 7 on Carson street.
A study of the docket of the Aldermen's Court on the South Side, in a prescribed area where Slavs and Lithuanians form an essential part of the population, showed a total of 167, or 39.5 per cent for these nationalities; but these cases varied greatly from those in the police stations. 48.3 per cent were cases of assault and battery and 45.6 per cent of the culprits were foreigners. The cases of fornication and bastardy, adultery and rape, numbered seventeen, more than half of which were to be laid at the door of the foreigners. Cases of larceny, disturbance of the peace, and disorderly conduct were about equally divided between the English-speaking and the non-English-speaking of southeastern Europe. Out of thirty-one cases of desertion and non-support, not a Slav, Lithuanian or Italian was implicated.
