Charities and the Commons: The Pittsburgh Survey, Part I. The People

by Various

One deplorable trait I frequently met with among the Slavs was contempt for American law. The existence of this trait is largely due to the teaching of experience,—and experience of one particular sort. The story of Vilchinsky, a Ruthenian boarding-boss, is such a common one, it illustrates so well a wide-spread condition in the administration of law by the petty aldermen's courts of the Pennsylvania industrial districts, that it is worth repeating for the sake of its general significance. October 14, 1907, one of the boarders was celebrating his patron saint's day. This meant a lot of drinking by all, and during the festivities they got more or less under the influence of liquor, but they were in their own home, there was no public disturbance, and toward midnight they all went to bed. About two o'clock in the morning, however, when they were all asleep, policemen came to the house, wakened everybody and loaded them into patrol wagons and buggies and took them to a police station. The boarding-boss, four girls and three men were all taken before the magistrate, charged with disorderly conduct. Without any regular hearing,—none of them could speak English and there was no interpreter,—the squire asked for twenty dollars apiece for the boarders and fifty dollars for the boarding-boss. All but two girls paid the fine immediately, and these two were then sentenced to the county jail. During the following day, their friends succeeded in collecting enough money to pay their fines and the $1.50 extra for board in the jail.

Abuses such as this are generated by the fact that aldermen and constables obtain fees out of the fines, which makes it to the financial interest of these officials to get as many cases into court as possible. Many men I have talked with have stated that the constables often provoke disorder when none exists for the sake of the profit in the arrests. The Slavs know that they are victimized, and at the same time they realize their helplessness; the natural result is a bitter contempt for law.

"Huh!" sneered Vilchinsky, "the police are busy enough all right stopping disorder when the men have got money. But when there's hard times, like there is now, a man can make all the noise he pleases and the police won't arrest him. They know he hasn't money to pay a heavy fine and costs. It ain't law they think about. It's money."

There are plenty of Slavs who are quarrelsome, just as there are among other races; and when you have a combination of Slavic ill-temper and the above-mentioned judicial practice, then there is basis for trouble indeed. Zavatsky and Yeremin, Russians, and neighbors in a steel town, drank more than was good for them one Saturday afternoon in a saloon, and at last Zavatsky spoke his mind about Yeremin's wife, whom he did not consider as good-looking as she should be, and indulged in drunken threats against her if she did not stop throwing ashes on his side of the yard. Yeremin repeated to his wife these threats and remarks and Mrs. Yeremin, being a choleric woman, went to the squire in spite of the fact that it was very late in the evening. But as it was payday, he was in his office ready for business.

Drawn by Joseph Stella.

PITTSBURGH TYPES.

RUSSIAN.

A constable was sent to Zavatsky's house to arrest him. The constable went into the kitchen and, finding nobody there or in the next room, went upstairs. Here there were a number of boarders talking, but they were not drunk. The constable, seeing these men, thought it would be wisest to have assistance, so he brought two policemen and then went for Zavatsky. They broke open the door of the room where Zavatsky was sleeping, dragged him out of bed and told him to get up. He was in a drunken stupor and claims that he did not resist the constable, in fact, scarcely knew what was going on; but the constable felled him with so heavy a blow that it made a scalp wound and the blood rushed out and blinded him. While on the floor, Zavatsky remembered a revolver under his pillow, and raised his hand and got it. The constable wrested it from him and according to Mrs. Zavatsky's version, he exclaimed, "I'll give you a revolver, you son of a gun," and shot Zavatsky in the chest. Mrs. Zavatsky, catching up a hammer, rushed at the constable, but he knocked her unconscious by a blow on the head and she fell down in a swoon. Before that, she had screamed to the men, "Come down, boys, come down, they're killing the gazda!" One of the first to come to Zavatsky's assistance was his kum, (the kum is one who is godfather to one's children, or one to whose children one is godfather; a very close relationship,—generally the dearest friend). As the kum tried to rush into the room, the two officers gave him several violent blows on the head. The other men rushed down, but they were all seized by the officers, with the exception of one whose flight was suddenly stopped by a shot in the leg.

As a result of the melee, the whole household of ten men and one woman was taken in patrol wagons to the squire's court and committed to jail, charged with disorderly conduct, felonious assault and interference with an officer in performance of his duty. Zavatsky and the boarder who was shot in the leg were sent to the hospital for treatment. At first it looked as if Zavatsky were not going to live. After a hearing four days later they were all committed to the grand jury, and my reports say that they were all sentenced to jail for varying periods. None of the policemen or the constable had even a scratch to show, although they charged these ten men with felonious assault. The house, when I saw it just following the affair, looked like the day after a battle.