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[Illustration: _From stereograph copyright--1904, by Underwood &
Underwood, N. Y._

AT THE GATE

With tickets fastened to coats and dresses, the immigrants pass out
through the gate to enter into their new inheritance, and become our
fellow citizens.]




ON THE TRAIL

OF

THE IMMIGRANT

EDWARD A. STEINER'S

Studies of Immigration

_From Alien to Citizen_

The Story of My Life in America
Illustrated      net $1.50

In this interesting autobiography we see Professor Steiner
pressing ever forward and upward to a position of international
opportunity and influence.

_The wonderful varied Life-story of the author of
"On the Trail of the Immigrant."_

_The Broken Wall_

Stories of the Mingling Folk.
Illustrated      net $1.00

"A big heart and a sense of humor go a long way toward making
a good book. Dr. Edward A. Steiner has both these qualifications
and a knowledge of immigrants' traits and character."

--_Outlook._

_Against the Current_

Simple Chapters from a Complex Life.
12mo, cloth      net $1.25

"As frank a bit of autobiography as has been published for
many a year. The author has for a long time made a close
study of the problems of immigration, and makes a strong
appeal to the reader."--_The Living Age._

_The Immigrant Tide--Its Ebb and Flow_
Illustrated, 8vo, cloth      net $1.50

"May justly be called an epic of present day immigration,
and is a revelation that should set our country thinking."

--_Los Angeles Times._

_On the Trail of The Immigrant_

Illustrated, 12mo, cloth      net $1.50

"Deals with the character, temperaments, racial traits, aspirations
and capabilities of the immigrant himself. Cannot fail to afford
excellent material for the use of students of immigrant
problems."--_Outlook._

_The Mediator_

A Tale of the Old World and the New.
Illustrated, 12mo, cloth      net $1.25

"A graphic story, splendidly told."--ROBERT WATCHORN,
_Former Commissioner of Immigration_.

_Tolstoy, the Man and His Message_

A Biographical Interpretation.
_Revised and enlarged._ Illustrated, 12mo, cloth      net $1.50




ON THE TRAIL

OF

THE IMMIGRANT

EDWARD A. STEINER

_Professor in Iowa College, Grinnell, Iowa_

_ILLUSTRATED_

[Illustration]

NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO

Fleming H. Revell Company

LONDON AND EDINBURGH

Copyright, 1906, by

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 125 No. Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

_This book is affectionately dedicated to
"The Man at the Gate"
ROBERT WATCHORN,
United States Commissioner of Immigration
at the
Port of New York:


     Who, in the exercise of his office has been loyal to the interests
     of his country, and has dealt humanely, justly and without
     prejudice, with men of "Every kindred and tongue and people and
     nation."_

     _ACKNOWLEDGMENT_

     _Cordial recognition is tendered to the editors of The Outlook for
     their courtesy in permitting the use of certain portions of this
     book which have already appeared in that journal._




CONTENTS


I.            BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION                                  9

II.           THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL                             16

III.          THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE STEERAGE                         30

IV.           LAND, HO!                                              48

V.            AT THE GATEWAY                                         64

VI.           "THE MAN AT THE GATE"                                  78

VII.          THE GERMAN IN AMERICA                                  94

VIII.         THE SCANDINAVIAN IMMIGRANT                            112

IX.           THE JEW IN HIS OLD WORLD HOME                         126

X.            THE NEW EXODUS                                        143

XI.           IN THE GHETTOS OF NEW YORK                            154

XII.          THE SLAVS AT HOME                                     179

XIII.         THE SLAVIC INVASION                                   198

XIV.          DRIFTING WITH THE "HUNKIES"                           213

XV.           THE BOHEMIAN IMMIGRANT                                225

XVI.          LITTLE HUNGARY                                        238

XVII.         THE ITALIAN AT HOME                                   252

XVIII.        THE ITALIAN IN AMERICA                                262

XIX.          WHERE GREEK MEETS GREEK                               282

XX.           THE NEW AMERICAN AND THE NEW PROBLEM                  292

XXI.          THE NEW AMERICAN AND OLD PROBLEMS                     309

XXII.         RELIGION AND POLITICS                                 321

XXIII.        BIRDS OF PASSAGE                                      334

XXIV.         IN THE SECOND CABIN                                   347

XXV.          AU REVOIR                                             359

              APPENDIX                                              365

              INDEX                                                 371




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                           _Facing page_

AT THE GATE                                                      _Title_

AS SEEN BY MY LADY OF THE FIRST CABIN                                10

THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL                                           26

WILL THEY LET ME IN?                                                 50

THE SHEEP AND THE GOATS                                              66

BACK TO THE FATHERLAND                                               92

FAREWELL TO HOME AND FRIENDS                                        114

ISRAELITES INDEED                                                   140

THE GHETTO OF THE NEW WORLD                                         156

FROM THE BLACK MOUNTAIN                                             180

WITHOUT THE PALE                                                    208

HO FOR THE PRAIRIE!                                                 246

THE BOSS                                                            270

IN AN EVENING SCHOOL, NEW YORK                                      294

A SLAV OF THE BALKANS                                               302

ON THE DAY OF ATONEMENT                                             330




ON THE TRAIL OF THE IMMIGRANT




I

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION



_My Dear Lady of the First Cabin_:

On the fourth morning out from Hamburg, after your maid had disentangled
you from your soft wrappings of steamer rugs, and leaning upon her arm,
you paced the deck for the first time, the sun smiled softly upon the
smooth sea, and its broken reflections came back hot upon your pale
cheeks. Then your gentle eyes wandered from the illimitable sea back to
the steamer which carried you. You saw the four funnels out of which
came pouring clouds of smoke trailing behind the ship in picturesque
tracery; you watched the encircling gulls which had been your fellow
travellers ever since we left the white cliffs of Albion; and then your
eyes rested upon those mighty Teutons who stood on the bridge, and whose
blue eyes searched the sea for danger, or rested upon the compass for
direction.

From below came the sweet notes of music, gentle and wooing, one of the
many ways in which the steamship company tried to make life pleasant
for you, to bring back your "Bon appetit" to its tempting tables. Then
suddenly, you stood transfixed, looking below you upon the deck from
which came rather pronounced odours and confused noises. The notes of a
jerky harmonica harshly struck your ears attuned to symphonies; and the
song which accompanied it was gutteral and unmusical.

The deck which you saw, was crowded by human beings; men, women and
children lay there, many of them motionless, and the children, numerous
as the sands of the sea,--unkempt and unwashed, were everywhere in
evidence.

You felt great pity for the little ones, and you threw chocolate cakes
among them, smiling as you saw them in their tangled struggle to get
your sweet bounty.

You pitied them all; the frowsy headed, ill clothed women, the men who
looked so hungry and so greedy, and above all you pitied, you said
so,--do you remember?--you said you pitied your own country for having
to receive such a conglomerate of human beings, so near to the level of
the beasts. I well recall it; for that day they did look like animals.
It was the day after the storm and they had all been seasick; they had
neither the spirit nor the appliances necessary for cleanliness. The
toilet rooms were small and hard to reach, and sea water as you well
know is not a good cleanser. They were wrapped in gray blankets which
they had brought from their bunks, and you were right; they did look
like animals, but not half so clean as the cattle which one sees so
often on an outward journey; certainly not half so comfortable.

[Illustration: _From stereograph copyright--1905, by Underwood &
Underwood, N. Y._

AS SEEN BY MY LADY OF THE FIRST CABIN.

The fellowship of the steerage makes good comrades, where no barriers
exist and introductions are neither possible nor necessary.]

You were taken aback when I spoke to you. I took offense at your
suspecting us to be beasts, for I was one of them; although all that
separated you and me was a little iron bar, about fifteen or twenty
rungs of an iron ladder, and perhaps as many dollars in the price of our
tickets.

You were amazed at my temerity, and did not answer at once; then you
begged my pardon, and I grudgingly forgave you. One likes to have a
grudge against the first cabin when one is travelling steerage.

The next time you came to us, it was without your maid. You had quite
recovered and so had we. The steerage deck was more crowded than ever,
but we were happy, comparatively speaking; happy in spite of the fact
that the bread was so doughy that we voluntarily fed the fishes with it,
and the meat was suspiciously flavoured.

Again you threw your sweetmeats among us, and asked me to carry a basket
of fruit to the women and children. I did so; I think to your
satisfaction. When I returned the empty basket, you wished to know all
about us, and I proceeded to tell you many things--who the Slavs are,
and I brought you fine specimens of Poles, Bohemians, Servians and
Slovaks,--men, women and children: and they began to look to you like
men, women and children, and not like beasts. I introduced to you,
German, Austrian and Hungarian Jews, and you began to understand the
difference. Do you remember the group of Italians, to whom you said
good-morning in their own tongue, and how they smiled back upon you all
the joy of their native land? And you learned to know the difference
between a Sicilian and a Neapolitan, between a Piedmontese and a
Calabrian. You met Lithuanians, Greeks, Magyars and Finns; you came in
touch with twenty nationalities in an hour, and your sympathetic smile
grew sweeter, and your loving bounty increased day by day.

You wondered how I happened to know these people so well; and I told you
jokingly, that it was my Social nose which over and over again, had led
me steerage way across the sea, back to the villages from which the
immigrants come and onward with them into the new life in America.

You suspected that it was not a Social nose but a Social heart; that I
was led by my sympathies and not by my scientific sense, and I did not
dispute you. You urged me to write what I knew and what I felt, and now
you see, I have written. I have tried to tell it in this book as I told
it to you on board of ship. I told you much about the Jews and the
Slavs because they are less known and come in larger numbers. When I had
finished telling you just who these strangers are, and something of
their life at home and among us, in the strange land, you grew very
sympathetic, without being less conscious how great is the problem which
these strangers bring with them.

If I succeed in accomplishing this for my larger audience, the public, I
shall be content.

You were loth to listen to figures; for you said that statistics were
not to your liking and apt to be misleading; so I leave them from these
pages and crowd them somewhere into the back of the book, where the
curious may find them if they delight in them.

My telling deals only with life; all I attempt to do is to tell what I
have lived among the immigrants, and not much of what I have counted.
Here and there I have dropped a story which you said might be worth
re-telling; and I tell it as I told it to you--not to earn the smile
which may follow, but simply that it may win a little more sympathy for
the immigrant.

If here and there I stop to moralize, it is largely from force of habit;
and not because I am eager to play either preacher or prophet. If I
point out some great problems, I do it because I love America with a
love passing your own; because you are home-born and know not the lot
of the stranger.

You may be incredulous if I tell you that I do not realize that I was
not born and educated here; that I am not thrilled by the sight of my
cradle home, nor moved by my country's flag.

I know no Fatherland but America; for after all, it matters less where
one was born, than where one's ideals had their birth; and to me,
America is not the land of mighty dollars, but the land of great ideals.

I am not yet convinced that the peril to these ideals lies in those who
come to you, crude and unfinished; if I were, I would be the first one
to call out: "Shut the gates," and not the last one to exile myself for
your country's good.

I think that the peril lies more in the first cabin than in the
steerage; more in the American colonies in Monte Carlo and Nice than in
the Italian colonies in New York and Chicago. Not the least of the peril
lies in the fact that there is too great a gulf between you and the
steerage passenger, whose virtues you will discover as soon as you learn
to know him.

I send out this book in the hope that it will mediate between the first
cabin and the steerage; between the hilltop and lower town; between the
fashionable West side and the Ghetto.

Do you remember my Lady of the First Cabin, what those Slovaks said to
you as you walked down the gangplank in Hoboken? What they said to you,
I now say to my book: "Z'Boghem," "The Lord be with thee."




II

THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL


Some twenty years ago, while travelling from Vienna on the Northern
Railway, I was locked into my compartment with three Slavic women, who
entered at a way station, and who for the first time in their lives had
ventured from their native home by way of the railroad. In fear and awe
they looked out the window upon the moving landscape, while with each
recurring jolt they held tightly to the wooden benches.

One of them volunteered the information that they were journeying a
great distance, nearly twenty-five miles from their native village. I
ventured to say that I was going much further than twenty-five miles,
upon which I was asked my destination. I replied: "America," expecting
much astonishment at the announcement; but all they said was: "Merica?
where is that? is it really further than twenty-five miles?"

Until about the time mentioned, the people of Eastern and Southeastern
Europe had remained stationary; just where they had been left by the
slow and glacial like movement of the races and tribes to which they
belonged. Scarcely any traces of their former migrations survive,
except where some warlike tribe has exploited its history in song,
describing its escape from the enemy, into some mountain fastness, which
was of course deserted as soon as the fury of war had spent itself.

From the great movements which changed the destinies of other European
nations, these people were separated by political and religious
barriers; so that the discovery of America was as little felt as the
discovery of the new religious and political world laid bare by the
Reformation. Each tribe and even each smaller group developed according
to its own native strength, or according to how closely it leaned
towards Western Europe, which was passing through great evolutionary and
revolutionary changes.

On the whole, it may be said that in many ways they remained stationary,
certainly immobile. Old customs survived and became laws; slight
differentiations in dress occurred and became the unalterable costume of
certain regions; idioms grew into dialects and where the native genius
manifested itself in literature, the dialect became a language. These
artificial boundaries became impassable, especially where differences in
religion occurred. Each group was locked in, often hating its nearest
neighbours and closest kinsmen, and also having an aversion to anything
which came from without. Social and economic causes played no little
part, both in the isolation of these tribes and groups and in the
necessity for migration. When the latter was necessary, they moved
together to where there was less tyranny and more virgin soil. They went
out peacefully most of the time, but could be bitter, relentless and
brave when they encountered opposition.

But they did not go out with the conqueror's courage nor with the
adventurer's lust for fame; they were no iconoclasts of a new
civilization, nor the bearers of new tidings. They went where no one
remained; where the Romans had thinned the ranks of the Germans, where
Hun, Avar and Turk had left valleys soaked in blood and made ready for
the Slav's crude plow; where Roman colonies were decaying and Roman
cities were sinking into the dunes made by ocean's sands. They destroyed
nothing nor did they build anything; they accepted little or nothing
which they found on conquered soil, but lived the old life in the new
home, whether it was under the shadow of the Turkish cres