Chapter 9 OLD WORLD TIDES IN BOSTON.

"There is a poor blind Samson in this land,

Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel,

Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,

And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,

Till the vast temple of our liberties

A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: The Warning.

Travellers tell us that in some parts of the ocean, when the waves are still and the water is perfectly quiet, the curious eye may look down through the clear depths and see, rising out of the ocean's bed, the gnarled and broken trunks of forest trees. Once this ocean-bed was above the water-line, and these trees grew in the sunshine and stretched their branches upward to the blue sky of heaven. But, as the result of some strange convulsion of the earth, the coast-line has sunk down and down, until the incoming tide of the salt sea has swept over it, and schools of porpoises and fishes swim among the branches of old forest trees that in the former time were accustomed to the chatter of squirrels and songs of birds.

Any one studying the older and more historic sections of Boston will see many relics of a past civilization by which he will be impressed in very much the same way as is the sailor who looks on the remains of an ancient forest in the ocean's bed. Standing in the North End, in front of the "Copp's Hill Burying-ground," and looking up at the tower of Christ Church where the famous signal lanterns were hung, one can almost hear the old church appropriating the words of the poet:-

"By time's highway-a milestone gray-

I watch the world march by;

An endless stream of moving men

Rolls on beneath mine eye.

Still, still they go; where, none can know;

And when one wave is gone,

Another and another yet

Come ever surging on."

It seems strange indeed to go up and down some of these old historic streets, and yet never in the course of one's walk hear spoken the language of the country. In the course of my investigations during the past few months, I have found it impossible to do anything practical without an interpreter, sometimes in one language, and again in another. Often in entering an old rear tenement house, where filth and misery held riot, I have been astonished at the splendidly carved ornaments over the doorways, and the still-to-be-traced carving on the balustrade. Once these old rear tenements were the abodes of Boston's wealthiest and most cultivated citizens; but the Old World tide has come in, and house after house, block after block, and street upon street, have been overwhelmed by the waves of people who speak other languages, and whose habits of life are more foreign than their speech.

[Illustration: CHRIST CHURCH TOWER.]

I have no sympathy with those people who are crying out against all foreigners, yet it seems to me that no serious student of the signs of the times can take other than a sober view of the submerging tide of foreign immigration which has come into this country, of which the North End of Boston is a suggestive illustration. The consideration which causes the most sober thought among earnest men to-day, is the entirely different class of immigration coming to us now from that of former times. In the earlier days of American history it was the intelligent, self-reliant part of the European communities who dared the expense and hardship of the long sea voyage by a sailing-vessel, and faced the exigencies of the New World. The immigrants of those days were mostly farmers and skilled mechanics, who brought with them the habit and prestige of success. But under the new order of things, with the great steam ferries which make a passage to America only a brief holiday trip of a week, with reduced rates, and controlled by companies who scour every European city, by aid of their agents, to gather in their human cargoes from the poorest and most ignorant of all the labor classes, it becomes a very different question.

[Illustration: ON THE CUNARDER.]

The motives that impel people to this country now, are very different from what they used to be. The San Francisco Alta well says: "The time was when the majority of foreign immigrants came because of an intelligent devotion to free government. Ninety-nine per cent of them were free from merely material motives. They were not urged by starvation, they did not come in the squalid steerage, they did not, on landing, feel compelled to invent servile occupations, before unknown in this country, merely to get the crusts and scraps that would keep them alive. Their motive was intellectual more than material. Their descendants are found in every State, of good report, foremost among the fibres that make up American character. Their blood may have been in the beginning English, Irish, Scotch, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Scandinavian, or Slav. No matter: they are now Americans, because the expatriation of their ancestors was real, and not unreal. Its motive was ethical, and not material. At present ninety-nine per cent of all immigrants come for material reasons only. Their decision to migrate to the United States is not for lack of liberty, but for lack of bread. The purpose is animal entirely. Every old emigrant from any country in Europe knows this to be so. The Italian who genuinely expatriated himself, who believed in Joseph Mazzini, and sought liberty for its own sake, finds no fraternity in the Italian immigration that has poured upon us since the suppression of the murder guilds of Sicily, and the decline of the industry of assassination in that country."

[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO THE RABBI.]

I think it is indeed one of the hopeful features of the situation that nearly all our adopted citizens, who are themselves thoroughly Americanized, share strongly in this view. Indeed, many of them seem to realize the danger more keenly than do the native-born citizens. I was very much interested, at the New England Chautauqua the other day, to hear Mr. John M. Langston, the colored orator of Virginia, read a letter from a leading Hebrew of Washington City, in which he reminded Mr. Langston that he had often pleaded the cause of the Negro, and appealed to him in turn to plead the cause of the Hebrew, by arousing public sentiment against the too rapid influx of Russian Jews.

[Illustration: PASSING THE QUARANTINE DOCTOR.]

The swift incoming of these Old World tides has very close relation to the wages of laboring people. Large numbers of the alien laborers who are coming now, are little better than "slaves of contractors, steamship lines, and the professional European jobbers in pauper labor. The large proportion of those engaged in our mines and on public works have been secured through these sources, either in direct defiance of our laws or by the evasion of the laws. They come in direct competition with the native-born and the worthy foreign immigrant, who comes here for the purpose of applying for citizenship and securing a home. They not only come into competition with every worthy class of laborers, but they are, for the most part, too ignorant to comprehend American institutions, and have no broader idea of liberty than to insist that it includes license. At every point of contact with our labor system, they debase it."

An illustration of this class of labor may be found in the fact that a year or two ago forty-seven alien miners employed in phosphate mines near Waterboro, S.C., were imprisoned because they refused to fulfil the contract under which they had been employed. Their story was that they had been met at Castle Garden by labor agents who induced them to sign a paper which they did not understand, but which proved to be a contract to work for one and two dollars a week in the phosphate mines, and board themselves. When they learned, on their first payday, of the trick which had been played upon them, they revolted. A few days in jail, however, induced them to return to work on the old terms.

The Chicago America, commenting on the incident, says this picture is a startling contrast to the prate of demagogues concerning the dignity of American labor. While they scheme to get the votes of intelligent workingmen, labor in many parts of this country is being enslaved by means of the hordes of foreigners who are imported in violation of law and right. Mr. Powderly tells, in the North American Review, of a visit which he paid to a mining-camp to investigate the condition of the men who were imported to take the places of American workmen who had demanded higher wages for labor done. These men lived in huge barracks. Their dining-room, smoking-room, sitting-room, kitchen, and bedchamber were one. There were five rows of bunks, three deep, each one thirty inches in width and seventy-eight inches long-the first bunk eighteen inches from the floor, the next, supported by rough hemlock posts, but two feet above it, and a third two feet above the second one. Each bunk was filled with straw, and covered with coarse coffee-sack material for bed-clothing. Two rows of hemlock boards, each one twenty feet in length by three feet in width, constituted the tables. The men came in from the mines while he was present, and, before washing face or hands, sat down to their supper of salt pork, meal, and water. One hundred and five men lived in a building one hundred and sixty feet in length by thirty feet in width. He found no one to answer him in the English tongue. When it was bedtime they lay down without divesting themselves of a single article of clothing; some of them took off their shoes, but the majority did not even do that. These men took the places of American workmen who were receiving from two dollars to two dollars and a half per day. The compensation allowed them was but seventy-five cents a day, and board. As a careful investigation proved that fifteen and three-eighths cents would provide the food furnished each man, the outlay was but ninety and three-eighths cents a day. It is getting to be quite a common custom on railroads and in mines and other places where this class of laborers are employed, to attach to the waistband of each man a leather strap fastened to a large brass check, similar to a baggage check. Every check bears a number, and the man who carries it, or to whom it is fastened, is known by the number on his check. Mr. Powderly grimly comments: "Fancy the future of the American laborer, whose name is forgotten, and whose only means of identification rests with a brass check, which may be substituted for another while he sleeps." If this is not white slavery, what is it?

These Old World tides have also close relation to the health of our cities. Large numbers of these people have been accustomed to live in crowded quarters, on insufficient food, and without any regard for cleanliness, in their native country. They come here, bringing all their filthy habits, bred in them sometimes for generations. I have no doubt that some of my critics tell the truth when they say that the squalid tenements occupied by the Russian Jews and Italians in Boston are better than the homes whence they came. So far as these foreigners themselves are concerned, even these wretched conditions are perhaps an upward step in evolution. But if we are going to have Naples in Boston, we must expect to have Neapolitan cholera epidemics as well.

[Illustration: SURGICAL THEOLOGY.]

These Old World tides have also a very close relation to the morals of our people. An overwhelming majority of all the criminals who figure in our police courts, and are supported in our jails and penitentiaries, were born abroad. This is very easy to understand when one investigates a little the methods used to encourage emigration to this country. The investigation made by the Ford Congressional committee revealed the enormous extent to which steamship companies are drumming Europe for human freight, to be dumped on our shores. "To those unscrupulous 'fishers of men' everything that walks or crawls is acceptable. Quantity, not quality, is the desideratum. The worse the specimen, the more effective, usually, is the emigration prize offered, and the less the opposition interposed by government officials. In a word, a drag-net has been thrown over nearly the entire European continent, with the result of having recently collected for shipment to this country a class of humanity, which, wherever it may be, is a menace to good order and a tax upon the police and charity departments of the country."

One who speaks with the highest authority on questions of political economy puts the immigration problem in a strong light when he says: "We are now draining off great stagnant pools of population which no current of intellectual or moral activity has stirred for ages. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of those who represent the very lowest stage of degradation to which human beings can be reduced by hopelessness, hunger, squalor, and superstition, are found among the new citizens whom the last decade has brought into the Republic." It is known beyond doubt that prisoners' aid societies in various European countries have been steadily shipping convicts to the United States. Neither has it been an uncommon thing for criminals to be let off by the courts, on condition of their emigrating to America. It is folly for us to expect to take this great criminal class, who were born to crime in the purlieus of European cities, who have been thieves from their cradles, and who come to us fresh from jails and prisons, and change them into useful citizens. They will not only continue to be criminals themselves, but they will spread their vile and wicked contagion wherever they go. There is not a single cause of reform or progress in this country that is not constantly discouraged and postponed by these Old World tides of ignorance and vice.

[Illustration: BUILDING USED BY THE BRITISH AS A HOSPITAL.]

There can be no doubt that there is a rising tide of public sentiment in this country in favor of a careful and wise examination of every emigrant who offers himself as a candidate for American citizenship in the future. I think, in view of the fact that we are getting a very large and increasing proportion of our immigration from Southern Europe, which is the most illiterate portion of the Old World-in Southern Italy, for instance, seventy-nine out of every one hundred are illiterate-there ought to be an educational test. There is certainly no wisdom in our adding hundreds of thousands a year to the number of illiterates already here, who are unable to read the Declaration of Independence, and have not the faintest conception of the principles of our Constitution. The examination of emigrants ought to be on the other side of the water. We have had many recent illustrations in Boston of the manifest hardships experienced under the present arrangement. Every person intending to emigrate to America ought to be required to give notice of that desire through the nearest American Consul, and furnish a clean bill of health, both moral and physical; and no one should be permitted to sail without a certificate of such investigation and satisfactory finding. This would not shut out any one who would be of value to American institutions, but it would require European countries to care for the criminals and paupers which their own social system has bred.

But what shall we do with these multitudes of foreigners who are already living in our midst? In the first place, we must cease to regard them as foreigners or aliens, and set to work with a definite purpose to Americanize them as quickly as possible. We must not, for a moment, be satisfied to let them herd together in the filth and squalor to which they may have been accustomed at home. We cannot afford to hand them over to the greedy tyranny of the sweater. Nothing will help us more than the abolition of the neglected tenement house, and the provision for a healthier, cleaner shelter for the people.

[Illustration: VICTORIA SQUARE.]

Some of our public-spirited men of wealth cannot do better than to look in this direction as a field in which to make their mark upon the uplift of their race and their time. There is a far greater demand for this class of benevolent investments than there is for added colleges or universities. If some of the vile and unhealthy tenements that have been described recently, not only by myself but by the reporters and the daily press, could be replaced by such buildings as the Victoria Square building in Liverpool, it would be a great public benefaction. On the former site of Victoria Square were miserable tenement houses. To-day a magnificent structure stands there, built around a hollow square, the larger portion of which is given up for a healthful play-ground for the children. "The halls and stairways of the building are broad, light, and airy; the ventilation and sanitary arrangements, perfect. The apartments are divided into one, two, and three rooms each. No room is smaller than thirteen by eight feet six inches; most of them are twelve by thirteen feet four inches.

"All the ceilings are nine feet high. A superintendent looks after the building. The tenants are expected to be orderly, and keep their apartments clean. The roomy character of halls and chambers may be inferred from the fact that there are only two hundred and seventy-five apartments in the entire building. The returns on the total expenditure on the building, which was three hundred and thirty-eight thousand eight hundred dollars, it is estimated will be at least four and a half per cent." The rents will seem miraculous to those of you who have been following the prices given in this series of discourses. In this beautiful Victoria Square dwelling, with its large, shrub-encircled play-ground for children attached, light, airy, three-room tenements are furnished for one dollar and forty-four cents per week. For those containing two large rooms one dollar and eight cents a week is charged; while the one-room quarters are let at fifty-four cents a week.

Who among our rich men will lead off in some grand crusade of this sort? Another thing we want to do to Americanize these people, is to furnish them employment under conditions consistent with health, intelligence, and morality. Instead of the crowded sweat-shop, the moral atmosphere of which is as filthy as the physical, we must have factories conducted in the spirit of Christian civilization.

Let me tell you of a vision I had the other day as I sat meditating and dreaming in my study chair. I dreamed I was walking down the streets of an American city when I saw a large brick building which I might have thought was a factory except that there were white curtains at every window in the house. As I neared the door, I asked a passer-by what it was, and he astonished me by saying, "This is the great Christian factory." Being a little anxious to see what life in a really Christian factory would be like, I went in on a tour of investigation. There were several hundred employees in the factory, most of whom were young women. To my astonishment, I found bath-tubs in this factory, with an abundance of hot and cold water, linen towels, and toilet soap. Did one ever hear of such luxuries in a factory of any sort? In the girls' bath-room there were rugs under foot, the finishing was done in oak, the trimmings were nickel-plated, the sanitary arrangements were perfect, and everything was as bright and clean as it was possible to make it. Each employee was allowed thirty minutes for a bath, and if one was so fastidious as to need three-quarters of an hour, no comments were made. The structure was commodious and convenient, substantially built, and heated, lighted, and ventilated throughout according to the most improved system. Even the cellar was attractive in its completeness, from the steam-engine that operated the machinery of the building, to the culinary department where those who desired could purchase a noon-day lunch at actual cost of material. The cook in charge of the kitchen devoted her entire time to the work. Every day, tea, with milk and sugar, was supplied by the firm free of charge; oaten meal was furnished three days in the week at the same rate. Delicious soup was served at three cents a bowl. The entire floor was carefully cemented; it was light, warm, and clean, and there were tables and benches for those who lunched in the building. An hour was allowed at noon, and while all were expected to be on hand promptly at one o'clock, the girls living at a distance from the factory were thoughtfully permitted to leave a few minutes before twelve o'clock.

On the main floor goods were stored in the centre of the room, the remaining space being reserved for the pleasure and convenience of the employees. At one end of this spacious floor there was an improvised music-room, with a piano and window garden, where the girls could sing and sun themselves every noon. Opposite was an enclosed sanctum, divided into a reading and reception-room. Bright, soft rugs were scattered about. The reading-table was as well stocked with current literature as a club man's library table. The papers and periodicals were reserved for the exclusive use of the girls. An open fireplace was one of the attractive features of the reception-room, and there was a mantel-mirror, too-that means of grace so dear to the gentler sex.

The two upper floors contained the work-tables and machines. On entering these work-rooms one was struck by the neatness of the place. Everything seemed to have a white lining. The atmosphere was not only clean, but fresh and sweet. There were no rags, no dust, no fluff, no smell of dripping grease from over-hanging machinery. A special staff of men was constantly employed to look after the premises, and their vigilance was such as to anticipate the wear and tear. The abundance of light and sunshine would astonish and delight not only business people, but school commissioners as well. Each work-shop was the size of an entire floor, so that light was admitted from four sides of the building, the windows almost adjoining one another. The white curtains, which softened the light, gave the place a homelike appearance which was very pleasing. Another charm was the love of flowers. There were potted plants on every floor, and they were as green and lovely as if nourished by a practical florist. On making some inquiries, I found that Friday was pay-day, and that indirectly much good resulted from this thoughtful system. Not only did it give the hundreds of families the benefit of the early Saturday markets, but in a great measure did away with the credit-books, and, best of all, was instrumental in keeping the girls off the street Saturday night. No charges were imposed upon the operators. They did not have to buy thread, pay machine-rent, or replace broken needles. If an attachment was displaced, it was restored by the firm, and even the girls' scissors were kept sharpened at the expense of the employer. Hot and cold water, mirrors, towels, and soap were among the conveniences. Posted over the stationary wash basins was this request: "Please help with your forethought to keep things clean and nice. Any attention will oblige." This was signed by the firm. The work was so systematized, and the training so thorough, that the tyrannical forewoman and domineering foreman had no place in the establishment. The manager was the only person to whom the hands were accountable. Adjoining the factory was a pretty garden containing a pear-orchard, with arbors and seats, where the girls lunched in fine weather. Women as a class show the effects of good keeping, and these workers were not an exception. There were a great many pretty faces among them, and not one that betrayed "boss-fright" or time-terror. As a class they looked more like normal college students than factory hands. Compared with overworked, nerve-strained, anxious-faced girls in the sweat-shops, and indeed in most shops and factories, these trim, tidy-looking, cheerful and contented women seemed to me the very noblesse of the industrial world.

Ah! you may say, that is only an idle and visionary dream; and no doubt my critic of a few weeks ago, who thought I belonged to the most dangerous class in the community when I was describing the misery of the "white slaves of the Boston sweaters," would be ready to say that I am engaged in a scarcely less dangerous task in putting such ideal and impossible dreams into the heads of working-girls. But, dear sceptical friend, what I have been telling you is not a dream at all, but a heavenly reality that is going on in this modern work-a-day world, in the city of Newark, N. J., and I have merely been summarizing for you the report of Nell Nelson in the New York World, giving an account of the Christian experiment of Ferris Brothers' factory for the making of corset waists. I was at this point in my discourse on Thursday at half-past one o'clock, when I said to myself, "Isn't it a little hazardous to take all this for fact, even on the authority of a newspaper reporter? Will not a great many of your audience say it is only a pleasing fancy of a reporter's imagination?" So at three o'clock I was on the train for New York, and at eleven that evening I was in bed in a hotel in Newark.

Friday morning, at half-past seven, I was going through Ferris Brothers' factory, It is with great pleasure that I tell you that, on returning, I did not have to strike out a single word I had written. On every side were evidences of thoughtfulness; for instance, a large portion of the girls employed live in a section of the city to the rear of the factory. In order to save the extra walk of a block or two, three hundred additional keys have been made to the orchard gate, so that they can come and go that way. A large number of umbrellas are kept in the office. If a girl is caught at the factory in an unexpected shower, she finds an umbrella waiting to be loaned in just such an emergency.

With the manager I went through the culinary department. They make ice-cream now every day, and sell large plates to the girls for three cents. A careful account is kept of the cost, and the manager said he thought he should be able to reduce the cream to two cents a plate. I looked through the reading-room and over the carefully selected lists of papers. The manager said that among the girls were some excellent musicians, and others with good literary abilities, and told me, I thought with a pardonable degree of pride, that a few months since, when some desirable positions in the Newark Public Library were open to competition, the two young ladies from the Ferris Brothers' factory who were successful, scored ninety-five points out of a possible hundred in their literary examination. No employee works more than nine and one-quarter hours a day, and Saturday afternoon is free. The average wages, including beginners and help girls, is seven dollars a week, and a good worker makes twelve dollars.

You may say that many of these things that I have mentioned are insignificant and only trifles, but, after all, it is such things as these that in a large degree make or unmake our human lives; and a human life is no trifle. But lest some hard-headed business man shall shake his head and say, "The fools will bankrupt themselves," I must add, that aside from the beauty and grace of this thoughtful business philanthropy, the enterprise has been entirely satisfactory from a commercial stand-point, the firm agreeing that not only have their employees done more, but better, work than ever before. One of the firm assured me that, while there were, of course, many discouraging things and occasionally an employee who showed little appreciation, on the whole there had been a steady improvement during their three years' experience in this factory, and under no circumstances would they be willing to go back to the old factory regime.

To contrast a factory like this with some of the sweat-shops I have visited, is like contrasting heaven with hell. There may be, and I doubt not are, many other factories where the same Christian thoughtfulness is exercised in the treatment of employees, as here. Upon all such may the benediction of Heaven rest! May their numbers be multiplied!

The Church, too-I mean the great Catholic Church, formed of all the branches of our Christianity "who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity"-must open its arms with a heartier tone of welcome and brotherhood to the tried and disheartened working-people. Nothing in recent art has stirred me so deeply as a dim copy of Hacker's "Christ and the Magdalene," reproduced by Mr. Stead in the Review of Reviews. The Christ is standing with coarse clothing and toil-worn hands by the work-bench in the carpenter-shop at Nazareth. The shavings are heaped in piles around, him on the otherwise bare floor, while kneeling at his feet in penitence and trust is the Magdalene. Brothers, it is this carpenter Christ, as Frances Willard aptly puts it, "the Monday Christ," for whom the toil-worn world hungers, and will welcome when it sees Him manifested in us, in the shop, the factory, and the counting-room, as well as in the church.

Zoe Dana Underhill sings, in Harper's Magazine, a song the modern Church needs to learn, until its great heart shall throb with its spirit.

"The Master called to His reapers,

'Make scythe and sickle keen,

And bring me the grain from the uplands,

And the grass from the meadows green,

And from off the mist-clad marshes,

Where the salt waves fret and foam,

Ye shall gather the rustling sedges,

To furnish the harvest-home.

Then the laborers cried, 'O Master,

We will bring Thee the yellow grain

That waves on the windy hillside,

And the tender grass from the plain;

But that which springs on the marshes

Is dry and harsh and thin,

Unlike the sweet field-grasses,

So we will not gather it in.'

But the Master said, 'O foolish!

For many a weary day,

Through storm and drought, ye have labored

For the grain and the fragrant hay.

The generous earth is fruitful,

And breezes of summer blow

Where these, in the sun and the dews of heaven,

Have ripened soft and slow.

'But out on the wide, bleak marshland

Hath never a plough been set,

And with rapine and rage of hungry waves

The shivering soil is wet.

There flower the pale green sedges,

And the tides that ebb and flow,

And the biting breath of the sea-wind

Are the only care they know.

'They have drunken of bitter waters,

Their food hath been sharp sea-sand;

And yet they have yielded a harvest

Unto the Master's hand.

So shall ye all, O reapers,

Honor them now the more,

And garner in gladness, with songs of praise,

The grass from the desolate shore.'"