The Russian Jew in the United States; studies of social conditions in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, with a description of rural settlements

Preface

There have been a number of attempts to portray the life of the newly arrived immigrant Jew, the Jew who has come from Russia, Austria-Hungary, Roumania, who has been settling in the last three decades among Anglo-Saxon peoples in English and American communities, who has contributed an interesting admixture to the strange combinations that are found where English law and custom and American institutions have permitted a freer development than can be found among most of the nations of the Eastern hemisphere. In his masterpiece, " Children of the Ghetto, ' ' Israel Zangwill has painted with most skilful brush Jewish characters from eastern Europe transplanted into an English soil, so that we see their lif elikeness with all its intensity, their communal activity with all its warmth and poesy, as well as its hardness and struggle. Other writers have done minor work in the form of story or character sketch, with the purpose of presenting some idea of the life, the thought, and the customs of these people. There have, too, appeared some more scientific studies, like '' The Jew in London." The present work, which was projected before the last mentioned, is intended to present the rise and development of the Russian Jews who have come to the United States during the past twenty-odd years, to show the qualities they brought with them, to present the facts as to their adjustment to the conditions here, and to look a little into the future.

It has been deemed desirable by the editor that the detailed studies should be undertaken chiefly with reference to three leading cities of the United States, — New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, embracing the larger portion of this Jewish immigrant population, and that there should be included, in addition, a description of the leading rural communities and the work of distribution from large centres of population. The division into various subjects is somewhat arbitrary and at times the lines of investigation overlap ; yet for practical purposes the plan

6 PREFACE

has served very well. The results of the studies in the three cities are in the nature of cumulative evidence, and it is thought that a broader character has been given to the investigations by obtaining the information from three independent communities. The editor realizes that in such a mosaic there must be some lack of unity. Notwithstanding somewhat divergent opinions, however, there has been on the whole a remarkable accord as to the facts, their underlying and surrounding causes, and their probable consequences.

The editor is indebted to Miss Emily W. Dinwiddle and David W. Amram, Esq., for assistance in preparing the manuscript for press, and to the several contributors whose generous co-operation has made the volume possible.

Charles S. Bernheimer.

Philadelphia, March 15, 1905.

Contents

PAGE

Preface 5

I INTRODUCTORY

II

{A) NEW YOEK By Milton Reizenstein, Ph. D.

Superintendent Hebrew Educational Society, Brooklyn

(B) PHILADELPHIA By Chakles S. Bernheimer, Ph. D.

(C) CHICAGO By Philip Davis, A. B.

Resident Civic Service House, Boston

^1

New York Lower East Side

GENERAL ASPECTS OP THE POPULATION

There is no other city in the world that contains as many Jews as there are in New York. A conservative estimate, based upon the police census and the reports of the Board of Health, places the total Jewish population of Greater New York at about 600,000 persons, which is probably less than the actual number.

The Russian Jews (under which generic name all the immigrants from Russia, Roumania, Galicia, Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe since 1881, are classed) constitute by far the larger portion of this great aggregation of Israelites.

Within a few miles of New York, there are many thousands more of the chosen people, for there are large settlements of Russian Jews in Jersey City, Elizabeth, Bayonne, Newark, and a census of Jews in New Jersey would probably show a surprisingly large number in that state.

Aside from the Jews distributed more or less thickly all over the better residential sections of New York, there are several well defined districts whose population is practically wholly Jewish. The largest of these is situated on the lower east side of the Island and Borough of Manhattan, and is easily entitled to be called the Great Ghetto. The next largest is the settlement known as Brownsville, which lies in the eastern district of the Borough of Brooklyn. There is another extensive settlement of Jewdsh immigrants on the upper east side of the Borough of ]\Ianhattan in the vicinity of One Hundredth Street, and a fourth in the northern part of the Borough of Brooklyn, the centre of which is on Seigel, ]\Ioore, and Yaret Streets. Each of the minor Ghettos has certain peculiarities due to its situation, but in any general study of conditions, the student need only turn to the Great Ghetto (of whose main features the smaller settlements are, after all, living minia-

44 GEI^EEAL ASPECTS OF THE POPULATION

tures) in order to get the best possible view of the life of the Kiissian Jew in the American metropolis.

No walls shut in this Ghetto, but once within the Jewish quarter, one is as conscious of having entered a distinct section of the city as one would be if the passage had been through massive portals, separating this portion of the lower East Side from the non-Jewish districts of New York.

If the entry into the Ghetto has been made from the Bowery by way of one of the streets that run eastwardly to the river — it may be Broome, Delancey, Rivington, or Stanton, — the attention of the observant visitor is at once engaged. On both sides of the streets, tower the gloomy, dingy tenement houses, built on their long, narrow lots — the curse of New York. The peculiar system of cutting city lots into sections one hundred feet deep by twenty-five feet wide has almost compelled the erection of buildings which are bad from every sanitary point of view. It takes two or more lots to give space enough to erect a tenement house that will give necessary light and air to the residents.

As a happy offset to the miserable apologies for habitable dwellings are the handsome and spacious schoolhouses, many of them striking object lessons left by a reform city government — still insufficient for the needs of this overcrowded quarter, although they greet the eye «very few blocks.

The main Ghetto of New York embraces the Seventh, Tenth and Thirteenth "Wards, as well as the southern portions of sanitary districts A and B of the Seventeenth Ward, and of sanitary districts A and C of the Eleventh Ward. This area contains about 500 acres, the average density being approximately 500 to 600 persons to the acre.

This great Jewish city is bounded on the north by Houston Street (although there are now many Russian Jews living north of this point), on the west by the Bowery, and on the east and southeast — for the shape of the Ghetto is that of a square, with its southeastern corner cut off — by the East River. Adjoining the Jewish quarter on the north lies ^' Little Germany," whither its present residents moved when driven out from Grand and Canal Streets by the advent of the Russian Jews, and whence they bid fair to be driven again owing to the encroachments of the steady streams of Hebrew immigrants, who are still coming in thousands from Russia and Roumania direct to New York.

Along the East River front there is still a fringe of Irish, Italian, and American-born residents, but otherwise the whole five hundred acres are practically solidly inhabited by Jews.^

East Broadway, which is the main business thoroughfare of the quarter, divides the Ghetto into two. The conditions prevailing in the more southerly portion are distinguishable from those of the more northerly half, not so much because they are better, but because those prevailing in the northern section are worse. Generally speaking, the economic status of those who live in the streets to the south of East Broadway is not so bad as that of the residents farther to the north, because merchants, manufacturers — some of them doing business on a fairly large scale — as well as their clerks and other employees, live in the southern section, while in the northern portion are the workshops and the badly built and worse kept tenements, where thousands upon thousands of workers in the underpaid needle industries are housed.

The streets in the southern portion are wider, too, than the thoroughfares further north, and there are more private houses to relieve the congestion which the tenement houses, front and rear, cause in the areas in which they are most thickly built. The tenements, too, are kept in better condition in the southern half.

It is in the narrow streets extending to the north from East Broadway, that the '' sweater " works and exists. The tenement houses in this section are of two main types — the old fashioned front and rear tenement, and the modern ** dumb-bell double-decker." A prominent architect of New York has said that no misfortune that has ever come to the metropolis in the way of fire, flood, or pestilence, has been so disastrous as the way that the city has been cut up into long and narrow lots, twenty-five by one hundred feet, upon a single one of which it is not possible to build a good habitation for many families.

Owing to the physical limitations of the Island of Man-

* The Federation of Churches and Christian Workers of New York, in a report upon social conditions in the Fourteenth Assembly District, which includes the section of New York between Seventh and Fourteenth Street, east of Third Avenue (the northern extension of the Bowery) shows 17 per cent, of the families in this district are Jewish. The population of the section is about 50,000 persons, of whom 20,000, or 40 per cent., are Germans.

hattan, the vastness of the population has caused the value of land to rise to enoniious figures. Consequently, in order to pay the owner of property a fair return upon his investment, it has been found necessaiy to erect houses sheltering many families in almost all portions of the city. Even then the rents are xery high. Measured by square feet of lot space there are few portions of the city where such a high rate of rent is paid as in the Great Ghetto. Take, for example, a dumb-bell double-decker of the most modern t^-pe. Such a house is built with six stories and a basement, making practically seven stories, for there are stores in the basement, the floor of which is only a few feet below the street level. There are four families to each floor, and two stores and living rooms for two families in the basement. The absurdly low rent of $10 per month for each apartment or store would bring $3,360 for the house for the year. This is, however, considerably less than the actual gross return from such houses, which is generally rather over ten per cent, than under ten per cent, of the cost. A lot 25 feet by 100 feet in the Jewish quarter would cost not less than $20,000, and a similar sum, at least, would be required to erect a dumb-bell double-decker of the regulation kind. Nevertheless, in spite of these high figures, the rents charged in some of these tenements are so exorbitant that in spite of losses from non-payment of rentals, a net return of ten per cent, or more is realized upon the sums invested. Many of the worst tenements are owned by Russian Jews themselves, who live within the confines of the Ghetto.

The mode whereby they acquire title to such valuable holdings is this: A house and lot may be worth $-10,000. The " owner " can get a loan of at least $28,000 on such a piece of property at 4% per cent, or even 4 per cent, and then he puts as large a second mortgage as possible upon the property, sometimes as much as $7,000, leaving the owner to invest only $5,000 of his own money. Of course, the risk is entirely his, for in case of disaster he would be first to suffer. To offset this disadvantage, he sees to it that he secures as much as possible from his tenants, giving them as little as possible in return. In many cases, the " owner " will net at least $1,000 on his house by dint of good management, or 20 per cent, on his investment.

Remark has already been made regarding the crowded

NEW TOBK 4!7

condition of streets and sidewalks in the Jewish quarter. This is the natural result of the dense population, for if the weather is at all warm, it is almost impossible for the residents to remain indoors, and there is no place to go but the street. Even in cold weather, the apartments are so small that the young people cannot receive their friends at home, and the streets, the cafes, the dance halls, or other places of amusement become the rallying point for social intercourse. Most of the streets of the quarter are paved with asphalt, which not only permits of frequent and easy cleaning, but also deadens the noises of traffic, of which more than enough, however, are left to disturb the slumbers of the Ghetto dwellers. The front steps are crowded during summer evenings, and also during the days when they happen to be on the shady side of the street, while during very hot weather in mid-summer, there are sleepers on the sidewalks, front steps, fire escapes, and roofs, as well as in the parks, on the docks and recreation piers, and in all other places where there is opportunity for a breath of air.

There are now a few open play spaces in the quarter that are a blessing to the children. In the summer time, some of the public schools throw open their yards as play grounds, and besides this, the city has opened a number of recreation piers along the water front, where sweltering humanity may breathe in the revivifying breezes that play over the East River upon the warmest days. Furthermore, the Educational Alliance has opened a roof garden for the people upon the top of the building, and there is also a garden on the roof of the Alfred Corning Clark Neighborhood House, and one on the top of the University Settlement. One would naturally draw the conclusion from the undesirable conditions that prevail here, owing to the overcrowding and defective way in which the houses are built, that the mortality would be very high. It is a remarkable fact that on the contrary, the death rate is low, as is shown in the discussion on Health and Sanitation in this volume.

This seems very favorable, but it takes no account of the great amount of sickness and the depressed or exhausted vitality of the residents, all of which are part of the tremendous arraignment against bad housing and urban overcrowding.

The best part of the social life of the Jewish quarter

48 GEJ^EBAL ASPECTS OF THE POPULATION

centres, as it should, in the home. The tenement house, with its cramped quarters, does the very best it can to destroy home life. But its best is not the worst possible. For in spite of such physical limitations as the double-decker tenement house imposes, and others slightly worse, the clans — so many of them as can gather in the ten by twelve front room — always assemble to celebrate a bar mitzvah (when a Jewish boy is admitted to the faith at the age of thirteen years) or a b'rith milah (circumcision). The older people do pay visits to their brothers-in-law, or other relatives, from time to time. The members of the immediate family are close together (more or less necessarily) all the time they are at home.

But the young people ! That is a wholly different story. The social life for them, alas! does not make the three-room apartment the common centre. In the first place, it is not conducive to the observance of the convenances to have the children put to bed in the same room where Rebecca is entertaining Isaac. Yet the children must be bedded somewhere, and the other two rooms, one of which is the kitchen, are already pre-empted. Therefore, not only does Eebecca refrain from receiving Isaac in her home, but she is just as unable to entertain Esther or Sarah or Leah. Such space as exists, the children and the older members of the family occupy, and there is no place wherein the young maidens can whisper to each other their little secrets and hopes and plans, the discussion of which sweetens the hours after the toil of the day.

What is the consequence? There is the street. Crowded, too, but there is isolation in such a crowd, and the street becomes the common meeting place for man and maid. Needless to say, the ethics and etiquette of the streets are not elevating, and the degenerating effects are not hidden from the eyes of the observant. Such young people soon become inoculated with the shallow cynicism of the ignorant. The Jewish faith, as they know it, with its ceremonies and restrictions, is to them ridiculous and contemptible. ** Pleasure," and not *' duty," being their watch-word, all that hampers freedom or self-indulgence is a kill-joy to be avoided. Therefore, the dance hall, the vaudeville theatre, the card game, the prize fight are places of frequent resort. The synagogue, the lecture hall, the concert room, the debating club, are not visited to any extent by thi& particular portion of Young Israel.

There is, on the other hand, a very appreciable number of fairly well educated young people, who have left the Jewish religion of their orthodox parents. There is a wide field for work among these young people. They need a leader possessing eloquence and personal magnetism and the power of teaching by example the value of a religious life as interpreted by the teachings of Judaism in its modern form.

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Philadelphia Southeastern Section

There is something picturesque in the appearance of the streets in the southern section of the city, though it may not be necessarily attractive to the native who sees but the squalor and the dirt that are part of the picture which forms itself in the localities where the several nationalities and races are congregated. The lower portion of the city contains fairly well-defined groups, — Russian Jews, Italians, negroes, besides native Americans, Irish, Germans, and people from Slavic countries, such as Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Hungarians, which add to the variegated character of the assembly of nations in the city.

The district to which I shall confine myself chiefly includes the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Seventh "Wards of the city of Philadelphia. The area of these six wards is 2.322 square miles, ancl, as the total area of the city is 129.583 square miles, the district is about one-fiftieth of the entire surface of the city. The population of these six wards is 165,385, according to the census of 1900. The population of the city is 1,293,697. We have, then, one-eighth of the people of the city in an area which is but one-fiftieth of the city. The Third Ward is the most densely populated in the city, the number of persons inhabiting it being 24,693, and as its area is but .191 square mile, this is an average of 129.282 persons to the square mile.

An inquiry into the Russian-Jewish population enables me to assume 55,000^ as the number. This is deduced from

1 The method of the English Educational Department to ascertain the number of children of school age is to divide the population by six. This is applied by H. Llewellyn Smith, in Booth's " Life and Labor of the People," Vol. in, p. 106. Notwithstanding the efforts of truant officers and others interested in the education of children, the actual school attendance for various reasons, never reaches the total of children of school age, but though it may approximate it more closely with Jewish children than with most other classes, in all but the higher grades, we cannot absolutely accept the multiple of six to obtain the population as other elements vary in the public school conditions between this country and Great Britain. Factors which must be considered are the greater size of the Russian Jewish families on the one hand and, on the other, the greater number of adults in the immigrant population, some of whom would not be accounted for in a calculation based merely on school attendance. However, these two factors in a measure neutralize each the fig'ures as to the number of Jewish children attending the public schools. The number in schools of the section bounded by Spruce Street on the north, Moore Street on the south, the Delaware River on the east, and Nineteenth Street on the west, is 11,686 out of a total of 21,515 pupils.

The negro population of these lower wards is 18,000 in round numbers, according to the United States Census statistics. The Italians are assumed to number 28,000, according to the Census. The Christians from Slav countries may number between 5,000 and 10,000. The remainder of 50,000 are Irish, German and native American.

When the Russian Jewish people first came here, as a consequence of the persecutions, they settled in dwellings in the lower section, because rents were as cheap there as anywhere. With relatives and friends coming year after year, and with natural accretions, the population grew and grew until now it has become a fair proportion of the southeastern section of the city. It has supplanted not only the German Jewish and Polish Jewish population, which was originally in this section, but it has swarmed into Pine and Spruce Streets, formerly occupied by old Philadelphia families. It has, in some cases, made the streets more respectable and less dangerous morally. It has even, in some instances, displaced Italians, just as Italians have displaced some native-born and others of foreign nationalities in sections immediately west of the Jewish portions. Some of the well-to-do Jews are in the northern portion of the section on Spruce and Pine Streets. Lombard is lowergrade, especially because of its mixture with the lower-class negroes. South Street is a bee-hive of business activity among the Jewish people. Parts of Bainbridge Street are similarly active. Prom Fitzwater down, for several blocks, we find a dividing line at Fifth and Sixth Streets, west of which are Italians, and east of which are Russian Jews. Below Christian the groupings are less distinct. The Jewish population has, however, gradually moved down so that some may be found as far south as Moore Street. Some

other. In our statement of more than 11,000 Jewish school children, we unquestionably have a large majority of the children between the age of three and thirteen. We must, in addition, account for all under the first and over the second, apart from those_ not attending school. Let us arbitrarily assume that the school children are. in a proportion, approximately one-fifth of the Jewish population of the district. This will make the total about 55,000. There are probably 15,000 Russian Jews in other sections of the city, making 70,000 out of a total of approximately 100,000 Jews.

well-to-do families have moved to Yv'liarton Street and streets running north and south in the neighborhood. Of the north and south streets, Fourth contains the most thickly settled Jewish population. Large numbers may be found all the way from Spruce to Reed. Second and Third also contain a large Jewish population, especially between Pine and Wharton. On Fifth Street, too, it is similarly predominant as far as Washington Avenue, and on Sixth Street as far as Fitzwater. Immediately west of the northern portion of the Jewish section are numerous negroes, and southwest is the section predominantly Italian.

In the northern portion of this down-town district the Jewish people mingle with the left-overs of Americans. On Spruce Street they are with the so-called better element of the Americans. On Bainbridge Street the Italians begin to take a share. On Fitzwater Street the Italians become more emphatic in their claim for attention by virtue of their numbers. At Sixth and Fitzwater Streets the Jews and Italians may be said to battle for supremacy as to numbers. From this corner, west and south, Italians are settled in in thick numbers. The main streets they inhabit in this neighborhood are Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth, from Fitzwater Street to Washington Avenue, including Catharine, Christian and Carpenter, besides a number of smaller streets and alleys. At Fifth and Carpenter Streets the Italians again m.eet the Jewish people, who are preponderant east of this point. Sometimes a block is inhabited in its outer boundaries by one nationality chiefly, and in the streets within by another.

In the lower wards on the Delaware River front, besides Irish and American, there are probably at least two thousand persons from Slavic countries, chiefly Poles, but also some Hungarians and Lithuanians. These are largely in a block bounded by Lombard Street on the north. Carpenter Street on the south, the Delaware River on the east, and Third Street on the west.

The Jewish population has spread north as well as south. Along Second Street particularly has there been a movement north. For a distance of two miles there have been streams formed in a narrow line along the eastern side of the city. This is indicated, for example, by the population around Second and New ]\Iarket Streets, details of whose housing and sanitary conditions are given in the study devoted to this subject.^ So, too, there are clusters around Second and Poplar Streets. There is also a settlement in Richmond in the northeastern portion of the city.

Jewish children attend the public schools in large numbers; no nationality down-town is more appreciative of the public school system. The result is most gratifying to our educational system, and to the adaptability and intellectual ability of the Jewish population. The public night schools are supplemented by private schools in the teaching of the immigrant populations. Meetings, lectures, and discussions held under the auspices of literary societies, beneficial organizations and charitable institutions of one sort or another, help fill out the intellectual life of the Jewish people.

The intellectual ferment among the Russian Jewish population finds no counterpart among the other nationalities. The educational activities initiated or responded to by them are much less prominent.

A valuable element of the religious life of the orthodox portion of the Jewish community is the synagogue. Some of the congregations worship in halls or rooms, others in buildings of their own.^ To the list of orthodox Jewish congregations should be added the Congregation Israel, at Fifth and Pine Streets, started from without and intended for the less orthodox young people with a service in Hebrew and English, and an English sermon.

From the religious to the social life is not so far a cry

1 There were 1,294 persons in the district investigated, of which 606, nearly half, were Jews. The total number of families was 239, of which 100 were Jewish. The total number of houses inspected was 179, in 73 of which the occupants were predominantly Jewish.

- The location of congregations is an index of the localities inhabited by the population. Starting with the most northern among the down-town congregations they may be enumerated as follows:

Beth Israel, 417 Pine Street.

B'nai Zion, 532 Pine Street.

Tiferes Israel Anshe Zitomir, 620 Addison Street.

B'nai Jacob, Fifth Street, above Lombard.

Kesher Israel, 421 Lombard Street.

B'nai Abraham Anshe Russia, 521 Lombard Street.

Agudas Achim, 514 S. Third Street.

Shomre Shaboth, 518 S. Third Street.

Emunath Israel Oheb Sholem, S. E. Cor. Fifth and Gaskill Streets.

B'nai Reuben, Sixth and Kater Streets.

Ahavas Chesed Anshe Shavel, 322 Bainbridge Street.

B'nai Joseph, 525 Bainbridge Street.

Ahavas Achim Anshe Nazin, 754 S. Third Street.

Gomel Chesed Shel Emes, 314 Catharine Street.

Ahawas Zion, 815 S. Fourth Street.

Independent Chevra Kadisho, 408 Christian Street.

B'nai Israel, 922 S. Fourth Street.

Poel Zodak Seerus Israel, 1021 S. Fifth Street.

as may be thought, for with the older people the synagogue is the social centre, and many social celebrations still occur in connection with holidays and ceremonies. Social functions of a public character are balls, Russian tea parties, small dances, and musical entertainments given by one or another of the societies.

Whatever cases of charity among the Jewish people are not taken care of by any organization, are referred to the United Hebrew Charities. "When the immigrant first arrives here, if he needs immediate aid or advice, the agent of the Association of Jewish Immigrants directs him. The Sheltering Home, a Russian Jewish institution, may keep him for a few days. Then the employment bureau of the Hebrew Charities, or the Baron de Hirsch Fund is brought into play, and he is found work. Later, he, or his family, may require the services of the hospital, the orphan asylum, or the burial society. All are provided for. It is still true that Jews do not become public charges as the result of dependency.

There is probably no nationality less prone to serious crime than the Jewish. It is true, we see evidences of juvenile delinquency among the immigrant portion of this nationality, and the problem with reference to this is grave, but as the conditions which have permitted it to develop are to a considerable extent due to the city environment of the children, to bad housing and street influences, to the absence of sufficient play space, one remedy lies along the lines of improving these conditions, which, with the greater adaptability of the parents and the people of the neighborhoods, as they continue here, will modify the evils.