An American in the making : the life story of an immigrant

Introduction

WHEN I hear all around me the foolish prattle about the new immigration — "the scum of Europe," as it is called — that is invading and making itself master of this country, I cannot help saying to myself that Americans have forgotten America. The native, I must conclude, has, by long familiarity with the rich blessings of his own land, grown forgetful of his high privileges and ceased to grasp the lofty message which America wafts across the seas to all the oppressed of mankind. What, I wonder, do they know of America, who know only America.''

The more I think upon the subject the more I become persuaded that the relation of the teacher and the taught as between those who were born and those who came here must be reversed. It is the free American who needs to be instructed by the benighted races in the uplifting word that America speaks to all the world. Only from the humble immigrant, it appears to me, can he learn just what America stands for in the family of nations. The alien must know this, for he alone seems ready to pay the heavy price for his share of America. He, unlike the older inhabitant, does not come into its

INTRODUCTION

inheritance by the accident of birth. Before he can become an American he must first be an immigrant. More than that, back of immigration Hes emigration. And to him alone is it given to know the bitter sacrifice and the deep upheaval of the soul that are implied in those two words.

The average American, when he thinks of immigrants at all, thinks, I am afraid, of something rather comical. He thinks of bundles — funny, picturesque bundles of every shape and size and color. The alien himself, in his incredible garb, as he walks off the gang-plank, appears like some sort of an odd, moving bundle. And always he carries more bundles. Later on, in his peculiar, transplanted life, he sells nondescript merchandise in fantastic vehicles, does violence to the American's language, and sits down on the curb to eat fragrant cheese and unimaginable sausages. He is, for certain, a character fit for a farce.

So, I think, you see him, you fortunate ones who have never had to come to America. I am afraid that the pathos and the romance of the story are quite lost on you. Yet both are there as surely as the comedy. No doubt, when you go slumming, you reflect sympathetically on the drudgery and the misery of the immigrant's life. But poverty and hard toil are not tragic things. They indeed are part of the comedy. Tragedy lies seldom on the surface. If you would get a glimpse of the pathos and the romance of readjustment you must try to put yourself in the alien's place. And that

INTRODUCTION

you may find hard to do. Well, try to think of leavetaking — of farewells to home and kindred, in all likelihood never to be seen again; of last looks lingering affectionately on things and places; of ties broken and grown stronger in the breaking. Try to think of the deep upheaval of the human soul, pulled up by the roots from its ancient, precious soil, cast abroad among you here, withering for a space, then slowly finding nourishment in the new soil, and once more thriving — not, indeed, as before — a novel, composite growth. If you can see this you may form some idea of the sadness and the glory of his adventure.

Oh, if I could show you America as we of the oppressed peoples see it ! If I could bring home to you even the smallest fraction of this sacrifice and this upheaval, the dreaming and the strife, the agony and the heartache, the endless disappointments, the yearning and the despair — all of which must be ours before we can make a home for our battered spirits in this land of yours. Perhaps, if we be young, we dream of riches and adventure, and if we be grown men we may merely seek a haven for our outraged human souls and a safe retreat for our hungry wives and children. Yet, however aggrieved we may feel toward our native home, we cannot but regard our leaving it as a violent severing of the ties of our life, and look beyond toward our new home as a sort of glorified exile. So, whether we be young or old, something of ourselves we always leave behind in our hapless, cherished birthplaces. And

INTRODUCTION

the heaviest share of our burden inevitably falls on the loved ones that remain when we are gone. We make no illusions for ourselves. Though we may expect wealth, we have no thought of returning. It is farewell forever. We are not setting out on a trip; we are emigrating. Yes, we are emigrating, and there is our experience, our ordeal, in a nutshell. It is the one-way passport for us every time. For we have glimpsed a vision of America, and we start out resolved that, whatever the cost, we shall make her our own. In our heavy-laden hearts we are already Americans. In our own dumb way we have grasped her message to us.

Yes, we immigrants have a real claim on America. Every one of us who did not grow faint-hearted at the start of the battle and has stuck it out has earned a share in America by the ancient right of conquest. We have had to subdue this new home of ours to make it habitable, and in conquering it we have conquered ourselves. We are not what we were when you saw us landing from the Ellis Island ferry. Our own kinsfolk do not know us when they come over. We sometimes hardly know ourselves.

Part I The Alien At Home

EVEN an imaginative American, I suppose, must find it very hard to form anything like a just idea of the tremendous adventure involved in the act of immigration. The alien in our midst is too elusive an object for satisfactory study. He changes too rapidly. But yesterday he was a solid citizen in his particular village of Sicily or Rumania, of a piece with his ancestral background, surrounded by friends and kindred, apparently rooted in his native soil. To-day he is adrift in a foreign world, mute and helpless and tragically ridiculous — a soul in purgatory, a human creature cut from its moorings, the most pitiable sight to be met on this earth. To-morrow. f^ Who knows? To-morrow very probably you will find him a prosperous citizen again, very earnestly devoting himself to some strange — until recently undreamed-of — business, giving orders or taking them, even now perhaps a bit discordant against his new setting, and, except for one or two well-hidden scars, none the worse apparently for his translation. Who shall find the patience to follow him in his tortuous career?

What is surely most amazing is that he should have started out at all. Considering the pangs of separation and the risks that warn and threaten him and beset his path, why, you might ask, should he want to emigrate.? Is it the dream of avarice.? Yes, in part. And the hope of freedom.? Without a doubt. But these are general motives and remote. The far-flung clarion call of American liberty and her promise of equal opportunity are the powerful lodestones that draw all immigrants alike. There are more particular motives than these to spur him on. Even freedom and economic independence have a varying meaning to individual aliens. Station in life, and nationality, and age, all play their part in composing his mental picture of America. And, as in war, so also in emigration, there are always immediate causes as well as remote and general ones.

I have myself been asked hundreds of times why I have come to America, and I trust that there was no malice in the question. As a rule, I have pointed to the usual reasons. I explained that at home in Vaslui, and in Rumania generally, there was very little opportunity for a young man to make anything of himself. My parents had ambitions for me which their clinging, hopeless poverty made impossible of attainment. And I was only a child of sixteen, and I longed for the great world with its rich prizes and its still richer adventures. My soul was thrilled with the dream of conquest and the pious hope of delivering my family from want and oppression. But while all this is true, it was not the whole truth. In fact, I quite omitted from my account the most vital, because it was the most direct, cause of my migration.

The remainder of the truth is that in the year of my departure from Vaslui America had become, as it were, the fashionable place to go to. Hitherto it had been but a name, and by no means a revered name. But suddenly America had flashed upon our consciousness and fanned our dormant souls to flames of consuming ambition. All my relatives and all our neighbors — in fact, everybody who was anybody — had either gone or was going to New York. I call it New York, but you as Americans ought to be informed that the correct spelling is Nev-York, as every refined person in Vaslui knows.

I did not, then, as you see, come alone, to America. I came with the rest of the population of Vaslui. And Vaslui was merely a sort of scouting-party, to be followed directly by the main army. It has probably been forgotten in this country, if indeed it was generally noted at the time, that about the year 1900 there was what, to my eyes, appeared to be a national migration from Rumania to New York, a migration which seemed literally to include well-nigh the whole Rumanian race.

What had so suddenly raised the prestige of New York among the Vasluianders and the Moldavian traveling public generally, I am in an excellent position to relate, for it so happened that the principal agent in this grand scheme of advertising among us the attractions of New York was a not distant relative of my own. I am well aware that such services as his ought not to go unrewarded, and I know that already your curiosity about his identity is getting the better of you, but until a committee of representative New-Yorkers assures me of its appreciation of mine and my countrymen's patronage, I feel in honor bound to respect my kinsman's modesty and to guard his secret. Meantime you shall know him by the name of Couza. Couza is a royal Rumanian cognomen, and my relative, whether by divine gift or forethought, had an unmistakable royal air, at least while he was in Vaslui.

Couza, then, put in an appearance in our town during the winter of 1899, after an absence in America of some fourteen years. For months before, if you had put your ear to the ground, you might have heard the distant rumble of his approach, and Vaslui held not only its ear to the ground, but its breath. It seemed to us that our life had been hitherto dull and common, but that at last it was to be tipped with glory and romance. Couza's brother Jacob became overnight the first citizen of the town, and this reflected glory was shared by all our family. Those daily letters that Jacob received were inquired after by the whole community. They became, in the truest sense, Vaslui's first newspaper, for they contained the only intelligence we cared to hear about. Now he was embarking at Nev-York, and now he had landed at Havre. A long succession of bulletins reported him at the various capitals and great cities of Europe. He was coming, coming, coming. The air was growing too thick for respiration. On the street, in the market, at the synagogue, we kept asking one another the one question, "When will he arrive.'*'*

At last the long-awaited telegram flashed over us, and I shall never forget my terrible disappointment on learning its message. For weeks I had been training in the boys' chorus which was to welcome the guest on his arrival. And now, at the last moment, he had coldbloodedly decided to come in on the midnight train. The choral reception had, therefore, to be abandoned. Vaslui must content itself with a mere representative committee of citizens and restrain its pent-up enthusiasm as best it might till the morrow. I have a very vivid recollection of that night of Couza's arrival, for, although I was deprived of a direct share in the reception, I had a partial reward for my disappointment in the reflected splendor that fell upon me through my father. He, being one of the guest's family, was chosen a member of the welcoming committee; and toward two o'clock in the morning he burst into the

2 7 house trailing clouds of glory from his rare experience. We had been tossing about for several intolerable hours, wondering whether he ever would get back. No sooner did we hear his key in the door than we leaped up in our beds and greeted him with a chorus of inquiry that nearly frightened him.

"Is he here.f^" we yelled all together.

"Is he.^ Well, I should rather say so!" father cried, breathlessly, and still in the dark.

Then followed things amazing. For hours that seemed like brief moments we sat agape, listening to a detailed account of the arrival and a somewhat bewildering word-picture of the personage himself.

"You should see the old boy," my parent began. "It seems only like yesterday when I used to see him in these very streets, a slouchy, unprepossessing youngster, with his toes out at his gaping boot-tips, carrying heavy cans of milk around for his mother. Remember, mamma, he used to bring us our liter every morning before we got our own cow.? And do you remember how your brother Samuel never tired of telling us what a dunce the urchin was at school? Ah, this Nev-York must be a wonderful place. Why, I did not know him at all when he stepped off the car, not until Jacob rushed up to him and was followed by the whole cheering lot of us. At first I thought he was a rov [rabbi]; he is so large, and stout, and dignified. He wore a long, black frock-coat and a high hat — just the kind that Reb Sander wears on Saturdays at the services. But when I got up nearer to him, I noticed that he was clean-shaven. Would you believe it? He did not even have a mustache. I never saw so many trunks and bags in all my life as they unloaded for him. And jewelry! He had diamonds in his cravat and brilliants on his fingers, and a magnificent gold chain from which hung a great locket stuck full of more diamonds. He is a millionaire, if ever there was one in America."

This was very exciting and altogether astonishing in many ways. It suddenly revealed America to us in a new light; for you must not suppose that we were so ignorant as never to have heard of the place at all. The name Nev-York was, indeed, rather new, and we admired father a good deal for throwing it so glibly into his account. But then you could not expect us to know the whole map of America in detail. Of America, however, we had heard considerable on several occasions. Wlienever a Vasluiander went into bankruptcy, and whenever a soldier wearied of the discipline and deserted, it was bruited abroad that he had "run away to America." There was a female beggar in the town whom mother always singled out for special kindnesses. I used to wonder about her, until one day I learned that she had once been the well-to-do mistress of a home of her own, but that her husband had tired of her and escaped to America. I had thus come to think of the place as a city of refuge, an exile which men fled to only in preference to going to prison.

I had heard of people going to Vienna and Germany and Paris, and even to England for business or pleasure, but no one, to my knowledge, had ever gone to America of his own free will. And of those who went, considering the circumstances of their departure, none ever returned to tell us what it was like, any more than if they had gone to the other world. In fact, a person gone to America was exactly like a person dead. That was why, on those rare occasions when a family followed its breadwinner to that distant land, the whole community turned out, and marched in slow time to the station, and wept loudly and copiously, and remembered the unfortunates in its prayer on the next Saturday.

I said that no one had ever returned from America. But there was one exception; and I mention it here because the individual was destined to become the villain in the piece which I am here transcribing. It was commonly gossiped in Vaslui that Itza Baer, who was hand-in-glove with officialdom, and whom every one feared and flattered as a notorious informer, had years before returned from America, where he must have had a stormy and ignominious career, because whenever anybody ventured to ask him about it, he would merely say that he preferred to serve his term than to live a dog's life in exile, and forthwith change the subject.

This Itza Baer was at first decidedly friendly to the news of Couza's coming. When the time arrived he even went so far as to consent to serve on the committee, and at the station he was, according to father's report, one of the first to greet the arrival. Father went into circumstantial detail in his account of this historic greeting. He said that the rest of the committee drew back a step and stood around in solemn awe while the two Americans exchanged compliments in English. But the odd thing was that Itza Baer ever after had an ironical smile about his lips and an impish twinkle in his eye when referring to that English conversation. He was never seen speaking to Couza again, except at the temple on the Saturday following the event, and then it was neither in English nor in friendship. A mysterious coldness seemed to have developed between the two men almost from the start; and when Vaslui fell down on its knees and worshiped Couza as the great man he was, Itza Baer's jealousy — for jealousy was all it could be — turned into whispered threats at first, and finally into open hostility.

On the morrow after the arrival I saw him. I saw him on the first of those impressive progresses which were to become a regular, but not a conimon, sight in the daily life of our town for the next fortnight. He was riding slowly in a droshka, smiling happily, and bowing unpretentiously to the populace. The streets were lined with craning, round-eyed, tiptoeing Vasluianders, open-mouthed peasants, and gay-attired holiday visitors from neighboring towns who, having heard of the glory that had come to Vaslui, had driven in in their ox-carts and dog-carts to partake of it. I have sometimes seen the king ride in state through these same streets, and have heard the throng shouting, " Trdiascd Regele!^' But this occasion was not boisterous, but dignified and solemn. Vashii seemed too full for idle noisemaking. It seemed to feel that while the king was no doubt a fine fellow and all that, he had not come all the way from Nev-York, he had not brought with him any dozen trunks, he did not speak English, and wear diamonds, and dress in a different frock-coat every day. Quite the contrary: the king had on the same uniform every time he came to Vaslui. He was, after all, a sort of exaggerated army officer with an unnecessary amount of gold lace and other trappings about his person. He, like all military folk, might care for show and shouts. But an American millionaire was not a clown or a bear to be clapped at.

Why, he was the most modest and the simplest of men. Any other man of his great wealth would have put on airs and gone to the Hotel Regal, the exclusive stopping-place in Vaslui for all mere aristocrats. Instead, he went to his brother's home and unassumingly shared the humble quarters of his family. That appeared to be his way. Whatever was good for one man was good enough for every man. He never spoke of his wealth; indeed, he looked embarrassed and uncomfortable whenever the subject was alluded to. He positively disliked to talk about himself in any fashion.

He let his actions speak for him and all that he represented, and from his actions Vaslui was forced to draw the right conclusion. The sheer extravagance of that trunkful of presents he had brought from America for the immediate members of his family spoke volumes for his generosity and the abundance of his means. There was the neat little razor in the leather case for his brother Jacob which a child could use without cutting himself and which was reputed to cost no less than ten francs. Then came the wonderful penholder for his sister-in-law, which, as Couza explained at some length, dispensed with ink-wells and drew its life-fluid from some mysterious source. The children, too, were by no means forgotten. There were railways that were wound up like clocks and ran around in their tracks like real trains, and dancing negroes, and squawking dolls, and jews'-harps, and scores of other delights for the palate as well as the fancy. And then the climax was capped when Couza himself drew forth out of that trunk of wonders the final package and proceeded to unwrap therefrom endless reams of tissue-paper, and just as his spectators were about to succumb to the torments of breathless curiosity, held it up and presented it to his old mother — a musical box to the value of twenty-five francs.

Moreover, no one but a millionaire could have behaved as he behaved in the synagogue on the memorable Saturday following his arrival. It was the usual custom for a distinguished guest to be honored with a reading of the Law, and it was expected from him, in turn, to make a suitable offering in return for the honor. But when the official reader paused for the donor to fill in the blank, Couza calmly and very distinctly said, "One hundred and twenty -five francs," and looked modestly about at the astounded faces of the congregation. That donation simply transcended our imagination. The high- water mark until that day and for years past had been recorded by Eliezer Kaufman, the wealthy merchant, now dead, who had once in an extravagant moment subscribed five francs; and the old men in Vaslui still talked of it in awed tones. A hundred and twenty-five francs! Why, even when crops were bumpers a grain-merchant could garner no more than that in a month. The sum would bring a team of oxen, pay two years' rent for a house in town, or very nearly buy a modest dwelling in the country.

From that day on Vaslui became a changed town. Hitherto we had been content to gaze in abstracted admiration at the splendid phenomenon and the dim, romantic land that lay behind him. But now the shimmering apparition had become a solid reality. We had seen with our own eyes, and had heard with our own ears, the concrete thing that it meant to be an American millionaire, and Vaslui suddenly felt a vast ambition stirring in its galloping heart. Gone was the languor, the easy-going indifference, the resignation, the despair that once dwelt in the lines of our faces. We became a bustling, seething, hopeful community. A star had risen in heaven to lead us out of the wilderness.

II

THE very next day my father took me by the hand and marched me straight up to Great Headquarters. He had done some deep thinking all night and had apparently worked up an exceedingly clever scheme. At least I supposed it was clever until we reached our destination. I had been given only the broadest outline of it, but I gathered from that that it was essentially a plan to induce Couza to take me to America with him when he returned, details to be worked out later. When, however, we got within a block of Cousin Jacob's store my heart sank and father turned very pale. Here was a line of similarly clever fathers with equally shamefaced sons and daughters, extending from Jacob's store in the front, all the way around the little circular park which was in the center of the shopping district; and another shorter column in the rear, starting from the back door and ending a block away at the gate of the court-house. The total effect was of two opposing armies struggling for the capture of Jacob's store and the great prize within. And every father and son there claimed relationship with Couza,^ and was ready, I suppose, to back it up with documentary evidence and a flourishing family tree. I had never reaHzed that all of Vaslui belonged to my family.

It was just at this time that the notorious Itza Baer entered upon the scene in real earnest. To the shame of Vaslui be it confessed that he had succeeded in gathering about him a very considerable following, and, strangely enough, among men who had hitherto been held in high esteem for their integrity and shrewdness. It is at such stirring times as these that men go astray. When one or two of those whom Couza had felt obliged to discourage in their emigration plans chanced to speak of their disappointment, Itza Baer suggested that they might offer to share their first million with Couza in return for the passage across. He and his followers organized themselves into an anti-Couza committee, which made ridiculous claims of seeking to save Vaslui, and in the end they very nearly succeeded in ruining the hope of the town.

From the day of the great incident at the synagogue rumors of an infinite variety had gained currency regarding certain phases in Couza's career in America. No one was able to trace them to their source, but they kept issuing with ever-increasing frequency and with the emphasis of unquestionable truth. We tried to discuss them with Couza himself, but he could not be induced either to confirm or to deny them. He would simply smile confusedly, and declare that everything was possible in New York. But at the end of that week a report of the most stupendous sort reached our ears. It was to the effect that our guest was not merely a milHonaire, but that he held a very high government position in America, something resembling a prefect or a minister. This time we besieged him and insisted on knowing the truth. For this news was no matter of mere personal glory for an individual. It revealed one side of that wonderful America that we had not thought of before. One could get rich, once in a while, even in Rumania. But that our humble, downtrodden people could not only vote, but be voted for and hold office in New York, was a revelation of the most startling and inspiriting kind.

This time, I say, we would not be put off with modest blushes. Couza, of course, tried to hedge about by admitting that people of our kind might become members of the Government, that religion in America was a private matter unconnected with politics, and that he had himself heard of an American President by the name of Abraham (he could not remember his other name). But while all this was gratifying to a degree, Vaslui demanded to know the whole truth. Was it true that he himself was the prefect of Nev-York? If it was, then nothing else mattered, because everything was as clear as day. Finally the conference ended in a compromise. Of the prefecture of New York he could by no means be persuaded to speak, but after long and cruel drilling and cross-examining he did confess that his visit to Vaslui was only a side-trip incidental to his commissions in Paris as a special representative of the American Government to the World's Exposition and the Proces Dreyfus.

After that confession Couza's modesty dropped from him like a mask. Once his mouth had been forced open, he found great difficulty in closing it again until we knew as much about New York as he did, which is to say everything. He seemed eager now to make us realize how dull and circumscribed and enslaving was our existence in Rumania, and then point in contrast to the freedom and the v/ealth and the beauty of that City of God which was New York. There were many ways of getting rich in America, he told us. People got paid, it seemed, even for voting. A mere slip of a girl could earn fifty francs a week at making blouses. Girls, indeed, were not a burden there as they were in Vaslui. In America the richest young ladies earned their own living, fed and clothed themselves, and saved up the necessary dowry to get a husband with. In fact, girls were altogether an enviable asset to their parents. A man who had a half-dozen grown daughters, or even a skilful wife, could be independent and free for the rest of his natural life.

One of the trunks that Couza had brought with him, we were to learn, was filled with American newspapers, and with their help he preached to us the gospel of New York. Seated on the divan in that vast room at the rear of his brother Jacob's store which constituted the family's apartment, he would spread before him one of those extensive sheets and dehght his open-mouthed callers with a message from the great world he had come from. I do not know what other people got out of those readings, but I myseK was terribly excited by them, so that for months afterward I dreamed of nothing but ingenious murders and daring robberies committed in broad daylight by clean-shaven desperadoes in frock-coats and silk hats. I conceived of New York as a brave, adventurous sort of place where life was a perilous business, but romantic for that very reason.