Old World Traits Transplanted
Chapter 1: Immigrant Heritages.
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DURING the past seventy years the various tribes, races, and nationalities of mankind have been examined in detail by the students of ethnology, and a comparison of the results shows that the fundamental patterns of life and behavior are everywhere the same, whether among the ancient Greeks, the modern Italians, the Asiatic Mongols, the Australian blacks, or the African Hottentots. All have a form of family life, moral and legal regulations, a religious system, a form of government, artistic practices, and so forth. An examination of the moral code of any given group, say the African Kaffirs, will disclose many identities with that of any other given group, say the Hebrews. All groups have such "commandments" as
( 2) "Honor thy father and mother," "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal." Formerly it was assumed that this similarity was the result of borrowing between groups. When Bastian recorded a Hawaiian myth resembling the one of Orpheus and Eurydice, there was speculation as to how this story had been carried so far from Greece. But it is now recognized that similarities of culture are due, in the main, not to imitation, but to parallel development. The nature of man is everywhere essentially the same and tends to express itself everywhere in similar sentiments and institutions.
HERITAGES DEFINED
On the other hand, the different races and nationalities differ widely in the details of their conception and practice of life, and even their behavior in connection with general ideals which they hold in common is often curiously and startlingly different. Thus, "Honor thy father and mother" implies among certain African tribes that children shall kill their parents when the latter reach a certain age. Among these people life after death is conceived as a continuation of this life, under somewhat improved conditions, and the parents wish
( 3) to reach the next world while still young enough to enjoy it. Similarly, among many peoples "faithful unto death" does not exhaust the possibilities of marital fidelity; the widow is expected to follow the husband to the next world. When, in 1836, the English governor of India forbade the suttee (the practice of burning widows) a petition was presented, signed by 18,000 persons, many of them representing the best families of Calcutta, requesting the revocation of the edict.
These examples illustrate the well-known fact that different races and nationalities attach values to different things, and different values to the same thing. This is the chief factor in the problem of "Americanization," of harmonizing the life of the immigrants with our own. Every human group has developed in the course of its experience a certain fund of values particular to itself and a set of attitudes toward these values. Thus, a poem, a folk dance, a church, a school, a coin, is a value, and the appreciation of any one of these objects is an attitude. The object, the practice, the institution, is the value; the feeling toward it is the attitude. For the purpose of the, present study we call the fund of attitude and values which an immigrant group bring
( 4) to America—the totality of its sentiments and practices—its "heritage."
ILLUSTRATIVE DOCUMENTS
We add below some documents illustrating further the variety of attitudes and values which exist in the world and which may be brought to America as immigrant heritages. These are used at this point simply as a concrete means of defining heritages. They are not an attempt to characterize the groups in question, though they necessarily do this to some extent. It would be possible to cite in connection with each group examples of both good and bad heritages, as we have done in the case of the Chinese.
1. When I was five years old I began to go to cheder [school] . . . Such was my diligence that I went through the sidur [prayer book] and the Pentateuch in one winter, and I also began to study "Gemorah." At six and a half, my father brought me into the famous yeshiba of Vilna. .
The sole source of maintenance for almost all the yeshiba-bahurim [pupils] was the system of "day eating," at the homes of some well-to-do or poorer members of the community—at a different home each day. As a rule, the bahurim are not residents of the city where the yeshiba is situated. To maintain them, each is assigned to eat one day in the
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week in certain houses; he thus rotates through seven houses a week.. .
Reb Simon "Long Robe" was the most remarkable man among the Jews of Vilna. He dedicated his life work to providing the poor bahurim who were left without day board with food and other necessities. From early dawn to almost midnight he would stand in the "Jewish street" with a big collection box in his hand, and collect donations for "his children," as he called the yeshiba-bahurim. He drew his living from working during the night hours as a grinder of snuff tobacco for a tobacco dealer of Vilna. None knew his birthplace, nor whence he came. . . . He spoke to no one, and to all inquiries made no answer. Even the Christians regarded him with the deepest respect, and deemed him a holy man. . . . So well was Reb Simon known in Vilna that each household that found aught left of the best dinner courses had these remains carried off at once to the synagogue courtyard—to Reb Simon Kaftan, who immediately distributed them. among the hungry yeshiba youths.[1]
2. When I was seven years of age my father moved his family to Bielostok. At that time I left school and engaged in the reading of Russian novels, books of travel, and of adventure. I remember to have been literally swallowing these books, reading them late into nights and mornings.. . The gospel of the class struggle, of the wronged proletariat of the world, of the poverty-stricken peasants of Russia, had already at the age of thirteen absorbed my attention. The members of the secret Central Commit-tee of the Bielostok branch of the Bund at this time began to use me as a means of carrying on their
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propaganda. One of the members of the Committee arranged with me to have his secret organization ,code mail sent to my address. I used to pay the letter carrier twenty-five kopecks a month to hand all my mail to me personally, not to leave it with the folks at home... .
[At about fourteen] I was introduced to many of the workers in the revolutionary movement, and began to take an active part in it. I attended illegal revolutionary meetings and later assisted in organizing them. I was reading and distributing illegal literature. I soon became a leader among the workers. My activities consisted in talking before circles of workers on the significance of the class struggle and the necessity of overthrowing the then Russian government. I remember distinctly having given a number of talks on the inefficacy of the "terror" as advocated by the social revolutionists. As a member of the Bund I did not approve of the terroristic tactics of the social revolutionists.[2]
3. I am a widow. My husband died three years ago. Since then I am struggling to make a living for my family, which consists of five children, the oldest son being fifteen years old, and the baby three and a half.
I have a store and barely get along, for the expenses are great. As I am unable to manage the house and store alone, I am obliged to employ a salesman, who receives as much salary as is necessary for our own livelihood.
If I were to withdraw my son from high school I could dispense with the salesman, but my motherly love and the duty toward the child do not permit me to take that step, for he is a very good scholar.
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So, what shall I do when the struggle for existence is so acute? I must have his assistance in order to keep my business going and take care of the other children; but at the same time I cannot definitely decide to take him out of school, for I know that I would make him unhappy, for he has inclinations to study and goes to school dancing. I lay great hopes f on my child.[3]
4. . . . I am a son of a [Polish] peasant farmer. Until ten years of age I did not know the alphabet, or, exactly speaking, I knew only the letter B. Father did not send me to school. He was always repeating: "We have grown old, and we can't read nor write, and we live; so you, my children, will also live with-out knowledge." . . . Once my mother took me to church. I looked to the right, a boy, smaller than myself, was praying from a book; I looked to the left, another one held a book just like the first. And I stood between them like a ninny. I went home and said to my father that I wanted to learn from a book. And father scolded me, "And who will peel potatoes in the winter, and pasture the geese in summer?" Here I cried. . . . Once, while peeling potatoes, I escaped from my father and went to an old man who knew not only how to read, but how to write well. I asked him to show me [letters] in the primer, and he did not refuse. I went home and thought: "It is bad! Father will probably give me a licking." And so it was. Father showered a few strokes on me and said: "Snotty fellow! Don't you know that, as old people say, he who knows written stuff casts himself into hell?" But I used to steal out to learn more and more frequently... .
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Once I found on the road an old almanac. I looked at it, and I read on the last page that there was in Warsaw a Gazette Swiateczna which people order and receive it by mail every Sunday. After that I said to one of the neighbors, not a young man, "Do you know, in Warsaw there is a Gazeta which every one, even if not educated, can read?" And that man said to me: "Look at him, at the snotty fellow! He wants a newspaper!" "Do you know, Kum," said he to my father, "your son will become a real lord, for he says that he will order a news-paper." "Ho, ho!" said father, "but where will he get the money?" . . .[4]
5. MY ILLUSTRIOUS FRIEND AND JOY OF MY LIVER:
The thing which you ask of me is both difficult and useless. Although I have passed all my days in this place, I have neither counted the houses nor inquired into the number of the inhabitants; and as to what one person loads on his mules and the other stows away in the bottom of his ship, that is no business of mine. But above all, as to the previous history of this city, God only knows the amount of dirt and confusion that the infidels may have eaten before the coming of the sword of Islam. It were unprofitable for us to inquire into it. . . . Listen, O my son! There is no wisdom equal to the belief in God! He created the world, and shall we liken ourselves unto him in seeking to penetrate into the mysteries of his creation? Shall we say, Behold this star spinneth around that star, and this other star with a tail goeth and cometh in so many years? Let it go. He from whose hand it came will guide and direct it. . . . Thou art learned in the things I care not for, and as for that which thou hast seen, I spit
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upon it. Will much knowledge create thee a double belly, or wilt thou
seek paradise with thine eyes? The meek in spirit,
IMAUM ALI ZADI.[5]
6. . . . Arson is for the peasant something quite natural, is a self-redress, and does not even bring him dishonor in the eyes of his peasant neighbors. Reciprocal incendiarism is such a frequent manifestation of self-redress that it merits particular studies. . . . It is civil war. The peasant considers breaking Lent a greater sin. To stop or at least to diminish the number of arsons the bishops in Poland have reserved the sin of putting fire to houses, barns, and stables for themselves—that is, an ordinary priest cannot remit the sin of the incendiary, but must appeal to the bishop or send the man to the bishop to confession, in the same way as with murder. But this does not help much. I would define it as a feud, a way of leading civil war. A peasant whom my father reproached for having set fire to his neighbor's buildings said, "I have set fire to his barn, but he could have and still can set fire to mine." . . . I have listened to the confession of many even respectable farmers who tried to set fire to their enemies' farm buildings, only they did not always succeed. The variety of the technique of arson is itself worth studying. The motive is frequently the loss of a lawsuit, the seduction of a woman, etc .[6]
7. OUR RESPECTED CATHOLICS AND ASSISTANTS TO THE EMIGRANTS: I beg you kindly to advise me
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in what way I could emigrate to America with my family, for instance, with my wife and four boys from two to fourteen years. One boy, sixteen years old, went to Argentine on May 14th. I intend also to go and to buy land there, because here in Wolyn it is very dear; a desiatina [two acres] reaches 500 rubles. What can I buy if I have five boys and only two thousand of money? I could buy perhaps in Russia, but what is the use of it since there are no [Catholic] churches, so my faith will get lost. I have heard meanwhile that in America there are churches enough and our faith will not get lost.[7]
8. One of the [Sicilian] characteristics is the recognition of the principle of omertà. What do we understand by omertà? Omertà is a moral code which has never been written, but which is more or less instinctively present in all Sicilians, in the peasant as well as in the highly cultivated city dweller. Indeed it is more emphasized in the former.. . The moral code of omertà demands firmness, energy, and seriousness, a self-reliant and self-conscious mind whose activities are as far as possible independent of the civil authorities. It seeks help through one-self and not through the courts or police. It has that quality of knightliness which characterizes duelists, who settle their differences between themselves, far from the police courts. Revenge is accomplished quietly, unaided, or with the help of trusted friends.[8]
9. Every year, 'for the last twelve years, there have been from twelve to twenty murders committed
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in the square half mile of the North Side Sicilian Settlement of Chicago.[9]
The circumstances are nearly always the same. The victim is shot from ambush, his body riddled with slugs and nails from a sawed-off shotgun or with the entire charge from a revolver; the weapon is found near the body; there are no witnesses and the murderer is never found. A squad of police are sent. into the district, premises in the vicinity are searched, the wife or relatives of the murdered man are taken to the station and sweated, an occasional arrest is made, bat not more than three or four persons have ever been convicted and sentenced for these crimes. Sometimes the victim is murdered in his own home and not infrequently two and even three men are killed at the same time .[10]
10. In Italy I live in small town—six, seven thousand. It take not much money to live. We pay the rent once a year, only little money. We have fine garden, we live healthy, happy. I obey my mother's word, which is like the God. The people, in my town they are serious, human, good heart. We, give everything to the poor. When stranger comes to us, he got always the first chair, we make all we could for him. We love the foreigner, especially from North America. The people used to go to him and give him the welcome. We say, "Oh he is American, he is, from the land of Columbus." The stranger can stay a year, he don't need no money to pay for anything, wherever he go he got everything for nothing.
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We work little bit, then we take the leisure. We love very much the music, art, poetry. We love the poetical life—poetry to-day, and to-morrow we take what's coming with the good patience. The way I mean is not only to read the books of the great poets, of Dante that we love more than a father, or Petrarca, Ariosoto, Tasso, Alfieri, and so many others down to Manzoni, Carducci, Giusti, D'Annunzio, but the poetry of the beautiful scenery in the country, the poetry of the music, the poetry of the friendship. Even in the small town we have band and philharmonica. Not to know the musical works of Rossini, like "Barbiere di Seviglia" and "Guglielmo Tell," is not to know anything. We like the music of the great Donizetti and Bellini because they are dramatici, emotionanti. We are crazy for "Norma," for "Lucia di Lammermoor." They have red blood, what the Italian like, for the Italian warm heart. We like Puccini, Mascagni. Verdi, we adore him. He was welcome all over for his wonderful heart. He speak the voice of the people, in the big romantic utterance, he speak fearless like a man, he express our own emotions by the great genius. . . [11]
11. Lindsborg is the center of a Swedish colony of about forty square miles in extent. Its only boast above the neighboring towns is the presence of Beth-any College and the annual musical event at Easter time.
Each Easter week its people perform Handel's "Messiah" with a chorus of five hundred voices and an orchestra of forty pieces. With the exception of the soloists, who now are stars of the first magnitude
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on the artistic firmament, it is entirely a home affair. The membership of the organization is made up of the merchants, artisans, farmers, and housewives of the town and surrounding countryside, together with the students of the college. The chorus is more than thirty years old and has given Handel's "Messiah" eighty-seven times.
Among its members there are those who participated in the first performance, and it is no uncommon thing for three generations of the same family to be represented. From the bass section more than one grand-father hears the voices of his daughter and grand-daughter singing among the sopranos and altos. One of the unique features is a children's chorus of three hundred, and the exercises of the Messiah Week, as the festival is popularly called, would be quite incomplete without the concert by this organization. Membership in it is a distinction to which every boy and girl in the community aspires, and it is a red-letter day in the life of the youthful musician when for the first time he is permitted to appear as a member of the orchestra in a public performance of the oratorio.[12]
12. The Finns have much faith in co-operative establishments for the conduct of their affairs, as is evidenced by the numerous co-operative creameries, co-operative general merchandise and grocery stores, co-operative savings banks, and other co-operative institutions. In 1918 there were 2,167 co-operative societies in Finland, with a total membership of 196,000. Into northeastern Minnesota co-operative institutions are rapidly finding their way. While all varieties are not yet represented there, they may
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be found in the Lake Superior region as a whole. In addition, the co-operative hotel has grown to be a significant institution.[13]
13. I, Ah Kam, being poor and not having any one on whom to depend, make this agreement, by which to obtain $460 with my person. The middle party in this transaction, Loui Fung, having introduced me to Lang Kai, and having the promise of the latter to pay this debt -for me, besides passage money and other expenses, we three are agreed, and to-day the transaction has taken place. Not a cent now is owing to Loui Fung, the money having actually changed hands, first into the hands of myself, Ah Kam; and I am this day handed over to Lang Kai, to be taken to California for immoral purposes. The time of service is agreed to be four and one half years, with no pay for the service on the one hand and no interest for the money on the other. Fourteen days of sickness will not be taken notice of, but fifteen days of sickness will have to be made up by serving another month. In case of pregnancy an additional year has to be served. As to any expected calamities happening that may happen to anyone, that will be left to the decree of heaven. Should I upon arrival at California attempt to escape, or refuse to be a prostitute, I agree irrevocably that Lang Kai should sell me to another at pleasure.
Lest word of mouth should not be proof, this instrument is drawn up to be such.
AH KAM (her mark).
October 1,1899.[14]
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14. [Sister] died last Thursday morning at eight. We did not expect it nor in the least could have dreamed it. About three weeks ago she took a bad cold when she went to Fresno. . . . [Description of sickness]. She was conscious to the end and very cheerful, as she always was. I won't try to tell you how we miss her or how we have lived since. You and she never got on together, but you must have known that she was better in every way than us girls [herself and her sister]. Her music teacher said she had the finger relaxation which the greatest artists succeed in teaching only after years of work. She was the only Chinese girl who could sing well. She had mamma's entertaining ways and she would have become a beauty. She was so popular because of her wit, and then she had to die. I must not let any complaining note come into me, because she would not have liked it. We try to think how beautifully she died and how troublesome a world she escaped. It should comfort us, but it doesn't. We buried her beside my older brother on Friday. The flowers were far more beautiful than anyone had ever seen. It was all as beautiful as such things are possible. The whole thing is almost breaking mamma's and papa's heart. She was their baby. My head is topsy-turvy so I can't remember what I have said and what -I have not. Will you give the details to those [her cousins] in China? We can't.[15]
15. Osman Assen . . . said to the judge who questioned him : "Recently I was at the border buying giraffe skins to make shields. About a month ago I returned and my wife informed me that our daughter Fatma, still a young girl, was pregnant. I
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was greatly displeased and had no peace during a whole night and a whole day. In the evening I told my daughter to come and help me fetch some fodder and wood, and had her mount upon the ass... . [In a retired spot] I made her dismount from the ass. I threw her on the ground first and tried to strangle her, then seeing that this did not succeed, with a. quick pressure against her head I broke her neck. Before throwing her on the ground I said: `Think on what you have done. I have brought you here to kill you.' She answered: `I know I have done wrong. I am in your hands and God's.’
"After I had killed my daughter I set about digging the grave, and two of my cousins joined me, whom I had asked to follow and assist with the burial. . . . Before killing her I asked my daughter who had seduced her, but she would not say. When I returned I informed my wife that I had done what I had said I would do, and what is prescribed in our customs to do. Now I am sorry for what I did."
[Questioned, the mother said:] "My daughter was killed by my husband because, marriageable, she became pregnant. When my husband returned I informed him of what had happened. He assured. himself of the girl's condition and then decided to kill her according to our custom." [16]
RESULTING ANTAGONISMS
Some of the attitudes represented by the above examples of immigrant heritages are those which we ourselves have or under-
( 17) -stand. The Jewish devotion to learning (document 1) is among these. At the same time this case may be used to illustrate a general principle. The role which a given attitude is able to play in an immigrant group in America is never the same as the one it played at home. Jewish learning as it was pursued in Russia—that is, as a distinction, an artistic, religious occupation —may lead to maladjustment in America. On the contrary, the same attitude applied to a different kind of learning may lead to a superior intellectual status for the whole group in America; or, the attitude may continue to be an organizing force, but in a different field of application. The three documents following illustrate this point.
16. I am forty-five years old, born in a little town in Russia, where my parents brought me up in a respectable way. I studied the Talmud and the Jewish laws until I was thirteen years old, and, being industrious, I drew the attention of a wealthy man who had only one daughter and I became a bridegroom . . . and a "board-child" in my father-in- law's home, where I continued to study the Talmud for my mother-in-law's sake and general science for my own sake, to be prepared for the examinations.
[Became a merchant. The pogroms followed. Came to America. Began teaching in à Hebrew Free School.] But my teaching is very tiresome because the children do not want to know the things
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they are taught in the Hebrew school, which is a hovel —broken benches and cobwebs on the ceiling—and they have no respect for the school when they come from the beautiful, modern public school, and they also do not respect the Jewish teachings, that are really not for them—like the fine books of Moses and translations from the prayers... .
So, again I thought : " What can I do to give up my position as Hebrew teacher?" I took a course on how to make eyeglasses and secured a diploma from a college as Doctor of Optics. Unfortunately it is a business that requires peddling with eyeglasses from house to house, and I cannot do that under any circumstances. So a druggist advised me to go to work in a drug store, where after two years I can get an assistant's license and earn fifteen dollars a week, and remain in the drug store for three more years and become a registered druggist and open a store for myself. I went to work in a drug store and then the orthodox officials found it out and I was discharged from my position in the Hebrew Free School.[17]
17. It has been ascertained that the Russian Jews, in spite of their comparative poverty, send more of their children to the high schools of this city, and permit them to stay there longer, than any other ethnic group. It is common knowledge that more than three-fourths of the pupils in the College of the City of New York are children of eastern European Jews.[18]
18. In many cases the rise [of the Jew] to social position through wealth is merely a recuperation of
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status previously enjoyed [in Europe] by dint of reputation for learning.[19]
But many of the cases just cited impress us as strange and disturbing, as having no place at all in our scheme of life. We must remember, however, that strangeness itself may be a source of displeasure and prejudice. The un-American shoes and un-American beard of the immigrant arouse these emotions in us. (See documents 35, p. 48, and 38, p. 49.) In general, any practice which is not customary, which is not in our code, is shocking. Thus we customarily carry food to the mouth with the fork and the use of the knife for this purpose affects us unpleasantly, although the fork seems to have no natural superiority for this purpose. Smacking with the lips when eating produces disgust in us, but the Indian, logically enough, smacks as a compliment to his host.
In addition to strangeness, the shock of these examples is often due to the fact that they excite our moral disapproval. But even so, the worst of these practices are not entirely foreign to our experience. A "code of honor," which had the same spirit as the Italian vendetta (documents 8, p. 10, and 9, p.10), was some generations ago held in
( 20) the greatest esteem by all "gentlemen" of the Western World and did not become entirely strange to us until the past century:
In the eight years between 1601 and 1609 two thousand men of noble birth fell in duels in France; and, according to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who was ambassador at this court of Louis XIII, there was scarce a Frenchman worth looking on who had not killed his man in a duel.[20]
The cases of Hamilton and Burr, Jackson and Dickinson, represent this spirit in. American history.
Document 13 illustrates the Oriental form. of "white slavery." The situation is thus not entirely unfamiliar to us, but it is peculiarly shocking because the naive and explicit procedure creates the impression that the girl is from the beginning a voluntary participant, and that the practice is normal. for this group. It is, in fact, normal in China, under certain conditions and in a. certain class. It may even be regarded as meritorious, if undertaken by the girl for the benefit of her family. Our moral superiority in this case lies in the fact that we expect and usually find in the white slave a consciousness of guilt which is here lacking.
( 21) (Society wishes to forgive and restore an erring member, but it is not able to do this in the absence of that shame which leads to repentance.)
Document 15 shows another Oriental (Mohammedan) attitude, one which we have had and have, but never so completely. It is only a thoroughgoing repudiation of the girl who goes wrong.
On the other hand, the immigrant finds here strange, unexpected, and inconsistent situations. We are usually not well acquainted with our slums-housing conditions, where three, five, seven, nine families share the same toilet room,[21] the sweatshop, and the general industrial system—or we do not think of them often, but they are totally. different from the rural life of Europe, and impress the immigrant in cities painfully. Some of the foreign-language news-papers in America, especially the Italian (as a retort to our condemnation of the Black Hand), constantly seek to find in America phases of life as bad as any we can attribute to the immigrant groups they represent:
19. Now and then the Black Hand of the Americans appears. . . . The payments of tribute to the
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police . . . the protection by the police of individuals in the mala vita [criminals and prostitutes], . . the sale of liquor and cocaine clandestinely and known to the police—all this graft stinks of the Camorra, the Mafia—i.e., the Black Hand. . . . The American Black Hand is as well organized as the Italian.[22]
Frequently the displeasure excited by American conditions (often not really American conditions, but immigrant conditions in America) is very violent:
20. In their feelings toward the Americans the Russians, judging by the collected data, may be divided into three groups—those who have learned to love and esteem the Americans; those who are indifferent toward them; and the incensed haters of Americans.
Those who esteem the Americans all write that at first they "did not like them." A visiting teacher opened one's eyes to "the real meaning of Yankee"; another learned to love Americans for their great will power, "the thing that we Slays lack so much"; the third one became attached to the Americans for their great tolerance and respect toward an opponent in politics and religion, etc.
Those who are "indifferent," write that the Americans simply do not interest them. The Americans whom they meet are a harsh and not always a just people. They are like machine men and "do not appreciate" good craftsmen. Sometimes it is a factory foreman, sometimes it is a house owner, who does not mind molesting his tenants, and, "when
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the Russian soul goes a-merry," it is a policeman with a none too soft club, and then the judge, who, "expressionless," pronounces between his teeth, "Three, five, ten dollars fine."
The "haters" of Americans are incensed by their compulsory loneliness; they are men whose souls are hidden from Americans, as the Americans' souls are unknown to them. They are the great numbers of immigrants who live in America their old Russian life, only without the soothing effect of the Russian rivers, steppes, and the great Russian forests. It is a soulless, a stifling "American Russia," and they soon feel themselves in a new "prison." They work in shops that belong to foreigners like themselves, reside in immigrant neighborhoods, and are separated as if by a mountain from American thought, American social life, and American struggles. The "America" they live in is suppressing their spirits, and they cannot see behind the walls of their free prison the genuine America.
And sometimes tragical, sometimes comical are their complaints: "America is the most mean and vile country," writes a laborer by the name of Terenty, " and I will try to light the fire of hate toward Americans in every corner of Russia."He lived in America for six years, but during that time the "Americans" he came in contact with were immigrants like himself, who sometimes exploited and mistreated him. A laborer from Ohio, without any evident attempt to be gay, writes: "We have here too many Americans. I worked in other places, and have seen only a few of them. But here wherever you go you see Americans, and they look upon you as if you were a low thing and they were great men. I hate them!"
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Only one of those "haters" displayed some humor, saying: "The Americans are a bad people. You speak to them the plainest Russian language, and you even add a word or two of English for their benefit, and still they do not understand a thing!"
The main difficulty in the relations between Russian immigrants and Americans is that there are almost no such relations. . . [23]
The first contacts between Americans and immigrants produce, therefore, a
degree of antagonism, owing to the element of strangeness and to the different
degree of moral worth attached to given values, as viewed by Americans, on the
one hand, and by immigrants, on the other. The antagonism produced by mere
strangeness is of course in the region of pure prejudice, and has no more moral
significance than the displeasure produced by a fashion of dress or a code of
etiquette differing from the one to which we are habituated, but this mutual
prejudice is, nevertheless, as we shall see, one of the most serious hindrances
to the assimilation of the immigrant.
