Old World Traits Transplanted
Chapter 4: Immigrant Demoralization
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HUMAN nature is such that society has an extremely difficult task to make its 'individual member "good "—that is, to regulate and organize his wishes and make him efficient. Even when the population is homogeneous, the traditions unbroken, the institutions of family, community, state, church, school, etc., complete, it is a task which society never accomplishes perfectly; we always have some disorder and crime.
"Good" behavior, conformity to accepted standards, is secured in any population by what we may call a common definition of the situation. The "shalt nots" of the Ten Commandments are definitions of the situation. The "don'ts" of the mother, the gossip of the community, epithets (" liar," " thief "), shrugs, sneers, and " bawlings out," the press, the pulpit, legal decisions, etc., are common methods of defining the situation.
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At home the immigrant was almost completely controlled by the community; in America this lifelong control is relaxed. Here the community of his people is at best `far from complete, and, moreover, it is located within the American community, which lives by different and more individualistic standards, and shows, as we have seen, a contempt for all the characteristics of the newcomers. All the old habits of the immigrant consequently tend to break down. The new situation has the nature of a crisis, and in a crisis the individual tends either to reorganize his life positively, adopt new habits and standards to meet the new situation, or to repudiate the old habits and their restraints without reorganizing his life—which is demoralization.
There is, of course, violation of the traditional code, "breaking of the law," in all societies, and there is at present a general problem of demoralization in the regions from which our immigrants come, particularly where the peasant population has come into contact with the industrial centers or practices seasonal emigration (as from Poland to Germany); but the demoralization, maladjustment, pauperization, juvenile delinquency, and crime are incomparably greater among the immigrants in America
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EARLY STAGES
In document 48 below, the girl is not yet demoralized. Her habits are disorganized and it is a painful situation, but she is evidently trying to make the transition to a new group—to become Americanized. She may marry and become an allrightnick (see document 81, p. 102), or she may abandon, the family and become wayward. A too rapid Americanization is usually disastrous. Document 49 presents another painful and abnormal situation, as result of the same process of rapid change in children. The humoristic fiction extract (document 50) illustrates the condition of the individual whose life is no longer regulated by the community norms and who is not yet able to stabilize his life on any other basis:
48. [Her husband, a business man in Russia, contracted for standing grain and was ruined. Her sister in America offered to take her daughter until she had "worked herself up" and could send for her parents.]
So we sent our sixteen years old daughter to America and we remained at home. I cannot describe to you the way I felt when my daughter left us. Many nights I did not sleep and shed many tears before I received a letter from her that she had arrived safely.
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We thought that we should be able to follow her within a short time, but it was not so. My daughter came to America, but she did not meet with luck and it happened that our condition improved, so we wrote to our child to come home.
This was three years after she left us. We wrote one letter after the other and we begged her to return, but she did not want to. She wrote that she liked America and did not even think of returning home. I am a mother, and a faithful mother at that, and I was longing for her, and when I saw that she did not want to return, I began to persuade my husband to go to America. He did not care to go, but I talked so much and argued and pleaded with him that he consented and we emigrated to America. It was not so soon; a few years had passed, and when we arrived we did not recognize our daughter. She was grown up, tall, pretty—a pleasure to look at her.
My husband began to earn little by little. We fixed up a nice home and I was happy because I could see my daughter. But soon I realized that my big pretty daughter is not the girl I knew; she has changed entirely. During the few years that she was here without us she became a regular Yankee and forgot how to talk Yiddish. I talk to her in Yiddish and she replies in English. With much difficulty I induce her to speak a word in Yiddish and I succeed only when there are no strangers in the house. When strange people come to us, my daughter will not say a single Yiddish word.
So I ask her: "Daughter of mine, talk Yiddish to me and I will understand you." She says that it is not nice to talk Yiddish and that I am a greenhorn. And that is not all. She does worse things. She wants to make a Christian woman out of me. She
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does not like to have me light the Sabbath candles, to observe the Sabbath. When I light the candles she blows them out. She does all the things that I do not want, that cause me the greatest heartache. And she argues with me. She says that because I and my husband are pious and have a Jewish home, she can never invite a boy acquaintance to her house; she is ashamed. She makes fun of me and her father. She calls us greenhorns and is ashamed of us. Once I saw her standing on the stoop with a boy, so I went up to her and asked her when she would come up and eat something. She did not even reply, and later when she came up she screamed at me because I" had called her by her Jewish name. But I cannot call her differently. I cannot call her by her new name.
Dear Editor, it is impossible to describe the troubles that she causes us, and as much as I ask her to be a good daughter, it does not help. Please write a few words for my daughter.[1]
49. I, an old seventy-year old Jew, am asking you for a little space to tell you my troubles. I have hardly begun to write and my tears are coming down already.
Just listen what children are. At home I was a business man. In Russia I have played a big part, employed many people, contributed much to charity, and had a good name. My house was always open for the needy and hungry. The best people of our city came to my house. In short, I had everything that one could wish for....
[Business failed, but saved money and on it his sons and sons-in-law have become prosperous in America.] My daughters go to the country every year. Naturally it costs them a large sum of money.
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First, they go with their children, my grandchildren; second, they buy extra dresses and they go to a swell place where they pay high prices. And my sons-in-law go to them every Saturday and return Monday morning. Until now I would remain at home with the servant girl. She would wash and cook for me. But this summer they took the girl along with them and on account of her I went too.
Now I am cursing every day my old years. I am worse off than a beggar, because a beggar when he does get a piece of bread he can eat it wherever he wishes, but I cannot. They, my children and my grandchildren, told me that I should not sit and eat with them at the same table because I do not know English and I have a long gray beard, and to sit with such a father or with such a grandfather is a shame.
So they told the hotelkeeper to make a separate place for me in a but not far from the springs. And so I am getting my meals just like a dog. They do not talk to me, they do not take me along whenever they go out for a walk; they do not want to introduce me to anybody and so on... .
So I decided to ask my children for a few hundred dollars and I will return to Russia. And there I should close my eyes far, far from my children and die among strange people on a strange bed.[2]
50. Because he was too lazy to go to preparatory school to gather "counts" like his older brother, and his mother made his life miserable, he read Yiddish papers and was an anarchist. And because he was, an anarchist he wanted to like music, and he let his hair grow until it was big enough for both an anarchist and a violin virtuoso. ` Bertha felt he was the right man for her, so she no longer looked with disfavor
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upon Yiddish papers, ceased buying the Times every morning, and donned an anarchist blouse with a black tie. When his mother saw their intimate relations she discharged the girl from the shop. If they had no serious intentions until then, this action served to bring them closer together and they went to live in a free union. . . [3]
EXTREME CASES
In document 51 we have a definite demoralization, but in its first stages; while in document 52 the demoralization is complete. In this case there had been no organizing influence of family and community, no definition of the situation in social terms, and the boy shows the predatory disposition natural to boys, one which in tribal times, on the frontier, and in war makes the hero:
51. DEAR SISTER: I write as to a sister and I complain as to a sister about my children from the old country—those three boys. I did not have them with me, and I grieved continuously about them; and to-day again, on the other hand, my heart is bleeding. They will not listen to their mother. If they would listen, they would do well with me. But no, they wish only to run everywhere about the world, and I am ashamed before people that they are so bad. They arrived, I sent them to school, because it is obligatory to send them; if you don't
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do it the teacher comes and takes them by the collar, So they have been going, but the oldest was annoyed with the school. "No, mamma, I will go to work." I say, "Go on to school." But "No!" and "No!" Without certificates from the school they won't let them work. I got certificates for the two oldest ones: "Go, if you wish." They worked for some time, but they got tired of work. One went with a Jew to ramble about corners (trading or amusing himself?), and for some days was not to be seen; I had to go and search for him. The worst one of them is Stach; the two others are a little better. They were good in the beginning, but now they know how to speak English and their goodness is lost. I have no comfort at all. I complain [to you] as to a sister. Perhaps you will relieve me at least with a letter, if you write me some words, dear sister. .
Stach has been bad, is bad, and will be bad. So long as he was smaller he remained more at home. I begged him, "Stach, remain at home with your mother." No, he runs away and loafs about. Well, let him run. I had his eyes wiped [had him instructed] as well as I could; he can read, write, and speak English, quite like a gentleman. You say, "Beat." In America you are not allowed to beat; they can put you into a prison. Give them to eat, and don't beat—such is the law in America. Nothing can be done, and you advise to beat ! Nothing can be done; if he is not good of himself, he is lost....
I regret that I took the children from our country so soon. In our country perhaps they would have had some misery, and in America they have none, and because of this many become dissolute. In America children have a good life; they don't go to
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any pastures, but to school, and that is their whole work. . [4]
52. When eleven years old [father still living] Walter Dyganski was brought to court in company with three other boys, accused of breaking a padlock on a grocery store and attempting to enter the store at 4 A.M., March, 1909, and also of breaking a pad-lock on the door of a meat market and stealing thirty-six cents from the cash till. Put on probation.
August 19, 1910.—Brought to court for entering with two other boys a store and stealing a pocket-book containing $3. "He admitted to the officers he and his company were going to pick pockets downtown. He is the leader of the gang." The officer believes he is encouraged in his acts by his mother... .
Sent to St. Charles.—Ran away March 17, 1913. By breaking a window got into a drug store with two other boys and stole a quantity of cigars and $1.61. Having taken the money, he gave one boy 10 cents and another 5 cents. He gave away the cigars—eight or nine boxes—to "a lot of men and some boys." Spent the money "on candy and stuff." Committed to John Worthy School... .
October 27th.—His conduct has improved greatly; released on probation. Work was slack; boy changed three positions within a month.
December 23, 1913.—Accused of having broken, with an adult boy nineteen, into a clothing store and filled a suit case they found in the store with clothing and jewelry. Caught in shop. The officer said: "He would like to imitate Webb. He would like to kill somebody." According to his own confession: "It
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was six o'clock at night. I was going to confession. I met a boy and he said, `Come out with me.' About nine o'clock we came to a clothing store, and we walked to the back, and seen a little hole. We pulled a couple of the laths off and as soon as we got in we got caught." But the officer said that previous to this they had burglarized a butcher's store and took from there a butcher's steel, and bored a hole in the wall with it. Committed to John Worthy School. Released June 26, 1914...
July 19th.—Shot in a back alley twice at a little boy and once hit him. Broke with two other boys at night into Salvation Army office, broke everything he could and "used the office as a toilet room." Next. day broke into a saloon, broke the piano, took cigars. Before this, July 14th, broke a side window of a saloon, stole $4 and a revolver. At the hearing Walter said about shooting the boy: "That boy was passing and I asked him for a match, and I. heard the boy holler. I took a revolver off him [his companion] and fired a shot and hit the boy." His mother testified that he had spent only three nights at home since the time of his release from John Worthy School. He was arrested after the first offense, but escaped from the detention home. Committed to John Worthy School... .
[Letter of Mr. Millkan, John Worthy School, January 4, 1915:] ". . . I wish to recommend for re-lease . . . Walter D. He has been at the Worthy School 568 days. . . . I am putting him on the list, not because I feel that he will make good on the out-side, but because by keeping him here we are removing all possibility of his making good, and I feel that for his sake he should be given a chance. If he returns to the court he should be sent to Pontiac, where he.
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can be kept from society entirely. He is bright enough, but a sullen, surly character." . .
Released after March 26th.-Committed a burglary in a grocery store, April 17th. Shot a man with a revolver in the left arm April 4th; held up, with three other boys, a man on April 11th, sand robbed him of $12. Caught later, while the other boys caught at once. Held to the Grand Jury, found "not guilty," and released June 16, 1915 [5]
Our documents show that the disorderly behavior of the immigrant is often connected with some misapprehension of what he sees and hears here. In seeking to imitate the new environment he naturally selects the more pleasurable aspects—those giving expression to his suppressed wishes, perhaps gratifying the natural tendency to vagabondage.
53. Mary Ceglarek vs. Joseph Ceglarek. Married twelve years. During this period he deserted her more than a dozen times, but always returned after a month or so.
But frequently he really misunderstands our institutions, seeing an identity in situations which have only a superficial or nominal resemblance. So much is heard of divorce in America that the immigrants have developed a tradition that we have no marriage
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—only temporary relations. A boy writes to his parents in Poland:
54. You write me whether I am married. Well, no. America is not the old country where it is necessary to marry for your whole life. Here it is not so.[6]
An analysis of the puzzling cases of immigrant crime shows that the perpetrators often introduce features which they think are a part of the proper procedure in the case, but which show a misapprehension of the motives of the American models which they think they are imitating:
55. On October 9.0, 1911, Walter Shiblawski, Frank Shiblawski, Philip Suchomski, Thomas Schultz, Philip Sommerling, and Frank Keta (all boys) held up and killed Fred Guelzow, a farmer, who was bringing a load of vegetables to Chicago. They had two revolvers, a bread knife, a pocketknife, and a large club. They had been reading novels and planned a hold-up. When Guelzow was ordered to hold up his hands he promptly did so. They took his silver watch and chain, then killed him, mutilated him horribly with bullets and knives, and cut off a piece of his leg and put it in his mouth.[7]
It appears from the complete record that the boys were not satisfied with the mere
( 72) hold-up. They were nonplused to find that it was all over and there had been no killing. It was not complete and did not correspond to a hold-up as they had come to understand it. So they added the details which were lacking. The immigrant child is more likely than an American child to follow the suggestion gotten from picture shows.
The person who has been completely controlled by a group, whose behavior in a limited number of possible situations has been predetermined by his community, tends to behave in wild and incalculable ways, to act on any vagrant impulse that invades his mind, when withdrawn from the situations he knows and removed from the background of a permanent community. The result is behavior that is incomprehensible because it follows no known pattern:
56. On August 29th at 3 P.M., I was in the house, the following people being present: Joseph Stanczak, his wife, Josephine Okrasina, and myself. We drank some beer and got pretty well intoxicated. I did not drink anything. The two Stanczak brothers were arguing over $100. About nine o'clock I went to bed, but I could not sleep. I stayed in bed until eleven o'clock. I got up, put on my trousers, and sat on the side of the bed until 1 A.M. And Constantine Binkowski came into the house through the kitchen door. I seen him through the bedroom door
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which was open. I went into the kitchen and took hold of Feliks Stanczak and put him outside through the kitchen door which I locked about ten minutes later. Joseph Stanczak took a bottle, a pail, and went out. When Joseph Stanczak went out Constantine Binkowski came into the bedroom where I was and told me I had better get out of the house or the two brothers would lick me. So I took my hat and coat and shoes and went out alone leaving Mrs. Stanczak asleep in the kitchen bedroom. Josephine Okrasina was sitting at the kitchen table and Constantine Binkowski was standing in the kitchen. I went over to Peter Altman's house . . . first floor; and old lady Binkowski let me in. There I put my shoes, coat, and hat on, and went back to Stanczak's and entered by the rear door. Finding the two Stanczak brothers, Joe and Feliks, I said: "If you are so strong, why, commence now." Joseph ran toward me, struck me with his fist right by my right ear. I had a file which I carried inside with me, and pulled it out of my pocket and struck Joseph on the head with it. He fell down on his side and then Feliks ran toward me and I struck him twice on the head with the file. And he staggered against the stove and called out, "Women, help." Feliks ran into the bedroom and Joe was about to get up. When I seen him getting up, the file slipped out of my hand and I grabbed the chair and beat him with it on the head. The chair broke in pieces and he fell down again. I don't know how or when the women got out, but they were gone at that time. I went into the front bedroom and got my revolver which I had bought from a pawn man a few months before. . . . I bought it with the intention of killing Joseph Stanczak after a fight I had three months ago.
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I then went to Joseph Polowski's.... I got there about four o'clock ... and I slept until about noon. Got up and ate breakfast, and left there and rode to Stephen Malecki's, Twenty-sixth Street. I got there about 2P.M., I changed into my Sunday clothes and left there about 4 P.m. I went downtown to see a show on State Street. I left the theater at 9 P.M., and then I came home to Peter Altman's . . . and slept in the kitchen until eight o'clock in the morning—August 31st. Then I got my revolver and went to Joseph Stanczak's. I entered by the kitchen door and went into the bedroom where Joseph Stanczak was sleeping and fired three shots at him. He was asleep. There was nobody else in the house at the time and nobody knew my intention that I know of. I then went to (Altman's) house, where I sat on the porch while I emptied and cleaned the revolver and then went to the attic and hid the revolver... . After hiding the revolver I went down to Altman's and went in and sat there until 5.80 A.M. Then I went upstairs to Stephen Vickes, where he made up a lunch for me, and I went to work at the car .. . shop. This was September 1st. I worked all day and went home and slept in Altman's house and went away. I ate my supper at Stephen Weybeck's, Twenty-sixth Street. They mentioned that Joseph Stanczak was dead, but I didn't answer when they told me. I went down to Stanczak's place and Josephine Stanczak and Josephine Okrasina and Binkowski was there. And Binkowski told me that Joseph Stanczak was dead, and I answered that his time was come. The women were in bed asleep and I went to bed and slept with little John Stanczak [his victim's son]. And no more said about the death. The morning of September 2d I got up at 9.30 and went
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to work. I worked until 1.30 P.M. At the time I was arrested. .
Question.—Did the wife of this man ever make you an offer of $25 to kill him?
Answer.—No, she did not.
Question.—Weren't you living with her just the same as if you were married to her?
Answer.—No, never.
Question.—Why did you do this?
Answer.—I done this just because I knew that this man lived long enough. He killed one in the old country. He cut a man out there with a razor.
Question.—Was this man in the old country that was killed by Joseph Stanczak a relative of yours?
Answer.—I don't know this man at all.[8]
We learn from other sources that Opalski was disturbed by the fact that he was not immediately recognized as the murderer, and, so to speak, claimed the crime. We have other documents showing that immigrants have been pronounced insane by our courts, because their behavior showed no sort of consistency, who at home would probably have remained normal, though perhaps difficult, members of their communities.
Another type of demoralization occurs where a socially produced inhibition yields to the prompting of an instinctive appetite :
57. Defendant, Lithuanian, naturalized, fifteen years in America. Testimony of Mrs. White: "I
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live down stairs from where these people lived up-stairs. . . . She [defendant's daughter, twelve years old] came on Sunday morning, 28th of February, and looked as though she had been crying. I says: 'Anna, what is the matter?' She says: 'Well, if I would tell you, my papa would be put in jail.' I says : 'What did he do?" Oh, Oh, he did something bad to me, he did really wrong.' And I questioned her. . . . I said, 'Could that be so?' . . . I thought that was pretty dangerous, and as I have a ten-year old girl myself, I thought it best to go to the station."[9]
Communal habits of life and the disposition to regard any countryman as a friend, make it easy for the immigrants to exploit one another in various ways, and some of them make a business of doing this :
58. Defendant Kasimerz Marzec was engaged to be married to Katie Dupak, who went with him three years. On his promise of marriage he got from her $200 in cash. She bought him a suit of clothes valued at $25; he took her watch, $20; she bought a couple of rings valued $10, which he took along with him. The baby was born and the mid-wife bill was $10, and the baby died later and she paid $50 for the funeral. Then there was the meats and everything ordered, $77, for the wedding feast. She paid all this for him. They were to be married September 10, 1915. He left on September 8, 1915, for parts unknown. He got back September 18, 1916, and was arrested in Chicago. He said he —
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caught her talking to some other fellow. . . . The child was born in December, 1915. . . . [Before leaving he married another girl and went with her to Philadelphia.)[9]
59. I am a married man and live contented with my wife and two children and could be happy for a long time were it not for the trouble that corrupts my life, and that is my conscience, which burns with a hellish fire in my heart, which gives me no minute's rest and which will soon make me give up my happy life.
For the past few years I was in business for myself ... and always worried about a livelihood until this summer. I am now an agent for lots and sell them to the poor workers of New York. I make a lot of money in my present business. I make more than I ever could make and this is the cause of my trouble; for I do not consider myself as agent, but an accomplice of a band of robbers who are robbing people right and left in the name of business.
The lots that I have sold are very far away, but it is so trickily done that the trip with our victims shall not take over thirty to forty minutes, and when we arrive at the station the victims are packed into autos or large wagons and when they are dragged out of the vehicles—tired and full of illusions about fortunes that they will now secure (we, the agents, are filling their heads with it during the trip), they are relieved of their money so easily that it is really a shame. You can imagine what it means when the chief of the gang himself exclaims—after raking in all the money—in English, and with a villainous smile: "It's really a shame to take the money, by Jesus." They are stripped of all the money they
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possess, from $1 up. Even if the lots were sold by a reliable company they are being charged $9.00 for every $5 worth.
How, then, can one witness such robberies? And you ought to see the agents! It is a rather mixed gang. Some are apparently born for that; they are stout-faced and of large physical proportions so that one can at once tell that they had never earned an honest cent; and then there are Jews with peyos [side locks] and whiskers, dressed in half-silk coats, with pious faces, who always speak with God's help.
I laid my eyes upon an Essex Street Jew and his son. They are quite green in the country, but not in the business. I do not want to bother you or I could fill a volume on this little Jew.
Among the gang there is also a Brooklyn woman who knows how to lure innocent victims and extract the last hard-earned pennies from the poor workers.
Well, I think you know enough to comprehend my situation. I know how dirty is this sort of business. You can imagine how bad I feel that when a friend of mine asks my advice as to purchasing some lots in Brooklyn ... I asked him to purchase from me.
I have acquired gold out of dirt and dirt out of gold. I am satisfied to give up my dirty fortune if I could only get some good advice as to what to do. [10]
60. I am a girl from Galicia. I am neither old nor young. I am working in a shop like other girls. I have saved up several hundred dollars.
Naturally, a young man began to court me, and it is indeed this that we girls are seeking. I. became acquainted with him through a Russian [Jewish] matchmaker who for a short while boarded with a
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countryman of mine. He is really handsome and, as the girls call it, "appetizing." ` But he is poor, and this is no disgrace. He became dearer to me every day.
One day he told me he was in want, owing to a strike, so I helped him out. I was never stingy with him, and besides money also bought him a suit of clothes and an overcoat.... Who else did I work for if not for him? In short, we became happily engaged... .
Some time after, we hired a hall in Clinton Street and we were on our way to the bank to draw some money for the wedding expenses and also to enter the savings in both our names. On the way we passed some of his countrymen who were musicians, and we needed music, so we stopped in. He introduced me as his bride. I offered to have them play at our wedding.
Incidentally, I inquired about my fiancé, and they gave good opinions of him. Only a musician's boy pitifully gazed at me and remarked, when my fiancé was not near us: "Are there not enough people from the old country to ask for their opinion?" I under-stood the hint and asked him for an address, which he gave me.
Meanwhile, we were late for the bank, and fortunately, too! I could hardly wait for evening when I rushed over to his countryman and inquired about him. They were surprised at my questions and told me he had a wife and three children in ---- Street. As I later found out, she was the same woman whom he introduced to me as his boarding mistress....
I cannot describe my feelings at that time. I became a mere toy in the mouths of my countrymen.
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But what more could I do than arrest him. But his wife and children came to court and had him released.
I found out of the existence of a gang of wild beasts, robbers, who prey upon our lives and money. I then advertised in a Jewish newspaper, warning my sisters against such a "fortune" as befell me. I was not ashamed and told my misfortune wherever I came and gave warnings. The East Side has become full of such "grooms," "matchmakers," "mistresses," "sisters," and "brothers." Inquire of their country-men. There are plenty of their kind.
A girl from my country also married one of the band, the one who was my former matchmaker. To the 'warnings that he had a wife and child in Europe she replied, "Well, if she comes she will be welcome." And good countrymen did indeed send for her and she came with a four-year-old boy. Her predicament is horrible to describe. She is poor and lonely and my countrywoman did not welcome her as she boasted, and her husband said, "Whoever sent for you may support you."
So she was forced to adopt the American method; she had him arrested . . . and he was sentenced to five years in the workhouse, where there are no slack seasons nor strikes. Who is to blame? [11]
