Old World Traits Transplanted
Chapter 5: Immigrant Types
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EACH immigrant brings to America an individual correlation of the wishes which rule human conduct (see Chapter II). In one the desire for recognition predominates; in another the desire for security; and so on in many variations. This individual organization of wishes is what we call character. Likewise each immigrant group as a whole brings a more or less marked character. And while we do not ignore the fact that character is partly due to temperamental qualities—the characteristics of the Swedes, the Jews, the Italians, may be connected with their original, inborn, temperamental dispositions—it is nevertheless certain that character in both individuals and groups is mainly built up by the process which we have referred to above as "the definition of the situation"—by gossip, conversation, disputes, doctrines, by the whole of the experiences and social influences which modify, qualify, and organize the wishes. Thus, the
( 82) Sicilian omertâ, the Catholic church and confessional, the Lutheran faith, the doctrine of anarchy, the principle of democracy, are more or less dominant in defining the situation in certain groups and tend to characterize partially these groups and their members. We are able, therefore, to distinguish roughly various immigrant types, representing different heritages. It is not true, however, that we can treat any given immigrant group strictly en bloc from the standpoint of heritages. We find a great homogeneity in this respect in certain groups (and we are inclined to assume more than exists), but in all groups certain individuals resemble individuals in other groups more than they resemble the average member of their own group. Thus a Jewish intellectual probably has more in common with an intellectual of any other group than with a ritualistic Jew. Certainly the difference between an intellectual Pole and a Polish peasant is as profound as possible. In general, where the process of defining the situation rationally instead of customarily has been introduced, a wide divergence will be found between individual members in a group.
In this study we do not attempt to characterize immigrant groups in their totality. We are able to study only the types of
( 83) attitudes brought to America by immigration, and the following indication of types is made from this standpoint, though it will become evident, here and later, that certain attitudes are more or less peculiar to certain groups. The terms used below are more or less arbitrary and the types are usually not pure.
THE SETTLER
All emigration represents some crisis in the life of the emigrants. The decision to leave home is usually precipitated by some incident of immediate significance, probably one destroying the economic basis of life—as where the hereditary land fails to support a growing family, or the property of a Jew is destroyed by a pogrom. What the peas-ant immigrants call "securing an existence" is practically always a motive. And the whole attitude of the immigrant in America is frequently determined by the type of experience at home which has led him to come here. The settler either sets out with a resolve to break with the past permanently, to seek a home in the new country, and transfer his interests to it, or this may become his attitude, perhaps, after a series of hardships here. Extremely and permanently hard economic conditions, such as
( 84) exist in Sweden and Norway, are favorable to this decision. In general, when the organization of life at home, the traditional attitudes and values resemble our own, the decision to make a home in America is more natural.
61. In Hungary I had a wife, two children, a house, six acres of land, two horses, a cow, two pigs, and a few poultry. That was my fortune. This same land that afforded an existence to my father and grandfather could not support us any longer. Taxes and the cost of living in the last few years have advanced so greatly that the expenses cannot be' covered from as much as a small farm can yield.
[Things became worse, an early spring storm killed his crop, he had to buy his bread for money.] My horses were killed from disease. I had to sell my cow to buy winter clothes for the family. There was no money to work the land and without horses and work the land will not produce. I had to mortgage my home. . . .
As a farm laborer in Hungary can earn only enough. for bread and water, how is he to pay the taxes,, living expenses, and clothing? There was but one. hope, America, the golden land of liberty, where the rivers and mountains are full of gold... .
We will never go back to Hungary. It only deprived us of our home and land, while in America the soil covers our child. We have a home, money, and business, everything acquired in America. We lost everything in Hungary. We love Hungary as our native land, but never wish to live in it again. [1]
62. My first recollection is that we lived in a
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very small hut in the most abject poverty. When V was about seven years of age I had to go out and look after infants—that was my first occupation—and then I had to tend geese, pigs, and sheep. Then I worked on the estate until I was fourteen years of age, when I was confirmed. I also had a little schooling, nine months altogether, two days in one week and three days in the next. The school children were too many, so the boys and girls had to attend school every other day. After I had been confirmed I hired out to a dependent farmer, who leased a large farm. My wages were fixed at twenty-five riksdaler ($7), one pair of boots, two shirts, and one pair of mittens a year.
Then I went to another dependent farmer, where I got herring five times a day, must be at the estate at four o'clock in the morning, and work to half past eight at night, when I had to walk one and a half (English) miles, get a little porridge and milk and four hours' rest.
I left my parents' home the 4th of April, 1871, and landed in New York the 4th of May the same year. Now at last I was in land of promises, without relatives, without friends, and almost without money. I wandered about like a deaf and dumb man. My ticket was to Chicago and I started for that city, but by some mistake by the railroad people I was sent astray. [At last reached Chicago, dug graves in Rosehill Cemetery, contracted malaria there.] Now I was in the worst situation I ever have been in my life—sick, and without money and friends, with a two-hundred-riksdaler mortgage on my muscles for my ticket to this country. As in a dream I went up and down the streets in Chicago. Was this the so highly praised America?
At last I left Chicago and went to Pennsylvania,
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where I worked on the railroads for about four years. Then I married a girl from my own home country. She had a little money and I had saved some, so we bought a small place of 20 acres, which we started to work up, bought three cows, one horse, and some farm implements. We kept this place for two years, when we sold it and bought another of 120 acres for $1,000. I sold 50 acres of this and that made us free from debt. Now we worked on this farm for a couple of years, when a sawmill in our neighborhood was offered for sale and we bought it for $2,000. Now I sawed timber both for myself and others, so within two years I had paid for the mill, but then it burned down and I had no insurance. I built up the mill immediately and started to saw again. Now I started to buy larger and smaller pieces of wood-land and all went well. I sold my old place, bought a bigger and better one, started a country store, bought building lots in the cities, and started to build houses in Youngsville and Jamestown, New York. To-day I have 300 acres of land, a good farm, a good sawmill with planing machinery; two stores, eight city houses, and ten lessees, who pay me $900 a year. In the meantime I have brought up eight children, some of whom are married now. I am taxed about as follows: my farm, $3,000; wood-lands, $2,500; sawmill, with accessories, $3,000; horses, other cattle, and farm implements, $1,500; timber on land, $3,000; city property in Youngsville, $10,000; in Jamestown, $2,500. If I had. remained in Sweden I should probably be a hired man, or at most a dependent farmer.[2]
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63. [Born on a small farm in Saxony, worked from fourteen to eighteen hours a day. Had a small inheritance. Started a small business and lost everything.] I longed all the time for my first profession, farming; but there was no prospect at all to become independent, because one acre of good land costed from $400 to $500. It happened occasionally at that time I saw some papers and pamphlets, printed in America, the contents of which were quite inviting for emigrants. The prospects were painted in the brightest colors. . . . Finally we decided if three quarters of the reports we read in those papers and pamphlets were exaggerated and only one quarter the truth, still the prospect would be inviting. So we resolved to emigrate. We thought it advisable I should go alone first and look around somewhat... . [Bought farm at Eau Claire, Wisconsin, returned to Germany and brought back wife and four children.]
By and by I found out my place was a so-called "run-out farm." The former owner worked in the winter time in the logging camps where he earned cash wages and took to farming only as a side line. On the 120 acres available land, only about 50 were under cultivation. He raised everything, but preferred crops with the least work—wheat, oats, and timothy hay; that meant stuff he could sell any time. The worst of it was he did not care to give the land anything back and so finally the land refused to give continually good crops. In fact, at the time I started on that farm, some crops did not yield the seed back. My harvests were the poorest among the poor in the whole neighborhood. In those circumstances I got aware not even that quarter of the fine reports I had read in Germany was true.
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But what could be done? I was here and could not go back. I was not discouraged, but I had to change the method of farming here to that I had followed in Germany, where I had worked land valued up to $500, paid the interest, and laid some-thing by for "rainy days." Of course it took years before I was acquainted with the different kinds of soils I had on my farm, but finally I had the best success. After years of intensive farming, no other farmer was able to beat me in the yield of any crop per acre. I tried my best to inform my neighbors how they could improve their crops, but when I found out my advice was not wanted I had to let them alone; but I had the satisfaction, when they could not help to see my success, to see one after the other to accept some of my methods. I got acquaint with smart (!) business men in the cities who told me the same thing as those reports in the papers and pamphlets I mentioned above, that it would be entirely superfluous to bother oneself with the learning of the English language, because I could sell everything I had for sale to them, and also everything I needed to buy, I could have from them. For years I was foolisch enough to believe that, but meanwhile I took the chance to join my children in their studies in their Englisch schoolbooks and from that time I had better success in selling my stuff. I acquired private customers, received cash, and was able to buy only what I needed, and was not compelled to take goods which I did not need, but had to take in order to balance my bill of trade in the store.
By and by I noted the condition of my pocketbook and my bank account constantly improved in spite of the very low prices I received for my goods. For instance, I had to sell for years most of my eggs three
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dozen for a quarter, and a pound of butter from ten. to fifteen cents. All other products in same proportion. I got aware there was no chance to getting rich on the farm, but working hard with my good wife and obedient children—was able to meet my obligations and knew I was on the road of progress. Of course our personal living was fine, and when I corresponded with relations and friends in Germany. I truthfully stated I live in a country "where milk and honey flows."
Right here I make the statement that I am convinced the main reason for my success consisted in the fact that I kept correct accounts about all my affairs. This enabled me to decide the best crops adapted to my soil, the best for the market, the best live stock, etc. In short, it gave me the most reliable information of everything pertaining to the management of my farm. I have started with those records already in the year 1866 and keep it up until to-day. There is no guesswork in all my affairs. I am able to give the minutely accounts of everything pertaining my farming and also about my household.
After I had been here over five years, one day two of my neighbors came to me (both Frenchmen) and asked if I intended to stay. "Why! sure," I said. "Would it not be foolish otherwise to spend my time and money on this farm?" "Very well, then, it is time to do your duty and make application for citizenship and take part in the public and political life of this country." I was quite perplex, it never occurred to me to have any duties besides to run my farm and pay my taxes. Knowing my neighbors. to be very honest and explicit men, I followed them to the clerk of the court where they acted as lay spokesmen. I received my first paper and took now
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active part in the several elections and other kind of public affairs. After a few years more I received my paper as a ful-fledged citizen. In short succession my neighbors elected me as road commissioner, as a member of the school board, and a member of the town board. Finaly they elected me to the office of town clerk. That was now quite hard for me. My English was hardly sufficient to converse with my neighbors about the most common things, much less sufficient to fill that office. As I had no spare time, I had to spend many nights in studying the English language, and I tell you it was hard work, because I was already an old boy of fifty-five. I was re-elected to that office for five years and mostly unanimously, so I have good reason to believe I did my duty. . . . I am now seventy-one.
It is now thirty-one years I live in this country and have never repented to come here. I correspendet much with parties of Germany, and in my answers I never failed to emphasize the importance for every newcomer to learn the English language as soon as possible. Other correspondents might be correct by saying it is not absolute necessary, but I say it is very beneficial and therefore highly important to understand the official language.
This is a short biography of my existence, and I am astonished to note what a long story it is. I am afraid you will feel very tiresome by reading it, therefore I repeat if it is not what you want, drop it in the waste basket and no harm done. At the other hand if it proves to be what you expect from your correspondence, then I inform you I could be much more in detail if you will have the kindness to name the particulars you want me to answer.
Please excuse my still very faulty English and the
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many errors in the foregoing. It is not long since I learned to use the typewriter in order to avoid the cramps in my hand by the use of the pen.[3]
The settlers described above are of the pioneer type. In addition, the political refugee and the fugitive from justice may have the psychology of the settler, or, as we shall note presently, they may belong to other categories :
64. [Father] had scarcely ever known what it meant to be free from anxiety. First, from early childhood it was the fear of the army where he would be compelled to violate the laws against God, "Thou shalt not kill," and the fear for the blind and helpless mother he would have to leave behind. In this fear he grew up to manhood. And then with blood money, borrowed and saved on bread and his mother's tears, he bought a false name. Then his life was in constant fear of human beings, often in fear of his own shadow. Then being found out, and all seeming lost, his escape to America, then the struggle of a stranger in a strange land, which led to only a hand-to-mouth existence, without any change, without hope of change.[4]
65. I have been already ten years in this blessed country, where there are no passports.
I am doing honest labor as a machinist's assistant. In Russia I was a plain criminal. Yes, a criminal. I am openly saying so, for that was in my far-away past. And it seems to me that I am speaking not of myself, but of another unfortunate man, whom
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circumstances made a thief and a forger. . . . I knew well what the criminal prison means . . America accepted me as I was. America gave me a chance to stand on my own feet. I was taken in with my shameful past, as if I were equal to the best. And I have repaid America with respect that only death itself can take away from my heart.
Excuse me for not signing my name. My Russian name I have, indeed, thrown out together with my Russian past, and as to my American name it is a clean one, and is not guilty for the past of the one who carries it.
A SON OF THE DON.[5]
THE COLONIST
We may distinguish two general types of success, according to the standard in the mind of the individual. The one is associated with an extraordinary gratification of the wishes, or of some of them—for example, the "will to power "—the other with their limitation. The small shopkeeper may be as successful in his way as a Napoleon, because his wishes are limited. The typical settler has been accustomed to a severe limitation of the wishes in the home country and relative hardship here is considered success. But in the first generation of immigrants this success is never felt as complete. The economic success may be complete, from any standpoint, but there
( 93) are sentimental losses. In the Swedish volume containing document 62 above, there are 128 short life histories of immigrants, and the most general attitude in them is: "I have been successful. I have property. My children have superior advantages. But I have lost my life." This means, of course, not only that the writer has had a hard time here, suffered sentimental losses, but that he has regretful memories of home conditions, of occasional leisure and festivities, of joys and sorrows shared by an intimate group.
We define the colonist as one in whom these memories of home are, from our stand-point, "over determined" (to use the psycho-analytic phrase) : one who never forgets nor wishes to forget, whose allegiance is to the home country, whose superior values are the home values. The English are historically great colonizers, and they furnish good representatives of this type in America. The German is also likely to show the colonist's attitude, and the same is true of the French, and of any people who have an eminent position among the nationalities. Their representative feels something akin to the pride in family. These are often very fine types, but the old loyalty yields stubbornly to the new, and the subject is usually careful to let you know that he is
( 94) contributing more to America than America is contributing to him:
66. Major Ian Hay Beith, in his delightful little essay entitled "Getting Together," gives some advice to an Englishman as to what he should remember in conversing with an American, and to an American as to what he must bear in mind in talking with an Englishman. To the Englishman, he says: "Remember you are talking to a man who regards his nation as the greatest nation in the world. He will probably tell you this." To the American, he says: "Remember you are talking to a man who regards his nation as the greatest in the world. He will not tell you this, because he takes it for granted that you know already." .. .
[One contribution which an Englishman is able to make to America] is the historic memory which British birth and education give to a man. He inevitably escapes the shallowness of a retrospect that is bounded by 1776 or 1619, or even by 1492. . . .[Another] contribution which every immigrant can bring to America consists in the positive good which he has derived from the civilization of his native country. It is at this point that one may seem to be setting 'oneself up, in a ludicrously pharisaic fashion, as an example. I must therefore beg the reader to understand that ... I am thinking not of what I am, but of what any Englishman ought to be.[6]
67. We did not enter the American nation as a banished or persecuted race, seeking aid and protection, but as part of this nation, with equal rights, and as part of a noble people which for more than two hundred years has found a second home here
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and, in common with the kindred Anglo-Saxon race, had founded and developed this state. . . .We protest most energetically [against the ideal of the "melting-pot "] not only because we regard this uniformity as equivalent to the destruction of all that we regard as the holiest part of our people and its culture, but because the undertaking itself appears to the German spirit as repulsive as a desecration.[7]
68. Emerging from the colony is one pole of the dreams [of the Hungarian-American leaders]. The other is recognition in and by the old country; the desire to attain status, to show that they have made good. In pre-war times this desire, always very vague, crystallized mainly around the hope of a governmental recognition of some sort or other, perhaps a knighthood of the Order of Francis Joseph, or some similar decoration [8]
69. The Sixty-ninth Street group is the central group of the Sicilians who come from the village of Cinisi, and those who remain in this group intend to return to Cinisi; in fact, most of those who are in New York intend to return. Those in the interior cities do not have this intention. My cousin from New Orleans remarked about this fact—namely, that those in New Orleans are settled and never talk of Cinisi, while here he was surprised to hear them constantly talking of the home town.
The reason for this is evident. Here they are nearest to Cinisi. Here they receive letters and talk to the new arrivals. All those who return from Detroit, Chicago, or anywhere else, pass New York and this reminds them.
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In this way the town of Cinisi is always in their minds.[9]
70. The intellectual atmosphere prevailing in Polish-American circles is purely and exclusively Polish. In every home the conversation runs on Polish topics, the library is full of Polish books, pictures reproduce Polish paintings, Polish music is played, Polish dishes served. I heard a lady of this circle pride herself on the fact that when a prominent Pole from Cracow, who had just come to this country, visited her (she lived then in California with her husband, in a purely American town), she could talk with him about the latest literary and artistic events in Cracow, and he felt in their home as if he had never left Poland. At this moment, I have not met a single person belonging to this circle who did not talk about returning home in the near future; some have been here for fifteen years. At the same time, every one hastens to prepare some American values which he thinks may be useful in Poland. One studies American economics, another American legislation, a third some special line of industry, a fourth the American newspaper technic. There is one who is organizing an entire factory, on the co-operative basis, and expects to transfer it to Poland—machinery, capital, workmen, and all.[10]
THE POLITICAL IDEALIST
Members of the "oppressed and dependent" nationalities of Europe bring to Amer-
( 97) -ica forms of the Freudian "baffled wish" and of the "inferiority complex." They are obsessed by the idea of the inferior status of their group at home, and wish to be a nationality among other nationalities. Their organizations here seek to make America a recruiting ground for the battle in Europe. Consequently they wish first of all to save their members from Americanization, to send them home with unspoiled loyalty, or to keep them a permanent patriotic asset working here for the cause at home. They regard America as merely the instrument of their nationalistic wishes. Their leaders wish also to get recognition at home for their patriotic activities here, and superior status on their return. They speak of the penetration of America by their own culture. Thus the Poles, the most ambitious of them, call the Polish-American community the "fourth division of Poland," and refer to the whole body of Poles in America as "Polonia Americana." At the same time the material position of the leaders of these groups—the editors, bankers, priests—depends on keeping the group un-American. We find that the aims of these nationalists are often more explicitly and naïvely stated in communications sent to Europe than in their American publications.
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71. This great current of [Lithuanian] emigration would have been lost for the Lithuanian national cause, would have been submerged in the ocean of a great foreign nationality, if some great patriots had not succeeded in organizing it and rendering it refractory to assimilation by forming it into groups and associations, by teaching it the maternal language, by creating parishes, schools, and Lithuanian newspapers, by the development of pride of race, respect for the traditions and customs of its ancestors, and above all the love of native land.[11]
72. The most powerful bond which unites emigrants of the same nationality in a strange country is constituted by religion and the church. Pious people like the Poles, the Slovaks, the Lithuanians, etc., carry with them their profound religious sentiments. In their churches they feel at home; the church is for them a corner of their distant country. Thus in America religion is the most powerful source of resistance to Americanization, to assimilation.[12]
73. The task of the intellectual Ruthenians will be the easier since many Ruthenians live in America and after having amassed a certain sum return to their country. What is not permitted in the country of the crown of Saint-Etrienne is permitted in the free land of Washington. If the Ruthenian national idea is firmly planted in America it will extend to Hungary.[13]
74. The ultimate meaning of all activities [of the Alliance of Polish Socialists] is connected with the
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future of Poland, not of America, and the political and social interests of its members are concentrated mostly around the question of returning to Poland and helping to organize Poland. . . They have resigned all hope of playing a political role in this country, as a party, and consider their organization as a training school and a center of future influence.
... Any characterization of Polish life in this country which can be written at this moment is in a large measure "mere history," as a prominent Chicago Pole (Zaleski) expressed it. The war and the consequent liberation of Poland is bound to bring a radical change of the entire direction of evolution of the Polish-American society. The patriotic exaltation produced by Poland's oppression, by all the preparations for national struggle, by the expectation of Poland's freedom, will decrease very soon among those who decide to stay in this country; there will no longer be the feeling of duty to preserve Polish ideals intact, no feeling of guilt will be connected with Americanization.[14]
Another group of political idealists, embittered against the social order represented by the state and by private property, perhaps disgusted with humanity, are the propagandists of some revolutionary scheme—bolshevism, anarchy, communism—for the redistribution of values. They continue in this country a struggle against organized `society which they had been carrying on at
( 100) home. They bring here and exploit grievances and psychoses acquired under totally different conditions. We are sufficiently familiar with the type:
75. I hated the rich because they are murderers, and the poor because they would become such if they had the opportunity.[15]
76. . . . We must mercilessly destroy all the remains of governmental authority and class domination . . . all legal papers pertaining to private ownership of property, all field fences and boundaries, and burn all certificates of indebtedness—in a word, we must take care that everything is wiped from the earth that is a reminder of the right to private owner-ship of property... [16]
76a. The bourgeois is useless and the government is unnecessary for the development of the commercial and industrial life of the people. . . . It is better to die, and if we are going to die . . . why don't we seek those who are responsible for such disorders and iniquities and execute them? [17]
77 . . . We have nothing against the blindness of the bourgeoisie and expect nothing else from them. Because the bourgeoisie, which includes lawyers, priests, physicians, writers, merchants, etc., have the same habit as a prostitute; she sells herself to the one who pays more money. . . .[18]
78. We will strive for a revolution and we will
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carry it through to the end, until every remembrance. of you shall be obliterated.[19]
79. The real cause [of the war] was the. same damned trinity—rights [law], ownership, and. state [rule]. . . . Down with rights! Down with ownership! Down with the state! Let this be the death of this three-headed monster. Long live anarchism! In anarchy humanity will find happiness and eternal well-being.[20]
80 . . . Will you be meek and slavish? Will you wallow under the iron heel of your masters? Or will you tear your way by the revolution to a better and happier life? . . THE ALLRIGHTNICK [21]
This term is one which the Jews of the New York East Side apply to successful members of their race who have found a comfortable berth outside of the Jewish community and within the cosmopolitan group of the "Americanized" Americans. There are, however, other and deeper implications in the term. Here it is used to characterize an opportunistic type which is not peculiar to the Jewish race—namely, the individual who realizes a very natural ambition to gain. access to and some sort of recognition, or
( 102) at least toleration, in the native American community, or what passes for it, but who does so at the sacrifice of the ideals of his own national and family group. In the case of the Jew, the allrightnick may simply be a man who has been a socialist, who has gone into business and become a bourgeois. The mental type is a familiar one, found wherever the transition is made from one cultural group to another, as in the case of the missionary convert.
81. . . . The poor Jew whom I now scrutinized more closely wore an old shabby coat, an old cap, his hands were black from dust and cold. And his face—what a face! Pale, bony, wrinkled. In each wrinkle there was compassion. And this Jew who sells cookies on the street has three sons and a daughter—all fairly prosperous!
"How is it possible?" slipped off my tongue.
"You mean, of course, why I am not living with them? . . . I did not want to live with them. You understand, I cannot live among machines. I am a live man and have a soul, despite my age. They are machines. They work all day and come home at night. What do they do? Nothing. Wait for supper. During supper they talk about everything in the world—friends, clothes, money, wages, and all sorts of gossip. After supper they dress up and go out. Where to? Either the theater, banquet, or movie. Or else their friends call and they drink, eat, and play cards; or they start the machine and it, plays and they dance. The next day again to work and so on for the rest of their life. . . . They have
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all been to school—educated people; but just try, for the fun of it, and ask them if they ever read a book. Not on your life. Books have nothing in common with them; Judaism has nothing in common with them; Jewish troubles have nothing in common with them; the whole world has nothing in common with them. They only know one thing—work, eat, and. away to the theater. How can they do this? I am asking you; how can one lead a life like that?" And in his voice there was a deep anger... .
His voice grew louder and became very angry. "And I —I cannot live like that. I am no machine. I like to think, I like to be in good mood, I want to talk to people, I want to get an answer to my questions. When I live among shoemakers I know that the shoemaker is a blind man; but when I live among educated people, then I expect them to be Menschen.
" When I first came here I used to speak and argue with them. But they did not understand me. They would ask: `Why this and that? This country is not Russia. Here everybody does as he likes.'
" Gradually I realized that they were machines. They make money and live for
that purpose. When I grasped this situation a terror possessed me and I did not
believe these were my children. I could not stand it to be there; I was being
choked; I could not tolerate their behavior and I went away. ..."[22]
THE CAFFONE
The Italians in America apply the term caffone (literary, "simpleton") to a man of their nationality who has the least possible
( 104) association with any group, has no regard for opinion, wears, for example, the same clothes (luring his whole stay in America, avoids all conversation, ignores his surroundings, and accumulates the sum of money he has in mind as rapidly as possible. We use the term here to designate the pure opportunist, who is unwilling to participate either in the American life or in that of his national group :
82. The caffoni, who were in Sicily mostly villani [serfs], are looked down upon by their own people and' especially by that class of Italians who want to stay here and who feel injured whenever the Italian name is hurt. To this superior class a good name for the Italians is a requisite of their progress. The caffoni don't care. All they want is to make money and go back. So we often see the superior class preaching and speaking to the caffoni in meetings, in groups and individually, persuading them to uphold the Italian name. The caffoni listen, but then they shrug their shoulders and it is all over. "It does not give me any bread whether Italians have a good name in America or not. I, am going back soon." [23]
THE INTELLECTUAL
Our documents show that the "educated" immigrant is usually more misadapted to American society than the workman. He
( 105) does not, unless he is a technician (chemist, engineer), bring a commodity which we want to buy (as does the laborer), and he must usually make such a place as he can among his fellow immigrants. Document 83 shows the situation of the intelligentsia of one group :
83. The characteristic note of the corporate life of Hungarian-America intellectuals is one of utter hopelessness, born of the consciousness of isolation, both from the main currents of American and of old country life, and of the realization of the doom hanging over the American-Hungarian community. This is the paradox of the immigrant colony—that it is constantly losing its best element, which manifests its superiority just by being able to detach itself and. to merge into the larger American life. . . . There are new "movements" every now and then to "organize" American Hungariandom [" amerikai magyarsag," a collective term like Deutschtum]. The conscious or avowed purposes of these movements vary; their common unconscious element is to make a showing of some sort, to prove [for themselves] that there is such a thing as a Hungarian-American culture and a Hungarian-American future; but these movements invariably collapse or die of sheer inertia. The Hungarian-American socialist press is wont to attack. these movements as mere attempts at organized graft, and undoubtedly there is an element among the "leaders" which is trying to exploit these campaigns for personal gain. Nevertheless,-it is plain that there is some moral purpose behind them—factors ranging from personal vanity and craving
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for prestige to a genuine, though vague, yearning for spiritual achievement. Hungarian-American intellectuals are obsessed by a peculiar megalomania centering about the "mission" and greatness of "Hungarian-Americandom." Nobody ever tried to define what this mission is, but it is constantly spoken of. This megalomania seems to be the converted expression of a manifold inferiority complex—the resultant, perhaps, of the following complexes: (1) The "oppressed race" complex. Magyar chauvinism is just the result of a feeling of inferiority as compared to Austria, of playing the second fiddle within the monarchy, of the fear of being classed by Europeans as a Balkan race. (2) The inferiority complex of the immigrant, the "hunky."(3) The individual inferiority complexes of men who have proved failures at home.
These movements—I am almost tempted to say revivals—are bound to fail chiefly for three reasons: (1) The absence of a clearly defined program, of a nonfictitious moral purpose; (2) the fatal Magyar tendency to dissent, similar to the Polish national disease [in Hungary they call it the "Turanian curse"], unwillingness to self-renunciation and co-ordinated effort; (3) the sameness of the personnel. This last-named is the peculiarly Hungarian-American factor. In the old country there are always reserves to draw upon, there is "fresh blood"; here, especially since the war, it is always the same few dozens of people, in different groupings and alignments, but the same individuals. I aroused against myself the Hungarian intellectuals of Cleveland by saying that Hungarian-American society reminds me of a bunch of gamblers marooned on a desert island and engaged in a desperate, endless game—each trying to live on
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his winnings from the rest, but nobody producing new values.[24]
There is a type of intellectual, the product of a superior and systematic training, who comes rarely but who can contribute particular values to the culture of any nationality. Now, modern progress evidently depends in part on communication in space, on the ability to assemble from all parts of the world values which happen to exist there. Economic efficiency, for example, does not reject any value because it is foreign. But it appears that of all the immigrants who come we are least prepared to receive the foreign intellectual, who is at the same time the type of immigrant best fitted to make a cultural contribution.
Very often the intellectual who comes here has been a failure at home or is a pre-destined failure anywhere, but will nevertheless attribute his failure here to America's inability to appreciate him. But document 84 is from a really superior man. In addition to the criticism of America, it reveals the psychology of the Polish intellectual:
84. I was positively influenced in America by the democratic idea, revised my former contempt for
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economic considerations, learned to appreciate the social idealism, the active interest in other people's welfare, the willingness to make a sacrifice for a humanitarian cause oftener met here than in any European society except the Polish—and the free, direct, and sincere attitude toward phenomena which characterizes the good American worker.] In other lines, however, I have hardly come any nearer to American life. Two reasons prevented my "Americanization" in the deeper sense of the term; the divergencies which I began to discover after a longer stay in this country between most of the aspirations actually predominant in American society and certain ideals which, in my cosmopolitan training, I have learned to revere as the best part of the general human civilization, independent of national differences; and—more particularly—the attitude of American society toward foreigners and foreign values... .
[Among other things] there is the lack of social freedom, the oppression of the individual by all kinds of traditional or recently created social norms. I have not seen in Europe anything comparable to it except, perhaps, in small and very isolated provincial towns. Since I am not politically active, this social tyranny affects me much more than any amount of political despotism could do, particularly as it extends to the intellectual domain. I feel more bound in the expression of my opinions here than I felt under Russian censorship in Warsaw, in spite of the fact that I am not in the slightest measure inclined toward political, social, moral, or religious revolutionism of any kind, and was considered in Europe, even by the most radical conservatists, a perfectly "inoffensive," mildly progressive intellectualist... .
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And yet, I am sincerely interested in America—but in the future rather than in the present America. I could work with real enthusiasm for the progress of American culture in the intellectual line, in which I can be most efficient and in which progress seems most needed; I am sure that I could be really useful to this country, produce some really important cultural values. But my incipient enthusiasm for American cultural development never has any chance to mature, because I realize at every moment that American society does not feel any need of my or any other "foreigner's" co-operation, is in general perfectly satisfied with itself, and perfectly able to manage its own future in accordance with its own desires, to create all the values it wants without having any "imported" values "thrust upon it." In analyzing the evolution of my attitudes toward this country, it seems to me that much of my growing criticism and dissatisfaction with American conditions has been due to the gradual realization of this self-complacency of American society. . . . In France, in Germany, in Italy, in Poland, this attitude manifests itself toward other national groups, but not toward individual foreigners when they come to live and work in the country. On the contrary, I have experienced myself, during my travels abroad, and I have seen manifested toward incomers in Poland (unless they were members of the oppressing nation) an attitude which I may call "intellectual hospitality," a tendency to learn, to appreciate, and to utilize whatever values the foreigner may bring with him, unless, of course, he brings nothing but unskilled labor. No European society I know acts as if it possessed and knew everything worth while and had nothing to learn, whereas this is precisely the way
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American society acts toward a foreigner as soon as he ceases to play the role of a passing "curiosity" and wants to take an active part in American life. I do not think most Americans realize how revolting to a more or less educated immigrant is their naïve attitude of superiority, their astonishing self-satisfaction, their inability and unwillingness to look on anything foreign as worth being understood and assimilated. This may work with the peasant who is used in the old country to attitudes of superiority on the part of the higher class, is desirous of imitating them, and finds in this country exactly the same atmosphere, only connected with an unknown language and unknown institution which make real imitation more difficult. But I believe, judging even less by my own experience than by the confidences of others, that the unanimously critical standpoint taken toward this county by all, even if only half educated and socially dependent, immigrants and their universal attachment to and idealization of the "old country" values, are provoked by this "lording it over" the immigrant, his traditions, his ideals, by this implicit or explicit assumption that Americanization necessarily means progress, that the immigrant should simply leave all he brought with him as worthless stuff—worthless, at least, for this country—and instead of trying to introduce the most valuable elements of his culture into American life and select the most valuable elements of Americanism for himself, should merely accept everything American just as it is.
In the same line, and perhaps even more revolting for the reflecting foreigner who comes with the idea of working and settling in this country, is the current tendency of American society to interpret the rela-
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-tion between the immigrant and America as that of one-sided benefit and one-sided obligation. This is again an attitude which I have never met in Europe, though European countries are incomparably more crowded than America... .
I may have overlooked some important elements of American civilization, but this does not seem to be the main point. No individual can assimilate all the values of a modern civilized society, and I know many Americans for whom American civilization contains and means much less than it does for me. And there is no such thing as an unbiased view of life; the only question is whether a certain bias is due to an uncritical acceptance of locally and temporarily limited social traditions which have no positive significance for general human progress, or to a critical, even if, perhaps, too exclusive, appreciation of certain values reflectively selected from the whole stock of human culture and constituting an important, even if not necessarily the most important, component of every civilization, in all epochs and all societies. Now, my personal bias is certainly no longer a class bias. If there are any specific class attitudes persisting subconsciously in my personality —and I do not think there are—they have nothing to do with the actual problem of my adaptation to American conditions. Nor is my bias in any particular way national. However great may have been the role which Polish national ideals have played in my life, my psychology seems to me less specifically national, contains less particularly racial elements, than that of any individual, Pole, Frenchman, Italian, German, Russian, American, I have ever met. . . . I have, at various times, actively participated in the intellectual life of three different societies
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besides my own—French, Swiss, and American—using in each case a different language, needing each time only a few months of preparation, and mixing intimately with the respective groups. This fact seems to me a sufficient proof of the lack, on my side, of any racial obstacles to my adaptation. My bias, is, if anything, a professional bias. I certainly have unexalted conception of the function which the scientific profession can and should fulfill in human society—one which entitles it to demand that minimum of favorable social conditions which is absolutely indispensable for intellectual productivity. I also believe that all scientists have an obligation to maintain certain professional ideals, the most important of which are continual perfecting of the standards of theoretic validity in so far as compatible with intellectual efficiency on the given stage of , human development; disinterestedness of theoretic pursuit, the only personal reward which the scientist has the right to expect being recognition based exclusively on the objective importance and intrinsic perfection of his work and therefore necessarily slow to come and limited to the most intellectual part of society; freedom of mind and sincerity of expression; enthusiasm for scientific work and for the development of human knowledge in general; and, finally, "true brotherhood" of all scientific workers in the domain of science, manifested in reciprocal interest, serious and thorough criticism, deserved appreciation, encouragement and help in intellectual pursuits. And all this is independent of differences of class, race, religion, etc., which may divide scientists as social individuals, as members of concrete groups, in other fields of cultural life.[24]
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85. .. I was naturally deeply interested in the Polish writer's analysis [document 84 above] of phenomena with which I, too, find myself confronted, and on the whole I was inclined to accept his conclusions. . . . I felt, however, that he would have strengthened his case—the case of the European intellectual against intellectual America—by presenting, simultaneously, the case against himself. It is true that European intellectuals are invariably dissatisfied with American life; much of the bitterness with which they criticize American conditions is doubtless justified. But in the interest of fair play the question, "What's the matter with intellectual America?" ought to be supplemented with this other one, "What's the matter with the European intellectual in America?" This implies what the Polish writer has neglected—an analysis of the analyzer.
First among the sources of discontent with which the European intellectual confronts American life is the lowering of his status. . . . An attempt to fix his own place on the social ladder will lead him to the realization that he was better off in aristocratic Europe than in democratic America. For in Europe he belonged—if he achieved any recognition at all—to the upper middle class. Even a moderate degree of literary or artistic eminence secured him admission to the most interesting quarter of a society where money, however important, was never the sole criterion of gentility. In all European capitals there are certain centres of social intercourse where members of the three aristocracies of birth, riches, and intellect meet in a congenial atmosphere and on a basis of full equality... .
The European intellectual will then turn to an analysis of his economic status and will find it worse
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than it was in pre-war Europe. Probably he made much less money in dollars and cents, even at the old rate of exchange; but his smaller income insured to him a higher place in the social hierarchy and a much greater amount of comfort. . . . The Sunday afternoon spectacle of thousands upon thousands of automobiles, filled with festive families bound nowhere in particular and beaming with the happiness of dreams come true, serves chiefly to impress him with the meaning of the American slang phrase, "all dressed up and no place to go."
Europe was different. The things he craves for, books, engravings, theatre and concert tickets, good clothes, good home-furnishings, were comparatively much cheaper there. Above all, travel was much cheaper. The fare from Vienna to London, from Budapest to Stockholm, was less than from New York to Cleveland; and why go to Cleveland, anyhow? A Vienna journalist, a Cracow college professor, a Budapest art critic, not the leaders of their profession, just good average, could go for a month's vacation to Switzerland or Belgium or a Baltic resort or Florence, live well, and spend less than at home. For the same class of person in America that sort of thing is about as feasible as spending the week end in the moon. In a word, in America, where he has to work much harder and makes more money, the European intellectual will find that this income leaves him socially an outcast and qualifies him for less substantial material comfort than is enjoyed by his grocer.
One has to be a thoroughbred continental to appreciate another factor which, to an untraveled American, may seem utterly trivial. I mean the absence of the continental type of café. . . . The literary café
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of the continental capital is a place where men of similar tastes and interests may drop in, without any formality, at teatime and after supper, and be sure of finding congenial company, brilliant repartee, interesting gossip, or substantial shop talk, according to what he seeks. . . . The brilliancy of surroundings, the presence of beautiful and well-dressed women, the possibility of meeting new people, often important foreigners—these elements all converge to create an atmosphere of an extraordinarily stimulating character. There is nothing in American life that even remotely corresponds to this stimulus, and the life of literary cafés is missed by the continental intellectual as a drug is missed by its habitué.
But the absence of these easily accessible, standardized meeting places of intellectuals, open to all who have the price of a demitasse, has another, still subtler effect. For the intellectual, constant inter-course with his equals acts not only as a stimulus, but also as a check. It is written that it is not good for a man to be alone. Rubbing up against his compeers is as necessary for the intellectual as gnawing at hard substances is necessary for a squirrel's teeth. Isolation for him results in a sickly over-estimation of his importance, a hypertrophied sensitiveness and that notion of omnipotence which comes from the absence of tests. A constant reiteration of "Hic Rhodus, hic Salta" is a good cure against intellectual megalomania; but for the European litterateur American is not Rhodes. Just as the lack of academic standards favors an individualism that frequently is mere crankiness, the lack of intellectual give-and-take may result in an elephantiasis of self-consciousness... .
Here, then, we have the elements of a state of mind
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which inevitably expresses itself in overestimation of self and underestimation of surroundings. The conditions analyzed do not necessarily imply that American culture is inferior to European; but they do determine a feeling in the European intellectual that American life is less exciting, less stimulating, less interesting, less worth while....Out of this maze of factors—the lowering of economic and social status, lack of habitual and easy contact with one's peers, absence of the stimuli of metropolitan life, difficulties of everyday technique, struggle for self-expression through an unyielding idiom, etc.—rises a state of mind for which American conditions are responsible without necessarily being at fault. The characteristic tendency of this mentality is to make "America" a symbol of one's own failures and unfulfilled desires.
The pivot around which this psychology turns is the Canaan-complex--that perennial yearning for the land where everything will be what it is not; the longing for the tabula rasa, for the new start. The fuller, the more differentiated the life the European intellectual leaves behind when he comes to America the more probably will he discern the mistakes of that life, and the more certainly will he wish to arrange matters differently in the "new world." The intellectuals of the generation that attained maturity on the eve of the war were afflicted with the disease of aesthetic inertia—Stimmungsanarchie, a clever German critic called it. For many who diagnosed the trouble America stood as the symbol of success and energy. What a man of this type expected from America was not political democracy, not even equal economic opportunity—he knew enough of America to discount these catchwords;
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but he hoped for a new milieu, free from the sophistications, the noblesse oblige, the hothouse atmosphere of the old world. What he expected, in brief, was the rebirth of personality in and by America. Now the one thing the European intellectual is certain to discover in America is that crossing the ocean does not change a man; that a personality may develop, expand, differentiate by the experience of America, but it will not be reborn. Disappointment in America is determined by the act of embarking for it; arrival reveals the Promised Land as a delusion; the symbol of new life turns into the symbol of discrepancy between dream and reality.
But this disappointment is merely the negative side of a rising new hope; the image of Canaan fades out before the vision of the Golden Age. To the disenchanted, intellectual Europe emerges in a roseate mist of dreams and expectation. That Europe, however, is not the actual Europe, not even pre-war Europe; it is merely a reversed America. Whatever one fails to find here is idealized into what was left behind. For the central fact of the European intellectual's discontent in America is the disparity of his bases of comparison. He contrasts, not America with Europe, but a nightmare of American reality with a non-existent Eldorado which he calls Europe —the Cosmopolis built with the brick of memory and the mortar of hope.
By insisting that criticism of American cultural conditions by European intellectuals be discounted along the suggested lines, I do not mean to belittle the value of such criticism. On the contrary, I believe that its very real and distinctive merit is brought into relief when due allowance has been made for the subjective element in it, the inevitable
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tendency of the critic unconsciously to paraphrase his experience from
the category pleasant-unpleasant into the category superior-inferior, to
rationalize personal likes and dislikes into absolute standards of value. I
believe that the European intellectual not only exercises a right, but
discharges a very substantial duty by applying his native standards to a
fearless examination of American culture. He may be prone to exaggerate the
value of his contribution, and to expect special regard and compensation from a
public none too appreciative of intellectual achievement at the best; he may
even develop—as did the anonymous Polish author—a redeemer-complex and establish
a fixed relation between the recognition meted out to him by Americans and the
salvation of the American soul. But this tendency is merely the counterpart of
the no less unreasonable assumption of native Americans that foreigners owe a
special debt of gratitude to this country for opportunities accorded, as if
Americans admitted foreigners and provided them with jobs because they love
them, and not because they need them. By helping to pierce the aes triplex
of American self-complacency and to battle that intolerance
of dissent and that glorification of buncombe which are the greatest
intellectual dangers of America the educated European may perform a very real
service, but he must not forget that his contribution to the growth of American
culture is measured by the growth of his own personality.[26]
