Great Britain -- Emigration and immigration; Noncitizens -- Great Britain
It must not be supposed, however, that these men remain always in this
position. When they have learned to speak the language and to know
their way about, they will make better terms for themselves. By degrees
they gradually get on. After being in the "slosher's" shop for six or
eight months, they learn sufficient to enable them to go into the boot
manufactories kept by foreigners, and to apply for work to take out in
large quantities. By a process of gradual development, the "greener"
becomes a "slosher" himself, and in the fulness of time he may be seen
walking about the East End, accosting and offering employment to the
first batch of recently-arrived immigrants he sees. More probably he
will meet them at the railway-station and waterside; or if in a more
extensive way of business, he will write to Hamburg to some of the
agencies there, stating that he can find work for so many men. When he
gets them into his clutches he treats them in precisely the same way as
that in which he himself has been treated. Thus does this evil system
go on and flourish.
After a time the foreign Jew begins to accumulate money; and though
he still continues his frugal diet of "Wally-Wally" and "Deütcher,"
he launches forth a little in other ways. The long Russian coat is
discarded, and with it the Hessian boots and fur cap. He bedizens
himself out with a quantity of cheap flashy jewellery, and possibly
goes in for mild theatrical amusements. There is a small theatre in a
certain small court in Whitechapel, where well-known English plays are
acted in "Yiddish." Here may be seen the smart young foreign Jews and
Jewesses, arrayed in all their glory, on every night of the week except
Friday, when the Hebrew Sabbath, which nearly all Hebrews outwardly
respect, commences. He may also perhaps join the "Chovevi Zion"--Hebrew
for "lovers of Zion"--a society which sprang into existence in the
East End of London about twelve months ago; or he may possibly--very
probably--join one of the many little gambling-hells so greatly
affected by the foreign Jew. Worst of all, he may drift into one of
the secret socialistic or foreign revolutionary societies which abound
in that part of the metropolis. That such societies exist cannot be
doubted. They are formed of the class of men who marched to Hyde Park
the other day, with a banner inscribed "Down with the Czar." These
societies have papers of their own circulated among themselves, written
in "Yiddish," breathing the vilest of political sentiments--Nihilism of
the most outrageous description.
Thus whole districts in the East of London are as foreign as in Warsaw,
or the Ghetto--when there was a Ghetto--in Rome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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