The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and FlowSteiner, Edward Alfred
History
The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow
Steiner, Edward Alfred
United States -- Emigration and immigration
The usual results of such ignorance followed, in that they have been
treated with an injustice which makes them quite unconscious of the fact
that they have found the land of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." I
have verified nearly every complaint which they have made to me, for I
know how easy it is for sensitive men to exaggerate their wrongs; but I
found that they knew only about half of what they suffered, the other
half being mercifully hidden from them by their ignorance of the
language and the customs of our country.
After pay-days and feast-days the magistrates of the towns around seek
them to arrest them, and the fine they must pay is always twice, three
times, and in some cases ten times as great as that imposed upon the
American offenders. After trials which make a Russian military court
seem fairly decent, they are railroaded into jails and workhouses, and I
now soberly confess that as a stranger I would rather fall into the
hands of the police of Moscow or St. Petersburg than into those of the
protectors of the law in most of our industrial centres in Pennsylvania
and out of it.
The citizens of Pennsylvania may be comforted by knowing that Indiana,
Ohio, and Illinois, in their lower courts, are as unjust to the stranger
as their own state. In one town in Ohio there is, or was, a mayor who is
reputed to have made $9,000 a year out of the fines imposed upon
foreigners for petty offenses, usually for drunkenness or brawling.
This ingenious official arrested alien drunkards under the statute of
the state which allowed him to fine them as high as thirty dollars,
while the native was arrested under the statute of the town and fined
three dollars for his spree.
The Indianapolis police arrested a Slovak woman for the heinous crime of
picking up coal on the tracks. On the coldest day of the year she was
taken from her home and children and driven to the workhouse, in spite
of the fact that she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. The terrible
results of this inhuman treatment were, of course, what might be
expected. Such facts have led the citizens to organize an Immigrant
Protection League, which makes it its business to see that the immigrant
is not exploited by the courts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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