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
Frequently I have discovered in the returned immigrant a quickening of
the moral sense, especially among the men who had come in contact with
the better class of American mechanics; and the discovery was as welcome
as unexpected. I saw this emphasized during my trip last year. It was on
a Sunday's journey among the villages of the valley of the Waag.
Picturesque groups were moving along the highway to and from the church
and into the village and out of it. The appearance of my companions and
myself always created a great sensation and never a greater one than on
Sunday when the peasants were at leisure. They took it as a special
privilege to see "genuine Americans," and those who had been over here
were quickly on the scene to air their English and to show their
familiarity with our kind.
It was a reciprocal pleasure; for it seemed like a breath from home to
hear men talk intelligently of Hazleton, Pittsburg, Scranton and
Wilkes-Barre; moreover it gave us a splendid opportunity to test the
effect of our civilization upon them.
In one village a husband with his wife and two children came out of
their isba, and we could easily imagine ourselves at home; for the whole
family looked as if it had just come from a grand bargain sale at one of
our department stores. What seemed most delightful to us was the way in
which the man spoke of his wife, and no American husband could have been
more careful of her than was he; all this in striking contrast to the
peasants to whom the woman is still an inferior being.
In conversation with them, I took the returned immigrant as my subject
and told them something of our own social order as shown in the relation
of husband and wife in America; upon which one of the peasants told a
very ugly and realistic story to illustrate what he thought of women.
Then it was that the unexpected happened. My immigrant friend
blushed--yes, blushed--just as I should expect any well-bred man to
blush under similar circumstances, and said to me: "Don't mind him. He
has a dirty mouth. He may after all have a clean heart."
The man who blushed had been five years in--Pittsburg!
The change brought about through immigration, even in a youth of the
better class, whose character had been spoiled by his early training,
was shown in a young Magyar in Budapest. That city has the unenviable
reputation of being one of the most immoral cities in Europe. The
immorality of the great cities is everywhere very much alike in certain
respects; still it seems to me that a city is more or less immoral, not
according to the size of its tenderloin district, but in how far
immorality has been accepted as the norm of life. In that respect
Budapest is considerably in the lead; for its youth is nourished in an
atmosphere of indolence, false pride and various phases of social
impurity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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