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EVIL as the part is which the tenement plays in Jewtown as the pretext for circumventing the law that was made to benefit and relieve the tenant, we have not far to go to find it in even a worse role. If the tenement is here continually dragged into the eye of public condemnation and scorn, it is because in one way or another it is found directly responsible for, or intimately associated with, three-fourths of the miseries of the poor. In the Bohemian quarter it is made the vehicle for enforcing upon-a proud race a slavery as real as any that ever disgraced the South. Not content with simply robbing the tenant, the owner, in the dual capacity of landlord and employer, reduces him to virtual serfdom by making his
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becoming his tenant, on such terms as he sees fit to make, the condition of employment at wages likewise of his own making. It does not help the case that this landlord employer, almost always a Jew, is frequently of the thrifty Polish race just described.
Perhaps the Bohemian quarter is hardly the proper
name to give to the colony, for though it has distinct
boundaries it is scattered over a wide area on the
East Side, in wedge-like streaks that relieve the
monotony of the solid German population by their strong
contrasts. The two races mingle no more on this side
of the Atlantic than on the rugged slopes of the Bohemian
mountains; the echoes of the thirty years' war ring
in New York, after two centuries and a half, with
as fierce a hatred as the gigantic combat bred among
the vanquished Czechs. A chief reason for this is
doubtless the complete isolation of the Bohemian immigrant.
Several causes operate to bring this about: his singularly
harsh and unattractive language, which he can neither
easily himself unlearn nor impart to others, his stubborn
pride of race, and a popular prejudice which has forced
upon him the unjust stigma of a disturber of the public
peace and an enemy of organized labor. I greatly mistrust
that the Bohemian on our shores is a much-abused man.
To his traducer, who casts up anarchism against him,
he replies that the last census (1880) shows his people
to have the fewest criminals of all in proportion
to numbers. In New York a Bohemian criminal is such
a rarity that the case of two firebugs of several
years ago is remembered with damaging distinctness.
The accusation that he lives like the "rat"
he is, cutting down wages by his underpaid labor,
he throws back in the teeth of the trades unions with
the counter-charge that they are the first cause of
his attitude to the labor question.
A little way above Houston Street the first of his
colonies is encountered, in Fifth Street and thereabouts.
Then for a mile and a half scarce a Bohemian is to
be found, until Thirty-eighth Street is reached. Fifty-fourth
and Seventy-third Streets in their turn are the centres
of populous Bohemian settlements. The location of
the cigar factories, upon which he depends for a living,
determines his choice of home, though there is less
choice about it than with any other class in the community,
save perhaps the colored people. Probably more than
half of all the Bohemians in this city are cigarmakers,
and it is the herding of these in great numbers in
the so-called tenement factories, where the cheapest
grade of work is done at the lowest wages, that constitutes
at once their greatest hardship and the chief grudge
of other workmen against them. The manufacturer who
owns, say, from three or four, to a dozen or more
tenements contiguous to his shop, fills them up with
these people, charging them outrageous rents, and
demanding often even a preliminary deposit of five
dollars "key money;" deals them out tobacco
by the week, and devotes the rest of his energies
to the paring down of wages to within a peg or two
of the point where the tenant rebels in desperation.
. When he does rebel, he is given the alternative
of submission, or eviction with entire loss of employment.
His needs determine the issue. Usually he is not in
a position to hesitate long. Unlike the Polish Jew,
whose example of untiring industry he emulates, he
has seldom much laid up against a rainy day. He is
fond of a glass of beer, and likes to live as well
as his means will permit. The shop triumphs, and fetters
more galling than ever are forged for the tenant.
In the opposite case, the newspapers have to record
the throwing upon the street of a small army of people,
with pitiful cases of destitution and family misery.
Men, women and children work together seven days
in the week in these cheerless tenements to make a
living for the family, from the break of day till
far into the night. Often the wife is the original
cigarmaker from the old home, the husband having adopted
her trade here as a matter of necessity, because,
knowing no word of English, he could get Do other
work. As they state the cause of the bitter hostility
of the trades unions, she was the primary bone of
contention in the day of the early Bohemian immigration.
The unions refused to admit the women, and, as the
support of the family depended upon her to a large
extent, such terms as were offered had to be accepted.
The manufacturer has ever since industriously fanned
the antagonism between the unions and his hands, for
his own advantage. The victory rests with him, since
the Court of Appeals decided that the law, passed
a few years ago, to prohibit cigarmaking in tenements
was unconstitutional, and thus put an end to the struggle.
While it lasted, all sorts of frightful stories were
told of the shocking conditions under which people
lived and worked in these tenements, from a sanitary
point of view especially, and a general impression
survives to this day that they are particularly desperate.
The Board of Health, after a careful canvass, did
not find them so then. I am satisfied from personal
inspection, at a much later day, guided in a number
of instances by the union cigarmakers themselves to
the tenements which they considered the worst, that
the accounts were greatly exaggerated. Doubtless the
people are poor, in many cases very poor; but they
are not uncleanly, rather the reverse; they live much
better than the clothing-makers in the Tenth Ward,
and in spite of their sallow look, that may be due
to the all-pervading smell of tobacco, they do not
appear to be less healthy than other in-door workers.
I found on my tours of investigation several cases
of consumption, of which one at least was said by
the doctor to be due to the constant inhalation of
tobacco fumes. But an examination of the death records
in the Health Department does not support the claim
that the Bohemian cigarmakers are peculiarly prone
to that disease. On the contrary, the Bohemian percentage
of deaths from consumption appears quite low. This,
however, is a line of scientific inquiry which I leave
others to pursue, along with the more involved problem
whether the falling off in the number of children, sometimes quite noticeable in the Bohemian settlements,
is, as has been suggested, dependent upon the character
of the parents' work. The sore grievances I found
were the miserable wages and the enormous rents exacted
for the minimum of accommodation. And surely these
stand for enough of suffering.
Take a row of houses in East Tenth Street as an instance.
They contained thirty-five families of cigarmakers,
with probably not half a dozen persons in the whole
lot of them, outside of the children, who could speak
a word of English, though many had been ill the country
half a lifetime. This room with two windows giving
on the street, and a rear attachment without windows,
called a bedroom by courtesy, is rented at $12.25
a month. In the front room man and wife work at the
bench from six in the morning till nine at night.
They make a team, stripping the tobacco leaves together;
then he makes the filler, and she rolls the wrapper
on and finishes the cigar. For a thousand they receive
$3.75, and can turn out together three thousand cigars
a week. The point has been reached where the rebellion
comes in, and the workers in these tenements are just
now on a strike, demanding $5.00 and $5.50 for their
work. The manufacturer having refused, they are expecting
hourly to be served with notice to quit their homes,
and the going of a stranger among them excites their
resentment, until his errand is explained. While we
are in the house, the ultimatum of the "boss"
is received. He will give $3.75 a thousand, not another
cent. Our host is a man of seeming intelligence, yet
he has been nine years in New York and knows neither
English nor German. Three bright little children play
about the floor.
His neighbor on the same floor has been here fifteen
years, but shakes his head when asked if he can speak
English. He answers in a few broken syllables when
addressed in German. With $11.75 rent to pay for like
accommodation, he has the advantage of his oldest
boy's work besides his wife's at the bench. Three
properly make a team, and these three can turn out
four thousand cigars a week, at $3.75. This Bohemian
has a large family; there are four children, too small
to work, to be cared for. A comparison of the domestic
bill of fare between Tenth and Ludlow Streets result,
in the discovery that this Bohemian's butcher's bill
for the week, with meat at twelve cents a pound as
in Ludlow Street, is from two dollars and a half to
three dollars. The Polish Jew fed as big a family
on one pound of meat a day. The difference proves
to be typical. Here is a suit of three rooms, two
dark, three flights up. The ceiling is partly down
in one of the rooms. "It is three months since
we asked the landlord to fix it," says the oldest
son, a very intelligent lad who has learned English
in the evening school. His father has not had that
advantage, and has sat at his bench, deaf and dumb
to the world about him except his own, for six years.
He has improved his time and become an expert at his
trade. Father, mother and son together, a full team,
make from fifteen to sixteen dollars a week.
A man with venerable beard and keen eyes answers
our questions through an interpreter, in the next
house. Very few brighter faces would be met in a day's
walk among American mechanics, yet he has in nine
years learned no syllable of English. German he probably
does not want to learn. His story supplies the explanation,
as did the stories of the others. In all that time
he has been at work grubbing to earn bread. Wife and
he by constant labor make three thousand cigars a
week, earning $11.25 when there is no lack of material;
when in winter they receive from the manufacturer
tobacco for only two thousand, the rent of $10 for
two rooms, practically one with a dark alcove, has
nevertheless to be paid in full, and six mouths to
be fed. He was a blacksmith in the old country, but
cannot work at his trade here because he does not
understand "Engliska." If he could, he says,
with a bright look, he could do better work than he
sees done here. It would seem happiness to him to
knock off at 6 o'clock instead of working, as he now
often has to do, till midnight. But how? He knows
of no Bohemian blacksmith who can understand him;
he should starve. Here, with his wife, he can make
a living at least. "Aye," says she, turning,
from listening, to her household duties, "it
would be nice for sure to have father work at his
trade." Then what a home she could make for them,
and how happy they would be. Here is an unattainable
ideal, indeed, of a workman in the most prosperous
city in the world! There is genuine, if unspoken,
pathos in the soft tap she gives her husband's hand
as she goes about her work with a half-suppressed
little sigh.
The very ash-barrels that stand in front of the big
rows of tenements in Seventy-first and Seventy third
Streets advertise the business that is carried on
within. They are filled to the brim with the stems
of stripped tobacco leaves. The rank smell that waited
for us on the corner of the block follows us into
the hallways, penetrates every nook and cranny of
the houses. As in the settlement farther down town,
every room here has its work-bench with its stumpy
knife and queer pouch of bed-tick, worn brown and
greasy, fastened in front the whole length of the
bench to receive the scraps of waste. This landlord-employer
at all events gives three rooms for $12.50, if two
be dark, one wholly and the other getting some light
from the front room. The mother of the three bare-footed
little children we met on the stairs was taken to
the hospital the other day when she could no longer
work. She will never come out alive. There is no waste
in these tenements. Lives, like clothes, are worn
through and out bet fore put aside. Her place at the
bench is taken already by another who divides with
the head of the household his earnings of $15.50 a
week. He has just come out successful of a strike
that brought the pay of these tenements up to $4.50
per thousand cigars. Notice to quit had already been
served on them, when the employer decided to give
in, frightened by the prospective loss of rent. Asked
how long he works, the man says: "from they can
see till bed-time." Bed-time proves to be eleven
o'clock. Seventeen hours a day, seven days in the
week, at thirteen cents an hour for the two, six cents
and a half for each! Good average earnings for a tenement-house
cigarmaker in summer. In winter it is at least one-fourth
less. In spite of it all, the rooms are cleanly kept.
From the bedroom farthest back the woman brings out
a pile of moist tobacco-leaves to be stripped. They
are kept there, under cover lest they dry and crack,
from Friday to Friday, when an accounting is made
and fresh supplies given out. The people sleep there
too, but the smell, offensive to the unfamiliar nose,
does not bother them. They are used to it.
In a house around the corner that is not a factory-tenement,
lives now the cigarmaker I spoke of as suffering from
consumption which the doctor said was due to the tobacco-fumes.
Perhaps the lack of healthy exercise had as much to
do with it. His case is interesting from its own stand-point.
He too is one with a--for a Bohemian--large family.
Six children sit at his table. By trade a shoemaker,
for thirteen years he helped his wife make cigars
in the manufacturer's tenement. She was a very good
hand, and until his health gave out two years ago
they were able to make from $17 to $25 a week, by
lengthening the day at both ends. Now that he can
work no more, and the family under the doctor's orders
has moved away from the smell of tobacco, the burden
of its support has fallen upon her alone, for none
of the children are old enough to help. She has work
in the shop at eight dollars a week, and this must
go round; it is all there is. Happily, this being
a tenement for revenue only, unmixed with cigars,
the rent is cheaper: seven dollars for two bright
rooms on the top floor. No housekeeping is attempted.
A woman in Seventy-second Street supplies their cooking,
which the wife and mother fetches in a basket, her
husband being too weak. Breakfast of coffee and hardtack,
or black bread, at twenty cents for the whole eight;
a good many, the little woman says with a brave, patient
smile, and there is seldom anything to spare, but--.
The invalid is listening, and the sentence remains
unfinished. What of dinner? One of the children brings
it from the cook. Oh! it is a good dinner, meat, soup,
greens and bread, all for thirty cents. It is the
principal family meal. Does she come home for dinner?
No; she cannot leave the shop, but gets a bite at
her bench. The question: A bite of what? seems as
merciless as the surgeon's knife, and she winces under
it as one shrinks from physical pain. Bread, then.
But at night they all have supper together--sausage
and bread. For ten cents they can eat all they want.
Can they not? she says, stroking the hair of the little
boy at her knee; his eyes glisten hungrily at the
thought, as he nods stoutly in support of his mother.
Only, she adds, the week the rent is due, they have
to shorten rations to pay the landlord.
But what of his being an Anarchist, this Bohemian--an
infidel--I hear somebody say. Almost one might be
persuaded by such facts as these--and they are everyday
facts, not fancy--to retort: what more natural? With
every hand raised against him in the old land and
the new, in the land of his hoped-for freedom, what
more logical than that his should be turned against
society that seems to exist only for his oppression?
But the charge is not half true. Naturally the Bohemian
loves peace, as he loves music and song. As someone
has said: He does not seek war, but when attacked
knows better how to die than how to surrender. The
Czech is the Irishman of Central Europe, with all
his genius and his strong passions, with the same
bitter traditions of landlord-robbery, perpetuated
here where he thought to forget them; like him ever
and on principle in the opposition, "agin the
government" wherever he goes. Among such a people,
ground by poverty until their songs have died in curses
upon their oppressors, hopelessly isolated and ignorant
of our language and our laws, it would not be hard
for bad men at any time to lead a few astray. And
this is what has been done. Yet, even with the occasional
noise made by the few, the criminal statistics already
alluded to quite dispose of the charge that they incline
to turbulence and riot. So it is with the infidel
propaganda, the legacy perhaps of the fierce contention
through hundreds of years between Catholics and Protestants
on Bohemia's soil. of bad faith and savage persecutions
in the name of the Christians' God that disgrace its
history. The Bohemian clergyman, who spoke for his
people at the Christian Conference held in Chickering
Hall two years ago, took even stronger ground. "They
are Roman Catholics by birth, infidels by necessity,
and Protestants by history and inclination,"
he said. Yet he added his testimony in the same breath
to the fact that, though the Freethinkers had started
two schools in the immediate neighborhood of his church
to counteract its influence, his flock had grown in
a few years from a mere handful at the start to proportions
far beyond his hopes, gathering in both Anarchists
and Freethinkers, and making good church members of
them.
Thus the whole matter resolves itself once more into
a question of education, all the more urgent because
these people are poor, miserably poor almost to a
man. "There is not," said one of them, who
knew thoroughly what he was speaking of, "there
is not one of them all, who, if he were to sell all
he was worth to-morrow, would have money enough to
buy a house and lot in the country." |
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