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On the Trail of The Immigrant

<h2>XIX WHERE GREEK MEETS GREEK</h2> A BAGGAGE wagon heavily loaded by bags and trunks, and half lost to view in the muddy street and against the muddier sky of Chicago, stopped in front of the saloon to the Acropolis, on Halstead Street. The baggage man was surrounded by an angry mob, for he demanded four dollars for his trip, and that, the unsuspecting immigrants were unwilling to pay. In this they were supported by their countrymen who had come out of the saloon to welcome them to New Greece, which is unpicturesquely located on the West side of Chicago, between dives and cheap restaurants on one side, and the busy Ghetto on the other. Men of all nationalities, if of no occupation, gathered about the haggling crowd, and the baggage man received the support of the mob, for he wore a Union button, and the war cry: “It’s the Union price” was the Shibboleth by which the Greeks were vanquished and made to pay the four dollars; not of course, without having spent an hour in their national pastime of haggling for the price. The driver mounted his quickly emptied wagon, with a curse upon the “Dagos,” and the crowd informally discussed for a while the immigration question; its verdict being, that it is time to shut our doors against the Greeks, for they are a poor lot from which to make good American citizens. The crowd dispersed as quickly as it came and the freshly landed Greeks entered the gates of the “Acropolis,” a Greek saloon and restaurant combination, not unlike (externally at least) its American prototype on the same street, where the saloon is decidedly at its worst. The newcomers were feasted on black olives, brown bread and goat’s cheese; for the Greek is very loyal to the national appetite,—and they immediately begin to plan their entrance into the busy life of America, through the avenues of barter or of labour. It is not to be wondered at that the crowd which knows nothing of the Greeks, called them “Dagos,” for it would be hard even for one who knows them only from the classic past, properly to place this group of men, were it not that their speech betrayed the ancient heritage. We never picture the heroes of Greek epics, undersized, like these moderns; round headed, looking into the world out of small, black, piercing eyes, their complexion sallow and their hair straight and black. We too, would place them nearer modern Palermo than ancient Athens, and judge their blood to have flowed through the veins of rough Albanese mountaineers and crude Slavic plowmen, rather than through the perfect bodies of those Greeks who have dissolved with their myths, and who disappeared when Mt. Olympus was deserted by its divine tenantry. These modern Greeks have retained much of their past, stored in their memories at least, and scarcely one of those whom I have met but knows the Iliad and the Odyssey, or whose black eyes do not sparkle proudly when he recounts the glory of those Attic days. They are still eager to know, even more eager to tell what they know, and a brave front is not the least part of the equipment of the modern Greek. A consuming pride which amounts to conceit, shuts his eyes to his own faults as well as to the virtues of other races, and he will long hold himself aloof from the hopper which grinds us all into the same kind of grist. “Where do these men come from, Mr. B?” I asked the keeper of the classic bar of the “Acropolis.” “They are all Athenians.” Every Greek is, although cradled in some island unrenowned either in the past or the present. “Why do they come to Chicago? To make money?” I answer my own question. “Oh, no!” replies the classic barkeeper, delicately ironical. “They are not poor, no Greek is ever poor, even if he cannot buy five cents’ worth of black olives.” “Do they come here because they have a better chance?” “Chance? why, everyone of these men was on the way to become a Demarch (Mayor). They have come here to learn American ways, and incidentally to enrich American culture by their presence.” Full of this pride and confidence in themselves, they are nevertheless ready to blacken our boots for ten cents, and they do it remarkably well, displacing negroes and Italians, until later, they open stores and sell American candies to an undiscriminating public, hungry for the cheap sweets. No labour is too hard for them, although they prefer to stand behind the counter. More or less, all the Greeks will finally be in trades of some kind, and monopolists in all of them. At present, their eyes are on bootblacking and confectionery stores, nearly every town of any size in the United States being invaded by them, so that their presence is beginning to be felt. The modern Greek still has the license of the poet, and he uses the license whether he has the poetry or not. I think he is happiest when he exaggerates to no one’s hurt; albeit, like the rest of us he does not always stop to ask whether it hurts or not. Conceit and deceit are as close relatives as poetry and lying, and to Greeks and Americans they often look strangely alike. If the modern Greek is a hero, he is a cautious one and recklessness is not one of his faults. He is no “Plunger,” but moves along the “straight and narrow way which leadeth to”—a big bank account. Contented by little, he does not despise the much, and although he is not meek, he will inherit a fair share of this earth’s goods. Born with democratic instincts, he soon feels himself as good as anybody, and when he grows sleek and fat, he selects “the chief seat in the synagogue” or some other lofty height, from which he looks in disdain upon his poorer brothers. While hospitable, he has become strangely suspicious of strangers, and he is not a good bedfellow for he likes to occupy the whole bed. If it is a settlement which opens its doors to him it becomes all his, and he does not shrink from intimidation as a means of driving the Italian or the Jew from its welcoming gates. He is industrious and temperate, yet he likes to lounge about the saloons where he sometimes gets too much of his native wine and then he can be a really bad fellow. In his native village he is as chaste as the women, but in America he has a bad name and the neighbourhood in which he lives is not regarded as the safest for unprotected women. The Chicago police especially, has an eye upon his candy stores which are supposed to be as immoral as they often are uninviting. The fact that in the Chicago colony, 10,000 Greeks live, practically without their wives, explains this situation, and it is just possible that 10,000 Americans under the same conditions would not act differently. The police in New Greece is not on a good footing with the inhabitants, and occasionally shooting and stabbing occur. At such times it is difficult to know who is more to blame; the police or the supposed culprits. The modern Greek is still punctiliously pious, his church and priest follow him into every settlement, and he is loyal to the forms of his religion. It is doubtful whether here or in the Old World, it discloses to him the ethical teachings of Jesus; but in this, we are in a poor condition to “cast the first stone” at him. His priest is not servilely revered or feared, and the relation between them is too often that of buyer and seller. The priest has the means of grace, the Greek is in need of them for salvation, and he pays for what he gets,—sometimes reluctantly. At present it would fare ill with any one who would try to wean him from his Church; for loyalty to it is loyalty to Greece, and the Greek has never been a turn-coat. No more patriotic people ever came to us than these modern Greeks, and although that patriotism is centred upon their native country, they will ultimately make good citizens, and even before that day, make splendid politicians; for in the craft of politics every Greek is an adept, and he is a “Mighty (place) hunter before the Lord.” The only trouble with the government of modern Greece is, that it has not enough offices for all the aspirants for them, and this learned proletariat is a fair sized menace in this little country. In governing themselves the modern Greeks have not been a conspicuous success, and the only things we can teach them in this line are, the willingness to acknowledge failure and the eagerness with which we seek the better way. The New Greece of Chicago, a few blocks in a busy thoroughfare, is not a large world, yet it is more Greek than the Ghetto is Russian or Little Sicily is Italian. Homes in the true sense there are but few, because the women have not yet come; the housing conditions of the Greeks are bad and likely to remain so for a long time. There are grocery stores containing little or no American food; saloons, by far too many, but providing food and drink at the same time as is the custom in Greece; a Greek bank, the front windows of which are covered by the advertisements of steamship transportation companies; clothing and dry-goods stores, whose proprietors are Greeks, although their stock in trade is necessarily American; and the Greek church with a double cross to mark its orthodoxy;—this is New Greece. Out of it some of our newly arrived immigrants will go in the morning, to the railroad tracks, to do the digging and the ditching. They will be “bossed” by “Big Pete,” whose size is exceeded only by the length of his oaths, and who boasts of being able to handle his countrymen easily, because: “The Greeks can be handled only by a man who can show them that he is a better man, and that I am; and if you don’t believe it, feel my muscle. I pay them $1.50 a day and I treat them like Greeks.” I watched “Big Pete” treat them like Greeks for half a day, and I did not discover that such treatment saved a man from being geared to the highest notch and made to work incessantly, while “Big Pete” watched and cursed to help the pace. The same night that they arrived, some of the young boys were looked over by the men of the Greek colony, who had assisted them to come, and whose labour was theirs until the passage money was paid, and paid with interest. The next morning they began their tutelage in blacking boots in so-called parlours, whose walls are covered by chromos depicting Greek wars in which the Greeks are always the victors and the Turks are slaughtered like sheep at the stockyards; there are also one or two pictures of classic ruins. In such surroundings, and seemingly unconscious of the life about them, these boys will blacken boots for eighteen hours a day, with heart, mind and soul in Greece; and their fingers in America only when they handle our coin. They will attempt no conversation, even after they know our speech, literally obeying the Scriptural injunction to say “Yea, yea and nay, nay,” and not much else if they can help it. They are not nearly so communicative as the Italians, and although a smile sits well on a Greek face, I have rarely seen one there. The confectionery stores which are outside of New Greece, are open all the time, at least so long as a customer may be expected, and although these customers are nearly all Americans, the Greeks have few friends among them. They all return to New Greece as often as possible, and there their virtues unfold, and “their soul delights itself in fatness.” They are not exceeded even by the Chinese in that loyalty to native food which I call the patriotism of the stomach, and a Greek grocery store is filled from one end to the other with food from the classic isles. There are dried vegetables whose present form does not betray their natural shape, but which taste luscious, because the flavour of the native soil clings to them; fish, dried, pickled and preserved in some form, and cheese made from the milk of goats whose horns butted broken classic vases instead of modern tin cans. The smells seem ancient, too; but in these the Greek revels, and here he is at home. New Greece in Chicago is fortunate in having as one of its boundaries, Hull House, one of the numerous activities of which consists in trying to discover the possible point of contact between the home-born and the stranger. A Greek play given at Hull House opened the eyes of many American people to the fact that the past is alive in the modern Greek, and at a banquet, also at Hull House, where Americans and Greeks vied with each other in extolling the glory of Athens, the wealth of the past was again richly displayed. How near the American and the Greek have come to each other through these two notable events, it is difficult to tell; but I am sure that they have increased the pride of the Greeks, and have given us an added respect for them. But after all, they will be judged by the way they live to-day and by the measure in which these small, dark-haired traders and workers exemplify in their lives the virtues of those men of old, whose names they have inherited and whose fame they are eager to preserve. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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