The Immigrant Ship

Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.

From With Poor Immigrants To America, by Stephen Graham, 1914.

In a thunderstorm, with a high gale and showers of blinding hail and snow, with occasional flashing forth of amazing sunshine, to be followed by deepest gloom of threatening cloud, we collected on the quay at Liverpool — English, Russians, Jews, Germans, Swedes, Finns — all staring at one another curiously, and trying to understand languages we had never heard before. Three hundred yards out in the harbour stood the red-funnelled Cunarder which was to bear us to America; and we waited impatiently for the boat which should take us alongside.

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We carried baskets and portmanteaus in our strained hands; most of us were wearing heavy cloaks, and some had sacks upon their backs, so we were all very ready to rush aboard the ferry-boat and dump our burdens on its damp decks. What a stampede there was — people pushing into portmanteaus, baskets pushing into people! At last we had all crossed the little gangway, and all that remained on shore were the few relatives and friends who had come to see the English off. This pathetic little crowd sang ragtime songs, waved their hats and handkerchiefs, and shouted. There was a bandying of farewells:

“Ta-ta, ta-ta-ta!”

“Wish you luck!”

“Ta-ta-a, ole Lloyd George! No more stamp-licking!”

“Good luck, old boy!”

“The last of old England!”

The foreign people looked on and smiled non-comprehendingly; the English and Americans huzzaed and grinned. Then away we went over the water, and thoughts of England passed rapidly away in the interest of coming nearer to civilisation’s toy, the great liner. We felt the romance of ocean travel, and also the tremulous fear which the ocean inspires. Then as we lay in the lee of the vast, steep, blood-and soot-coloured liner, each one of us thought of the Titanic and the third-class passengers who went down beneath her into the abyss.

The vastness of the liner made our ferry-boat look like a matchbox. A door opened in the great red wall and a little gangway came out of it like a tongue coming out of a mouth. We all picked up our bags and baggage and pushed and squirmed along this narrow footway that led into the mouth of the steamer and away down into its vast, cavernous, hungry stomach: English, Russians, Jews, Germans, Poles, Swedes, Finns, Flemings, Spaniards, Italians, Canadians, passed along and disappeared — among them all, I myself.

“Dainty Swedish girls and their partners, looking over the sea.”

There were fifteen hundred of us; each man and woman, still carrying handbags and baskets, filed past a doctor and two assistants, and was cursorily examined for diseases of the eye or skin.

“Hats and gloves off!” was our first greeting on the liner. We marched slowly up to the medical trio, and each one as he passed had his eyelid seized by the doctor and turned inside out with a little instrument. It was a strange liberty to take with one’s person; but doctors are getting their own way nowadays, and they were looking for trachoma. For the rest the passing of hands through our hair and examination of our skin for signs of scabies was not so rough, and the cleaner-looking people were not molested.

Still carrying our things we took our medical inspection cards and had them stamped by a young man on duty for that purpose. Then we were shown our berths.

There was a spring bed for each person, a towel, a bar of soap, and a life-preserver. The berths were arranged, two, four, and six in a cabin. Married couples could have a room to themselves, but for the rest, men and women were kept in different sets of cabins. British were put together, Scandinavians together, Russians and Jews together. It was so arranged that the people in the cabins understood one another’s language.

Notices on the walls warned that all emigrants would be vaccinated on deck, whether they had been vaccinated before or not; that all couples making love too warmly would be married compulsorily at New York if the authorities deemed it fit, or should be fined or imprisoned; that in case of fire or smoke being seen anywhere we were to report to chief steward, but not to our fellow-passengers; that smoking was not allowed except on the upper deck, and so on. The cabins were a glittering, shining white; they were small and box-like; they possessed wash-basins and water for the first day of the voyage, but not to be replenished on succeeding days. There were general lavatories where you might wash in hot or cold water, and there were bathrooms which were locked and never used. Each cabin had a little mirror.

The cabins were steam-heated, and when the passengers were dirty the air was foul. Fresh air was to be found on the fore and after decks, except in time of storm, when we were barred down. In time of storm the smell below was necessarily worse — atrocious, for most of the people were very sick. We had, however, a great quantity of dark space to ourselves, and could prowl into the most lonesome parts of the vessel. The dark recesses were always occupied by spooning couples who looked as if they had embarked on this journey only to make love to one another. There were parts of the ship wholly given over to dancing, other parts to horse-play and feats of strength. There was an immense dining-room with ante-chambers and there, to the sound of the jangling dinner-bell echoing and wandering far or near over the ship, we assembled to meals.

The emigrants flocked into the mess-room from the four doors to twenty immense tables spread with knives and forks and toppling platters of bread. Nearly all the men came in in their hats, — in black glistening ringlety sheepskin hats, in fur caps, in bowlers, in sombreros, in felt hats with high crowns, in Austrian cloth hats, in caps so green that the wearer could only be Irish.

“Russians.”

Most of the young men were curious to see what girls there were on board, and looked eagerly to the daintily clad Swedish women, blonde and auburn-haired beauties in tight-fitting, speckless jerseys. The British girls came in in their poor cotton dresses, or old silk ones, things that had once looked grand for Sunday wear but now bore miserable crippled hooks and eyes, threadbare seams, gaping fastenings — cheerful daughters of John Bull trapesing along in the shabbiest of floppy old boots. Then there were the dark and somewhat forward Jewesses, talking animatedly with little Jew men in queer-shaped trousers and skimpy coats; there were slatternly looking Italian women with their children, intent on being at home in whatever circumstances. There was a party of shapely and attractive Austrian girls that attracted attention from the others and a regular scramble to try to sit next to them or near them.

No one ever saw a greater miscellaneity and promiscuity of peoples brought together by accident. I sat between a sheepskin-wrapped peasant wife from the depths of Russia and a neat Danish engineer, who looked no different from British or American. Opposite me were two cowboys going back to the Far West, a dandified Spanish Jew sat next them on one hand and two Norwegians in voluminous knitted jackets on the other. At the next table was a row of boisterous Flemings, with huge caps and gaudy scarfs. There were Americans, spruce and smart and polite; there were Italians, swarthy and dirty, having their black felt hats on their heads all through the meal and resting their elbows on the table as if they’d just come into a public-house in their native land. There were gentle youths in shirts which womenfolk had embroidered in Little Russia; there were black-bearded Jewish patriarchs in their gaberdines, tall and gaunt.

A strange gathering of seekers, despairers, wanderers, pioneers, criminals, scapegoats. I thought of all the reasons that had brought these various folk together to make a community, that had brought them all together to form a Little America. From Great Britain it is so often the drunkard who is sent. Some young fellow turns out to be wilder than the rest of his family; he won’t settle down to the sober, righteous, and godly life that has been the destiny of the others; he is likely to disgrace respectability, so parents or friends give him his passage-money and a little capital and send him away across the sea. Henceforth his name is mentioned at home with a ‘ssh, or with a tear — till the day that he makes his fortune. With the drunkard go the young forger or embezzler whose shame has been covered up and hidden, but who can get no “character” from his last employer.

Then there are the unemployed, and those discontented with their jobs, the out-of-works, the men who have seen no prospect in the old land and felt no freedom. There are the wanderers, the rovers, the wastrels, so called, who have never been able to settle down; there are also the prudent and thoughtful men who have read of better conditions and go simply to take advantage of them.

There are those who are there almost against their will, persuaded by the agents of the shipping companies and the various people interested to keep up the flow of people into America. There are the women who are going out to their sweethearts to be married, and the wives who are going to the husbands who have “made good”; there are the girls who have got into trouble at home and have slid away to America to hide their shame; there are girls going to be domestic servants, and girls doomed to walk the streets, — all sitting down together, equals, at a table where no grace is said but the whisper of hope which rises from each heart.

But it is not only just these people whom I have so materially and separately indicated. The cheerful lad who is beginning to flirt with his first girl acquaintance on the boat has only a few hours since dried the tears off his cheeks; they are nearly all young people on the boat, and they mostly have loving mothers and fathers in the background, and friends and sweethearts, some of them. And there are some lonely ones who have none who care for them in all the world.

There are young men who are following a lucky star, and who will never be so poor again in their lives, boys who have guardian angels who will never let them injure their foot on the ground, boys who have in their favour good fairies, boys and girls who have old folk praying for them. And there is the prodigal son, as well as the too-prodigal daughter. There are youngest brothers in plenty, going to win the princess in a way their elder brothers never thought of; young Hans is there, Aladdin, Norwegian Ashepattle, Ivan Durak — the Angel of Life is there; there is also the Angel of Death.

We sat down together to our first meal, — the whole company of the emigrant passengers broke bread together and became thereby one body, — a little American nation in ourselves. I am sure that had the rest of the world’s people been lost we could have run a civilisation by ourselves. We had peasants to till the soil, colliers to give us fuel, weavers and spinners to make cloth, tailors to sew it into garments, comely girls of all nations to be our wives; we had clerks and shop-keepers and Jews with which to make cities; musicians and music-hall artists to divert us, and an author to write about it all.

Mugs half-full of celery soup were whisked along the tables; not a chunk of bread on the platters was less than an inch thick; the hash of gristly beef and warm potato was what would not have been tolerated in the poorest restaurant, but we set ourselves to eat it, knowing that trials in plenty awaited us and that the time might come when we should have worse things than these to bear. The Swedes and the British were finicky; the Russians and the Jews ate voraciously as if they’d never seen anything so good in their lives.

The peasant woman next to me crossed herself before and after the meal; her Russian compatriots removed their hats, and some of them said grace in a whisper to themselves. But most ate even with their hats on, and most with their hands dirty. You would not say we ate as if in the presence of God and with the memories, in the mind, of prayers for the future and heart-break at parting with home; yet this meal was for the seeing eye a wonderful religious ceremony, a very real first communion service. The rough food so roughly dispensed was the bread and wine, making them all of one body and of one spirit in America.

Henceforth all these people will come nearer and nearer to one another, and drift farther and farther from the old nations to which they belonged. They will marry one another, British and Jewish, Swedish and Irish, Russian and German; they will be always eating at America’s board; they will be speaking the one language, their children will learn America’s ideals in America’s school. Even from the most aboriginal, illiterate peasant on board, there must come one day a little child, his grandson or great-grandson, who will have forgotten the old country and the old customs, whose heart will thrill to America’s idea as if he had himself begotten it.

On Sunday morning when we came upstairs from our stuffy little cabin we were gliding past the green coast of Ireland, and shortly after breakfast-time we entered the beautiful harbour of Queenstown, blue-green, gleaming, and perfect under a bright spring sun. Hawkers came aboard with apples, knotted sticks, and green favours — the day following would be St. Patrick’s. And we shipped a score of Irish passengers.

Outside Queenstown a different weather raged over the Atlantic, and as we steamed out of the lagoon it came forward to meet us. The clouds came drifting toward us, and the wind rattled in the masts. The ocean was full of glorious life and wash of wave and sea. A crowd of emigrants stood in the aft and watched the surf thundering away behind us; the great hillsides of green water rose into being and then fell out of being in grand prodigality. Gulls hung over us as we rushed forward and poised themselves with gentle feet outstretched, or flew about us, skirling and crying, or went forward and overtook us.

Meanwhile Ireland and Britain passed out of view, and we were left alone with the wide ocean. We knew that for a week we should not see land again, and when we did see land that land would be America.

“The Two Dreamy Norwegians.”

Then we all began to know one another, to talk, to dance, to sing, to play together. All the cabins were a-buzz with chatter, and along the decks young couples began to find one another out and to walk arm and arm. Two dreamy Norwegians produced concertinas, and without persuasion sat down in dark corners and played dance music for hours, for days. Rough men danced with one another, and the more fortunate danced with the girls, dance after dance, endlessly. The buffets were crowded with navvies clamouring for beer; the smoking-rooms were full of excited gamblers thumbing filthy cards.

The first deck was wholly in electric light, you mounted to the second and it was all in shadow, you went higher still and you came to daylight. You could spend your waking hours on any of these levels, but the lower you went the warmer it was. On the electric-light deck were to be found the cleaner and more respectable passengers; they sat and talked in the mess-room, played the piano, sang songs.

Up above them all the hooligans rushed about, and there also, in the shadow, in the many recesses and dark empty corners young men and women were making love, looking moonily at one another, kissing furtively and giving by suggestion an unwonted atmosphere to the ship. It was also on this deck that the wild couples danced and the card-players shuffled and dealt. Up on the open deck were the sad people, and those who loved to pace to and fro to the march music of the racing steamer and the breaking waves.

I wandered from deck to deck, everywhere; opened many doors, peered into many faces, sat at the card-table, crushed my way into the bar, entered into the mob of dancers, found a Russian girl and talked to her. But I was soon much sought for. When the Russian-speaking people found out I had their language they followed me everywhere, asking elementary questions about life and work and wages in America. Even after I had gone to bed and was fast asleep my cabin door would open and some woolly-faced Little Russian would cry out, “Gospodin Graham, forgive me, please, I have a little prayer to make you; write me also a letter to a farmer.”

I had written for several of them notes which they might present at their journey’s end.

All day long I was in converse with Russians, Poles, Jews, Georgians, Lithuanians, Finns.

“Look at these Russian fatheads (duraki),” said a young Jew. “Why do they go to America? Why do they leave their native land to go to a country where they will be exploited by every one?”

“Why do you leave it, then?” asked a Russian.

“Because I have no rights there,” replied the Jew.

“Have we rights?” the Russian retorted.

“If I had your rights in Russia I’d never leave that country. I’d find something to do that would make me richer than I could ever be in America.”

There were three or four peasants around, and another rejoined. “But you could have our rights if you wished.”

Whereupon I broke in:

“But only by renouncing the Jewish faith.”

“That is exactly the truth,” said the Jew.

“Yes,” said a Russian called Alexy Mitrophanovitch, “he can have all our rights if he renounces his faith.”

“If I am baptized to get your rights what use is that to you? Why do Christians ask for such an empty thing?”

“All the same,” said another Russian, “in going to America you will break your faith, and so will we. I have heard how it happens. They don’t keep the Saints’ days there.”

Alexy Mitrophanovitch was a fine, tall, healthy-looking peasant workman in a black sheepskin. With him, and as an inseparable, walked a broad-faced Gorky-like tramp in a dusty peak-hat. The latter was called Yoosha.

“You see, all I’ve got,” said Alexy to me, “is just what I stand up in. Not a copeck of my own in my pocket, and not a basket of clothes. My friend Yoosha is lending me eighty roubles so as to pass the officials at New York, but of course I give it back to him when we pass the barrier. We worked together at Astrakhan.”

“Have you a bride in Russia?”

No, he was alone. He did not think to marry; but he had a father and a mother. At Astrakhan he had been three thousand versts away from his village home, so he wouldn’t be so much farther away in America.

He was going to a village in Wisconsin. A mate of his had written that work was good there, and he and Yoosha had decided to go. They would seek the same farmer, a German, Mr. Joseph Stamb — would I perhaps write a letter in English to Mr. Stamb?...

Both he and Yoosha took communion before leaving Astrakhan. I asked Alexy whether he thought he was going to break his faith as the other Russians had said to the Jew. How was he going to live without his Tsar and his Church?

He struck his breast and said, “There, that is where my Church is! However far away I go I am no farther from God!”

Would he go back to Russia?

He would like to go back to die there.

“Tell me,” said he, “do they burn dead bodies 'in America? I would not like my body to be burned. It was made of earth, and should return to the earth.”

The man who slept parallel with me in my cabin was an English collier from the North Country. He had been a bad boy in the old country, and his father had helped him off to America. Whenever he had a chance to talk to me, it was of whippet-racing and ledgers and prizes and his pet dog.

“As soon as a get tha monny a’ll enter that dawg aht Sheffield. A took er to Durby; they wawn’t look at ’er there. There is no dawg’s can stan’ agin her. At Durby they run the rabbits in the dusk, an’ the little dawg as ’ad the start could see ’em, but ourn moight a been at Bradford fur all she could see. A’ll bet yer that dawg’s either dead or run away. She fair lived fer me. Every night she slep in my bed. Ef ah locked ’er aht, she kick up such a ra. Then I open the door an’ she’d come straight an’ jump into bed an’ snuggle ’erself up an’ fall asleep....”

The dirtiest cabins in the ship were allotted to the Russians and the Jews, and down there at nine at night the Slavs were saying their prayers whilst just above them we British were singing comic songs or listening to them. Most of us, I reckon, also said our prayers later on, quietly, under our sheets; for we were, below the surface, very solitary, very apprehensive, very child-like, very much in need of the comfort of an all-seeing Father.

Graham, Stephen. With Poor Immigrants To America. MacMillan Company, 1914.

Stephen Graham

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