In the editorial of the 'Gartenlaube'
(Garden Foliage) a conversation was in it this past summer,
probably like it is today, the relationships have changed very
much, an uneducated German without means went to America.
The German emigration has greatly decreased in the last decade
and still consisted of only about 20,000 people in a year, while
in the former three or four years ten times as many Germans
emigrated to America each year. Is America no longer the
land of longing for a greater part of our people, in which one
can quickly become rich? Or can Germans in America under
normal circumstances no longer be a rich uncle nieces and
nephews at home gaze at in amazement and whose would still like
to inherit from them?
In such and
similar questions the conversation went back and forth, until
the suggestion was made to make a practical attempt at once.
The editorial says: We just sent an uneducated German
without means over there, a German who had learned Greek and
Latin in his grammar school, but not English, who knew
everything possible, but not for example, how to polish his
shoes, in short, a man educated in the humanities without
practical knowledge.
I believe the editorial found their
own subjects for their plan. I did not have practical
knowledge at my disposal, at the grammar school I attended there was
still no English instruction, not once an option, and it also did
not appear to me that the “greenhorns” would usually agree to such a
plan. So I pressed the publishing firm of the “Gartenlaube”
for a pass for a ticket in hand for the trip to New York in the
between deck (of a ship), besides 25 dollars (same as 100 Marks)
without which no emigrant could leave for America, and finally still
another 20 Marks. With it I paid for the fourth class trip
from Berlin to Bremen, then stayed there because I had to be on the
between deck already for two days before the departure of their ship
in Bremen, so once there I stayed overnight. What was left of
the 20 Marks I could use to buy a glass of beer now and then on the
ship or I could save the rest for America, since the food was
well-known to be included in the price of the ticket. The
ticket cost 180 Marks. We calculated it would still be an
additional 25 dollars (100 Marks) and the 20 Marks, so it
amounted to a grand total of just 300 Marks.
But in a moment I wrote or cabled for
money from America because now after eight days or eight weeks my
expedition was at an end. Also I cannot seek any intellectual
work in America, only manual labor, of which I hardly knew anything
about. Under these conditions I then departed in the past
summer and I want to explain here what I as an educated, but
destitute traveler to America without a practical occupation
experienced.
In the between deck on the moving sea
The between deck people, who rode from Berlin to Bremen, mostly took
the night train which departed from the Lehrter train station in
Berlin at 11:46 PM. It consisted of mainly wagons for fourth
class and arrived in Bremen in the light of day, sparing a nights
quarters. I also rode on this train. With me were mainly
Poles, Slovakians, and Galician Jews who made themselves as
comfortable as possible on the benches and on the floor, smoked,
spit, gasped, and reeked of garlic and onions.
Small children made
noise and scratched themselves or were searched by older relatives
for the source of the itch until everything lapsed into a deep
sleep, from which one was always woken up again by the cackling, and
then the night was bitter cold. Indeed I caught enough vermin
in the beginning of the trip to see, but then no more. The
cold went right through the clothing, cloths, crates, and boxes.
At least, as we transferred in Stendal, I was glad to climb out, as
I must openly confess.
In Bremen the train
station police, emigrant agents, and employees of Lloyds waited for
the crowds and herded them into emigrant halls and emigrant inns.
I tore away and slipped out to a hotel where I could get a good
night’s rest from the nocturnal spook. But first I had a few
glasses of wine in the Ratskeller at 30 Pfennig per glass.
Around noon I exchanged my pass for the ticket and proceeded with
the ticket and a “doctor card” to the baggage hall of Lloyds for the
medical examination. A whole crowd of men, women, and children
already waited here. Southern Slavs and Poles, the women in
colorful head scarves and red skirts, Hungarians, some of their
women in high boots, Russians in long skirts and heavy caps,
Galician Jews in caftans and also about a dozen Germans. Two
by two we were driven to the doctor who in his white coat and apron
appearing ready for slaughtering, had to bare the left arm to be
vaccinated and had to open the eyes so wide that they teared.
America does not leave anyone one land who last not been vaccinated
or has an eye illness.
The employees were all
patient and pleasant. Only the doctor was grumpy and abrupt.
From there the herd was again driven to their quarters, and some
Germans still stood around for awhile, mistrustfully eying the
others and then left individually.
The next morning
around 6:30 AM we had to be in the baggage hall again and were
loaded onto a special train to Bremerhaven. The passengers’
first and second class cabins went later on two other special
trains. First the people from the east were loaded, then the
Germans, who were separated for the possibility of a humane and
sensible procedure, that unfortunately not all shipping businesses
mastered, as my comrades later reported. Humane and sensible
therefore, because the smallest German also still towered over the
people from the east in regards to cleanliness and tolerable
manners. A fruit of the public school and time as a soldier.
On the train the first
acquaintances were made. “Are you also traveling to America?
Is this your first time traveling?” This way one became known
and entertained himself. I got to know an old couple with four
grown children. He had been a farmer in America for twenty
years and now wanted to invest his savings in an estate of the
settlement commission in West Prussia. But the many
“regulations” there did not please him, and his children, born in
America, did not want land in Germany at any price. So they
quickly decided to go back to America again to buy a farm again way
out west and send the bigger children to the city to work. The
stay in Germany had lasted for ten days.
After about an hour
our giant steamer pulled up. The ship’s band played merrily,
however it did not suit my mood, and in a flash the whole between
deck was covered with eastern people, besides the Jews, as the
Germans stayed back, with sacks and packs, the lower lying deck
between the raised forecastle, the top of the ship, and the
raised deck of the first cabins in the middle of the ship. A
tangled muddle of men, women, and children which the agents and
sailors brought some order to after a long while. Again the
eastern people were brought under first, then the Jews, and finally
the Germans. The Austrians and Hungarians were counted with
the Germans as long as they could speak a little broken German, as
well as some Croatians who made an effort to speak the same broken
German. Some of them were still transported with their
countrymen. But some muckrakers stayed with us.
Under the forecastle
in the top of our ship (whose name I have not given, which I can
explain completely freely - for the same reason I also have not
given the day of my departure), are two narrow, little corridors.
On the one was the washroom and the toilets for the women. On
the other were the same rooms for the men. Between both of
these corridors was the kitchen for the between deck people and some
square holes fenced off for iron kettles so one did not fall into
the abyss. Through these holes the appropriate stairs reached
deep down to the floor of the sleeping quarters: “Compartment for
single men.” - “Compartment for families”. At the same level,
but under the first cabins lay the compartment “for single women”
and another one for families. Still one floor lower, so two
floors under the forecastle, there were some more similar rooms, but
these were only used for some passengers to eat. There were
only 420 of us between deck people, while the ship could take on
800. So we had considerably more room than the between deck
people who for example sailed in the spring when most emigrated.
I climbed down with
the other Germans to our room for single men, and reserved an upper
bed at once, directly by the way up so I could come out in the open
again where I could catch a breath of fresh air. In the open,
on the actual “between deck” the eastern people had already made
themselves comfortable with all of the family, loud and funny like
the sparrows. I climbed on one of the two chicken ladders on
the port side where between lower chains, ropes and such there was
still some space.
“Is this your first
trip to America?” asked an old, stocky man with glasses. I
told him yes and soon learned from him, a Silesian, that he only
went to visit his daughter in Germany. For the past 20 years
he lived in the house of a cabinet maker and put small machine part
for automobiles together in a factory in Albany, N.Y. Then a
sturdy West Prussian, who was traveling because of an inheritance on
the “outside”, socialized with us. He lived for twelve years
as a foreman in a factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Both had
wanted to travel in second class cabins but could no longer find any
place. But I heard this excuse so often that I accepted it as
more of a bashful excuse. Nearby there was a red-haired man
who squinted a lot.
“Man, when you
wreak havoc where you look, you will kill me and not the pig!”
The West Prussian shook from laughter, but we were soon also friends
with the Silesian. It was a Pfalz farmer who went searching in
America to try his luck a second time and hoped to find it by a
friend in a factory in New York State. I also counted a
tannery journeyman from Thorn who was already an American citizen
and worked in a tannery in Wisconsin. So although I was
already in my ‘30’s, the difference was they already knew America
and had a definite “profession”. The other “Germans” were loud
young people, left partly to defer two years of military service.
But not one was under them as I went in the blue sky over the great
pond. Each had his defined profession. He was a barber,
cook, farmer, factory worker, or the like. And each had
friends or relatives over there who accepted them and helped them
further. Also each had more money than I had. After me
the next poorest was a bakery journeyman from Styria. He had
30 dollars and a ticket to Chicago where he was also expected.
As
the ship set in motion, we between deck people were called below
deck to dinner by a kind of cow bell.
In our sleeping
quarters where there were 32 of us the beds stood at the one long
wall and the one diagonal wall in two rooms over one another, narrow
iron stands filled out by a straw sack which was somewhat thicker at
the head end and so served as a pillow. On the straw sack lay
a woolen cover. Between each pillow and the iron bars was a
container like a milk can, and a metal spoon and fork were stowed.
Under them there was a life jacket for all cases. On the other
long wall, the outside ship wall, there was a long wooden table like
an ironing board. In the middle of the room there was a second
such table. On the tables there were many metal plates and
between them there were large metal containers. The one was
filled with soup, another with potatoes, a third with bread, and the
fourth with meat. Like the others I fetched my spoon and fork
out of the pillow, and as the Silesian with the glasses was eager to
eat, I also tried it. The food was good and strong, but on the
first noon I did not eat much, but hurried to go back up on deck
again. The many metal utensils, the smells of the food, and
people – one lived for the moment.
Again I stood on the
port side, but I did not see many who went all around. Before
the first night I dreaded going down below to the sleeping quarters
and dining room. One did not immerse himself in the nature and
people when one feared his night quarters from which he cannot
escape.
Suddenly a voice
called loudly up to the port side, “Is jimmand do von die Koschern?”
(Does anyone there eat kosher food?)
“Jo.” (Yes), was the
answer.
“Kimm’s mit!” (Come
here!), came the call. The Jews ate first now, separated from
all the others, as prescribed by their religion.
to be continued.....
Translated by Brad
Schwebler
