Toward a Better Life

by Peter Morton Coan

  KEY HISTORIC EVENTS

  1910:

  Mexican Revolution results in the first major wave of Mexican immigrants to America.

  1911:

  The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City kills 146 people, most of them immigrant women and children, and leads to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards for sweatshop workers.

  1912:

  The maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic from Southampton, England, to New York ends in tragedy when the ship, with hundreds of immigrants aboard, strikes an iceberg; 1,517 people perish.

  1913:

  The Alien Land Law passes the California legislature, effectively barring Japanese, as “aliens ineligible for citizenship,” from owning agricultural land in the state. The Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization was divided into two separate bureaus—the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Naturalization—and was placed into the new Department of Labor.

  1914–1918:

  World War I affects mass immigration to the United States from Europe.

  1916:

  Madison Grant's popular book The Passing of the Great Race calls for exclusion, on racist grounds, of “inferior” Alpine, Mediterranean, and Jewish “breeds,” preferring Scandinavians or the “Nordic race.”

  1917:

  Persons of “psychopathic inferiority,” men and women entering the United States for immoral purposes, vagrants, alcoholics, and stowaways are added to the exclusion list. A literacy test for immigrants is finally adopted after being defeated in Congress seven times when Congress overrides the second veto by President Woodrow Wilson.

  1919:

  Antiforeign fears and hatreds shift from German Americans to alien revolutionaries and anarchist radicals; thousands of alien radicals are seized in Palmer raids and hundreds deported.

  MIGRATION FLOWS

  Total legal US immigration in 1910s: 6.4 million

  Top ten emigration countries in this decade: Italy (1,229,916), Russia (1,106,998), Canada and Newfoundland (708,715), Austria (589,174), Hungary (565,553), United Kingdom (371,878), Greece (198,108), Mexico (185,334), Germany (174,227), Ireland (166,445)

  (See appendix for the complete list of countries.)

  FAMOUS IMMIGRANTS

  Immigrants who came to America in this decade, and who would later become famous, include:

  William O'Dwyer, Ireland, 1910, politician

  Spyros Skouras, Greece, 1910, film producer

  David Dubinsky, Russia, 1911, labor leader

  Alfred Levitt, Belarus, 1911, painter

  Meyer Lansky, Belarus, 1911, gangster

  Charles “Charlie” Chaplin, England, 1912, actor/comedian

  Arthur Stanley Jefferson (“Stan Laurel”), England, 1912, actor/comedian

  E. E. Clive, Wales, 1912, actor

  Ludwig Bemelmans, Italy, 1912, writer/artist

  Ruby Keeler, Canada, 1912, dancer

  Jule Styne, England, 1912, composer

  Claude McKay, Jamaica, 1912, writer/poet

  Barbara West, England, 1912, Titanic survivor

  Rodolfo Guglielmi (“Rudolph Valentino”), Italy, 1913, actor

  Mike Mazurki, Ukraine, 1913, actor/wrestler

  Louis Adamic, Slovenia, 1913, writer

  Elia Kazan, Turkey, 1913, film director (On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire)

  George Zucco, England, 1913, actor

  Ettore Boiardi (“Chef Boyardee”), Italy, 1914, cook

  Jean Hersholt, Denmark, 1914, actor

  Harry Houdini, Hungary, 1914, magician

  Xavier Cugat, Spain via Cuba, 1915, bandleader

  Juano Hernandez, Puerto Rico, 1915, actor

  Marcus Garvey, Jamaica, 1916, ethnic leader

  Sergei Rachmaninoff, Russia, 1918, composer

  Emma Goldman, Russia, 1919, anarchist

  Igor Sikorsky, Russia, 1919, inventor (helicopter)

  Lilly Daché, France, 1919, hatmaker/fashion designer

  Her story is reminiscent of the von Trapp family from the movie The Sound of Music. (See page 115 for the story of Maria Franziska von Trapp.) Born in Vienna, raised in a rural village, she escaped Austria before the outset of World War I and came with her family to America in 1914 via Hamburg, Germany. Trained in a Baltimore seminary as a nun and a teacher, she found peace in the church and satisfaction teaching schoolchildren, which she did for sixty-seven years at the School of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Wilton, Connecticut. “I love my life,” she said, ninety-three at the time. “I'm very happy that I came to America. America gave me everything. There was no living in Austria. I went back in 1972. The village was now part of Czechoslovakia. My old house was gone. Everything was destroyed. And I saw this big field of roses and I asked someone, ‘What is that?' and they said, ‘Those are all the boys and girls killed by the Russians.' Every time I see The Sound of Music, it reminds me of what we went through.”

  We were living in a remote village outside of Vienna called Cejkovice, my mother's village. My father was a cabinetmaker. He had his big shop, and there he made his furniture. He made beautiful engravings on the furniture. And then when the furniture was finished, it was shipped to the city of Hodonin. My father had a warehouse there. And the furniture would be sold from there.

  My father also made things for people in the village—chairs, tables, things like that. And off and on he went to the priest's house, and if the priest needed anything to be done, my father would help.

  My mother died of tuberculosis when she was thirty-two. I was eight years old at the time. Her sisters also died of the disease; one was twelve, one was sixteen. My father made the coffin for her funeral. Many people came and paid their respects. In fact, the whole village came and prayed and the body was put on a big wagon and taken to the cemetery. I remember all of us standing there. I remember my little brother and me crying. Momma was going down into the hole. And they gave us a shovel of dirt to throw in, and it was very sad, but we knew that Mother was in heaven.

  About two years later, my father had business in Hodonin, and when he got there he found out that the husband of his former fiancee, who was married with two little children, had suddenly died of appendicitis. So my father proposed, and she immediately accepted.

  They were married in the morning. But in the afternoon my grandmother put us into a big wagon pulled by a farmer, and the farmer took us to a village to meet my stepmother. My father greeted us and said, “Now look, you're going to see your new mother. And be sure you say ‘mother.'” That was hard for me. My brother didn't care, he was too young. He was three years younger, so he was five years old.

  Then she came out, and she was a lovely lady with beautiful brown hair. And she smiled. And she handed me a beautiful dress and said, “This is for you,” and gave me a kiss. And that big, big heaviness from my heart went because in that village, there was a woman who adopted a child, and afterward she threw the child into a ravine, and from that day forward the ravine had the name of the mother, “Machosa.” I always thought if I had a stepmother, I'd wind up in the Machosa. Then she gave my brother a gift too, kissed us, and said, “Now, come and meet your little brother and sister.” So we went into the garden of the house where she was living, and there was a little girl about two years old, and a baby boy in a cradle. And we were so happy because now we had a bigger family. Such joy!

  By 1914, it all changed. The war was brewing, and everybody was restless. It was a very bad time. Men were being enlisted, and we heard about a buildup of soldiers in Vienna. Suddenly, people were too afraid to buy anything. Furniture that my father made, nobody would buy. And, in fact, soldiers even damaged furniture in my father's warehouse in Hodonin. So he knew his business was going down, down, down.

  Then, one day, the military police came and told my father he must pay for wood he already bought. It was harassment. Extortion. And my father said, “I don't have any money because I don't have any sales.”

  So they said, “If the money is not here
by tomorrow morning, you will be put in jail.” And we stood there watching these police. I remember my father had a few bags of flour and sugar, so they stuck their bayonets in and ripped them open. Then they put “For Sale” signs on our property.

  We just stood there: my mother holding one child, my father holding the other, and we were all crying. We didn't know what was going to happen. Where would we live? Where would we find a home? My father had a brother who lived in America who helped us later on. He lived in Brooklyn with a wife and seven children. He, too, was a cabinetmaker like my father, and they used to correspond. Would we find my uncle? We had the address, but there were no telephones.

  So, being a good churchman, my father went to the rectory and told the priest. The priest said, “Don't worry, you were a good helper to me in my church. I shall give you enough money to escape.” And my father said, “Don't worry, I will return every penny after I get in my betters.”

  When my father came home with the money that evening, my mother took a bedsheet and wrapped our clothes in it. My father took his tool chest and asked a farmer if he would please take it to his father's village because it was too big. The village was called Uherské Hradišti. And late that night, all packed, we covered ourselves with hay in a wagon so nobody would see us. There were not that many homes in the area, but we had to be careful. It was the six of us. And we went to Uherské Hradišti and stayed overnight.

  Early the next morning, before dawn, we made our getaway. Later on my grandmother told me the police were looking for us in Vienna because they thought my father went there. But no one knew where we went. It was very, very difficult because we were in such a hurry. We had no time. We had to go quickly. But we didn't know where to go. We knew the police would be looking for us. My stepmother cried and cried and cried. She said, “I thought this would never happen to us.” And she put her arms around my father. I remember the two of them just cried on each other's shoulder. She clung to him—talking, whispering with tears. And she loved us. And she put her arms around us and said, “Don't worry, don't worry, God will take care of us.” Then my father said to me, “When we get to Vienna I'll buy you a dancing doll.”

  But we never got to Vienna. About a week later we arrived in Hamburg, Germany. It was summer, and we were staying in a hotel. My father had bought boat tickets—steerage, third class—and I said to him, “Papa, are we going on that boat?” And he said, “Yes, we're going to America.” I said, “Papa, you said we were going to Vienna. Does that mean I don't get my dancing doll?” I remember that as clear as day. We boarded the boat, set to leave, when my stepsister disappeared. She had been playing with my brother and she ran off. We couldn't find her. Everyone was hysterical. The boat was already whistling away, and then the captain found her, and we went to America.

  He is from the country village of Bevagna near Perugia. His father was swindled out of his business, so he immigrated to America, to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Jack and his mother and three sisters came later. They eventually settled in Bethlehem.

  I was born with the name Giacomo. But nobody seemed to be able to say Giacomo when I came here, so I took Jack. I think it was because Jack Dempsey was champion and I thought that was a great name to take.

  My father was a butcher. He owned a delicatessen. He had the largest store in town. He sold meat, cheese, wine, things like that. In our town, either you owned a small business or you worked on a farm. There was no industry really. People were tenant farmers. The owners never did the work. The tenant farmer and his family were given a house, and they lived on the property and they did the work.

  My father was a large man. He weighed about 220 pounds, six foot. He was like a god to me. At one point, he went into business with a group of people to start a supermarket—a bunch of supermarkets, actually—but his store was the only one that was worth anything. After a year's work, the money disappeared and he lost his store. He was so angry. He had a passport already and the war was starting. So he left for America in 1914. He had been to France. He had traveled to Luxembourg and Germany and he didn't like them. There were some of our countrymen, you know, townspeople who had come to America, and so there was a ship coming to New York, and he just went on it. I was four and a half.

  He found a job in Manhattan on Thompson Street as a butcher, and he didn't like it. He was a man already about thirty-eight, and they used to poke fun at him because he couldn't speak English. They paid him very little, five dollars a week. He couldn't live on it, even in those days. What helped was that he could have a free lunch. He'd go to a bar to have a mug of beer. They had a smorgasbord of food, and you ate. All you had to do was buy a nickel's worth of beer. America was a very disappointing experience for him.

  Then someone mentioned he should go to Pennsylvania. He went to Scranton. At first, he worked in the mines. That wasn't his work. He couldn't do it. He lasted about three months. While he was there, someone mentioned there was a job available as a butcher. He applied for it. This husband and wife, they had two stores, a meat market, a general store, and they liked him and they said, “Well, look, if you can't speak we'll help you. My wife will help you.” He took over the meat market, and he built a nice business for them. He was making about twenty-five dollars a week.

  He was with them for three and a half years when we came here. Me, my mother, my two older sisters, and one younger sister. Five.

  My mother was an angel. She always took care of me as if I was the only one. She was a hardworking woman. She ran a little store. And she made sure that my two older sisters were able to go to school. There was a big age difference between me and my sisters because in between us, there were five other children who died at birth. Nobody seemed to know why at that time.

  Just before we left for America, I was gathering wood, twigs, for the fireplace, what we called “fornelli”—little burners that you made with bricks, and you put a pot over it, you know. So we needed little sticks. There was no charcoal or anything like that in those days. So I was with a friend, and he started chasing me and I tripped over a stump, then right across a wheelbarrow with a shovel, and I split my eyelid. I started bleeding. I was afraid to go home because I would get a beating besides. So I was packing it with dirt to stop the blood from flowing. I was about seven.

  Well, I finally got home; they took me to the pharmacist. In those days, the pharmacist did as much work as the doctor. And he cleaned it. He patched it up. The following morning, my face was like a balloon, and we went to the doctor, who took our physical for the boat, the Anconia. He says, “The boy cannot go.” So my mother says, “If my son doesn't go, none of us go.”

  Two weeks later, we found out that the Anconia was torpedoed and sunk. Then I became a hero. I have always said, “I have St. Francis on my shoulders. He's been watching me.” Because St. Francis of Assisi used to live only about four miles from our town.

  We finally got on board the Dante Alighieri in Genoa, and we went as far as Gibraltar. We were there for four or five days. They refueled us, and we were supposed to go out in a convoy, one behind the other. But our captain decided he wouldn't do that because he had no cargo. The boat was very light in the water, and he went in a different direction where he figured the German submarines wouldn't be hiding underneath. Midnight, after we left Gibraltar, they called everybody to the lifeboats and we huddled there. No lights on. There were two cannons, one at the bow, and one at the stern.

  At dawn, all I could hear was screaming, crying, people, mothers calling for their children because they got lost. The ship was mostly women whose husbands were in America. No men. I look overboard and I see lifeboats one after another going toward shore. The convoy had been attacked by submarines.

  We were in one of two big salons, no cabin. Just bunk beds, one after another, three high. The toilets were in the open. I remember we ran out of sweet, fresh water halfway through. There was only fresh water for drinking. So if you washed, you had to wash with saltwater from the ocean. There was a shower in the open
on deck. I never took a bath for the whole twenty-three days on board ship because it was too cold. It was February. I wasn't going to take a shower in the middle of the Atlantic in February…. We were black from coal dust [because the ship ran on coal].

  The food was lousy. My mother used to go with this dishpan, and they used to put this slop into it. After a while, we couldn't eat it no more. But if you had some money, you could buy rolls, little oval rolls they used to sell. They cost a lira. A lira at that time was about twenty cents. So we couldn't afford too many of those with five people to feed.

  New York had a lot of ice floes in the bay. They had an icebreaker ship. That's was how cold it was. I saw the statue, but America, the statue, meant nothing to me. I knew nothing about it.

  We expected my father to be at Ellis Island to claim us but he wasn't there. Nobody came to claim us. And my mother was frightened because he wasn't there. My sisters, too. There was some sort of communication snafu.

  We spent six days at Ellis Island. We had to be washed to get the coal dust off. We went through physicals. Doctors checked us all over. The first day I got big glasses of milk and white bread, which, to me, was like manna from heaven. I was treated very nicely, but you live on rumors. People were being sent back. And you never knew what was happening. My mother was crying her heart out. My sisters were worried, crying, because the trip coming over wasn't a cruise. And to go back and go through the same thing, or be blown up, you know, it was a horrible thought for them.