"Little Mother," 11, Is Pilot of Family

1920

Four Children End Journey From Norway to North Dakota.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota. — Unable to write or speak the English language, an 11-year-old "mother," guarding carefully her "family" of three young brothers, passed thru Minneapolis on her way from her home in Norway to the home of her grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. John Sagvang, Crary, N. D., where they arrived safely.

Magna Viken, the little girl, had safely brought her brothers — Magne, 9 years old; John, 7 years old, and the baby, 5 years old — across the Atlantic and overland as far as Minneapolis.

Their mother died recently and their father, at the request of the grandparents, had sent the children to America, Magna told a representative of the Travelers' Aid in Norwegian.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 5.

U. S. Seems To Be Land of Husbands

1920

FOREIGN GIRLS INVADING AMERICA BY WHOLESALE.

Feminine Army Hailing From All Nations Waits at New York for Lovers.

NEW YORK, N. Y., Aug. 5. — Brides, pink, nut-brown, olive and rosy, slender, chubby and plump, are anxiously inquiring at Ellis Island these days in a Babel of tongues for the sweethearts they have come so far to capture and break into domestic teamwork.

These modern Penelopes, who have reversed the old story and gone in search of their mates instead of supinely waiting and spinning at home, have adventured to more businesslike purpose than did old meandering Odysseus. They have winged a true course despite all the difficulties of these unsettled times.

They, together with aged relatives of kinsfolk already established here and wives and children coming to rejoin husbands, form a considerable part of the present mounting wave of immigrants, and their eager attractiveness just now is doing much to brighten the Island's grim labyrinth.

They're From All Lands.

There is such a choice and so cosmopolitan a bouquet of young brides at the Island that they deserve a consideration all to themselves, excluding from notice all of the faltering steps beside them of the aged fled from the chaos of Europe to secure haven with their children in America, and the prattlers in everything from Gaelic to Arabic, at last in a land of plentiful bread and milk.

Mary, Kathleen, Mollie, Malaki, Helena, Gastana, Taube, Conception, Mitzi and Germaine, all tender in years, all distractingly pretty, all in sparkling spirits, hailing from seven different countries and speaking seven different languages, clustered together in the New York detention room awaiting the arrival of their sweethearts, formed as inspirational citizen material as the Old World has ever sent us.

Mary, Kathleen and Mollie were Irish girls — home-makers they said — impatient to be away from the Island and at their chosen profession. Mollie Malone, a slender, brown-haired, brown-eyed girl from Dublin, jollied all rhyme and reason out of a would-be serious interview. She volunteered that she was going somewhere west of the Hudson River to marry a Yank whom she had met while he was doughboying overseas.

Draws Paper From Stocking.

Malaki Ayoub, a Syrian girl from Beirut, an exotic moving picture princess without half trying, olive skinned, dimpled, lustrous dark eyes, black hair, of plump, languorous dignity, also comes to marry. The interview with Malaki was limited to a word or so and nods, the interpreter, Nathan Greenberg, master of a sheaf of languages, being unable to understand much of the meat of her speech. Malaki, with naive, near-Eastern frankness, drew an official paper from the National Lisle Bank and verified the spelling of her name.

There was a slight English girl from Manchester among the brides. She refused to tell her name or anything about herself, but did consent to tell the interviewer that he should be heartily ashamed of Ellis Island and its tedious ways. She said that she reached New York on the Aquitania and she thought it a needless delay to be kept from her friends and sweetheart for four days.

Gastana Marchegiana[*] from Abruzzi and Conception Rodriguez from Seville, Spain, were two Southern beauties. Mitzi was a reticent girl from St. Gall, Switzerland, an embroidery worker. Taube (dove translated) Green (also a translation which she has adopted as appropriate to beginning her life in America) was an unusually pretty Polish Jewess, accompanied by her mother. Taube is a seamstress, as eager to enter the field of American business as she is to begin home-making here.

Conditions Bad in Poland.

Taube, who is going to Chicago, gave a discouraging description of conditions in Poland, where, she said, there is much near famine, and already much of the graft that characterizes democratic government. She said that it took four weeks' time and considerable backsheesh for her party to get its passports to leave Poland.

Germaine Dubuc of Bordeaux, France, following two years later in the wake of a California doughboy now established in a Western export house, was the last but not least attractive of the young brides-to-be greeted as they paced expectantly, some fretfully, before the doors of the detention room awaiting their sweethearts to claim them.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 5.

Note: [*] This name is right on the fold and so is hard to read. But it looks like it says Gactana Marchegina, more sure about the first name than the last. Earlier in the article, though, there is a reference to Gastana, certainly this same person. And the last name doesn't Google well, but with Marchegiana there are a lot more. Neither, of course, is necessarily right, but this is what we went with.

Which One Is The American?

1920 (Click the picture for larger version)

In the above picture is shown a mother and two sons. The mother and one of her sons have just come over from the old country and have been in this country but a few days. The other son has lived here for five years. Can you tell which one of the sons is an American and which is not? It ought not to require more than one guess!

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 2.

Comment: This is an odd item. I think the point of this item is American pride. With immigration being such a big thing in our history, the fact that we "clean up" well would be something to be proud of.

No Use for $1,500,000 Fund

1916

Original Bequest Was Made to Aid Needy Immigrants.

ST. LOUIS, Missouri. — This city is trying to find some way in which it can make use of a fund of $1,500,000, which for many years has been growing continually but at present is utterly useless to anybody. It is known as the Mullanphy immigrant relief fund.

Bryan Mullanphy in 1851 bequeathed to the city one-third of his estate for the relief of poor immigrants on their way to homes in the West. The original bequest amounted to $500,000, but it has grown to $1,500,000, most of which is invested in tenement-house property, bringing in an annual income of approximately $38,000. Last year the trustees were able to spend only $2,141 for the stipulated relief.

Sixty years ago, in the days of the prairie schooner, the Mullanphy fund was very welcome and proved a blessing to the stranded immigrants, who were enabled to resume their journeys with new hopes. As the years went by, the stream of immigrants grew smaller. In time the western trails became busy highways, winding thru prosperous farming communities. The covered wagons of the immigrant bound for the West became so scarce that they were a novelty. The need for a fund to aid immigrants finally virtually ceased to exist.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 5.

Two Jobs Well Done

By W. D. Boyce (W. D. Boyce's Talks)

The year 1919 had many problems. The biggest was to get our boys back from across the sea, get them settled in the jobs they held before the war and find other places for men and women who had taken their jobs while they were gone. The next biggest problem was the Red menace. The spirit of unrest developed by war was felt to a moderate degree in this country thru the efforts of the Bolshevists, I. W. W. and Red Socialists to make trouble. The strong arm of Uncle Sam reached out and interfered with these plans to make trouble and we are sending the alien Reds back to their fatherlands as fast as we can get ships and putting the trouble makers who are citizens of the United States, but don't like our Government, in the penitentiaries as rapidly as the courts can act. This element, however, will require constant watching.

It is amusing to see the Bolshevists and I. W. W. bunch point with pride to Soviet Russia, then kick violently when we prepare to send them back there on a free ticket. It is puzzling to the Government to know what to do with this half-crazy, insane, bombastic and dangerous element. I often have thought the best solution of the question would be to take one of the Philippine Islands or some other island we own and control and put the whole bunch — citizens and non-citizens, on it and let them run a Government of their own to suit themselves and at the same time let them feed themselves. Already we are using one of the Philippine group as a place to which we send the Filipinos who are not dangerous criminals, but who insist upon trying to make trouble for the Government. Why not another island for the Reds? They couldn't get off it and no one could get on it.

I doubt whether we have the right to send back to their native lands the aliens who develop Red or Bolshevist streaks after they arrive in this country. They may not have been that kind or held radical beliefs when they came over here, and so why should we send them back later anymore than we would deport an immigrant who came over in perfect physical condition and later developed some disease? Some day we may get into a lot of trouble with some country because we send back their citizens after they have been in the United States for some time.

In the first place we never ought to permit a politically Red or unhealthy man or woman to land in the United States. If we do we ought to be responsible for them ever after if they want to stay here, but at the same time have some place to put them if they try to make trouble for us. So I suggest that one of the 3,000 islands which we own might be used for that purpose. We ought never to let any of these aliens leave their native lands for this country until they have passed an examination and investigation by consular agents or representatives of our Bureau of Immigration. The stop order should be put in before the loss is made.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 6.

New York Children Are Taught to Play

1910

NEW YORK. — There are places where children have to be taught how to play. You might think that the youngsters wouldn't need instruction of this kind. You would be mistaken. Here in New York men and women spend the better part of their lives teaching thousands of children how to play, not only with their muscles, but also with their minds, writes a correspondent. A great many thousand dollars are spent annually by the city just for that purpose, and experience has proved that the time and money are well spent.

The tall tenements of the East side, as full of people as a warren is of rabbits, swarm with eager children. Their fathers and mothers were immigrants. Most of them had no boyhood or girlhood, as most people think of it. They worked for a living before they came to this country; they were hard at work in shops or factories after they came here. They had no traditions of play to hand down to their children. To them play was a foolishness.

Their children, unable to breathe in the tenements, take to the streets, which are dirty or infested with persons and things that are not good for little people to see and hear. Children who have no play places but the streets are apt to absorb unhealthful ideas as well as microbes. Pickpockets and loafers are developed that way. Besides, there is little of play that children can do in the streets. That ogre in cap and blue coat, the policeman, is always snooping about.

These are studies that folks with big minds made for themselves in past years. Little by little they got the city government interested and persuaded a very practical minded school board that it was worth while to provide play places for the children who had none, so the board of education has now in this city 245 playgrounds for children, day and night playgrounds, where the little people are carefully instructed how to frolic.

Both the Native-Born and Immigrant Have Duties to America

1920

By Senator W. S. Kenyon of Iowa

The alien cannot Americanize himself. He can never become assimilated if he is shunted off into a shanty town. He cannot be Americanized with a club. There is more hope in a handshake than in profit-sharing.

There is a growing need for America to Americanize itself; for each individual to stop shifting the blame onto others and depending on some one else to put our house in order. The immigrant has his duty to America and he must be made to discharge it. The native-born has his duty and he must search his own heart to see if there are any roots of the trouble there. If we could only control our greed, our avarice, our quick prejudice and passion and pull together for the general welfare of our country, what a nation this would be! America means more than stocks and bonds, and churches and schools and farms and stores. It means a great ideal of justice for all men. A man who cannot be just whether with his employee or with his employer is not a true American.

The ship of state is sailing through pretty troublesome seas, but it is a mighty sturdy old ship. It will weather the storm. It will pull through every crisis. It is a time for aroused conscience and determination of all our people to enthrone justice in their own hearts and then do what they can to assist others. We are engaged now in much talk of helping the world. We can help it by giving to the world a high example of justice and fraternity, and in so doing many of our industrial problems will be solved.

She's Going To Be 100 — Gets to Bed Early, Doesn't Dance

Syracuse, NY, 1918

Go to Bed Early, Don't Dance and Don't Worry and Live to Be 100

Mrs. Ann Land, Who Will Celebrate 100th Anniversary Next Saturday Says People To-day Are in Too Great Haste.

Says Too Many People Get to the Other Side of the Hill Without Any Reserve to Hold 'em Back.

Mrs. Ann Land of No. 1210 Grape street will celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of her birth next Saturday.

"All my life I've followed a set of rules," said Mrs. Land. "They are: Go to bed early. Eat carefully. Don't dance. Don't worry. It's because I've followed them that I'm going to have a birthday it is given few women to have.

"Young folks in this country live in too much of a hurry while they are young. Then when they get onto the other side of the hill they haven't anything in reserve to hold 'em back. They just slip down and get to the bottom quick."

Mrs. Land wasn't born in this country. She came here when she was 35, a bride. Her husband had a brother in this city and Mr. and Mrs. Land came directly here. She has lived in the little house in Grape street sixty-five years.

For thirty years she has been an invalid. Stepping from a street car in the days when the motive power was horses instead of electricity, the car started too soon. She was thrown violently to the pavement and her spine was injured.

But the fact that her legs have been helpless all these years has not impaired her usefulness. She does all the mending for herself and daughter, Mrs. Sarah Henry, who lives with her. She sews rags for carpets and makes ironing holders.

She has never worn glasses and just of late she has confessed to a growing dimness of sight.

"I'm only bothered in threading needles," she added hastily when she told of this affliction. "Sarah threads a lot of them for me and when I've used 'em all I call her to thread more."

She has been a widow since 1864, when her husband, John Land, was killed in the Battle of The Wilderness. She had four children, but all have died excepting Mrs. Henry.

It has always been a source of grief to her that she did not receive sufficient education in her youth to enable her to read extensively.

"In the old country large families educated their boys in those days, and let their girls shift for themselves. I had eight brothers," she concluded simply.

Mrs. Land likes to talk of the days in the old country, when, as she grew old enough, she filled positions as cook in the homes of various personages of high degree, lords and such.

She likes to tell of her trip across the Atlantic, which was her wedding trip, and attended by so many disagreeable occurrences that she never wanted to go back.

"In the first place I was seasick every inch of the way until we got near enough the shores of New Jersey to smell the peach orchards, which were in bloom," she explained.

"There was mutiny on board. A lot of sailors had been shipped at Liverpool and paid full wages for the trip. A day out we ran into bad weather and they made trouble. My husband saved the captain from being shot by knocking down a man who had a pistol pointed at his head. Those men made the remainder of the trip in irons. Maybe a trip isn't so difficult now, but I don't want to take it."

She doesn't understand why the world is at war.

"War is bad business," she said shaking her head. "It makes so much unhappiness and is so useless. It made a widow of me."

She hasn't any ambition to "live to a great age," she declares, but "rather expects she will."

My grandmother was 104 years old when she died. My father was nearly a hundred. All my people lived to be old, so I may as well be resigned," she said.

—The Syracuse Herald, Syracuse, NY, June 23, 1918, page 17.

The American Breed, Girls Smoking, Welsh Evangelist

1906

The American Breed

Professor Edward A. Ross, of the University of Nebraska, uses the term "the American breed" to describe what he calls a distinct type of man — the restless, strenuous people so different from the easy-going types of Europe. There are reasons why our immigrants should become nervous and energetic in one or two generations, but Professor Ross seems to think that the restlessness is not acquired here, but is the reason why these types left Europe. America is therefore weeding out the energetic folks from Europe — they are selected, venturesome natures and constitute a type. Whatever the reason is the type is fairly distinct and the chances are that much of our prosperity is due partly to our energy and not altogether to our tariff.


Girls Smoking

Cigarette smoking among girls is stated by the secretary of the Leeds, England, branch of the Anti-Cigarette league to be on the increase. The practice is particularly prevalent among the factory and warehouse girls in Leeds. Many of them, however, have taken the following pledge: "I promise, with God's help, to abstain from purchasing or using tobacco in any form, at least until I reach the age of 21, not only for my own sake, but for the good of my country." The league has now 4,000 pledged members.


Evangelist Endowed

Evan Roberts, the Welsh evangelist, has been given an income of £5 a week for the remainder of his life by will of Mr. Robert Davies, a millionaire philanthropist. Mr. Davies' idea was to enable Mr. Roberts to engage in continuous revival work wherever he felt called upon to go, without having to think too much about the money question.

--The Weekly Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, April 18, 1906, page 4.

Floating Nursery

On a Steamer Which Arrived in New York From Old Country Yesterday.

New York, April 21. - Of the 290 second cabin passengers who arrived here yesterday on the Holland-American steamer Ryndam, 190 were children between the ages of four and ten years. The Ryndam in fact was like a floating nursery. One family had nine children, another had eight, and another six, while three brothers by the name of Vandyke had fifteen between them. To add to the nursery, Mrs. Ernest Cabonnie, wife of a Philadelphia druggist, became the mother of twins during the voyage.

--The Mansfield News, Mansfield, Ohio, April 21, 1909, page 1.