ence for peace and order in the strike in Packingtown last Summer.
Louis A. Pink (St. Lawrence University), made a special study of the Magyars in New York in connection with his work in the Summer School in Philanthropic Work, in 1904.
Dr. Jane E. Robbins has had fifteen years of experience in settlement work and as a practising physician on the East Side in New York. For three years and a half, while head-worker at the Normal College Alumnæ House, Dr. Robbins lived in the heart of the Bohemian colony and had unusual opportunities for studying conditions in the cigar factories.
The Rev. Peter Roberts (Ph. D., Yale), is Welsh by birth and early education. His books show an intimate knowledge both of conditions and of people in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania, where the Slavs are a large part of the labor force, and he was one of the most important witnesses in behalf of the miners before the Strike Commission of 1902. Mr. Roberts is a graduate of Yale Theological Seminary, is in charge of a Congressional church in the heart of the Pennsylvania coal country, and is a member of the Industrial Committee of the National Council of Congregational Churches.
P. V. Rovnianek is editor of the Slovensky Dennik, Pittsburg. During his sixteen years in this country Mr. Rovnianek has been an important influence in educating his countrymen in American citizenship and in impressing on them the value of organization, and to him is due the organization of the National Slavonic Society.
Mary Buell Sayles, at present inspector in the Tenement-house Department of New York city, made a study in 1901-2 of the housing problem in several neighborhoods of Jersey City, while holding a fellowship for the College Settlement Association.
Frank Julian Warne (Ph. D., Pennsylvania), was stationed in the anthracite coal fields, during the great strike, as staff correspondent of the Philadelphia Public Ledger. He is the author of The Slav Invasion and the Mine Workers, and of many pamphlets and articles on economic and social subjects. At present Dr. Warne is editor of The Railway World, and research fellow in economics in the University of Pennsylvania.
Walter E. Weyl (Ph. D., Pennsylvania), has done graduate work in economics in Halle, Berlin, and Paris. He has conducted investigations in Europe and in Mexico for the United States Department of Labor, the results of which are embodied in department bulletins. During the coal strike he acted as John Mitchell's economic advisor. Mr. Weyl is now a resident at the University Settlement, New York city.
A Shepherd of Immigrants.
"My people do not live in America. They live underneath America. America goes on over their heads."
These are the picturesque and profoundly suggestive words of a Ruthenian Greek-Catholic priest, Father Paul Tymkevich of Yonkers.
"America does not begin till a man is a workingman; a laborer cannot afford to be an American. He must earn two dollars a day for that." Men earning a dollar and a quarter or a dollar and a half a day are necessarily "underneath America."
"My people do not love America."—Why should they from what they see of it? The more educated they hardly come in contact with, the "aristocracy of labor" is apt to be intolerant and contemptuous of foreigners—or of other foreigners. On the other hand, newcomers do come into contact with everyone who hopes to exploit them.
Economically, thinks the priest, they gain by coming here, "physically and morally, no." "In the city, they need more morality." Then again, with deep wisdom "They have no habits. The first step in civilization is to acquire habits, and where can they acquire them?—on the streets? in the saloon?"
Education, the school, alone can help them, in his opinion. But here success can be neither quick nor easy. They distrust these schools, teaching their children in a language they cannot understand themselves. Their whole history prepares them to suspect ulterior purposes. "Perhaps, too, some have seen political influence at work in public schools." They have most confidence in parochial schools, but as supplementary to the public schools not a substitute. Here, after school hours, the children are taught religion and, incidentally, their own language.
But the schools, he holds, do not Americanize the second generation. The parents too often care nothing for the child's education and home influences make strongly against it. Drinking, swearing and ignorance abound, and after few years the child is out of school and work. The third generation is not yet upon the scene.
