The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves

Expanded Edition

Werner Sollors

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135959784
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Culture populaire dans l'art

Hamilton Holt, editor of The Independent, collected these touching autobiographies of ordinary people--new immigrants and sharecroppers, cooks and fishermen, women and men working in sweatshops, in the city, and on the land. First published in 1906, and reissued a decade ago, this new edition of Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans is expanded to include lives Holt did not include in his original selection, as well as a new preface by Werner Sollors.

1. THE LIFE STORY OF

A LITHUANIAN

The Lithuanian, who told the following story of his life to Mr. Ernest Poole, is a workman in the Chicago Stockyards and gave his name as Antanas Kaztauskis.

THIS is not my real name, because if this story is printed it may be read back in Lithuania, and I do not want to get my father and the ugly shoemaker into trouble with the Russian Government.

It was the shoemaker who made me want to come to America. He was a traveling shoemaker, for on our farms we tan our own cowhides, and the shoemaker came to make them into boots for us. By traveling he learned all the news and he smuggled in newspapers across the frontier from Germany. We were always glad to hear him talk.

I can never forget that evening four years ago. It was a cold December. We were in a big room in our log house in Lithuania. My good, kind, thin old mother sat near the wide fireplace, working her brown spinning wheel, with which she made cloth for our shirts and coats and pants. I sat on the floor in front of her with my knee-boots off and my feet stretched out to the fire. My feet were cold, for I had been out with my young brother in the freezing sheds milking the cows and feeding the sheep and geese. I leaned my head on her dress and kept yawning and thinking about my big goose-feather bed. My father sat and smoked his pipe across the fireplace. Between was a kerosene lamp on a table, and under it sat the ugly shoemaker on a stool finishing a big yellow boot. His sleeves were rolled up; his arms were thin and bony, but you could see how strong the fingers and wrist were, for when he grabbed the needle he jerked it through and the whole arm’s length up. This arm kept going up and down. Every time it went up he jerked back his long mixed-up red hair and grunted. And you could just see his face—bony and shut together tight, and his narrow sharp eyes looking down. Then his head would go down again, and his hair would get all mixed up. I kept watching him. My fat, older brother, who sat behind with his fat wife, grinned and said: “Look out or your eyes will make holes in the leather.” My brother’s eyes were always dull and sleepy. Men like him stay in Lithuania.

At last the boot was finished. The little shoemaker held it up and looked at it. My father stopped smoking and looked at it, “That’s a good boot,” said my father. The shoemaker grunted. “That’s a damn poor boot,” he replied (instead of “damn” he said “skatina”), “a rough boot like all your boots, and so when you grow old you are lame. You have only poor things, for rich Russians get your good things, and yet you will not kick up against them. Bah!”

“I don’t like your talk,” said my father, and he spit into the fire, as he always did when he began to think. “I am honest. I work hard. We get along. That’s all. So what good will such talk do me?”

“You!” cried the shoemaker, and he now threw the boot on the floor so that our big dog lifted up his head and looked around. “It’s not you at all. It’s the boy—that boy there!” and he pointed to me. “That boy must go to America!”

Now I quickly stopped yawning and I looked at him all the time after this. My mother looked frightened and she put her hand on my head. “No, no; he is only a boy,” she said. “Bah!” cried the shoemaker, pushing back his hair, and then I felt he was looking right through me. “He is eighteen and a man. You know where he must go in three years more.” We all knew he meant my five years in the army. “Where is your oldest son? Dead. Oh, I know the Russians—the man-wolves! I served my term, I know how it is. Your son served in Turkey in the mountains. Why not here? Because they want foreign soldiers here to beat us. He had four roubles ($2.08) pay for three months, and with that he had to pay men like me to make his shoes and clothes. Oh, the wolves! They let him soak in rain; standing guard all night in the snow and ice he froze, the food was God’s food, the vodka was cheap and rotten! Then he died. The wolves—the man-wolves! Look at this book.” He jerked a Roman Catholic prayer book from his bag on the floor. “Where would I go if they found this on me? Where is Wilhelm Birbell?”

At this my father spit hard again into the fire and puffed his pipe fast.

“Where is Wilhelm Birbell?” cried the shoemaker, and we all kept quiet. We all knew. Birbell was a rich farmer who smuggled in prayer books from Germany so that we all could pray as we liked, instead of the Russian Church way. He was caught one night and they kept him two years in the St. Petersburg jail, in a cell so narrow and short that he could not stretch out his legs, for they were very long. This made him lame for life. Then they sent him to Irkutsk, down in Siberia. There he sawed logs to get food. He escaped and now he is here in Chicago. But at that time he was in jail.

“Where is Wilhelm Birbell?” cried the shoemaker. “Oh, the wolves! And what is this?” He pulled out an old American newspaper, printed in the Lithuanian language, and I remember he tore it he was so angry. “The world’s good news is all kept away. We can only read what Russian officials print in their papers. Read? No, you can’t read or write your own language, because there is no Lithuanian school—only the Russian school—you can only read and write Russian. Can you? No, you can’t! Because even those Russian schools make you pay to learn, and you have no money to pay. Will you never be ashamed—all you? Listen to me.”

Now I looked at my mother and her face looked frightened, but the shoemaker cried still louder. “Why can’t you have your own Lithuanian school? Because you are like dogs—you have nothing to say—you have no town meetings or province meetings, no elections. You are slaves! And why can’t you even pay to go to their Russian school? Because they get all your money. Only twelve acres you own, but you pay eighty roubles ($40) taxes. You must work twelve days on your Russian roads. Your kind old wife must plow behind the oxen, for I saw her last summer, and she looked tired. You must all slave, but still your rye and wheat brings little money, because they cheat you bad. Oh, the wolves—how fat they are! And so your boy must never read or write, or think like a man should think.”

But now my mother cried out, and her voice was shaking. “Leave us alone—you leave us! We need no money—we trade our things for the things we need at the store—we have all we need—leave us alone!”

Then my fat brother grinned and said to the shoemaker, “You always stir up young men to go to America. Why don’t you go yourself?”

I remember that the little shoemaker had pulled a big crooked pipe out of his bag. Now he took a splinter from the basket of splinters which hung on the wall and he lit his pipe and puffed it. His face showed me that he felt bad. “I am too old,” he said, “to learn a new trade. These boots are no good in America. America is no place for us old rascals. My son is in Chicago in the stockyards, and he writes to me. They have hard knocks. If you are sick or old there and have no money you must die. That Chicago place has trouble, too. Do you see that light? That is kerosene. Do you remember the price went up last year? That is Rockefeller. My son writes me about him. He is another man-wolf. A few men like him are grabbing all the good things—the oil and coal and meat and everything. But against these men you can strike if you are young. You can read free papers and prayer books. In Chicago there are prayer books for every man and woman. You can have free meetings and talk out what you think. And so if you are young you can change all these troubles. But I am old. I can feel it now, this winter. So I only tell young men to go.” He looked hard at me and I looked at him. He kept talking. “I tell them to go where they can choose their own kind of God—where they can learn to read and write, and talk, and think like men—and have good things!”

He kept looking at me, but he opened the newspaper and held it up. “Some day,” he said, “I will be caught and sent to jail, but I don’t care. I got this from my son, who reads all he can find at night. It had to be smuggled in. I lend it many times to many young men. My son got it from the night school and he put it in Lithuanian for me to see.” Then he bent over the paper a long time and his lips moved. At last he looked into the fire and fixed his hair, and then his voice was shaking and very low:

“‘We know these are true things—that all men are born free and equal—that God gives them rights which no man can take away—that among these rights are life, liberty and the getting of happiness.’”

He stopped, I remember, and looked at me, and I was not breathing. He said it again.” ‘Life, liberty and the getting of happiness.’ Oh, that is what you want.”

My mother began to cry. “He cannot go if his father commands him to stay,” she kept saying. I knew this was true, for in Lithuania a father can command his son till he dies.

“No, he must not go,” said the shoemaker, “if his father commands him to stay.” He turned and looked hard at my father. My father was looking into the fire. “If he goes,” said my father, “those Russians will never let him come back.” My mother cried harder. We all waited for him to say something else. In about five minutes the shoemaker got up and asked, “Well, what do you say,—the army or America?” But my father shook his head and would not say anything. Soon my brother began yawning and took his fat wife and went to bed. The little shoemaker gathered his tools into his big bag and threw it over his shoulder. His shoulder was crooked. Then he came close to me and looked at me hard.

“I am old,” he said, “I wish I was young. And you must be old soon and that will be too late. The army—the man-wolves! Bah! it is terrible.”

After he was gone my father and I kept looking at the fire. My mother stopped crying and went out. Our house was in two parts of two rooms each. Between the parts was an open shed and in this shed was a big oven, where she was baking bread that night. I could hear her pull it out to look at it and then push it back. Then she came in and sat down beside me and began spinning again. I leaned against her dress and watched the fire and thought about America. Sometimes I looked at my father, and she kept looking at him, too, but he would not say anything. At last my old mother stopped spinning and put her hand on my forehead.

“Alexandr`ia is a fine girl,” she whispered. This gave me a quick, bad feeling. Alexandr`ia was the girl I wanted to marry. She lived about ten miles away. Her father liked my father and they seemed to be glad that I loved her. I had often been thinking at night how in a few years I would go with my uncle to her house and ask her father and mother to give her to me. I could see the wedding all ahead—how we would go to her house on Saturday night and they would have music there and many people and we would have a sociable time. Then in the morning we would go to the church and be married and come back to my father’s house and live with him. I saw it all ahead, and I was sure we would be very happy. Now I began thinking of this. I could see her fine soft eyes and I hated to go away. My old mother kept her hands moving on my forehead. “Yes, she is a nice girl; a kind, beautiful girl,” she kept whispering. We sat there till the lamp went out. Then the fire got low and the room was cold and we went to bed. But I could not sleep and kept thinking.

The next day my father told me that I could not go until the time came for the army, three years ahead. “Stay until then and then we will see,” he said. My mother was very glad and so was I, because of Alexandr`ia. But in the coldest part of that winter my dear old mother got sick and died. The neighbors all came in and sang holy songs for two days and nights. The priest was there and my father bought fine candles. Two of the neighbors made a coffin. At last it was all over. For a long time our log house was always quiet.

That summer the shoemaker came again and talked with me. This time I was very eager to go to America, and my father told me I could go.

One morning I walked over to say good-by to Alexandr‘ia. It was ten miles and the road was dusty, so I carried my boots over my shoulder, as we always did, and I put them on when I came near her house. When I saw her I felt very bad, and so did she. I had the strongest wish I ever had to take hold of her and keep her all my life. We stayed together till it was dark and night fogs came up out of the field grass, and we could hardly see the house. Then she said good-by. For many nights I kept remembering the way she looked up at me.

The next night after supper I started. It is against the law to sell tickets to America, but my father saw the secret agent in the village and he got a ticket from Germany and found us a guide. I had bread and cheese and honey and vodka and clothes in my bag. Some of the neighbors walked a few miles and said good-by and then went back. My father and my younger brother walked on all night with the guide and me. At daylight we came to the house of a man the guide knew. We slept there and that night I left my father and young brother. My father gave me $50 besides my ticket. The next morning before light we were going through the woods and we came to the frontier. Three roads run along the frontier. On the first road there is a soldier every mile, who stands there all night. On the second road is a soldier every half mile, and on the third road is a soldier every quarter of a mile. The guide went ahead through the woods. I hid with my big bag behind a bush and whenever he raised his hand I sneaked along. I felt cold all over and sometimes hot. He told me that sometimes he took twenty immigrants together, all without passports, and then he could not pass the soldiers and so he paid a soldier he knew one dollar a head to let them by. He said the soldier was very strict and counted them to see that he was not being cheated.

So I was in Germany. Two days after that we reached Tilsit and the guide took me to the railroad man. This man had a crowd of immigrants in a room, and we started that night on the railroad—fourth class. It was bad riding sometimes. I used to think of Alexandr‘ia. We were all green and slow. The railroad man used to say to me, “You will have to be quicker than this in Chicago,” and he was right. We were very slow in the stations where we changed trains, and he used to shout at us then, and one old German man who spoke Lithuanian told me what the man was calling us. When he told me this I hurried, and so did the others, and we began to learn to be quicker. It took three days to get to Hamburg. There we were put in a big house called a barracks, and we waited a week. The old German man told me that the barracks men were cheating us. He had been once to Cincinnati in America to visit his son, who kept a saloon. His old, long pipe was stolen there. He kept saying, “Dem grafters, dem grafters,” in a low voice whenever they brought food to sell, for our bags were now empty. They kept us there till our money was half spent on food. I asked the old man what kind of American men were grafters, and he said, “All kinds in Cincinnati, but more in Chicago!” I knew I was going to Chicago, and I began to think quicker. I thought quicker yet on the boat. I saw men playing cards. I played and lost $1.80 in my new money, till the old man came behind me and said, “Dem grafters.” When I heard this I got scared and threw down my cards. That old man used to point up at the rich people looking down at us and say, “Dem grafters.” They were the richest people I had ever seen—the boat was the biggest boat I had ever seen—the machine that made it go was very big, and so was the horn that blew in a fog. I felt everything get bigger and go quicker every day.

It was the most when we came to New York. We were driven in a thick crowd to the railroad station. The old man kept pointing and saying, “Grafters, grafters,” till the guide punched him and said, “Be quick, damn you, be quick.”…“I will be quick pretty soon,” said the old man to me, “and den I will get back dot pipe in Cincinnati. And when I will be quicker still, alreddy, I will steal some odder man’s pipe. Every quick American man is a grafter.” I began to believe that this was true, but I was mixed up and could not think long at one time. Everything got quicker—worse and worse—till then at last I was in a boarding house by the stockyards in Chicago with three Lithuanians, who knew my father’s sisters at home.

That first night we sat around in the house and they asked me, “Well, why did you come?” I told them about that first night and what the ugly shoemaker said about “life, liberty and the getting of happiness.” They all leaned back and laughed. “What you need is money,” they said. “It was all right at home. You wanted nothing. You ate your own meat and your own things on the farm. You made your own clothes and had your own leather. The other things you got at the Jew man’s store and paid him with sacks of rye. But here you want a hundred things. Whenever you walk out you see new things you want, and you must have money to buy everything.”

Then one man asked me, “How much have you?” and I told him $30. “You must buy clothes to look rich, even if you are not rich,” he said. “With good clothes you will have friends.”

The next morning three of these men took me to a store near the stockyards to buy a coat and pants. “Look out,” said one of them. “Is he a grafter?” I asked. They all laughed. “You stand still. That is all you have to do,” they said. So the Jew man kept putting on coats and I moved my arms and back and sides when they told me. We stayed there till it was time for dinner. Then we bought a suit. I paid $5 and then I was to pay $1 a week for five weeks.

In the afternoon I went to a big store. There was a man named Elias. “He is not a grafter,” said my friends. He was nice to me and gave me good advice how to get a job. I bought two shirts, a hat, a collar, a necktie, two pairs of socks and some shoes. We kept going upstairs and downstairs. I saw one Lithuanian man buying everything for his wife and three children, who would come here the next week from Lithuania. My things cost me $8. I put these on right away and then I began to feel better.

The next night they took me for a walk down town. We would not pay to ride, so we walked so long that I wanted to take my shoes off, but I did not tell them this. When we came there I forgot my feet. We stood by one theater and watched for half an hour. Then we walked all around a store that filled one whole block and had walls of glass. Then we had a drink of whiskey, and this is better than vodka. We felt happier and looked into cafés. We saw shiny carriages a...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• The life stories of undistinguished Americans as told by themselves
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction by Werner Sollors (1999)
• Note by Hamilton Holt (1906)
• Introduction by Edwin E.Slosson (1906)
• 1. The Life Story of a Lithuanian
• 2. The Life Story of a Polish Sweatshop Girl
• 3. The Life Story of an Italian Bootblack
• 4. The Life Story of a Greek Peddler
• 5. The Life Story of a Swedish Farmer
• 6. The Life Story of a French Dressmaker
• 7. The Life Story of a German Nurse Girl
• 8. The Life Story of an Irish Cook
• 9. The Life Story of a Farmer’s Wife
• 10. The Life Story of an Itinerant Minister
• 11. The Life Story of a Negro Peon
• 12. The Life Story of an Indian
• 13. The Life Story of an Igorrote Chief
• 14. The Life Story of a Syrian
• 15. The Life Story of a Japanese Servant
• 16. The Life Story of a Chinaman
• 17. The Life Story of a Florida Sponge Fisherman
• 18. The Life Story of a Hungarian Peon
• 19. The Life Story of a Southern White Woman
• 20. The Life Story of a Southern Colored Woman
• 21. A Northern Negro’s Autobiography
• 22. Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of a Eurasian
• 23. The Story of Two Moonshiners
• 24. The Experiences of a Chorus Girl
• 25. Autobiography of a Football Player
• 26. The Confessions of a Woman Professor
• 27. The Story of the Waitress
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments