Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1906-11-07

in search of work and found it, slept in
box cars and on the ground, worked in
the steel mills that absorb the husky"
been robbed and bunlsoed and assisted
with the new citizen facing a new and
strange world in search Of opportunl-
ty. Always with charity for the weak
nesses of all classes and with perfect
personal understanding of the points
of view from the first cabin and the
steerage or ashore hs has written an
absorbing story Of the trails that
stretch from every mountain side and
valley of the Old World to converge
and end in the Land of Equal Oppor-
tunity. Its pages are vitagraphic films
OF the mingled humor, pathos and
swelters and stews coming westward
in the steerage possibly to die later
mill or perhaps returning over the
trail to write his name above or below
that of Vanderbilt on the passenger list
of the first cabin. Statistics are rele-
gated to an appendix where the reader
who Graves figures may satisfy his
yearnipg. What Steiner has tried to do
and succeeded in doing is to present
the migrant as he is, human, hopeful,
and aspiring to higher life, the crude
s1y o., >e nj r
izenship.
The book is plea. for the class CT
immigrants that Americans are in
cli1it'a to class as undesirable, tha
Slavic peoples, Russians, Jews, Ital-
ians, the more ignorant and most OPP
pressed Of these who make up the total
of the million a year The Slav. and
the Jew are given especial attention
possibly from a feeling of nationality,
and by reason of more intimate knowl-
edge and deeper insight into the char
acter of the people among whom the
authors youth was spent and whose
blood runs In his veins. He has en-
deavored to place them before Anleri
cans not as they appear at Ellis Is
land in frightened herds, wan and dir
try, and Ill smelling, or at the crowded
depots and immigrant cars but as they
are, human beings with hopes and as
pirations. and family ties and a love
of home and locality. He has tried to
show us the heart of the Slav and the
intense patriotism of the Jew for Am
erica, when he has sensed what a free
country means to the oppressed. 1t is
a plea and prophecy. A plea for the
downtrodden and the prophecy of
new race. The immigrant coming west
in the steerage is a pitiful, frightenened
peasant. If he returns he goes man
and an American. Said one Jew re-
turning as an American citizen to the
cc -,try where he had cringed before
moujik, when told that his boastful
Americanism would result in payment
of the higher prices which it is Gus
tomary to charge "the rich Ameri
cans" II don't care If it costs me
money to be an American. They will
know by my face that l am from Am
erica And Steiner would open the
gates to all the oppressed and print
America on all their faces
Professor Steiner has written a most
readable book bearing on a problem"
More than that he has come to his sub
ject as cosmopolite, a workman and
treated it as world question in poll
tics, as well as a very human problem
in which all men are concerned. He
has neglected locality and self-interest
and creeds and bored down to the
common humanity that constitutes the
wider kinship and nationality of man
kind for his reasons, and gone to the
deeper impulses and primitive in
stincts Of the race in his analysis Of
the forces that are crowding a million
souls of heterogeneous religions, Ian
guages and aspirations into America
annually. Best Of all has kept his
ideals and balanced the opportunity of
the country that receives him equally
against the opportunity of the immi-
grant. To Steiner the Statue of Liberty
at the gateway Of the country of equal
opportunity els the finest statuary in
the world" To offer liberty to all who
may come seeking, to weld the con-
vergent atoms that separate them
selves voluntarily from decadent civili-
cations to gravitate toward land OF
wider possibilities into new and
greater race is the destiny and duty OF.
America as he sees it; and his sense
Of mighty America is written thru the
book as it is into that paragraph of his
preface where he says:
IT know no fatherland but Am
erica; for after all 1t matters less
where one was born than where
ones ideals had their birth; and to
me, America is not the land Of
mighty dollars, but the land of
great ideals"
1t is splendid thing, the kind Of
Amerlcanism that pens such words; 1T
rs grand thing for any country when
her citizens born or adopted give such
-. %,rt,,ra