I came into Forest City along a road made of coal-dust. A black by-path led off to the right down a long gradual slope, and was lost among the culm-heaps of a devastated country side. Miners with sooty faces and heavy coal-dusty moustaches came up in ones and twos and threes, wearing old peak-hats, from the centre of the front of which rose their black nine-inch lamps looking like cockades. They carried large tarnished "grub-cans," they wore old cotton blouses, and showed by unbuttoned buttons their packed, muscular bodies. Shuffling forward up the hill they looked like a different race of men—these divers of the earth. And they were nearly all Russians or Lithuanians or Slavs of one kind or another.  
"Mostly foreigners here," said I to an American whom I overtook.
 
"You can go into that saloon among the crowd and not hear a word of white the whole night," he replied.
 
I addressed a collier in English.
 
"Are you an American?"
 
"No speak English," he replied, and frowned.
 
[Pg 124]
 
"From Russia?" I inquired, in his own tongue.
 
"And you from where?" he asked with a smile. "Are you looking for a job?"
 
But before I could answer he sped away to meet a trolly that was just whizzing along to a stopping-place. Presently I myself got into a car and watched in rapid procession the suburbs of Carbondale and Scranton. Black-faced miners waited in knots at the stations all along the road. I read on many rocks and railings the scrawled advertisement, "Buy diamonds from Scurry." Girls crowded into the car from the emptying silk-mills, and they were in slashed skirts, some of them, and all in loud colours, and over-decorated with frills, ribbons, and shoddy jewellery. We came to dreary Iceville, all little grey houses in the shadow of an immense slack mountain. We came into the fumes of Carbondale, where the mines have been on fire ten years; we got glimpses of the far, beautiful hills and the tender green of spring woods set against the soft darkness of abundant mountains. We dived into wretched purlieus where the frame-buildings seemed like flotsam that had drifted together into ridges on the bending earth. We saw dainty little wooden churches with green and yellow domes, the worshipping places of Orthodox Greeks, Hungarians, Ruthenians, and at every turn of the road saw the broad-faced, cavernous-eyed men and the bright-eyed, full-bosomed women of the Slavish nations. I realised that I had[Pg 125] reached the barracks of a portion of America's great army of industrial mercenaries.
 
I stayed three days at Casey's Hotel in Scranton, and slept nights under a roof once more, after many under the stars. I suppose there was a journalist in the foyer of the hotel, for next morning, when I opened one of the local papers, I read the following impression of my arrival:
 
With an Alpine rucksack strapped to his back, his shoes thick with coal-dust, and a slouch hat pulled down on all sides to shut out the sun, a tall, raw-boned stranger walked up Lackawanna Avenue yesterday afternoon, walked into the rotunda of the Hotel Casey and actually obtained a room.
 
Every paper told that I was an Englishman specially interested in Russians and the America of the immigrant. So I needed no further introduction to the people of the town.
 
Just as I was going into the breakfast-room a bright boy came up to me and asked me in Russian if I were Stephen Graham. "My name is Kuzma," said he. "I am a Little Russian. I read you wanted to know about the Russians here, so I came along to see you."
 
"Come and have breakfast," said I.
 
We sat down at a table for two, and considered each a delicately printed sheet entitled, "Some suggestions for your breakfast." Kuzma was thrilled to sit in such a place; he had never been inside the hotel before. It was pretty daring of him to come and seek me there.[Pg 126] But Russians are like that, and America is a free country.
 
As we had our grape-fruit and our coffee and banana cream and various other "suggestions," Kuzma told me his story. He was a Little Russian, or rather a Red Russian or Ruthenian, and came from Galicia. Three years previously he had arrived in New York and found a job as dish-washer at a restaurant, after three months of that he progressed to being bottle-washer at a druggist's, then he became ice-carrier at a hotel. Then another friendly Ruthenian introduced him to a Polish estate agent, who was doing a large business in selling farms to Polish immigrants. As Kuzma knew half a dozen Slavonic dialects the Pole took him away from New York, and sat him in his office at Scranton, putting him into smart American attire, and making a citizen out of a "Kike." I should say for the benefit of English readers that illiterate Russians and Russian Jews are called Kikes, illiterate Italians are "Wops," Hungarians are "Hunkies." These are rather terms of contempt, and the immigrant is happy when he can speak and understand and answer in English, and so can take his stand as an American. After six months' clerking and interpreting Kuzma began to do a little business on his own account, and actually learned how to deal in real estate and sell to his brother Slavs at a profit.
 
Kuzma, as he sat before me at breakfast, was a[Pg 127] bright, well-dressed business American. You'd never guess that but three years before he had entered the New World and taken a job as dish-washer. He had seized the opportunity.
 
"You're a rich man now?" said I.
 
"So-so. Richer than I could ever be in Galicia. I'm learning English at the High School here, and when I pass my examination I shall begin to do well."
 
"You are studying?"
 
"I do a composition every day, on any subject, sometimes I write a little story. I try to write my life for the teacher, but he says I am too ambitious."
 
"Do you love your Ruthenian brothers and sisters here?"
 
"No; I prefer the Great Russians."
 
"You're a very handsome young man. I expect you've got a young lady in your mind now. Is she an American, or one of your own people? Does she live here, or did you leave her away over there, in Europe?"
 
"I don't think of them. I shall, however, marry a Russian girl."
 
"Have you many friends here?"
 
"Very many."
 
"You will take me to them?"
 
"Oh yes, with pleasure."
 
"And where shall we go first? It is Sunday morning. Shall we go to church?"
 
[Pg 128]
 
We left the hotel and went to a large Baptist chapel. When we arrived there we found the whole congregation engaged in Bible study. The people were divided into three sections,—Russians, Ruthenians, Poles. Russians sat together, Ruthenians and Little Russians together, and Poles together. I was most heartily welcomed, and took a place among the circle of Russians, Kuzma being admitted there also, though by rights he should have gone to the other Ruthenians. He was evidently a favourite.
 
We took the forty-second chapter of Genesis, reading aloud the first verse in Russian, the second in Ruthenian, and the third in Polish. When that was accomplished we prayed in Ruthenian, then we listened to an evangelical sermon in Russian, and then sang, "Nearer, my God, to Thee!" in the same manner as we had read the chapter of Genesis—first verse in Russian, second in Ruthenian, third in Polish. It was strange to find myself singing with Kuzma:
 
Do Ciebie Boze moj!
Przyblizam sie.
I have never seen Poles and Ruthenians and Russians so happy together as in this chapel, and indeed in America generally. In Russia they more or less detest one another. They are certainly of different faiths, and they do not care about one another's language. But here there is a real Pan-Slavism. It will[Pg 129] hold the Slavic peoples together a long time, and separate them from other Americans. Still there are not many cities in the United States resembling Scranton ethnologically. The wandering Slav when he moves to another city is generally obliged to go to a chapel where only English is spoken, and he strains his mind and his emotions to comprehend the American spirit.
 
After the hymn the congregation divided into classes, and talked about the Sermon on the Mount, and to me they were like very earnest children at a Sunday School. I was able to look round. There were few women in the place; nearly all of us were working men, miners whose wan faces peered out from the grime that showed the limit of their washing. At least half the men were suffering from blood-poisoning caused by coal bruises, and their foreheads and temples showed dents and discolorations. They had been "up against it." They would not have been marked that way in Russia, but I don't think they grudged anything to America. They had smiles on their lips and warmth in their eyes; they were very much alive. "Tough fellows, these Russians," wrote Gorky. "Pound them to bits and they'll come up smiling."
 
They were nearly all peasants who had been Orthodox, but had been "converted"; they were strictly abstinent; they sighed for Russia, but they were proud to feel themselves part of the great Baptist[Pg 130] community, and knit to America by religious ties. None of them entirely approved of Scranton. They felt that a mining town was worse than anything they had come from in Russia, but they were glad of the high wages they obtained, and were saving up either to go back to Russia and buy land or to buy land in America. They craved to settle on the land again.
 
It seemed to me Kuzma's business of agent for real estate among the Slavs was likely to prove a very profitable one. I shall come back to Scranton one day and find him a millionaire. He evidently had the business instinct—an example of the Slav who does not want the land again. The fact that he sought me out showed that he was on the qui vive in life.
 
When the service was concluded we went over the church with a young Russian who had fled to America to escape conscription, and who averred that he would never go back to his own country. His nose was broken, and of a peculiar blue hue, owing to blood-poisoning. His finger-nails were cut short to the quick, but even so, the coal-dust was deep between the flesh and the nail. He was most cordial, his handshake was something to remember, even to rue a little. He had been one of those who took the collection, and he emptied the money on to a table—a clatter of cents and nickels. He showed us with much edification the big bath behind the pulpit where the converted miners upon occasion walked the plank to the songs[Pg 131] of fellow-worshippers. They were no doubt attracted by the holiness of water, considering the dirt in which they lived.
 
"He is a Socialist," said Kuzma, as we went away to have lunch. "A Socialist and a Baptist as well. He has a Socialist gathering in the afternoon and Russian tea and speeches, and he wants me to go. But they hold there should be no private property. I want private property. I want to travel and to have books of my own, so I can't call myself a Socialist."
 
In the afternoon Kuzma took me to the Public Library and showed me its resources. In the evening we went to supper at the house of a dear old Slovak lady, who had come from Hungary on a visit thirty years ago, and had never returned to her native land. She had been courted and won and married within three weeks of her arrival—her husband a rich Galician Slav. Now she was a widow, and had three or four daughters, who were so American you'd never suspect their foreign parentage.
 
She told me of the man............