I observed many interesting things in Chicago, the following circular for instance:
 
Balsok aut John J. Casey.
Hlasujte na John J. Casey.
Glosujgie na John J. Casey.
Votate per John J. Casey.
Vote for John J. Casey,
Labour candidate for Congress.
 
Ten years hence that farrago will have changed to simply "Vote for Casey."
 
My neighbours in the hotel spelt their name in two ways, one way for Polish friends and the other for American understanding:
 
Nawrozke.
Navrozky.
 
It is the latter name that will endure; or perhaps that also will be shed for some cognomen that sounds more familiar and reliable,—to Harris or Jones or Brown.
 
I had a talk in a slum with a family of Roumanian Jews who had come to Chicago twenty years ago. Chicago was a good place, they intended never to leave it, the family had come there for ever.
 
[Pg 295]
 
I met an Alsatian who told me how he had fled from home when he was twelve years old. He crossed the Swiss frontier, and got into Basle at midnight, and had travelled to America via Paris and Havre, and had never gone back. He did not want to serve in the German Army. His father had been a great French soldier in the Franco-German war.
 
"If you went back now would the German authorities bring you to trial?" I asked.
 
"No. I have the Emperor's pardon in black and white."
 
"Do many of those who run away get pardon?"
 
"Only when there is good cause. I used to send money home regularly to keep my sister. The mayor of the town heard of my generosity, reported it to Berlin, and a pardon was written out for me."
 
"They thought it a pity to keep a good citizen out of his own country, even though he had cheated the army. A wise action, eh?" said I.
 
"The Germans are 'cute," he replied.
 
I met a Russian revolutionary who complained that his compatriots in the towns spent all their spare time getting drunk, fighting, and praying. The Russian who made his pile went and opened a beer-shop. He thought the priests of the Orthodox Church kept the immigrants down; they got more money from drunkards than from the virtuous, and therefore they made no efforts to encourage sobriety. He would[Pg 296] like to see the Orthodox Greek and Russian Churches demolished, and the priests and deacons packed back to Europe. America was a new country, and needed a new church.
 
At Chicago also I received a letter from Andray Dubovoy, a young Russian farmer, whose acquaintance I made by chance in the Russian quarter of New York. He was rich enough to come travelling from North Dakota to New York to see the sights of America, a wonderfully keen and happy Russian, full of ideas about the future and stories of the settlement where he lived. He gave me a most interesting account of the Russian pioneers in North Dakota. In the towns where he lived every one spoke Russian, and few spoke English. If you went into a shop and asked for something in English the shopkeeper would shrug her shoulders and send for a little child to interpret. The children went to school and knew English, but the old folks could not master it, and had long given up attempts to learn the language. The town was called Kief, and was named after the province of Russia from which they originally came.
 
He told me the history of two villages in Kiefsky Government in Russia. They had heard of America, but thought it was a place in a fairy-tale—not a real place at all. They were even incredulous when the Jews began to depart for America in numbers. But they were destined to understand.
 
[Pg 297]
 
The villagers were people who asked themselves serious questions and searched their hearts. They ceased going to monasteries and making pilgrimages and kissing relics, and instead gathered together and read the Gospel.
 
Many were arrested for going to illegal meetings. Those who were sent to prison or to Siberia went gladly, as on the Lord's business, to be missionaries to those who sat in darkness.
 
But there was so much persecution that a great number of the villagers thought of following the example of the Jews and emigrating to America. It was in 1894 that they resolved to go; but at that time a large party of Stundists, who had gone out to Virginia the year before, came back with tidings of bad life and poor wages, and damped the enthusiasm. Ten families, however, were tempted by what the Stundists said, and they took tickets to go to the very district of Virginia that the Stundists had abandoned.
 
On their way out they fell in with a party of German colonists going back, after a holiday, to North Dakota. Such tales they told that five of the families changed their minds and determined to throw in their lot with the Germans.
 
The five families received land free, homesteads, they were given credit to purchase horses and cattle and carts and agricultural implements, and they[Pg 298] liked the new country and wrote glowingly to the others in Virginia and in the two villages of Kiefsky Government. As a result, twenty-five new families came at once, and in a few years there were 200 families installed.
 
Each man brought 20 to 30 dollars but no more, and each became indebted to companies for 1000 to 1500 dollars, a debt which they hoped to pay, but which hung on their necks like the instalments their ancestors had to pay to the Land Banks of Russia for the land they had been granted.
 
However, they ploughed and sowed and hoped for harvests, built log cabins and even American houses. They had hard times, and were on the verge of starvation—famine and death staring at them from the barren fields. They were forced to make an appeal through the newspapers of Eastern America, and as a result truck-loads of provisions were sent to them, and "clothes to last five years."
 
Succeeding years made up for their sufferings. There was a plentiful flax harvest; and though in 1909 hail destroyed the wheat and in 1910 and 1911 there was drought, the Russians bore up. And 1912 was a most fruitful year, some farmers garnering as many as 25,000 bushels of wheat.
 
Each year they were able to add to their stock, to build a little more, and to do various things. As a result of good harvests Andray Dubovoy himself was[Pg 299] able to go a-travelling, and to meet me and tell me his story. He had himself come to America when a little child, and did not know of his native land except by repute. He had not, however, had the advantage of education in an American school as a child, and so was as yet more Russian than American; but he was unlike the Russian type, he was clean of limb, clear of eye and of skin, calm—almost a Quaker in faith and morals. No one drank spirits or smoked tobacco in Kief, North Dakota, he told me with pride. The Russians there were living in a new way.
 
"Are the people as religious now as they were in Russia?" I asked.
 
"Not quite," said he, "they feel they don't need religion so much in America. At first the struggle for life was so hard, we had little thought for religion. It was only as we gained a footing on the land that we began to think of our religion seriously, and we built a chapel. We have a chapel of our own now."
 
"I suppose when you were no longer persecuted you did not need to affirm your way of religion so emphatically," I hazarded.
 
Andray did not know.
 
"Have you any bosses in Kief?" I asked.
 
Andray smiled.
 
"Our sheriff is a cabman."
 
"You feel no tyranny at all now?"
 
He was glad to say they never had need of a [Pg 300]policeman; there were no robberies, every one lived in mutual love and kindness. Only, of course, they were heavily in debt to the companies, and felt they were never solvent.
 
"Perhaps, when you have improved your land and made it really valuable you will be sold up by the companies and you will lose your property," said I.
 
He did not think that possible.
 
"And what is the cost of living with you?"
 
"Cheap," said my friend; "beef is 2? cents a pound, eggs 10 cents the dozen, butter 12 cents the pound, potatoes 35 cents the bushel; but the things we import, such as boots, clothes, fruits, are very dear, much too dear for our pockets."
 
"Food is cheaper than in the country in Russia, then?"
 
"Meat and butter and milk are cheaper, but other things are more than twice as dear. Still we do not complain. It is a good life out there; our children are grow............