At Easter 1912 I was with seven thousand Russian peasants at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. On Easter Day 1913 I arrived with Russian emigrants at New York, and so accomplished in two consecutive years two very different kinds of pilgrimage, following up two very significant life-movements in the history of the world of to-day. One of these belongs to the old life of Europe, showing the Middle Ages as it still survives under the conservative regime of the Tsars; the other is fraught with all the possibilities of the future in the making of the New America.
It was in March that I decided to follow up the movements of the people out of the depths of Europe into America, and with that purpose sought out I—— K——, a well-known immigration agent in the East End of London. He transhipped Russians coming via Libau and London, and could tell me just when he expected the next large detachment of them.
"Have you a letter of introduction?" asked the agent.
"I shouldn't have thought any was necessary," I answered. "A Russian friend advised me to go to you. You don't stand to lose anything by telling me what I want to know."
He would do nothing for me without an introduction, without knowing exactly with whom he had to deal. I might be a political spy. The hand of the Tsar was long, and could ruin men's lives even in America. At least so he thought.
I mentioned the name of a revolutionary anarchist, a militant suffragette. He said a letter from her would suffice. I went to Hampstead and explained my predicament to the lady. She wrote me a note to a mysterious revolutionary who was living above Israel's shop, and this missive, when presented, was promptly taken as a full credential. The mysterious revolutionary was on the point of death, and could not see me, but Israel read the letter, and at once agreed that he was ready to be of any service to me he could. There was a large party of Russians coming soon, not Russian Jews, but real Russian peasants, and he would let me know as soon as he could just when they might be expected. I returned to my ordinary avocations, and every now and then rang up "I. K." on the telephone, and asked, "Had the Russians come?" "When were they coming?" At last the intelligence came, "They are just arriving. Hurry down to Hayes wharf at once."
The news took me in the midst of other things, but I dropped all and rushed to London Bridge. There, at Tooley Street, I witnessed one of the happenings you'd never think was going on in London.
A long procession of Russian peasants was just filing out from the miserable steamship Perm. They were in black, white, and brown sheepskins and in astrakhan hats, some in blue blouses and peak-hats, some in brightly embroidered linen shirts; none wore collars, but some had new shiny bowlers, on which the litter and dust of the port was continually falling,—bowlers which they had evidently purchased from German hawkers who had come on board at some point in the journey. The women wore sheepskins also, many of them, and their heads were covered with shawls; they had their babies sewn up in little red quilts. Beside them there were pretty town girls and Jewesses dressed in cottons and serges and cheap hats. There were few old people and many young ones, and they carried under their arms clumsy, red-painted wooden boxes and baskets from which kettles and saucepans dangled. On their backs they had sacks, and in their hands several of them had crusts of bread picked up in their hurry as they were hustled from their berths and through the mess-room. Some of the sacks on their backs, as I afterward saw, contained nothing but crusts of white and black bread, on which, perhaps, they trusted to live during the first weeks in America!
