This combination would afford that development of civilization which, curiously enough, density alone brings and for which even a free system of rural delivery is not an adequate substitute. Much of the significance and charm of rural life in South Italy lies in its village companionship, quite as the dreariness of the American farm life inheres in ( 67) its unnecessary solitude. But we totally disregard the solution which the old agricultural community offers, and our utter lack of adaptability has something to do with the fact that the South Italian remains in the city where he soon forgets his cunning in regard to silk worms and olive trees, but continues his old social habits to the extent of filling an entire tenement house with the people from one village.
We also exhibit all the Anglo-Saxon distrust of any experiment with land tenure or method of taxation, although our single-tax advocates do not fail to tell us daily of the stupidity of the present arrangement.
It might, indeed, be well to make a few experiments upon an historic basis before their enthusiasm converts us all. For centuries in Russia the Slavic village, the mir system of land occupation, has been in successful operation, training men within its narrow limits to community administration. Yet when a persecuted sect from Russia wishes to find refuge in America, we insist that seven thousand people shall give up all at once a system of land ownership in which they are experts. Americans declare the system to be impracticable, although it is singularly like that in vogue in Palestine during the period of its highest prosperity. We cannot receive them in the United States, because ( 68) our laws have no way of dealing with such cases.
And in Canada, where they are finally settled, the unimaginative Dominion officials are driven to the verge of distraction concerning registration of deeds and the collection of taxes from men who do not claim acres in their own names, but in the name of the village. The official distraction is reflected and intensified among the people themselves, to the point of driving them into the mediaeval "marching mania," in the hope of finding a land in the south where they may carry out their inoffensive "mir" system.
The entire situation might prove that an unbending theory of individualism may become as fixed as status itself, although there are certainly other factors in the Doukhobor situation -- religious bigotry, and the self-seeking of leadership. In spite of the fact that the Canadian officials have in other matters exhibited much of the adaptability which distinguishes the British colonial policy, they are completely stranded on the rock of Anglo-Saxon individualistic ownership, and assume that any other system of land tenure is subversive of government, forgetting that Russia manages to exert a fair amount of governmental control over thousands of acres held under the system which they so detest.
In our eagerness to reproach the immigrants for ( 69) not going upon the land we almost overlook the contributions to city life which those of them, who were adapted to it in Europe, are making to our cities here. From dingy little eating-houses in lower New York, performing a function somewhat between the eighteenth-century coffee-house and the Parisian cafe, is issuing at the present moment perhaps the sturdiest realistic drama that is being produced on American soil.
Late into the night speculation is carried forward -- nor on the nice questions of the Talmud and on quibbles of logic; but minds long trained on these seriously discuss the need of a readjustment of the industrial machine in order that the primitive sense of justice and righteousness may secure larger play in our social organization. And yet a Russian in Chicago who used to believe that Americans cared first and foremost for political liberty and that they would certainly admire those who had suffered in its cause, finds no one interested in his story of six years' banishment beyond the Antarctic circle. He is really listened to only when he tells the tale to a sportsman of the fish he had caught during the six weeks of summer when the rivers were open. "Lively work then, but plenty of time to eat them dried or frozen through the rest of the year," is the most sympathetic comment he has yet re-( 70)-ceived upon an experience which, at least to him, held the bittersweet of martyrdom.
Among the colonies of the most recently immigrated Jews, who still carry out their orthodox customs and a ritual preserved through centuries in the Ghetto, one constantly feels during a season of religious observance, a refreshing insistence upon the reality of the inner life, and upon the dignity of its expression in inherited form. Perhaps the most striking reproach to the materialism of Chicago is the sight on a solemn Jewish holiday of a Chicago River bridge lined with men and women oblivious of the noisy traffic and sordid surroundings, casting their sins upon the waters that they may be carried far away. The scene is a clear statement that, after all, life does not consist in wealth, in learning, in enterprise, in energy, in success, not even in that modern fetich, culture, but in an inner equilibrium, in "the agreement of soul." It is a relief to see even this exaggerated and grotesque presentation of spiritual values.
