Immigrant Experiences in America: Jewish, African American, and Mexican Perspectives

Abraham Cahan and "A Bintel Brief"

  • Historical Context:

    • Publication: "A Bintel Brief" began in 19061906 in the Jewish Daily Forward (Forverts), a Yiddish-language newspaper based in New York City.
    • Audience: Addressed over half a million Jewish immigrants from Russia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Middle East.
    • Title Meaning: Translates to "a bundle of letters."
    • The Editor: Abraham Cahan (1860−19511860-1951), a novelist and journalist who sometimes authored both the inquiries and responses to manage the column's advice.
    • Thematic Focus: Struggling with new urban circumstances, overcrowded neighborhoods (noted for being subjects of Jacob Riis's reform photography), and internal community conflicts.

  • Selected Correspondence and Dilemmas:

    • The Family Grocery and Peddling (F.L.):
      • Situation: A family formerly well-off in Europe lost their savings in a grocery store. The husband became a peddler, which the writer describes as a miserable existence of "knocking on doors and ringing bells."
      • Economic Conflict: Money is lost through credit sales ("on time") to people who do not pay.
      • Physical Safety and Religion: The husband is regularly beaten by "hoodlums" because he has a beard. He refuses to shave due to religious law and personal pride.
      • Intergenerational Conflict: The son works late at a grocery store for $3.00\,USD per week but borrows money excessively and squanders it.\n * **Advice**: The editor suggests moving to the city where their daughter lives. Regarding the beard, it should be kept if the husband is religious, but sacrificed for earnings if he is not.\n * **Interfaith Marriage and Religious Tension**:\n * **Situation**: A Jewish man married a Christian woman. After one year, the wife became increasingly hostile toward Jewish culture (Jewish friends, Yiddish newspapers) and returned to devout Christian practice (early Sunday church, crying).\n * **Advice**: The editor characterizes these as "tragedies" of mixing different worlds and suggests moving to a Jewish neighborhood to influence the wife.\n * **Internal Ethnic Prejudice (B.M.)**:\n * **Situation**: A Galician Jewish girl records harassment from a Russian Jew colleague who claims Galicians are "inhuman savages."\n * **Defense**: The writer notes that Galician Jews sent money to support victims of Russian pogroms.\n * **Advice**: The editor asserts that every nation has good and bad people, and the Russian colleague's behavior makes him the "idiot" of the situation.\n * **Anti-Semitism in the Trades (E.H.)**:\n * **Situation**: An 18−year−oldmachinistinNewJerseywasbeatenbyamobofcoworkers.Despitebeingthevictim,hewasjailedwhilehisattackerswerereleasedon-year-old machinist in New Jersey was beaten by a mob of coworkers. Despite being the victim, he was jailed while his attackers were released on8.00\,USD bail.\n * **Personal Toll**: He describes going to work as entering "Gehenna" (Hell).\n * **Advice**: Contact the United Hebrew Trades to intercede with the Machinists Union.\n * **The "Greenhorn" Stigma**:\n * **Situation**: An American-born Jewish woman fell in love with a high-status, educated leader in Russian Poland. Once they moved to the U.S., her friends mocked him as a "greenhorn," causing her feelings to cool.\n * **Advice**: The editor calls her friends "foolish" and asserts he will eventually know American history and literature better than they do.\n * **Women's Education and Domestic Conflict**:\n * **Situation**: A wife wants to attend evening school twice a week. Her husband, despite claiming to support "emancipation," locks her out of the house and restricts funds for laundry to force her to stay home and work.\n * **Advice**: The editor scolds the husband for being a hypocrite and confirms the wife's right to education.\n * **Homesickness and Military Service (V.A.)**:\n * **Situation**: A young painter misses his parents intensely but cannot return home because he would be forced into 3 years of military service under "Fonie" (the Russian Czar).\n * **Advice**: Immigrants are like transplanted plants; they must "take root" in the new soil before they can flourish and eventually bring their parents over.\n\n# The Great Migration: Letters to the Chicago Defender\n\n* **Context of the Migration**:\n * **Scale**: Approximately 500,000AfricanAmericansmovedfromtheruralSouthtoNortherncitiesintheearlyAfrican Americans moved from the rural South to Northern cities in the early20^{th} century.\n * **Catalysts**: World War I labor demands, Jim Crow laws, political disenfranchisement, lynching, and economic failure due to boll weevil infestations.\n * **Information Source**: The *Chicago Defender*, collected by Emmett J. Scott (1873-1957), provided a vision of Northern economic opportunity.\n\n* **Documentation of Migrant Aspirations**:\n * **Family and Labor (Sherman, GA)**: A group of 11 family members seeking farm work or teaching positions, requesting information on travel routes and shelter.\n * **Education and Survival (Anniston, AL)**: A worker earning only enough to live seeks to move purely to put their children in school.\n * **Economic Captivity (Brookhaven, MS)**: Wage suppression is noted where cane growers pay only 0.85\,USD per day. The writer asks for railroad passes/tickets to be paid back from first wages.\n * **Seeking Manhood (Houston, TX)**: A 30-year-old freight handler seeks to go anywhere "a man is a man" rather than being treated as a "cur."\n * **Industrial Opportunity (Beaumont, TX)**: A worker of 8 years with one company seeks a chance as a machinist or molder helper because there is "no advancement" in the South.\n\n# Mexican Migration and the Promise of America\n\n* **Border Dynamics**:\n * **Statistics**: A 2,000−milefrontierwith-mile frontier with250\,million annual crossings; a "commuter border."\n * **Legislation**: The Johnson-Reed Act (1924) curtailed overseas immigration, making Mexican labor highly sought after.\n * **Researcher**: Manuel Gamio (1883-1960) interviewed migrants to capture their life stories.\n\n* **Individual Perspectives**:\n * **Luis Tenorio**:\n * Fled the Mexican Revolution (1915) after being pressured to join a revolutionary group following a night of drinking tequila with a childhood friend, Clemente.\n * Worked on Arizona railroads and then in Los Angeles street paving (cement work), which he describes as physically exhausting.\n * **Tomás Mares**:\n * A mestizo pressman and mechanic who established a successful garage in Phoenix.\n * **Economic Strategy**: Earns 1.00\,USDperhourasapressman,withtime−and−a−halfextraifformsaredeliveredafterper hour as a pressman, with time-and-a-half extra if forms are delivered after1:30\,PM$$.
      • Social Observation: Claims Americans pay more reliably than fellow Mexicans; notes high levels of espionage in Mexican Consulates.
    • Antonia Villamil de Arthur:
      • Married to an American man named Arthur; they run a hotel/fruit stand in Phoenix.
      • Integration: Prefers the American ease of movement (going to movies alone) and speaks English to customers, though she keeps her property in Mexico a secret from her husband out of suspicion toward "foreigners."
    • Domingo Ramírez:
      • Educated in U.S. schools but taught Mexican history and geography at home.
      • Business: Manages the sale of "Alaska" ice cream sticks (paletas) based on his brother's special formula.
      • Social Views: Prefers American girls for "going out" because they are less "particular" (allow kissing), but would only marry a Mexican girl for her perceived "obedience" and household skills.