The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1931, Page 83

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

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83

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serve as breathing-places for the thousands living
here, Living in such deplorable conditions, it can-
not seem strange that the children growing up under
these conditions present a serious problem. One
can think of the whole situation only with grave
apprehension. Where home life is as it is here,
morality cannot thrive, but crime and disease must
find a fertile soil.
The Italians.

The two most numerous foreign elements in
Philadelphia are the Jews and the Italians. A de-
plorable feature about J ewish and Italian immigra-
tion is that probably more than 75 per cent. of all
Jews and Italians coming to our country stay in
the Atlantic seaboard cities, and those who do not
stay there go to some other large inland cities, like
Chicago or Detroit. The criminal element of the
Italian immigration has a special love for down-
town New York. Of the Italians in Philadelphia
it cannot be said that they are specially conspicuous
because of their lawlessness. Of course, they are
very illiterate, as is the general case with Italians 5
for almost half of all our illiterate foreign popula-
tion comes from Italy. Just about half of all
Italian immigrants are unable to write their own
names. Only one out of eight has learned a trade.
Most of the Italians are from Southern Italy, from
Abruzzi, Calabria, and Sicily. While almost half
of them come from the country districts of their
native land, when they reach our shores, they want
to settle down in the large cities. Here they do our
heavy work; they dig our streets, work on railroad
tracks, and perform the hard labor in constructions
of all kinds. Some engage in small business enter-
prises, and being very thrifty, they often succeed
in accumulating wealth. They have come here to
better their economical condition. Not a few of
them are men who return to their native land with
their gathered savings; but many stay here and
rear families. Not a few buy their own homes on
the instalment plan and become respected members
of society and welcome neighbors.

At a very conservative estimate not more than
half of these Italian immigrants have any affilia-
tion with the Church of their fathers. To all in-
tents and purposes half of them are legitimate
mission-material. Especially the children of these
foreigners should be an object of concern for the
Church; for these are exposed to the greatest spir-
itual danger by the very conditions surrounding
them. In the old country they lived in villages.
Here they are crowded in tenements. In their old

home they were under parental care, but here their
living conditions make such control an impossibility.
They live most of their waking hours in the streets,
where they hear what they should not hear and
see things they should not see. Lawlessness and
disrespect for authority will naturally develop into
criminal tendencies. To gather these children into
mission-schools and to bring them under the rule
of God’s Word would be an unspeakably great
blessing. But also their elders should be thought
of, and earnest attempts should be made to gather
them into Christ’s fold.

The Jews.

Every larger city of our country has its Ghetto,
that is, its Jewish quarter. Of the almost 150,000
Jews living in Philadelphia possibly half are in
the congested district spoken of and described above.
Jews come in families, and these families are able
to crowd into less space than any other people, with
the possible exception of the Italians. The Jewish
quarter of Philadelphia beggars all description for
dirt, odor, squalor, and vulgarity. But they are
striving for better quarters; their children are
among the brighest in the schools; they seek and
prize that which is able to lift them materially.
Their god is Success; their religion is Materialism.
But one cannot keep from admiring their ability
to forge ahead. They are clever, acute, industrious,
determined, tenacious; but their ethical standards
are not always very high. co

The Jew is drifting away from Judaism. Pos-
sibly not one out five of the Jews of our larger cities
belongs to the synagog. Their Rabbis are greatly
alarmed over the great defection. The Jew is
becoming more and more thoroughly secularized.

It is a hard task to win the Jew away from his
materialism. But this should not lead us to forget
that the task is nevertheless one given us to per-
form. He is human, and just because he is human,
he is not beyond a love for Christ when once he
sees the living Christ. While the past efforts of
our Church have not been crowned with abundant
success if we would judge success by numbers, yet
God has not withheld from our labors the tokens
of His good pleasure. Whatever may be the cur-
rent lack of enthusiasm toward Jewish missions
among us, let us in all seriousness ask ourselves the
question, Have we seriously tried to do our whole
Christian duty towards the Jew? F. JL.

—— ee

Do not pull the scabs from other people’s sores.