In the editorial of the 'Gartenlaube' (Garden Foliage) a conversation was in it this past summer, probably like it is today, the relationships have changed very much, an uneducated German without means went to America.  The German emigration has greatly decreased in the last decade and still consisted of only about 20,000 people in a year, while in the former three or four years ten times as many Germans emigrated to America each year.  Is America no longer the land of longing for a greater part of our people, in which one can quickly become rich?  Or can Germans in America under normal circumstances no longer be a rich uncle nieces and nephews at home gaze at in amazement and whose would still like to inherit from them?

     In such and similar questions the conversation went back and forth, until the suggestion was made to make a practical attempt at once.  The editorial says:  We just sent an uneducated German without means over there, a German who had learned Greek and Latin in his grammar school, but not English, who knew everything possible, but not for example, how to polish his shoes, in short, a man educated in the humanities without practical knowledge.

     I believe the editorial found their own subjects for their plan.  I did not have practical knowledge at my disposal, at the grammar school I attended there was still no English instruction, not once an option, and it also did not appear to me that the “greenhorns” would usually agree to such a plan.  So I pressed the publishing firm of the “Gartenlaube” for a pass for a ticket in hand for the trip to New York in the between deck (of a ship), besides 25 dollars (same as 100 Marks) without which no emigrant could leave for America, and finally still another 20 Marks.  With it I paid for the fourth class trip from Berlin to Bremen, then stayed there because I had to be on the   between deck already for two days before the departure of their ship in Bremen, so once there I stayed overnight.  What was left of the 20 Marks I could use to buy a glass of beer now and then on the ship or I could save the rest for America, since the food was well-known to be included in the price of the ticket.  The ticket cost 180 Marks.  We calculated it would still be an additional  25 dollars (100 Marks) and the 20 Marks, so it amounted to a grand total of just 300 Marks.

     But in a moment I wrote or cabled for money from America because now after eight days or eight weeks my expedition was at an end.  Also I cannot seek any intellectual work in America, only manual labor, of which I hardly knew anything about.  Under these conditions I then departed in the past summer and I want to explain here what I as an educated, but destitute traveler to America without a practical occupation experienced. 

In the between deck on the moving sea 

   The between deck people, who rode from Berlin to Bremen, mostly took the night train which departed from the Lehrter train station in Berlin at 11:46 PM.  It consisted of mainly wagons for fourth class and arrived in Bremen in the light of day, sparing a nights quarters.  I also rode on this train.  With me were mainly Poles, Slovakians, and Galician Jews who made themselves as comfortable as possible on the benches and on the floor, smoked, spit, gasped, and reeked of garlic and onions. 

   Small children made noise and scratched themselves or were searched by older relatives for the source of the itch until everything lapsed into a deep sleep, from which one was always woken up again by the cackling, and then the night was bitter cold.  Indeed I caught enough vermin in the beginning of the trip to see, but then no more.  The cold went right through the clothing, cloths, crates, and boxes.  At least, as we transferred in Stendal, I was glad to climb out, as I must openly confess.

   In Bremen the train station police, emigrant agents, and employees of Lloyds waited for the crowds and herded them into emigrant halls and emigrant inns.  I tore away and slipped out to a hotel where I could get a good night’s rest from the nocturnal spook.  But first I had a few glasses of wine in the Ratskeller at 30 Pfennig per glass.

   Around noon I exchanged my pass for the ticket and proceeded with the ticket and a “doctor card” to the baggage hall of Lloyds for the medical examination.  A whole crowd of men, women, and children already waited here.  Southern Slavs and Poles, the women in colorful head scarves and red skirts, Hungarians, some of their women in high boots, Russians in long skirts and heavy caps, Galician Jews in caftans and also about a dozen Germans.  Two by two we were driven to the doctor who in his white coat and apron appearing ready for slaughtering, had to bare the left arm to be vaccinated and had to open the eyes so wide that they teared.  America does not leave anyone one land who last not been vaccinated or has an eye illness.

   The employees were all patient and pleasant.  Only the doctor was grumpy and abrupt.  From there the herd was again driven to their quarters, and some Germans still stood around for awhile, mistrustfully eying the others and then left individually.

   The next morning around 6:30 AM we had to be in the baggage hall again and were loaded onto a special train to Bremerhaven.  The passengers’ first and second class cabins went later on two other special trains.  First the people from the east were loaded, then the Germans, who were separated for the possibility of a humane and sensible procedure, that unfortunately not all shipping businesses mastered, as my comrades later reported.  Humane and sensible therefore, because the smallest German also still towered over the people from the east in regards to cleanliness and tolerable manners.  A fruit of the public school and time as a soldier.

   On the train the first acquaintances were made.  “Are you also traveling to America?  Is this your first time traveling?”  This way one became known and entertained himself.  I got to know an old couple with four grown children.  He had been a farmer in America for twenty years and now wanted to invest his savings in an estate of the settlement commission in West Prussia.  But the many “regulations” there did not please him, and his children, born in America, did not want land in Germany at any price.  So they quickly decided to go back to America again to buy a farm again way out west and send the bigger children to the city to work.  The stay in Germany had lasted for ten days.

   After about an hour our giant steamer pulled up.  The ship’s band played merrily, however it did not suit my mood, and in a flash the whole between deck was covered with eastern people, besides the Jews, as the Germans stayed back, with sacks and packs, the lower lying deck between the raised forecastle, the top of the ship, and  the raised deck of the first cabins in the middle of the ship.  A tangled muddle of men, women, and children which the agents and sailors brought some order to after a long while.  Again the eastern people were brought under first, then the Jews, and finally the Germans.  The Austrians and Hungarians were counted with the Germans as long as they could speak a little broken German, as well as some Croatians who made an effort to speak the same broken German.  Some of them were still transported with their countrymen.  But some muckrakers stayed with us.

   Under the forecastle in the top of our ship (whose name I have not given, which I can explain completely freely - for the same reason I also have not given the day of my departure), are two narrow, little corridors.  On the one was the washroom and the toilets for the women.  On the other were the same rooms for the men.  Between both of these corridors was the kitchen for the between deck people and some square holes fenced off for iron kettles so one did not fall into the abyss.  Through these holes the appropriate stairs reached deep down to the floor of the sleeping quarters: “Compartment for single men.” - “Compartment for families”.  At the same level, but under the first cabins lay the compartment “for single women” and another one for families.  Still one floor lower, so two floors under the forecastle, there were some more similar rooms, but these were only used for some passengers to eat.  There were only 420 of us between deck people, while the ship could take on 800.  So we had considerably more room than the between deck people who for example sailed in the spring when most emigrated.

   I climbed down with the other Germans to our room for single men, and reserved an upper bed at once, directly by the way up so I could come out in the open again where I could catch a breath of fresh air.  In the open, on the actual “between deck” the eastern people had already made themselves comfortable with all of the family, loud and funny like the sparrows.  I climbed on one of the two chicken ladders on the port side where between lower chains, ropes and such there was still some space.

   “Is this your first trip to America?” asked an old, stocky man with glasses.  I told him yes and soon learned from him, a Silesian, that he only went to visit his daughter in Germany.  For the past 20 years he lived in the house of a cabinet maker and put small machine part for automobiles together in a factory in Albany, N.Y.  Then a sturdy West Prussian, who was traveling because of an inheritance on the “outside”, socialized with us.  He lived for twelve years as a foreman in a factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Both had wanted to travel in second class cabins but could no longer find any place.  But I heard this excuse so often that I accepted it as more of a bashful excuse.  Nearby there was a red-haired man who squinted a lot.

“Man, when you wreak havoc where you look, you will kill me and not the pig!”  The West Prussian shook from laughter, but we were soon also friends with the Silesian.  It was a Pfalz farmer who went searching in America to try his luck a second time and hoped to find it by a friend in a factory in New York State.  I also counted a tannery journeyman from Thorn who was already an American citizen and worked in a tannery in Wisconsin.  So although I was already in my ‘30’s, the difference was they already knew America and had a definite “profession”.  The other “Germans” were loud young people, left partly to defer two years of military service.  But not one was under them as I went in the blue sky over the great pond.  Each had his defined profession.  He was a barber, cook, farmer, factory worker, or the like.  And each had friends or relatives over there who accepted them and helped them further.  Also each had more money than I had.  After me the next poorest was a bakery journeyman from Styria.  He had 30 dollars and a ticket to Chicago where he was also expected.

   As the ship set in motion, we between deck people were called below deck to dinner by a kind of cow bell.

   In our sleeping quarters where there were 32 of us the beds stood at the one long wall and the one diagonal wall in two rooms over one another, narrow iron stands filled out by a straw sack which was somewhat thicker at the head end and so served as a pillow.  On the straw sack lay a woolen cover.  Between each pillow and the iron bars was a container like a milk can, and a metal spoon and fork were stowed.  Under them there was a life jacket for all cases.  On the other long wall, the outside ship wall, there was a long wooden table like an ironing board.  In the middle of the room there was a second such table.  On the tables there were many metal plates and between them there were large metal containers.  The one was filled with soup, another with potatoes, a third with bread, and the fourth with meat.  Like the others I fetched my spoon and fork out of the pillow, and as the Silesian with the glasses was eager to eat, I also tried it.  The food was good and strong, but on the first noon I did not eat much, but hurried to go back up on deck again.  The many metal utensils, the smells of the food, and people – one lived for the moment.

   Again I stood on the port side, but I did not see many who went all around.  Before the first night I dreaded going down below to the sleeping quarters and dining room.  One did not immerse himself in the nature and people when one feared his night quarters from which he cannot escape.

   Suddenly a voice called loudly up to the port side, “Is jimmand do von die Koschern?” (Does anyone there eat kosher food?)

   “Jo.” (Yes), was the answer.

   “Kimm’s mit!” (Come here!), came the call.  The Jews ate first now, separated from all the others, as prescribed by their religion.

to be continued.....

Translated by Brad Schwebler