Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

I lived for twenty years, coming back ten years later to engage in social and religious work in the samé general district. In an area in this section of about threequarters of a square mile there were in 1920, 219,256 people living, or at the rate of 327,040 people per square mile. The population per square mile for the United States is only 35. There are only 30 cities in the entire country which have a greater population than is found in this East Side district. If all of New York City were as densely populated, it would contain more than the entire population of the United States. If all the people living in this district were suddenly seized with a desire to rush into the street, there wouldn't be room enough for them to stand.

There are many places of historical interest in this neighborhood, among them the old Marble Cemetery, on Second Street just off Second Avenue. This

was the first cemetery that I knew as a boy, and it had a peculiar fascination for me. Here rest the bodies of many old New Yorkers-among them Adam and Noah Brown, who during their lifetime built ships for Commodore Perry's fleet in 1812; and John Ericsson, builder of the Monitor, of Civil War fame; and for many years President James Monroe was buried here. The names on the tombstones in this old cemetery are all but effaced, and yet here and there one can make out the name of a former Knickerbocker who would be shocked beyond measure could he walk through these side-streets which were open fields when he lived there.

It must not be imagined that the neighborhood is irreligious. Jewish and Catholic enterprises flourish, and there are scores of little synagogues scattered throughout the tenements, meeting in the tenement-houses themselves, although the tenement-houses themselves, although

[blocks in formation]

there are many pretentious buildings, usually former Protestant churches which have been converted into orthodox synagogues. Once this was a Protestant stronghold, but in recent years scores of Protestant churches have moved

out.

FOR

OR nearly fifty years I have watched this boyhood neighborhood of mine grow. Sweeping through it there have followed successively the Yankees, the Irish, the Germans, the Bohemians, the Russians, the Italians, the Greeks, be sides a great smattering of smaller races each naturally leaving behind a remnant until to-day there is scarcely a country on the face of the globe which isn't rep resented. It is a mosaic of nations, and about as picturesque as mosaics usually are with all their form and color.

The product has been no outstanding race, but "East Siders." Much has been said about New York being a great "melting-pot of the nations." But it is unquestionably true that the East Side of New York is strongly, persistently Amer ican in spirit. While many of the for eign-born retain some of their old country customs, it should be remembered that not all "Americans" were born in America.

Only two per cent of the people living here are native white of native parents that is, white persons both of whose par ents were born in America. In the mind of many people, this constitutes a rea peril to our American institutions, but i does not necessarily follow. For exam ple, the attendance at the public schoo in this area is greatest among childre both of whose parents were foreign-born Wise leaders among the foreign-bon encourage them to emulate the best tha they left in the old country-and wh can deny that each of their native land contains histories and traditions of which they might well be proud, and whic they would do well to remember, and thus become better Americans?

My parents came to the East Side o New York when they were quite youngmy mother was only six. Her father wa a prosperous German baker who had city-wide reputation because of the ry bread he sold, having a fairly larg delivery-wagon service. I remember di tinctly my mother's businesslike air a she helped fill in as special saleswoma on Saturday nights when the baker shop on Eldridge Street was crowde with customers. My grandfather cumulated a considerable fortune, an returned to Hanover, Germany, his ma tive town.

My father was a brewer by trade. probably was a good workman, but

[graphic]
[graphic]

Mr. Stelzle's mother at the time of her marriage at eighteen And so the struggle began. She, who had enjoyed the comforts of a prosperous home, with no cause for financial anxiety, was now to spend many years in a handto-hand battle with all the horrors of poverty, asking favors of no one, but determining to keep strong so that she might work for the sake of her children.

was a poor business man, and the generous wedding dowry which he put into a brewery of his own soon disappeared. One of the heritages which he left consisted of a big book of unpaid accounts. And, as my mother had married against the distinct wishes of her parents, her pride would not permit her to appeal to them for help. So when my father died, she moved with her children into the very heart of the tenement district of the East Side, resolving to fight her way through alone. How well she did it, and what she suffered in the doing of it, will forever make her a heroine in my eyes.

[blocks in formation]

even to-day on the East Side, when conditions are undoubtedly worse in some respects than they were forty years ago, would be unfair to the poorer tenement people, who are by no means morbid in their outlook on life. There is no doubt that I suffered as much on account of poverty as does the average youngster now living in lower New York. But, taking it altogether, I was by no means an unhappy boy, even when I was living in the midst of extreme poverty. It is a question whether the son of the "princely merchant" that I read about in the Sunday-school books got as much real

excitement out of life as I did when, for instance, I swam from the end of an East Side dock, contrary to law and in peril of my life, as passing ferry-boats swirled the river into dangerous eddies, or when I spent a stolen day in the swamps of Long Island hunting for cattails and swallows' nests.

Grand Street on Saturday night was as good as a show. It was the great shopping center of New York's lower East Side forty years ago. But not all those who thronged the sidewalks came out to make purchases in Ridley's, the biggest department-store in that part of the city, nor to buy of the peddlers whose little carts lined the gutters, 'block after block, from the Bowery to Essex Street and beyond, spilling over into the side-streets and practically filling Hester Street, which paralleled the main thoroughfare. For those who bargained and cheated, and even for those who did a legitimate business, Grand Street on Saturday night was a serious affair. But for the boys who were out for a lark it was a riot of fun. The "movies" did not exist in those days, and there were practically no boys' clubs nor social settlements, and few institutional churches. There were a great many self-organized social clubs that met on the first floors of some of the smaller "private houses"

-so called because the front doors were usually kept locked-and in rooms back of saloons. But membership in these was only for the older boys who were earning enough to afford that luxury.

For the small boy there was only the gang and Grand Street. Sometimes it was both. This made it all the more interesting. Not infrequently the feuds of the gangs were fought out on Grand Street, sometimes to the great consternation of the merchants of the carts, the contents of which were tumbled into the street in the excitement of a "scrap" between the Orchard Street and Allen Street gangs. Many a plate-glass window suffered on the same account.

I belonged to the Orchard Street gang. Our leader was a short, stocky, redheaded Irish youngster, who was absolutely fearless and who was known to stand his ground alone, the solitary target for the stones of the Allen Street gang, after the rest of the Orchard Street gang had retreated. And on these occasions he came back to his crowd with great scorn; what he left unsaid was not worth mentioning. It did not matter what he said, however. He was always unanimously chosen as our leader. He would probably have been the leader whether we had chosen him or not: he

was the only Irish boy in the gang and he was a born fighter. No doubt he later became a Tammany Hall leader in the district.

And while we're on the subject, it might not be amiss to say that Tammany Hall's influence on the East Side was, and is, largely due to the very human qualities shown by its representatives. They not only know every one who lives in the block, but they know about his domestic and economic and social needs. They know about them the whole year round, and try to supply them; whereas the reformers live uptown and so it appears to the people seem to be in business for the purpose of taking privileges away from the people, rather than furnishing them with jobs, and coal, and food, and getting them out of the police courts if they happen to have trouble with the police. These things Tammany Hall does.

GR

RAND STREET was to me the greatest street in New York. Occasionally

I took a walk up Broadway, but "the Great White Way" was then unknown, and Broadway was almost deserted at night. There were no electric lights, and when the few gas lamps in the stores were put out New York's chief thoroughfare was a dreary place. I always came back to Grand Street with a feeling of pride that lower New York possessed the finest street in the city.

In strong contrast to the rough life of the gang and the excitement of Grand Street was the influence which the illuminated cross on the steeple of St. Augustine's Chapel, on Houston Street east of the Bowery, had upon me. I was just about thirteen or fourteen, the age at which the religious appeal takes strongest hold of a boy. This cross, which could be seen for blocks against the deep night sky, appealed tremendously to my religious imagination.

Not that we cared particularly for Stewart; for some reason which I have forgotten, he had not a very good name among the East Siders.

Second Avenue was the great promenade street of the East Side forty years ago. Even in those days there were many German coffee-houses and reading-rooms all along the avenue. It was an event of importance when I was taken to one of them by an aunt or an uncle. Most of them served only coffee or chocolate and tea, and all kinds of German coffee cake. There was a very comfortable, homelike atmosphere about these little coffee-houses, and the people used to linger and gossip or read.

Second Avenue is still the great thoroughfare of the East Side. Early in the morning its wide pavements are crowded with foreign workers who pour out of the tenements in the side-streets and march like a mighty army, all moving in the same direction, toward the clothing factories and department-stores just beyond Union and Madison Squares. Scores of thousands of men and women from the tenements make their daily pilgrimage along this magnificent street, so full of human and historic interest. At night, from the big theater on Houston Street to the Labor Temple on Fourteenth Street, which I organized about fifteen years ago, the avenue is a blaze of electric lights, cafés, bath-houses, motionpicture theaters, jewelry shops, and dozens of other enterprises. Each nationality has its own particular café or casino, where its favorite old country dishes are served and where its national airs are played by native musicians. On Saturday and Sunday nights many of those who have profited in business and moved uptown or out of town come back to enjoy a "regular dinner"-with all that goes with it.

Even a casual stroll down Second Avenue and into some of the side-streets will reveal the signs of the people's aspirations. The way they throng the public baths the district supports one of the biggest Turkish baths in the city, conducted exclusively for men-shows the desire for bodily cleanliness. There are "beauty shoppes" on nearly every block. Dentists do a profitable business. Even automobile agencies seem to thrive and palms are used for decorative purposes just as in the automobile district uptown. Pianos and musical instruments are prominently displayed for sale in many of the store windows. Apartmenthouses are given most royal names, like "Florence Court," "Victoria Hall," and "The Imperial."

Almost directly opposite St. Augustine's Chapel is Second Avenue. About half a mile up this street is St. Mark's Church. The impression this church made upon me was quite different from that made by St. Augustine's. For when I thought of St. Mark's it was not with any religious feeling, but always in connection with the fact that the body of A. T. Stewart, the merchant prince who founded the store now known as John Wanamakers', had been stolen from the graveyard. What a source of mysterious possibilities this story was to us boys! Nothing that St. Mark's ever did was big enough to overshadow the story of the ghouls who robbed the graveyard. The next installment of "An East Side American" will describe some of the neighbors—the queenly school-teacher, the drunken woman, the charity investigator, the mikman, the actor, and the restaurant-keeper

in Danger?

By HUGH A. STUDDERT KENNEDY

On the Pacific coast bankers and business men are asking the question which heads this article. The author gives the facts upon which the reader can form a judgment

A

SHORT time ago an article appeared in a well-known financial magazine which asked this question, and answered it quite definitely in the affirmative. "Destructive money power," it declared, "no longer lairs only in New York, in the vision of men who are apprehensive that somehow-some time-somebody is going to domesticate the free wild money of the Nation and monopolize its powers for selfish purposes. The money dragon of the alarms of the moment is environed in California. It abides in San Francisco, and haunts Market Street instead of Wall Street. It is even concrete enough, in one of its incarnations, to be named. It is the Bank of Italy, thus isolated, and it is, in the abstract, Branch Banking. The abstract 'reptile' already has its serpentine folds round a third of the banking

strength of America, and according to its opponents menaces the National bank ystem and threatens the Federal Reerve structure."

Is this true? Is this article just anther piece of scare-mongering or is it based on sober fact? It may not be asy to answer, but one thing is certain it is everybody's business. In no ountry in the world is banking so much question for every one as it is in the nited States, where the vast majority f the people have bank accounts, and here a check, signed and countersigned nd indorsed again and again, may take s place for days with the Nation's curncy.

The smallest doubt cast on the stabily of the National banking system ould sound like a knell in the dark laces of fear in millions of homes in the nited States. The French peasant with s hoardings under the hearthstone of

any occasion, are in a different posi-
tion.

A short time ago a prosperous bank in
a small town in the West had a strange
experience. A prominent citizen in the
town died, and all the business houses in
the city, in order to do honor to his
memory, agreed to close their doors for
one hour at the time of the funeral. The
manager of the bank decided to come
into line; he ordered the bank closed,
and promptly at the time when the big
grocery store on one side and the big
shoe store on the other pulled down their
shades the bank doors were shut and a
card was placed in the window bearing
the legend "Bank Closed." What fol-
lowed was remarkable. Some people
who happened to be depositors, return-
ing early from the funeral, saw the no-
tice, never connected it with the function

manity's hopes and fears, aims and aspirations, laughter and tears and anxieties. The bank president is a man, and he has led and is leading his life, and his business is part of his life, enters into a thousand hopes and a thousand dreams. And so it is all the way down to the youngest recruit among the stenographers or booking clerks. The Federal Reserve Bank is a banker's bank, and as it pays its millions here and receives its millions there it requires but little imagination to see it all for what it is—a great clearing-house for human activity rather than for paper and scrip and dollars and cents. It is, moreover, one of the greatest guaranties of safety to the depositor, small or great, which could well be devised. It is the great each-for-all and all-for-each of the American people.

eral Reserve System, some eleven

years ago, the cash reserves of the country were scattered among 25,000 different institutions, and provided no central reservoir from which banks could draw cash when it was urgently needed. This system of holding bank reserves has been compared to a system of fire protection in which each of the several thousand families in a city keeps its own cistern of water instead of having the whole city's water supply stored in a common reservoir connected by conduits with every part of the city, and so instantly available in unlimited quantities for the putting out of a blaze at any point.

they had themselves just attended, but PRIOR to the establishment of the Fed-
jumped to the horrifying conclusion that
the bank had suspended payment. The
news spread rapidly; from all parts of
the town terrified depositors flocked to
the bank, and when the doors were
finally opened a real run was in full
swing. It was not stayed until hours
after-until currency to the amount of
hundreds of thousands of dollars had
been rushed by motor car from the near-
est Federal Reserve Bank and banks in
neighboring towns had come to the aid
of their hard-pressed colleague to the ex-
tent of hundreds of thousands more.
Nothing is more delicate, as far as the
depositor is concerned, than the credit
of his bank. Faced with the persistent
rumor that his bank is lacking in sta-
bility, and the average man is sorely
tempted to be on the safe side-that is,
the outside.

[blocks in formation]

The structure of this Federal Reserve System was completed just prior to the outbreak of the Great War. By November, 1914, it was in full working order. Without it, or something like it, it is doubtful if the United States would have passed through the early years of the war without a financial panic comparable to that of 1907. Without it, or something like it, it is quite certain that the World War could never have been internationally financed. Any one who desires to see how near the world came to utter financial chaos in the middle years of the war has only to read Walter Hines Page's telegram ""of greatest from London to President \

wards the end of June, 1917. "I am convinced," the message concludes, "that these men are not overstating their case. Unless we come to their rescue we are all in danger of disaster. Great Britain will have to abandon the gold standard."

At the present moment, with speculation running high throughout the United States and stocks reaching levels never before attained, the situation would be impossible without some such controlling influence as that which the Federal Reserve System exercises with its power to check speculation by raising rediscount rates. Any new developments, such as branch banking, which may endanger the efficiency of this system is clearly the concern of everybody.

How does branch banking endanger the Federal Reserve System?

In the first place, it needs to be remembered that many bankers in a position to give an unprejudiced judgment are by no means satisfied that it does. There are, however, a very great number who believe that branch banking is unAmerican and opposed to the individualistic genius of the American people. The situation is really not difficult to understand. The backbone of the Federal Reserve System is the National bank, and National banks cannot engage in branch banking. In States, therefore, where branch banking is permitted, and where this permission is being taken advantage of, there is a strong tendency for National banks to surrender their National charter and incorporate themselves as State banks. Within the last six years some two hundred National banks have become State banks, and it is claimed by one authority that through the elimination of small-town and city National banks the Federal Reserve System is rapidly losing touch with the business and financial life of millions of the American people.

How is all this being done?

The question is best answered by a concrete example, as indicated in the opening paragraph of this article, namely, the Bank of Italy. It first of all needs to be said that this huge organization, having its headquarters in San Francisco and known as the Bank of Italy, makes no secret at all of its operations. Any Any reasonable information desired is readily obtainable, and from time to time official statements of the bank's expansion are published in the daily press. Any one who travels up and down the Pacific coast must be struck with its ubiquity. In almost every town one passes through the one building impossible to overlook is the Bank of Italy. It understands the art of advertising as few business houses understand it, and it exploits this knowl

[ocr errors]

edge to the utmost. The Bank of Italy, however, is only one part of its operations. Behind the Bank of Italy is the Bancitaly Corporation, which was formed, in the words of one of its directors, "to do everything that the Bank of Italy cannot do."

Now the Bancitaly Corporation is undoubtedly one of the largest holding corporations in the world. "This vast investment trust corporation," as one quite friendly writer recently put it, "whose

P. & A. Photos

Representative Louis T. McFadden of Pennsylvania

In

ramifications now extend all over the United States by reason of its holdings in most of the substantial banks in the country and of its investments in choice real estate, has become an eighth wonder of the world." The most recent published list of the holdings of this corporation are indeed truly remarkable. California the Bancitaly Corporation owns shares to any extent from 100 to 10,000 in the most important banks in the State. It controls two banks in San Francisco and has shares in seven others. Through the Americommercial Corporation, another subsidiary holding company, it owns banks in Los Angeles and has shares in four others. Outside of California, within the United States the Bancitaly Corporation owns shares in the most important banks in Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Washington. In New York the corporation already controls two banks and has shares in twenty others. Outside of the United States the Bancitaly Corporation

holds shares in the most important banks in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dublin, Edinburgh, London, Milan, Montreal, Oslo (Norway), Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Toronto (Canada), Vienna, and Zurich. The Corporation holds shares in the Bank of England, the Bank of Scotland, and the Bank of Ireland, has a controlling interest in the Bank of America and the Bank of Italy in Rome, and is a considerable share holder in the Reichsbank in Berlin.

[graphic]

A

LL this would be a question of no special moment, as far as the Fed eral Reserve System was concerned, if i were not for the fact that the more pow erful financially the Bank of Italy be comes, the more surely can it gain contro of other banks engaged in branch bank ing, and so gradually establish something very like a monopoly. Now State bank can, of course, become members of th Federal Reserve System if they so desire and the Bank of Italy is a member o the System. But State banks are at lib erty to withdraw from the System a will, and National banks cannot do s without surrendering their charter. Th advantages of belonging to the Federa Reserve System are very great, but ther can be no doubt that, just as the Britis Empire is virtually a league of nations i itself, while still a member of the o ganization having its headquarters a Geneva, so a vast internationally flur banking, branch banking, and holdin system is virtually a reserve system in i self, while retaining its membership the Federal organization. It is only question of to what length it can go.

What is true potentially of the Bar of Italy is also true potentially of sever other banks. The fight for control quite definitely on. Four other Califo nia banks have 190 branches betwee them, while eighty-two banks in th State now own over 600 of the loc banking agencies of the State. The are, moreover, already some 300 branch of State banks in Michigan and son 250 in New York. Such great banki centers as Chicago, Minneapolis and S Paul, Portland, and Seattle are sav from the difficulty by reason of the fa that they are in States which prohib branch banking. Thus it is seen th branch banking is being developed ever where to an amazing extent, and t more it develops, the more anxiously it observed, not only by bankers, but business men of all kinds, who reali that the stability of their business in th last resort depends utterly on the st bility of the banking system of the cour try.

The latest development is the so-calle

« PredošláPokračovať »