With the going of the boarders comes the demand for a carpet; a cheap cotton carpet with huge design of many colours, the same kind that our forefathers put upon their floors when rag carpets went out of fashion; not very beautiful; but thoroughly and primitively American.
Plush furniture is added and stands stiffly against the wall; not very useful, but somewhat like the article which stands in more pretentious parlours. The “installment plan” agent finds among these people willing victims to plush albums, sewing machines and crayon portraits. Scarcely any of the New Americans I know are miserly or have essentially a different standard of living from our own, except as that standard was forced upon them by economic conditions. All of them in common with our frail humanity will spend money in proportion to their income and often, too often, out of proportion. The Slovak and the Pole who are most complained about on this score of a low standard of living, are fond of fine clothes and good food. In their native village they go about resplendent in glorious apparel, usually twice the value of ours; though we affect a higher standard of living. There are Slovak girls in Pennsylvania now, who have spent a year’s wage on a dress in the old country; and I have known women living in wretched huts who paid ten dollars for the half yard of lace on their caps. Mother vanity has her devotees everywhere and she exacts her tribute on this side of the Atlantic as well as on the other.
Those who know the immigrant and care for his well being, are not concerned by the fact that he does not spend money, but that he does not spend it wisely;--that the girls of the first and second generations follow the fashions too quickly, and buy the things which are useless; even as their mothers will fill the homes with things which are neither comfortable nor beautiful. The Jews who are such a great economic factor in our life may be accused of everything with more show of justice than of this one thing; namely, that, viewed from this standpoint, their standard of living is low. They are proverbially good dressers; and good eating is part of their traditions; it is closely allied to their religion. If it were not for the Jews in New York and in Chicago, the theatres would be half empty and the music halls not less so; one of the stock complaints against the Jews of our large cities is that they want the best seats in these places, that they want to go to the best hotels and live in the finest residence sections. To get along in the world, to get up and out, to be “as good as the best,” is a passion in Israel; a passion which has made the Jew more enemies than he himself knows.