Read Online The Promised Land: Settling the West 1896-1914 by Pierre Berton - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Pierre Berton
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packing to leave for Canada on money borrowed from relatives and friends. Everything they own takes up no more than twenty cubic feet and will be carefully stored away in a green wooden trunk built by Nykola Humeniuk himself. His wife, Anastasia, puts the winter clothes, blankets, and bed sheets at the bottom; next come the holy pictures, packed between pillows; and on top of that the family’s dress clothes for Sunday church (for surely there will be a little church with an onion-shaped spire in whichever community they reach). Then, another covering, and twenty-five little cloth bundles of garden seeds – onions, garlic, horseradish, dried ears of corn – and above that some religious articles: candles, chalk, a bottle of holy water. Four precious books will also be taken: a prayer book, a history of the Ukraine, a school primer, and a collection of Bible stories. And finally, Nykola’s carpentry and farm tools: hammers and planes, axe and draw-knife, saws, bits, chisels, sickles, scythes, hoes, rake, and flail .
Great excitement! The task is done. Anastasia ties up some food for the trip in a cloth bundle as the neighbours and relatives pour into the house to say goodbye. What a commotion, with everybody talking at once! There are smiles at first; then, suddenly, some of the women begin to cry. They hug and kiss Anastasia, apologizing for things left undone, past offences real and imagined. The children start to cry, too, and then some of the men are seen to wipe tears from their eyes .
Somebody shouts for silence and then, as all bow their heads, he begins to recite a prayer, asking God to bless the Humeniuks and their two small children, Petryk and baby Theodore, and give them a safe voyage, prosperity, and good health in the strange land across the ocean. Write soon, everybody cries, write as soon as you arrive!
The wagon and team are waiting for the journey to the station. Four men hoist the big trunk onto the back as the family climbs aboard. But Anastasia Humeniuk stops and turns back, her baby in her arms. She walks to the doorway, makes the sign of the cross, kisses the frame, and then, in one last gesture, picks up a small lump of Galician earth, wraps it in a rag, and puts it in her hand valise, a memory of a land she will never see again .
Professor Oleskow’s plan had been to bring to Canada only the best farmers, the most productive and educated elements of the population – those who owned enough land to finance the long journey overseas and the first hard years on a Canadian homestead. ButOleskow’s plan was never acted upon. The steamship agents, to whom each peasant paid a fee, and their myriad subcontractors wanted to sign up as many as possible. It was the ignorant and the innocent who came to Canada, their naïveté exploited shamelessly by those who stood to make a profit from emigration.
We have on record a graphic example of the kind of exploitation suffered by the peasants as a result of the machinations of an agency in the Galician town of Oswiecim, now part of Poland. Its operators, Jacob Klausner and Simon Herz, were masters of the art of bribery and corruption. They fixed all the local officials, including both the police and the railway conductors, in order to achieve maximum emigration. They overcharged shamelessly for ocean passage, cheated on the exchange rate, and sold worthless advertising cards in lieu of tickets. If a man was of military age, subject to conscription and thus legally unable to emigrate, they charged double to smuggle him out of the country, even though the advertised risks had been eliminated by bribery. And whenever anybody was incautious enough to object, he was locked in a barn and beaten.
One Polish agent, Abraham Landerer, invented a fake telephone on which he received spurious “information.” It was only an alarm clock, but when it rang, Landerer claimed it was an inquiry about passage. Later, when the clock rang again, he would charge the peasant a
Great excitement! The task is done. Anastasia ties up some food for the trip in a cloth bundle as the neighbours and relatives pour into the house to say goodbye. What a commotion, with everybody talking at once! There are smiles at first; then, suddenly, some of the women begin to cry. They hug and kiss Anastasia, apologizing for things left undone, past offences real and imagined. The children start to cry, too, and then some of the men are seen to wipe tears from their eyes .
Somebody shouts for silence and then, as all bow their heads, he begins to recite a prayer, asking God to bless the Humeniuks and their two small children, Petryk and baby Theodore, and give them a safe voyage, prosperity, and good health in the strange land across the ocean. Write soon, everybody cries, write as soon as you arrive!
The wagon and team are waiting for the journey to the station. Four men hoist the big trunk onto the back as the family climbs aboard. But Anastasia Humeniuk stops and turns back, her baby in her arms. She walks to the doorway, makes the sign of the cross, kisses the frame, and then, in one last gesture, picks up a small lump of Galician earth, wraps it in a rag, and puts it in her hand valise, a memory of a land she will never see again .
Professor Oleskow’s plan had been to bring to Canada only the best farmers, the most productive and educated elements of the population – those who owned enough land to finance the long journey overseas and the first hard years on a Canadian homestead. ButOleskow’s plan was never acted upon. The steamship agents, to whom each peasant paid a fee, and their myriad subcontractors wanted to sign up as many as possible. It was the ignorant and the innocent who came to Canada, their naïveté exploited shamelessly by those who stood to make a profit from emigration.
We have on record a graphic example of the kind of exploitation suffered by the peasants as a result of the machinations of an agency in the Galician town of Oswiecim, now part of Poland. Its operators, Jacob Klausner and Simon Herz, were masters of the art of bribery and corruption. They fixed all the local officials, including both the police and the railway conductors, in order to achieve maximum emigration. They overcharged shamelessly for ocean passage, cheated on the exchange rate, and sold worthless advertising cards in lieu of tickets. If a man was of military age, subject to conscription and thus legally unable to emigrate, they charged double to smuggle him out of the country, even though the advertised risks had been eliminated by bribery. And whenever anybody was incautious enough to object, he was locked in a barn and beaten.
One Polish agent, Abraham Landerer, invented a fake telephone on which he received spurious “information.” It was only an alarm clock, but when it rang, Landerer claimed it was an inquiry about passage. Later, when the clock rang again, he would charge the peasant a
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