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Immigrants, the Latest Comers

No study of the component forces of the Pines would be complete without mention being made of the thriving Jew colonies established at different points, and of the Italian communities. A superficial observer has often been lead to believe that there is much similarity between these people and the native denizens of the Pines, but no one who knew them intimately could ever be so deceived. Whatever resemblance there is, is indeed superficial, such as: large families, often unsanitary and crowded conditions of living, small and incommodious dwellings; but beneath the surface we find on one hand, loose disjointed living, with attendant lack of intelligence, absence of ambition, dearth of ideals of every sort; on the other, solid, compact organized existence; the father head of his home, protecting his wife and daughters, teaching the same attitude to his sons; both parents training their offspring to thrift and industry.

Naturally there are exceptions to this rule, and it is most certainly true, especially in our large cities, that the foreign population tends to lose its characterizing virtues and assume our vices much more quickly than the reverse, leading thus to another problem -- not the problem of mental deficiency, but one which though of immense significance to the future of our country scarcely enters into the rural question at all.

To illustrate: one rather exceptional case in the Pines, yet characteristic, is that of "Italian Mike" who eighteen years ago left work in a railroad gang and, burdened by a debt of $40.00 incurred through illness, took up on credit twenty-five acres of woodland in the heart of the Pines and near a small community of typical, thriftless Pineys. Aided only by his faithful wife, "Mike" built a small shack and set to work clearing his land. What he could not sell as timber or cut up into cordwood he converted into charcoal. As soon as he had sufficient land cleared, he set out two thousand strawberry plants. In this small way he began, and during the years which followed he has had the usual round of discouragements, droughts, insect pests, etc., and yet today, besides a considerable bank account and credit good anywhere in the country, he is owner of more than a hundred acres of land, has a comfortable frame house, a large vineyard which is used exclusively for wine which he himself makes for home consumption, to say nothing of a family of eleven fresh, clear-eyed, attractive children who have helped him piece together his competence. In one year he cleared $2,600 on his small fruits which he himself takes to a city thirty-two miles away; his habit being to leave home about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, reaching his destination at 2 o'clock in the morning, his fruit then in perfect condition to command the best price in the market. The next day his oldest son leaves at the same hour and meets his father half way on the road, where they exchange teams, and the next day's market is made in the same way as the preceding one. "Mike" has never had the advantage of schooling for himself nor of much for his children, owing to the lamentable state of affairs in this regard in his section of the Pines, but his alert mind has had time amidst the stress of his active life to acquire the essentials of the three "R's" so that he is by no means an illiterate man.

In striking contrast to "Mike" is a family living on the same road, under the same natural environment, not a quarter of a mile away. Here too, is a family of eleven children, but they live in a ramshackle house for which they pay no rent and the father and mother gain a living by gathering moss in winter and berries in summer. The oldest boy is in the reformatory at Jamesburg, and the oldest daughter, having been committed to the State Home for Girls, had later been put out on probation in a good family. Here she got into trouble with a butcher boy and finally came back to her home a greater problem than she was when she went away.

Questioned as to his neighbors' habits of life, "Mike" showed neither surprise nor interest in what was asked him. Frankly he knew nothing about them at all, and in a few moments his mind came naturally back to home topics which absorb his entire interest. Truly the most convincing proof of a strong progressive mentality.

Down a Sandy Road on the Edge of the Pine Belt

My first introduction to the remarkable community which is the product of outlaw ancestry came one day by way of a sandy road on the edge of the Pine belt. I stopped at a little store to inquire about a certain Harry Reed who was a distant connection of one of the inmates of the Vineland Training School.

"I stopped at Harry's house on my way here," I said, leaning over the counter, "but he wasn't at home. His wife told me that Harry worked for you."

"Yes, Harry does work for me, but that wasn't his wife you saw," said the store-keeper half laughing, half sneering. "Harry has a wife, but she's left him and is living with a man down near Milltown -- Bertha there, the woman you saw, just lives with Harry."