“Immigrants In the Progressive Era and the representation of the times in the stories of Anzia Yezierska”
By David Dellecese
Copyright 2002
The early twentieth century was an era of business expansion and progressive reform in the United States. The highlight of the age was the rise of a progressive unification between urban reformers and radically minded farmers. These two groups shared a belief that government could be used as an instrument for improvement. That political blend eventually led to the formation of the Progressive Party. The progressives, as they called themselves, worked to make American society a better and safer place in which to live. They tried to make big business more responsible through regulations of various kinds.
A noticeable split over issues developed in the Republican Party during Taft's administration. On one side was the conservatives, who wanted a high tariff and opposed the kind of reforms started by Theodore Roosevelt. On the other side were those later known as progressives, who criticized the administration for refusing to continue the reforms begun by Roosevelt. The Former President Roosevelt openly sided with the progressives. He supported not only tariff revision but other political and economic reforms such as direct primaries, and an income tax.
In January 1911 the Republican senator from Wisconsin, Robert Folette organized the National Republican Progressive League to take political action for the beliefs of the progressives in the Republican Party. By 1912 the progressives had elected several governors in western states. Conservatives and progressive Republicans fought for control of the Republican national convention of June 1912. Defeated in their efforts to seat their delegates, the progressives, led by Roosevelt, organized the Progressive Party. Popularly known as the Bull Moose Party, the progressives nominated Roosevelt for president and Governor Hiram W. Johnson of California for vice president. The regular Republican convention had nominated Taft, and the Democratic Party nominated Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey. With the Republican party split, Wilson won.
Woodrow Wilson, like Roosevelt, felt that the presidency should be used for starting legislation in that corresponded with the President's view of what the people wanted. Wilson was successful in carrying out important reforms and revisions in the laws controlling the tax on imports, the banking system, trusts, labor, and agriculture.
The 1920s saw an end to free immigration into the United States. Migration from Asia had been restricted for several generations. Migration from Africa had never been an issue. But up until the mid-1920s migration from Europe was unrestricted. More than 1.2 million immigrants had come to the U.S. in 1914. But once the immigration restrictions of the 1920s took effect, the overall total was fixed at only 160,000 or so immigrants a year. Moreover, different nations had different quotas. The quotas for immigrants from northern and western Europe were more than ample for the demand. The quotas for immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were very small.
The United States as of the turn of the twentieth century was a much more economically and socially unequal place than it had been even thirty years before. Even immediately after the Civil War, wealth was still not that concentrated: the top one percent of households appear to have had a little more than a quarter of the wealth of the country.
The rising concentration of wealth in the United States started a widespread feeling that something had gone wrong with the country's development. The rich (and many of the native-born not-so-rich) blamed foreigners: aliens born in China, Japan, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Russia who weren’t able to speak English, or understanding American values, or contributing to American society. Many of the middle class, especially the farmers, blamed the rich, the easterners, and the bankers. The Populists of the 1890s blamed the eastern bankers and the gold standard. The Progressives sought reforms to try to diminish the power of what they saw as a wealthy-would be aristocracy.
They worked to clean up corrupt city governments, to improve working conditions in factories, and to better living conditions for those who lived in slum areas, a large number of whom were recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Many progressives were also concerned with the environment and conservation of resources. Most immigrants lived in ridiculously small tenements, the neighborhoods usually consisting of a cluster of the same ethnicity or country of origin. Goldberg notes this when discussing immigrants locating within cities. He notes, “They had clustered together in urban areas” (Goldberg, 147)
Shenah Pesah is the protagonist of the stories Wings, and Hunger, by Anzia Yezierska. She is a young woman representing the typical immigrant, who comes with high dreams and hopes, seeking the opportunity America is said to offer.
When John Barnes, a young sociology instructor from the University shows up to rent a room in her building, Shenah sees John as an unattainable, almost god-like figure. She quickly becomes smitten with him.
John Barnes’ feelings, meanwhile, are not exactly mutual. John views Shenah as nothing more than a cause…a sort of project. Yezierka writes:
“He was preparing his thesis on the “Educational Problems of the Russian Jews,” and in order to get into close touch with his subject, he had determined to live on the East Side during his spring and summer vacation.” (Yezierska, 5)
There is an incredible difference in perception between the two regarding their relationship. John Barnes is interested in Shenah in terms of research, while she seems him as a god or angel sent down to her. In the story, he describes her not as a man who cares about a woman, but rather, scientifically, like a professional studying a subject.
This is most evident in the varying points of view Yezierka gives us, starting with Shenah’s reactions to John Barnes’ first talking to her:
“Shenah Pessah did not hear the words, she heard only the music of his voice. She gazed fascinated at his clothes…but she did not see him or the things he wore. She only felt an irresistible presence seize her soul. It was as though the god of her innermost longings had suddenly taken shape in human form and lifted her in mid-air…She did not have the slightest notion of what he was saying, but talked on in a breathless stream lest he should hear the loud beating of her heart.” (Yezierska, 3-4)
This is as opposed to how John is perceiving their meeting, as she writes:
“So he was in their midst, the people he had come to study. The girl with her hungry eyes and intense eagerness now held a new interest for him…John Barnes…congratulated himself at his good fortune in encountering such a spledid type of research.” (Yezierska, 5)
Shenah’s very melodramatic reaction to John goes to show just how smitten Shenah was with him from the very moment she laid eyes on him. I find this to be a pretty good metaphor for the blind eyes so many had towards America at the time. They didn’t want to hear or see it’s faults or what it was really like. They grasped to their own vision of what it had in store for them, making it much more devastating when reality eventually set in. Shenah starts to get a glimpse of this reality when she attends the library with John for the first time. According to the story, “In the few brief words that passed between Mr. Barnes and the librarian, Shenah Pessah sensed that these two were of the same world and that she was different.” (Yezierska, 27)
The audience is meant to feel bad for Shenah. She has so much anticipation for John, much like an immigrant coming to the United States at the time. John Barnes represents America. She goes to the lengths of selling her things in order to have enough money to buy some clothes to impress him, and despite how much she tries and how much effort she puts in, it doesn’t work. Immigrants gave up all they had in their old country to come to this “land of opportunity”
The United States was trying to pretend that the rest of the world did not really exist. The people turned inward, and found that they had plenty to do. In the 1920s the United States became a modern middle-class economy made up of radios, consumer appliances, and automobiles. Nearly thirty million motor vehicles were on the road in 1929. Mass production had made the post-World War I United States the richest society the world had ever seen.
The United States’ manufacturing industries made simpler and rougher goods, while using incredibly less skilled labor, and seemed to incorporate much more of the knowledge needed to run the process of production into machines and organizations. This left much less in skilled workers' brains and hands.
In America, skilled workers were extremely far and few between, and it seemed worth it to follow production routines that used skilled workers as little as possible. Some of this resulted in finding new and more productive ways of doing things.
And in the second story, Hunger, Shenah finds herself working upward in a factory. The state of factories and production businesses is seen in how fast Shenah gets hired after inquiring about the job: “Because of the rush of work and the scarcity of help, Shenah Pessah was hired without delay.” (Yezierska, 43)
Shenah ends up making a personal voyage and realization over the course of these stories, very much like the personal voyage’s and realizations of immigrants who came to the United States at the time. She starts out as the wide eyed optimistic she was in Hunger, thinking there was so much for her, which she willingly gave up much for, and turns into a hard working, self sufficient with a more realistic vision of how the society worked.
The lesson shines through in this story that everything does not fall into your lap when you come to America, something that so many hopeful immigrants did not come to realize, until they were thrown into the midst of it.
Works Cited
Yezierska, Anzia. Hungry Hearts and Other Stories.
New York: Persea Books, 1985. 1-53
Goldberg, David J. Discontented America: The United States
in the 1920s. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999
Dumenil, Lynn. Modern Temper. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995
Copyright 2002
The early twentieth century was an era of business expansion and progressive reform in the United States. The highlight of the age was the rise of a progressive unification between urban reformers and radically minded farmers. These two groups shared a belief that government could be used as an instrument for improvement. That political blend eventually led to the formation of the Progressive Party. The progressives, as they called themselves, worked to make American society a better and safer place in which to live. They tried to make big business more responsible through regulations of various kinds.
A noticeable split over issues developed in the Republican Party during Taft's administration. On one side was the conservatives, who wanted a high tariff and opposed the kind of reforms started by Theodore Roosevelt. On the other side were those later known as progressives, who criticized the administration for refusing to continue the reforms begun by Roosevelt. The Former President Roosevelt openly sided with the progressives. He supported not only tariff revision but other political and economic reforms such as direct primaries, and an income tax.
In January 1911 the Republican senator from Wisconsin, Robert Folette organized the National Republican Progressive League to take political action for the beliefs of the progressives in the Republican Party. By 1912 the progressives had elected several governors in western states. Conservatives and progressive Republicans fought for control of the Republican national convention of June 1912. Defeated in their efforts to seat their delegates, the progressives, led by Roosevelt, organized the Progressive Party. Popularly known as the Bull Moose Party, the progressives nominated Roosevelt for president and Governor Hiram W. Johnson of California for vice president. The regular Republican convention had nominated Taft, and the Democratic Party nominated Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey. With the Republican party split, Wilson won.
Woodrow Wilson, like Roosevelt, felt that the presidency should be used for starting legislation in that corresponded with the President's view of what the people wanted. Wilson was successful in carrying out important reforms and revisions in the laws controlling the tax on imports, the banking system, trusts, labor, and agriculture.
The 1920s saw an end to free immigration into the United States. Migration from Asia had been restricted for several generations. Migration from Africa had never been an issue. But up until the mid-1920s migration from Europe was unrestricted. More than 1.2 million immigrants had come to the U.S. in 1914. But once the immigration restrictions of the 1920s took effect, the overall total was fixed at only 160,000 or so immigrants a year. Moreover, different nations had different quotas. The quotas for immigrants from northern and western Europe were more than ample for the demand. The quotas for immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were very small.
The United States as of the turn of the twentieth century was a much more economically and socially unequal place than it had been even thirty years before. Even immediately after the Civil War, wealth was still not that concentrated: the top one percent of households appear to have had a little more than a quarter of the wealth of the country.
The rising concentration of wealth in the United States started a widespread feeling that something had gone wrong with the country's development. The rich (and many of the native-born not-so-rich) blamed foreigners: aliens born in China, Japan, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Russia who weren’t able to speak English, or understanding American values, or contributing to American society. Many of the middle class, especially the farmers, blamed the rich, the easterners, and the bankers. The Populists of the 1890s blamed the eastern bankers and the gold standard. The Progressives sought reforms to try to diminish the power of what they saw as a wealthy-would be aristocracy.
They worked to clean up corrupt city governments, to improve working conditions in factories, and to better living conditions for those who lived in slum areas, a large number of whom were recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Many progressives were also concerned with the environment and conservation of resources. Most immigrants lived in ridiculously small tenements, the neighborhoods usually consisting of a cluster of the same ethnicity or country of origin. Goldberg notes this when discussing immigrants locating within cities. He notes, “They had clustered together in urban areas” (Goldberg, 147)
Shenah Pesah is the protagonist of the stories Wings, and Hunger, by Anzia Yezierska. She is a young woman representing the typical immigrant, who comes with high dreams and hopes, seeking the opportunity America is said to offer.
When John Barnes, a young sociology instructor from the University shows up to rent a room in her building, Shenah sees John as an unattainable, almost god-like figure. She quickly becomes smitten with him.
John Barnes’ feelings, meanwhile, are not exactly mutual. John views Shenah as nothing more than a cause…a sort of project. Yezierka writes:
“He was preparing his thesis on the “Educational Problems of the Russian Jews,” and in order to get into close touch with his subject, he had determined to live on the East Side during his spring and summer vacation.” (Yezierska, 5)
There is an incredible difference in perception between the two regarding their relationship. John Barnes is interested in Shenah in terms of research, while she seems him as a god or angel sent down to her. In the story, he describes her not as a man who cares about a woman, but rather, scientifically, like a professional studying a subject.
This is most evident in the varying points of view Yezierka gives us, starting with Shenah’s reactions to John Barnes’ first talking to her:
“Shenah Pessah did not hear the words, she heard only the music of his voice. She gazed fascinated at his clothes…but she did not see him or the things he wore. She only felt an irresistible presence seize her soul. It was as though the god of her innermost longings had suddenly taken shape in human form and lifted her in mid-air…She did not have the slightest notion of what he was saying, but talked on in a breathless stream lest he should hear the loud beating of her heart.” (Yezierska, 3-4)
This is as opposed to how John is perceiving their meeting, as she writes:
“So he was in their midst, the people he had come to study. The girl with her hungry eyes and intense eagerness now held a new interest for him…John Barnes…congratulated himself at his good fortune in encountering such a spledid type of research.” (Yezierska, 5)
Shenah’s very melodramatic reaction to John goes to show just how smitten Shenah was with him from the very moment she laid eyes on him. I find this to be a pretty good metaphor for the blind eyes so many had towards America at the time. They didn’t want to hear or see it’s faults or what it was really like. They grasped to their own vision of what it had in store for them, making it much more devastating when reality eventually set in. Shenah starts to get a glimpse of this reality when she attends the library with John for the first time. According to the story, “In the few brief words that passed between Mr. Barnes and the librarian, Shenah Pessah sensed that these two were of the same world and that she was different.” (Yezierska, 27)
The audience is meant to feel bad for Shenah. She has so much anticipation for John, much like an immigrant coming to the United States at the time. John Barnes represents America. She goes to the lengths of selling her things in order to have enough money to buy some clothes to impress him, and despite how much she tries and how much effort she puts in, it doesn’t work. Immigrants gave up all they had in their old country to come to this “land of opportunity”
The United States was trying to pretend that the rest of the world did not really exist. The people turned inward, and found that they had plenty to do. In the 1920s the United States became a modern middle-class economy made up of radios, consumer appliances, and automobiles. Nearly thirty million motor vehicles were on the road in 1929. Mass production had made the post-World War I United States the richest society the world had ever seen.
The United States’ manufacturing industries made simpler and rougher goods, while using incredibly less skilled labor, and seemed to incorporate much more of the knowledge needed to run the process of production into machines and organizations. This left much less in skilled workers' brains and hands.
In America, skilled workers were extremely far and few between, and it seemed worth it to follow production routines that used skilled workers as little as possible. Some of this resulted in finding new and more productive ways of doing things.
And in the second story, Hunger, Shenah finds herself working upward in a factory. The state of factories and production businesses is seen in how fast Shenah gets hired after inquiring about the job: “Because of the rush of work and the scarcity of help, Shenah Pessah was hired without delay.” (Yezierska, 43)
Shenah ends up making a personal voyage and realization over the course of these stories, very much like the personal voyage’s and realizations of immigrants who came to the United States at the time. She starts out as the wide eyed optimistic she was in Hunger, thinking there was so much for her, which she willingly gave up much for, and turns into a hard working, self sufficient with a more realistic vision of how the society worked.
The lesson shines through in this story that everything does not fall into your lap when you come to America, something that so many hopeful immigrants did not come to realize, until they were thrown into the midst of it.
Works Cited
Yezierska, Anzia. Hungry Hearts and Other Stories.
New York: Persea Books, 1985. 1-53
Goldberg, David J. Discontented America: The United States
in the 1920s. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999
Dumenil, Lynn. Modern Temper. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995
