rary hardships had been no greater than most immigrants encountered
in those days.

I later learned from a Bohemian of the trials his mother met with on her
first days in New York. He told me that she and her three children,
the smallest a babe in arms, tramped the streets of New York for days
looking in vain for some one who could speak their native tongue. They
slept at night in doorways, and by day wandered timid and terrified
through the streets.

"At last a saloon-keeper saw that we were famishing," the Bohemian told
me. "He was a--a--Oh, what do you call them in your language? I can
think of the Bohemian word but not the English."

"What was he like?" I asked to help find the word. "Red-headed? Tall?
Fat?"

"No; he was one of those people who usually run clothing stores and are
always having a 'SALE.'"

"Jew," I said.

"Yes, he was a Jew saloon-keeper. He took pity on us and took us into
his saloon and gave us beer, bread and sausages. We were so nearly
starved that we ate too much and our stomachs threw it up. The
saloon-keeper sent word to the Humane Society, and they came and put us
on the train for Chicago, where our father was waiting for us."

The Bohemians saved from starvation by the pity of a Jewish
saloon-keeper is a sample of how our world was running fifty years ago.
Who can doubt that we have a better world to-day? And the thing that has
made it better is the thing that Jew exhibited, human sympathy.

When I found myself head of the Labor Department one of my earliest
duties was to inspect the immigrant stations at Boston and New York. In
spite of complaints, they were being conducted to the letter of the
law; to correct the situation it was only necessary to add sympathy and
understanding to the enforcement of the law.

An American poet in two lines told the whole truth about human courage:

"The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring."

Tenderness and human sympathy to the alien passing through Ellis Island
does not mean that we are weak, or that the unfit alien is welcome. The
tenderer we treat the immigrant who seeks our hospitality, the harder
will we smash him when he betrays us. That's what "the bravest are
the tenderest" means. He who is tenderest toward the members of his
household is bravest in beating back him who would destroy that house.

For example, I received a hurry-up call for more housing at Ellis Island
in the early days of my administration.