Louis Adamic - Laughing in the Jungle

LOUIS ADAMIC

AYER COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, INC. SALEM, NEW HAMPSHIRE 03079

Reprint Edition 1985 AYER Company. Publishing. Inc. 382 Main Street Salem, New Hampshire 03079

Reprinted by arrangement with Harper & Row, Publishers All rights reserved

Library of Cong ress Catalog Card No. 69-18755

Manufactured in the United States of America isbn 0-405-00503-2

Laughing in the Jungle

The Autobiography of an Immigrant in America By

Louis Adamic

Harper & Brothers

New York and London

LAUGHING IN THE JUNGLE

Copyright, 1932, by Louis Adamic

Printed in the United States of America

To

MADS EN

Author s Note

Part I: Why I Came to America

I . Am er kan c i

II . Do Not Go to America!

III . I Go to America

Part II: Greenhorns

IV. Steve Rodin

V. New Year s Eve in New York

VI. The Jungle

VII. Steve Rodin (continued)

VIII My Own People in America

Part III: The Crusade

IX. To Make the World Safe

X. Superman

XI. The Man with the Big Head

XII. Blakelock in Command

XIII. Koskaandthe Flu

XIV. Blakelock Makes a Gesture

Part IV: The Land of Laughs

XV. After the War

XVI. My First Day in Los Angeles

XVII . The Enormous Village

XVIII. Lonie BurtonStill a Crusader

XIX. The Assassin of Woodrow Wilson

XX. A Soft Joband Mencken

Part V: Some People in California

XXI. The Man with a Soul

XXII. A Bohunk Woman

XXIII. Steve Rodin (concluded)

XXIV. America and Mysetf

Postscript

T his book is a narrative of the influences which, in 1913, prompted me as a boy of fourteen and a half to leave my native country in Europe an d go to America, and of things within my experience as an immigrant living in various parts of the United States that seem interesting or significant, or merely amusi n g to me personally, and give themselves to telling at this time. It does not pretend to be a complete autobiography (if such a thing is ever possible).

Immigration was a large factor in the upbuilding of America. The immigrant flood during the last seven or eight decades, and especially from about 1890 to 1914, included large numbers of my countrymen Bohunks, or Hunkies : Slavs from the Balkans and from eastern and central Europewhose contribution as workers to the current material greatness and power of the United States, albeit not generally recognized, is immense... Much of our work and our strength is frozen in the buildings of New York, and in the buildings of other cities, and in the railroads and bridges of America....

On the other hand, of course, immigration is in no small way to blame for the fact that the United States today is more a jungle than a civilizationa land of deep economic, social, spiritual, and intellectual chaos and distressin which, it seems to me, by far the most precious possession a sensitive and intelligent person can have is an active sense of humor.

Immigration now is ended. The United States is pulling down the Welcome sign. This fact appears to me one of the most significant in America s national existence today. Hence, perhaps, it is not inappropriate for, or presumptuous of, me at this time to add a volume to the rather meager shelf of autobiographical books by immigrants.

L oui s A damic

October, 1931

Amerikanci in Carniola

As a boy of nine, and even younger, in my native village of Blato, in Carniolathen a Slovenian duchy of Austria and later a part of YugoslaviaI experienced a thrill every time one of the men of the little community returned from America.

Five or six years before, as I heard people tell, the man had quietly left the village for the United States, a poor peasant clad in homespun, with a mustache under his nose and a bundle on his back; now, a clean-shaven Amerikanec, he sported a blue-serge suit, buttoned shoes very large in the toes and with india-rubber heels, a black derby, a shiny celluloid collar, and a loud necktie made even louder by a dazzling horseshoe pin, which, rumor had it, was made of gold, while his two suitcases of imitation leather, tied with straps, bulged with gifts from America for his relatives and friends in the village. In nine cases out of ten, he had left in economic desperation, on money borrowed from some relative in the United States; now there was talk in the village that he was worth anywhere from one to three thousand American dollars. And to my eyes he truly bore all the earmarks of affluence. Indeed, to say that he thrilled my boyish fancy is putting it mildly. With other boys in the village, I followed him around as he went visiting his relatives and friends and distributing presents, and hung onto his every word and gesture.

Then, on the first Sun day after his homecoming, if at all possible, I got within earshot of the nabob as he sat in the winehouse or under the linden in front of the wine-house in Blato, surrounded by village folk, ordering wine and klobase Carniolan sausagesfor all comers, paying for accordion-players, indulging in tall talk about America, its wealth and vastness, and his own experiences as a worker in the West Virginia or Kansas coal-mines or Pennsylvania rolling-mills, and comparing notes upon conditions in the United States with other local Ameri k a mci who had returned before him.

Under the benign influence of cvichek Lower Carniolan wineand often even when sober, the men who had been in America spoke expansively, boastfully, romantically of their ability and accomplishments as workers and of the wages they had earned in Wilkes-Barre or Carbondale, Pennsylvania, or Wheeling, West Virginia, or Pueblo, Colorado, or Butte, Montana, and generally of places and people and things and affairs in the New World. The men who returned to the village, either to stay or for a visit, were, for the most part, natural men of labormen with sinewy arms and powerful backs Bohunks, or Hunkies, so called in the United States who derived a certain brawny joy and pride from hard toil. Besides, now that they had come home, they were no longer mere articles upon the industrial labor market, working stiffs or wage slaves, as radical agitators in America referred to them, but adventurers, distant kinsmen of Marco Polo safely returned from a far country, heroes in their own eyes and the eyes of the village; and it was natural for them to expand and to exaggerate their own exploits and enlarge upon the opportunities to be found in America. Their boasting, perhaps, was never wholly without basis in fact. ...

I remember that, listening to them, I played with the idea of going to America when I was but eight or nine.

My notion of the United States then, and for a few years after, was that it was a grand, amazing, somewhat fantastic placethe Golden Countrya sort of Paradise the Land of Promise in more ways than onehuge beyond conception, thousands of miles across the ocean, un-tellably exciting, explosive, quite incomparable to the tiny, quiet, lovely Carniola; a place full of movement and turmoil, wherein things that were unimaginable and impossible in Blato happened daily as a matter of course.

In America one could make pots of money in a short time, acquire immense holdings, wear a white collar, and have polish on one s boots like a gospod one of the gentryand eat white bread, soup, and meat on weekdays as well as on Sundays, even if one were but an ordinary workman to begin with. In Blato no one ate white bread or soup and meat, except on Sundays and holidays, and very few then.