A Hazard of New Fortunes · Chapter
Chapter XI explained
Basil March travels via the Elevated train to Chatham Square to visit his old friend Lindau, observing the diverse ethnicities and social conditions of New York's East Side.
What happens
Basil March travels via the Elevated train to Chatham Square to visit his old friend Lindau, observing the diverse ethnicities and social conditions of New York's East Side. He reflects on the chaotic, planless growth of the city and the struggles of its immigrant poor. After a conversation with Fulkerson about the magazine's first issue, March finds Lindau living in a squalid tenement, revealing his friend's poverty and his own guilt for neglecting him.
Themes in this chapter
Urban vs. Rural Life
March contrasts the dramatic, distracting life of the city's poor with the dullness of the countryside, questioning why anyone would leave the city's 'alleviations' for rural 'comfort and plenty.'
Immigration and Cultural Diversity
March observes the variety of ethnic groups on the East Side—Irish, Germans, Italians, Slavs, Chinese—and reflects on their experiences in a free republic.
Labor and Social Justice
March's thoughts on Neapolitan workers 'worked and fed and housed like beasts' and the 'fierce struggle for survival' highlight the harsh conditions of immigrant labor.
Characters to notice
- Basil March
Travels to Chatham Square to visit Lindau, reflecting on the city's diversity and disorder.
- Fulkerson
Discusses the magazine's first number with March, proposing outlandish promotional stunts.
- Mr. Lindau
Found living in a poor tenement on the East Side; March's visit reveals his neglected state.
Key passages
“Now and then he had found himself in a car mostly filled with Neapolitans from the constructions far up the line, where he had read how they are worked and fed and housed like beasts; and listening to the jargon of their unintelligible dialect, he had occasion for pensive question within himself as to what notion these poor animals formed of a free republic from their experience of life under its conditions; and whether they found them practically very different from those of the immemorial brigandage and enforced complicity with rapine under which they had been born.”
Occasionally, March rode in a car full of Neapolitan laborers from construction sites, where he had read they were treated like animals. He wondered what these poor people thought of America's freedom, given their harsh lives, and whether it seemed any different from the oppression they had fled.
March reflects on the gap between American ideals and the reality for immigrant workers.
“The whole at moments seemed to him lawless, godless; the absence of intelligent, comprehensive purpose in the huge disorder, and the violent struggle to subordinate the result to the greater good, penetrated with its dumb appeal the consciousness of a man who had always been too self-enwrapped to perceive the chaos to which the individual selfishness must always lead.”
At times, the city's chaotic growth seemed lawless and godless to March, lacking any intelligent plan. The struggle for survival amid disorder struck him as a silent plea, making him realize how his own self-absorption had blinded him to the chaos caused by selfishness.
March experiences a moment of social awakening, recognizing the consequences of unchecked individualism.