A Jewish American Playwright Celebrates the American “Melting Pot,” 1909

From Israel Zangwill, The Melting-Pot

DAVID A fee ! I’d pay a fee to see all those happy immigrants you gather together—Dutchmen and Greeks, Poles and Norwegians, Welsh and Armenians. If you only had Jews, it would be as good as going to Ellis Island.  

VERA [Smiling]
What a strange taste ! Who on earth wants to go to Ellis Island ? 

DAVID Oh, I love going to Ellis Island to watch the ships coming in from Europe, and to think that all those weary, sea-tossed wanderers are feeling what I felt when America first stretched out her great mother-hand to me!  

VERA [Softly]
Were you very happy?  

DAVID It was heaven. You must remember that all my life I had heard of America—everybody in our town had friends there or was going there or got money orders from there. The earliest game I played at was selling off my toy furniture and setting up in America. All my life America was waiting, beckoning, shining—the place where God would wipe away tears from off all faces.
    [He ends in a half-sob.]  

MENDEL [Rises, as in terror]
Now, now, David, don’t get excited.
    [Approaches him.]  

DAVID
To think that the same great torch of liberty which threw its light across all the broad seas and lands into my little garret in Russia, is shining also for all those other weeping millions of Europe, shining wherever men hunger and are oppressed—.  

**

DAVID Oh, Miss Revendal, when I look at our Statue of Liberty, I just seem to hear the voice of America crying: "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest—rest—————"
  [He is now almost sobbing.]  

MENDEL
Don’t talk any more—you know it is bad for you.  

DAVID
But Miss Revendal asked—and I want to explain to her what America means to me.  

MENDEL
You can explain it in your American symphony.  

VERA [Eagerly—to DAVID]
You compose?  

DAVID [Embarrassed]
Oh, uncle, why did you talk of—? Uncle always— my music is so thin and tinkling. When I am writing my American symphony, it seems like thunder crashing though a forest full of bird songs. But next day— oh, next day!
[He laughs dolefully and turns away.]

VERA
So your music finds inspiration in America ?  

DAVID Yes—in the seething of the Crucible.  

VERA The Crucible?  I don’t understand!  

DAVID Not understand ! You, the Spirit of the Settlement !
[He rises and crosses to her and leans over the table, facing her.]
Not understand that America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand
    [Graphically illustrating it on the table]  
in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. But you won’t be long like that, brothers, for these are the fires of God you’ve come to—these are the fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians—into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American.

MENDEL
I should have thought the American was made already ---eighty millions of him.  

DAVID
Eighty millions!
    [He smiles toward VERA in good-humoured derision.]
Eighty millions! Over a continent! Why, that cockleshell of a Britain has forty millions ! No, uncle, the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell you—he will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman. Ah, what a glorious Finale for my symphony—if I can only write it.