Popular images are rarely entirely wrong; and if the mass media and the popular mind today see the social scientist as a man with pencil and pad in hand, buttonholing hapless citizens on the street, the error is not in the observation—it is only in seeing the social scientist as the interviewer himself rather than as the man who sits in an office poring over columns of figures, the end product for which the interviews provide the raw materials.
Today, no matter what the question put to the social scientist, he begins his answer by composing a questionnaire, which he then gets filled out by having an appropriate number of respondents interviewed. The census, the foundation of all social investigation, is itself the product of such a procedure. In more recent years, first psychologists, then sociologists, and now political scientists and economists, have turned to interviewing as the basic method for empirical social investigation. The public opinion poll has become the model for research in every field but archeology and history—and even in the latter field ingenious young scholars are doing their best today to break down the apparently impassable barrier presented to interviewing techniques by the fact that most of the respondents are dead.
It was not always so. Twenty-five years ago a leading American work on the methods of the social sciences devoted a dozen pages out of four hundred to questionnaires and interviews—and warned its readers not to take these techniques too seriously. But the virtues of the interview—the ease and simplicity with which it can be used, the way in which it opens every question to study, the fact that it makes possible the accumulation of so much data that advanced statistical methods can be used to interpret them, and the way in which it permits the employment of “unskilled labor” to a fairly large extent in social research—soon overrode all other considerations. The interview itself became the subject of manuals, studies, and monographs in America (one manual has been recently translated into German under the title Das Interview).
Now and then one heard it whispered that all was not well between interviewer and respondent—collusion, conscious and unconscious, misunderstanding, confusion were mentioned—but the structures built on interviews were nevertheless reared higher and higher. Today the whisper is a low roar, and the interviewer on whom so much depends is getting a thorough scientific going over—generally, of course, by interview, but on rare occasions also by direct observation of him at work. It is fair to say that some social scientists have been shaken by what they have seen. And yet interviews must inevitably be the basis of all empirical social science—how else conduct even something as simple as a census?
As A contribution to these studies, we present below a report of the experiences of an early interviewer, I. L. Peretz, better known as the great Yiddish writer, the centenary of whose birth was celebrated all over the free world in 1952. In his “Travel Pictures,” written toward the end of that last century, Peretz describes how, in that time of troubles for the Jews of Russia, he decided to go out to the villages like a scientist, as he tells us in his introduction, and find out just how the Jews there lived and just what they thought. He discovered—as American social scientists now engaged in asking questions throughout the world are discovering every day—that asking a question and getting an answer is not so simple a matter as it seems—particularly when dealing with a people among whom it is de rigueur to answer one question with another. Since he was a rather early interviewer, his report, and our excerpts, also. include the less formal observations of the unprofessional sociologist of an earlier day.
We are indebted to Professor S. M. Lipset of the Columbia University sociology department for calling this early venture into empirical sociology to our attention.
“The Interviewer at Work” (our title) is a series of excerpts from “Travel-Pictures,” one section of the volume Stories and Pictures which the Jewish Publication Society of America first published in English in 1906. It is with the kind permission of the Jewish Publication Society that we reprint this revised version of their translation.—Nathan Glazer.
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My first halting place was Tishevitz. I took lodgings with an acquaintance, Reb Boruch. He sent for the beadle and a few householders.
While I was waiting for them I stood by the window and looked out at the market place. It was a large square bounded on every side by a row of grimy, tumble-down houses, some roofed with straw, but the majority with shingle. All were one-storied and had broad porches supported by rotting beams.
Out in front of the porches, and with not too much room between them, stood huck-stresses over stalls holding rolls, bread, peas, beans, and various kinds of fruit. The market-women are in a state of great commotion. I must have made a big impression on them.
“Bad luck to you!” screams one. “Don’t point at him with your finger; he can see!”
“Hold your tongue!”
The women know that I have come to take down things in writing. They confide the secret to one another so softly that I overhear every word, even inside the house.
“They say it is he [Satan] himself!”
“It is a good thing the poor sheep have shepherds watching over them. All the same, if that Shepherd didn’t help, much good it would do!”
“A person can’t understand why that Shepherd should require such messengers” (an allusion to my shaven face and short-skirted coat). . . .
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I began with mine host. He has no wife, and before I could put in a word he excused himself for it by asking, “How long do you suppose she’s been dead?”—lest I should reproach him for not having found another to fill her place.
Well, to be brief, I set him down a widower, three sons married, one daughter married, two little boys and one little girl at home. And here he begs me at once to put down that all his sons—except the youngest, who is only four years old, “and Messiah will come before he is liable for military service”—are exempt from serving for one reason or another.
With the exception of the two eldest sons, I already know the whole family.
The married daughter lives in her father’s house and sells tobacco, snuff, tea, and sugar; also foodstuffs; also I think, kerosene and grease. I had bought some sugar from her early that morning. She is about twenty-eight years old. A thin face, a long hooked nose that seems to be trying to count the black and decaying teeth in her half-opened mouth, cracked, blue-gray lips—the image of her father. Her sister, a young girl, is like her but she has “kallacheyn,” her face is fresher and pinker, her teeth whiter, and altogether she is not so worn and neglected looking. I also see the two little boys, pretty little boys, they must take after their mother: red cheeks, and shy, restless eyes, their tight black curls full of feathers. But they have ugly habits, are always shrugging their little shoulders and writhing peevishly. They wear quilted coats, dirty but in one piece.
The mother can’t have died more than a short time ago, long enough for the coats to get dirty, not long enough for them to get torn. Who is there to look after them now? The eldest sister has four children, a husband who is a scholar, and the shop—the little kalla maiden waits on her father’s customers at the bar; the father himself has no time.
“What business are you in?” I ask him.
“Percentage.”
“Do you mean usury?”
“Well, call it usury if you want to. It doesn’t amount to anything either way. Do you know what?” he exclaims. “Take all my rubbish and welcome, bills of exchange, deeds—everything for 25 per cent, only pay me in cash. I’ll give up usury, even the public house! God knows how I’d love to go to Palestine—but give me the cash! Take the whole business and welcome! You think we live on usury—it lives on us! People don’t pay up, the debt grows bigger. The bigger it gets, the less it’s worth, and the poorer am I, I give you my word!”
Before going out to take further notes, I witness a little scene. While I was gathering up my things, paper, pencil, cigarettes, Reb Boruch was buttering bread for the children to take with them to cheder. They each had two slices of bread and butter and a tiny onion as a relish.
“Now go!” he says; he does not want them in the public house. But the little orphan isn’t satisfied. He hunches his shoulders and pulls a wry face preparatory to crying. He feels a bit ashamed, however, to cry in front of me, and waits till I am gone. But he can’t wait so long and lets out a wail:
“Another little onion!” he wants. “Mother always gave me two!”
The sister has come running into the taproom and catches up another onion and gives it to him. “Go!” says she also, but much more gently.
The mother’s voice sounded in her words.
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We go from house to house, from number to number. I can see for myself which houses are inhabited by Jews and which by Gentiles; I have only to look at the windows. Dingy windows are a sure sign of “Thou hast chosen us,” still more so broken panes stuffed with cushions and sacking. On the other hand, flower pots and curtains show the presence of those who have no such right to poverty as the others.
One meets with exceptions—here lives, not a Jew, but a drunkard—and here again—flowers and curtains, but they read Hazefirah. [A Hebrew newspaper, to subscribe to which meant that one was “enlightened” and “advanced.”] . . . And don’t imagine Tishevitz is the world’s end. It has a Maskil, too, and a real Maskil, one of the old style, middle-aged, uneducated and unread, without books, without even a newspaper, in a word a mere pretense at a Maskil. . . .
As I heard later, the Maskil took me for another Maskil, and was sure that I should lodge with him, or, at any rate, that he would be the first one on my list. “For work of that kind,” he said to the others, “you want people with brains. What do you suppose he could do with the likes of you?”
And as the mountain did not go to Mohammed, because he had never heard of him, Mohammed went to the mountain. He found me in the house of a widow. He came in with the wicked child’s question in the Haggadah: “What is all this to you?”
“Moi panyiyel What are you doing here?”
“How here?” I ask.
“Very likely you think I come from under the stove? That because a person lives in Tishevitz he isn’t civilized, and doesn’t know what is doing in the world? You remember: ‘I have sojourned with Laban’? I do live here, but when there’s a rat about I soon smell him out.”
“If you can smell a rat, and know everything that’s going on, why ask questions?”
The beadle pricked up his ears, and so did the half-dozen loungers who had dogged my steps. There was a fierce delight in their faces, and on their foreheads was written the verse: “Let the young men arise”—let us see two Maskilim have it out between them!
“What’s the good of all this joking?” said the Maskil, irritated. “My tongue is not a shoe sole! And for whose benefit am I to speak? That of the Tishevitz donkeys? Look at the miserable creatures!”
I feel a certain embarrassment. I cannot very well spring to the defense of Tishevitz, because the Tishevitz worthies in the window and the doorway are smiling quite pleasantly.
“Come, tell me, what does it all mean, taking notes?”
“Statistics!”
“Statistic-shmistik! We’ve heard that before. What’s the use of it?”
I explained—not exactly to him, but to the community, so that they should all have an idea of what statistics meant.
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughs the Maskil loudly and hoarsely. “You can get the Tishevitz donkeys to believe that, but not me! Why do you want to put down how a person lives, with a floor, without a floor! What does it matter to you if a person lives in a room without a floor? Ha?”
It matters, I tell him, because people want to show how poor the Jews are; they think—
“They think nothing of the kind,” he interrupted. “But let that pass! Why should they want to know exactly how many boys and how many girls a man has? And what their ages are, and all the rest of the bother?”
“They suspect us of shirking military duty. The records, as of course you know, are not correct, and we want to prove—”
“Well, that may be so, for one thing—I’ll allow that—but—about licenses! Why do you note down who has them—and what they are worth?”
“In order to prove that the Jews—”
But the Maskil won’t let me finish my sentence.
“A likely story! Meantime people will know that this one and the other pays less than he ought to for his license, and he’ll never hear the last of it.”
Hardly had he said this when the heads in the window disappeared; the beadle in the doorway took himself off, and the Maskil, who had really meant well all along, stood like one turned to stone.
The population had taken fright, and in another hour or two the town was full of me.
I was suspected of being an agent of the excise. And why not, indeed? The excise knew very well that a Jew would have less difficulty in getting behind other people’s secrets.
I was left to pace the market square alone. . . .
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I arrived in Lyashtzof on a dark summer night, between eleven and twelve o’clock. Another market place, with different kinds of buildings and little walled-in houses round about.
In the middle of the market place, a collection of large, white stones. I drive nearer—the stones move and sprout horns; they become a herd of milk-white goats.
The goats show more sense than the community leaders of Tishevitz: they are not frightened. One or two of the whole lot lift their heads, look at us sleepily, and once more turn their attention to the scanty grass of the gass , and to scratching one another.
Happy goats! No one slanders you, you needn’t be afraid of statisticians. It is true, people kill you, but what of that? Doesn’t everyone die before his time? And as far as troubles go, you certainly have fewer. . . .
Early in the morning, before the arrival of the beadle, there come some Jews—they want to see the note-taker. My fame has preceded me.
I make a beginning, and turn to one of them: “Good morning, friend!”
“Good morning, sholom aleichem.” He gives me his hand, quite lazily.
“What is your name, friend?”
“Levi Yitzchok.”
“And your German [family] name?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Well, is it a secret?”
“Secret or no secret, you may as well tell me why you want to know. I’ll be bound that’s no secret!”
“Then you don’t know your German name?”
“Not exactly.”
“Make a stab at it—just for fun!”
“Baerenpelz,” he answers, a little ashamed.
“A wife?”
“Ett!”
“What does ett mean?”
“He wants a divorce!” another answers for him.
“How many children?”
He has to think, and counts on his fingers: “By the first wife—mine: one, two, three; hers: one, two. By the second wife. . . .
He gets tired of counting: “Let’s say six!”
“ ‘Let’s say’ is no good. I must know exactly.”
“You see, ‘exactly’ is not so easy. ‘Exactly!’ Why do you want to know? Vos iz? Are you an official? Do they pay you for it? Will somebody follow and check your statements? ‘Exactly!’ ”
“Tell him, blockhead, tell him,” the rest encourage him. “Now you’ve begun, tell him!” They want to know what the next questions will be.
Once again he has counted on his fingers and, heaven be praised, there are three more: “Nine children, health and strength to them!”
“How many sons, how many daughters?”
He counts again: “Four sons and five daughters.”
“How many sons and how many daughters married?”
“You want to know that, too? Look here, tell me why?”
“Tell him, then, tell him!” cry the rest, impatiently.
“Three daughters and two sons,” answers someone for him.
“Takeh?” says the latter. “And Yisrolek?”
“But he isn’t married yet.”
“Horse! They call him up next Sabbath! What does a week and a half matter?”
I make a note and go on. “Have you served in the army?”
“I bought exemption from Kohol [local Jewish authorities], for four hundred rubles! Where should I find them now?” and he groans.
“And your sons?”
“The eldest has a swelling under his right eye, and besides—not of you be it said!—a rupture. He has been in three hospitals. It cost more than a wedding. They only just sent him home from the regiment! The second drew a high number. The third is serving his time now.”
“And the wife?”
“At home with me, of course. Why ask?”
“She might have been at her father’s.”
“A pauper!”
“Have you a house?”
“Have I a house!”
“Worth how much?”
“If it were in Samoscz, it would be worth something. Here it’s not worth a dreier, except that I have a place to lay my head down in.”
“Would you sell it for one hundred rubles?”
“The Lord help us! One’s own inheritance! Not for three hundred.”
“Would you sell it for five hundred?”
“Mehl I’d rent a place and go into business!”
“And what is your business now?”
“What business?”
“What do you live on?”
“That’s what you mean! One just lives.”
“On what?”
“God’s providence. When He gives something one has it!”
“But He doesn’t throw things down from heaven?”
“He does so! Can I tell how I live? Let’s figure it out: I need a lot of money, at least four rubles a week. The house brings in, beside my own lodging, twelve rubles a year—nine go for taxes, five for repairs, leaves a hole in the pocket of two rubles a year! That’s it.”
He puts on airs: “Heaven be praised. I have no money. Neither I, nor any one of the Jews standing here, nor any other Jews—except perhaps the ‘German’ ones in the big towns. We have no money. I don’t know any trade, my grandfather never sewed a shoe. So I live as God wills, and have lived so for fifty years.
And if there is a child to be married we have a wedding and dance in the mud.”
“Once and for all, what are you?”
“A Jew.”
“What do you do all day?”
“I study, I pray—what else should a Jew do? And when I have eaten I go to the market.”
“What do you do in the market?”
“What do I do? Whatever turns up. Well, yesterday, for example, I heard, as I passed, that Yoneh Borik wanted to buy three rams for a gentleman. Before daylight I was at the house of a second gentleman who had once said he had too many rams. I made an agreement with Yoneh Borik, and, heaven be praised, we made a ruble and a half by it.”
“Are you then what is called a commission agent?”
“How should I know?Sometimes it even occurs to me to buy a bit of produce.”
“Sometimes?”
“What do you mean by ‘sometimes’? When I have a ruble I buy.”
“And when not?”
“I get one.”
“How?”
“What do you mean by ‘how’?”
And it is an hour before I find out that Levi Yitzchok Baerenpelz is a bit of a rabbinical assistant, and acts as arbiter in quarrels; a bit of a commission agent, a fragment of a merchant, a morsel of a matchmaker, and now and again, when the fancy takes him, a messenger.
Thanks to all these “trades,” the counted and the forgotten ones, he earns his bread, though with toil and trouble, for wife and child—even for the married daughter, because her father-in-law is only a pauper.
