September 6, 1909 – “The Melting Pot” Opens on Broadway & Becomes a Metaphor

On this day in history, a play by British Jewish author Israel Zangwill about immigrants in America called “The Melting Pot” opened on Broadway to rousing success. It had premiered in Washington, D.C. a year earlier and was popular enough to be brought to New York. At the Washington, D.C. premiere, President Theodore Roosevelt had famously shouted out, “That’s a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that’s a great play!”

Updating “Romeo and Juliet,” the play features young lovers from two immigrant families. In this story, David has emigrated to America after the 1903 Kishinev pogrom in Russia in which his entire family was killed. In America, he falls in love with a beautiful Russian Christian immigrant named Vera. Moreover, Vera’s father turns out to be the Russian officer responsible for the annihilation of David’s family. But Vera’s father admits his guilt and David and Vera agree to wed, and they kiss as the curtain falls.

Much of the play concerns David’s dream of a society free of ethnic divisions and hatred. At one point, he proclaims:

There she lies, the great Melting Pot – listen! Can’t you hear the roaring and the bubbling? There gapes her mouth [_He points east_]–the harbour where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour in their human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian,–black and yellow-” VERA: “Jew and Gentile-” DAVID: “Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross–how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. Ah, Vera, what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward!” (The Melting Pot, full text via Project Gutenberg, here.)

The concept of a “melting pot” had been invoked before, but Zangwill’s play popularized the term as a symbol for American society.

A cartoon of America’s melting pot, as imagined unflatteringly in 1889 in Puck, Britain’s famed satirical magazine.