My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyOswald Mosley visits US Coalmine - 1926.We saw almost everything that was to be seen, beginning with the slums of New Yorkand the virtual segregation of various communities. I had an astonishing experiencewhich at that point in my life I could not begin to understand, and had never seen inEurope. The usual large team of journalists was accompanying me on foot through theslums of New York, where I was examining housing conditions, which at that timewere very bad. Suddenly the journalists were missing, and I found myself surroundedby people who were immigrants and could hardly talk our language, but I spent sometime among them and entered their houses on their friendly invitation. Wheneventually I emerged from this quarter into streets which were quite different, thejournalists were there again. 'What happened to you?' I enquired, for it was the onlytime I had lost them on the whole tour. 'We were not going in there at any price,' wasthe reply. It was the first time I had ever encountered a strong anti-semitism, which atthat time was to be found more in America than in Europe. As we shall see I had aquarrel years later with certain Jews for political reasons, but have not at any timebeen an anti-semite.A Spanish friend of mine, the Marques de Valdeiglesias, told me of much the sameexperience when he went to America about that time. As a young man he madefriends on the ship with a lady of dark and romantic beauty, and in New York wasmuch in her company. One hot day he suggested they should go bathing together, andshe replied: 'Certainly, but you must come to our beach'. He understood for the firsttime that she was a Jewess, and was astonished to learn that Jews were segregated indifferent beaches, as various communities are in South Africa today. Anti-semitismthen appeared in various sections of American life from top to bottom. There werelegends of Otto Kahn's exclusion from the opera and his vigorous action with weightof money to overcome it; stories in universal circulation which I never checked indetail.Certainly this attitude was prevalent in Washington, in whose social life the family ofCimmie's mother, the Leiters, was prominent. This made the more curious the stories168 of 424