Los Angeles Time, dated Jun 1, 1906, page I13

More Russians Head This Way
Additions Coming to Local Molokane Colony.
Fifty Families En Route from Native Land While Several Have Returned from Hawaiian Islands, Which Did Not Suit Them – Half-Hundred Recent Arrivals.

In spite of the scattering to Hawaii and Lower California of members of the local Molokane colony, its numbers continue to increase. Within the last few days fifty additional men, women and children have arrived in Los Angeles and have joined their countrymen in the settlement down near the river. Fifty families, numbering at least 200 persons, are on their way from Russia, and are expected here within three or four weeks.

With the additions that have come in small companies from week to week for several months, it is estimated that there are now upward of three hundred families in Los Angeles. Indications now are that this is the promised land which this oppressed people has sought, for the latest advices from Hawaii are that those who went to those islands a few months ago are not satisfied with the change.

Six of the forty-three families that sailed for Honolulu have returned to Los Angeles. They report that they do not like the climate of the islands. It is too wet and too warm for them, they say. It may be that others who went out to the gem of the Pacific will return.

Although hampered by their unfamiliarity with the English language, the Russians are accommodating themselves quite easily to conditions here. It is said that practically all the able-bodied men have work, while such women that are not required through domestic duty to remain at home have little trouble in obtaining employment in factories and in other places where a sturdy physique makes their services valuable.

Many of the men of the colony are employed in lumber yards and at other places, where brawn counts. It is said they earn from $2 to $3 a day.

Some of the younger men and women have work in laundries, and members of this contingent are failing rapidly into American ways. Some of the youths, especially, have discarded the odd garb of their fathers, instead of bright-colored shirts worn outside their trousers; they tuck in the tails, wear collars and hats.

They shave, too, and have their hair cut at barber shops instead of having it trimmed at home with dull shears, with the edges of a mush kettle as the guiding lines – method apparently practiced by some of the older members of the colony.

The younger colonists, too, are taking readily to the English language, being assisted materially in lingual training at the night school maintained for their benefit at the Stimson-Lafayette Industrial School on Lafayette Street.

Numbers of the immigrants now here are sending money to relatives in Russia, to pay their passage to the United States, and otherwise to assist them in getting out of the country they no longer love. One of the Molokane a few days ago sold a handsome brass samovar – the family pride and daily need for $20, sending the money, with more, to a relative in the old country.

There has been some hesitancy on the part of some of the men of the colony to prepare themselves for naturalization. The Molokane is a lover of peace – a Quaker in many ways – and he is particularly averse to war or fighting of any kind. Some of them have an idea that, if they become American citizens, they may be impressed for army service and for this reason they have held back from taking out naturalization papers.