Our Foreigners: A Chronicle of Americans in the MakingOrth, Samuel Peter
History
Our Foreigners: A Chronicle of Americans in the Making
Orth, Samuel Peter
Immigrants -- United States; United States -- Emigration and immigration
A like transformation has taken place in the manufacturing towns of
New York, New Jersey, and Delaware and in the iron and steel towns of
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the Middle West. For forty years
after the establishment of the first iron furnace in Johnstown,
Pennsylvania, in 1842, the mills were manned exclusively by Americans,
English, Welsh, Irish, and Germans. In 1880 Slavic names began to
appear on the pay rolls. Soon thereafter Italians and Syrians were
brought into the town, and today sixty per cent of the population is
of foreign birth, largely from southeastern Europe. The native
Americans and Welsh live in two wards, and clustered around them are
settlements of Italians, Slovaks, and Croatians.
The new manufacturing towns which are dependent upon some single
industry are almost wholly composed of recent immigrants. Gary,
Indiana, built by the United States Steel Corporation, and Whiting,
Indiana, established by the Standard Oil Company for its refining
industry, are examples of new American towns of exotic populations. At
a glass factory built in 1890 in the village of Charleroi,
Pennsylvania, over ten thousand Belgians, French, Slavs, and Italians
now labor. An example of lightning-like displacement of population is
afforded by the steel and iron center at Granite City and Madison,
Illinois. The two towns are practically one industrial community,
although they have separate municipal organizations. A steel mill was
erected in 1892 upon the open prairies, and in it American, Welsh,
Irish, English, German, and Polish workmen were employed. In 1900
Slovaks were brought in, and two years later there came large numbers
of Magyars, followed by Croatians. In 1905 Bulgarians began to arrive,
and within two years over eight thousand had assembled. Armenians,
Servians, Greeks, Magyars, every ethnic faction found in the racial
welter of southeastern Europe, is represented among the twenty
thousand inhabitants that dwell in this new industrial town. In
"Hungary Hollow" these race fragments isolate themselves, effectively
insulated against the currents of American influence.
The mining communities reveal this relative displacement of races in
its most disheartening form. As early as 1820 coal was taken from the
anthracite veins of northeastern Pennsylvania, but until 1880 the
industry was dominated by Americans and north Europeans. In 1870 out
of 108,000 foreign born in this region, 105,000 or over ninety-seven
per cent came from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. In
1880 a change began and continued until in 1910 less than one-third of
the 267,000 foreign born were of northern European extraction. In 1870
there were only 306 Slavs and Italians in the entire region; in 1890
there were 43,000; in 1909 there were 89,000; and in 1910 the number
increased to 178,000.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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