The Borders of Integration

Polish Migrants in Germany and the United States, 1870–1924

Brian McCook

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780821443514
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

The issues of immigration and integration are at the forefront of contemporary politics. Yet debates over foreign workers and the desirability of their incorporation into European and American societies too often are discussed without a sense of history. McCook's examination questions static assumptions about race and white immigrant assimilation a hundred years ago, highlighting how the Polish immigrant experience is relevant to present-day immigration debates on both sides of the Atlantic. Further, his research shows the complexity of attitudes toward immigration in Germany and the United States, challenging historical myths surrounding German national identity and the American "melting pot."

In a comparative study of Polish migrants who settled in the Ruhr Valley and northeastern Pennsylvania, McCook shows that in both regions, Poles become active citizens within their host societies through engagement in social conflict within the public sphere to defend their ethnic, class, gender, and religious interests. While adapting to the Ruhr and northeastern Pennsylvania, Poles simultaneously retained strong bonds with Poland, through remittances, the exchange of letters, newspapers, and frequent return migration. In this analysis of migration in a globalizing world, McCook highlights the multifaceted ways in which immigrants integrate into society, focusing in particular on how Poles created and utilized transnational spaces to mobilize and attain authentic and more permanent identities grounded in newer broadly conceived notions of citizenship.

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Migration and Settlement

Building Polish Communities in the Ruhr and Northeastern Pennsylvania

MORE THAN 10 PERCENT of the population of partitioned Poland left for North America or Western Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; many migrated to the Ruhr and northeastern Pennsylvania.¹ Between 1870 and 1890, 31,629 Poles settled in the Ruhr, and 15,142 arrived in northeastern Pennsylvania.² From the 1890s onward, the size of Polish communities in each region grew exponentially, and by 1914, the Polish presence was substantial. In the Ruhr, 297,322 Poles were living in this region along with 159,743 Masurians, a Slavic ethnic group from southern areas of East Prussia (present-day northeast Poland) who spoke a dialect of Polish; combined they represented 9.4 percent of the total population.³ Meanwhile, approximately 160,000 Poles, constituting 13.8 percent of the total population, worked and lived in northeastern Pennsylvania.⁴ Why did Poles migrate? To what extent did homeland origins influence immigrant outlook? What was the topographical, social, and cultural terrain of areas in which Poles came to live? How did informal and formal institutional support mechanisms within the ethnic community aid Poles in building vibrant ethnic communities? This chapter addresses these questions in order to understand Polish community development in each region.

Causes for Polish Migration

Migration to the Ruhr and northeastern Pennsylvania was driven by a variety of causes. Classic economic push-and-pull factors associated with modernization played one important role. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the growth in population in Polish lands led to a decrease in sustainable farms within the agricultural sector, contributing to the creation of a large, landless labor pool that drove down wages. The lack of significant industrialization, with the notable exception of Upper Silesia, limited the ability of nearby urban centers to absorb the excess population. From the 1870s onward, domestic agriculture was also in crisis due to foreign competition and government policies that favored larger agricultural estates over small farms. As a consequence of these demographic and economic developments, growing numbers were pressed to migrate, both overseas to North America and to parts of Western Europe. Added to these push factors was the pull generated by industrial growth in countries such as Germany and the United States, where labor shortages and high wages attracted many. In the Ruhr and northeastern Pennsylvania, demand for coal drove an ever-increasing need for workers. By the early 1880s, traditional sources of labor in both regions were becoming exhausted and employers sought to attract “foreign” workers in order to ensure the continued expansion of the industry. Beginning in the 1870s, operators either directly, or indirectly through agents, began recruiting Poles, especially those from Upper Silesia with mining experience. This practice of recruitment soon expanded to include the predominately agricultural regions of Poland. By the late 1880s, the role of employers in driving migration receded in importance as more informal networks between early and later Polish migrants became established, spreading news of the opportunities to be found in Western Europe and the United States.⁵

Migration westward was also spurred by political struggles in Polish lands, which at the time were partitioned by Prussia, Austria, and Russia. In both the Prussian- and Russian-controlled areas of Poland, extensive efforts were made from the 1860s onward to restrict Polish culture and contain nationalist sentiment. In Austrian-controlled Galicia, Poles enjoyed much greater freedom of expression and thought, though here too the government did take steps to guard against the political threat of peasant populism.⁶ Such attacks and restrictions on Polish culture factored prominently into the decision of small numbers of middle-class national agitators and priests to migrate west, including to the Ruhr and northeastern Pennsylvania, where they could organize Polish immigrants for the nationalist cause and hinder their assimilation into German or American society.

For Polish peasants, most of whom lacked a national consciousness prior to migrating, the policies of the partitioning powers also influenced the decision to leave, though indirectly. In Russian-controlled Polish lands, younger Poles chose to go abroad in order to escape service in the armies of the tsar. Whereas only a few Russian Poles found refuge in the Ruhr, usually illegally, thousands left for the United States every year, many of whom settled in the anthracite fields of northeastern Pennsylvania, especially after the mid-1890s.⁷ Meanwhile in the eastern Prussian provinces, Poles left because the Prussian government’s Germanization campaign, which sought to buy Polish agricultural land for colonization by Germans, significantly increased land speculation and prices; increasingly it became impossible for people of ordinary means to buy land.⁸ Andrzej Pietrzak, a Polish miner in Oberhausen, noted in 1906 that “in order to feed our families we had to leave our homeland and move to the [Ruhr] because the Hakatists [German nationalists] have ensured that the earth and soil in our homeland will be bought out.”⁹ This statement emphasizes a great irony in German history. Namely, policies implemented to Germanize Polish areas of eastern Prussia helped instead to Polonize parts of the German heartland.

In addition to economic and political considerations, Polish migration was facilitated by other factors. Over the course of the nineteenth century, literacy rates among Poles increased, widespread print media provided Poles with greater knowledge about opportunities in the wider world, and transportation networks improved vastly, particularly with the growth of German rail and steamship lines during the second half of the nineteenth century.¹⁰ Polish peasant society was also increasingly mobile. Many Poles had prior migration experiences, as there existed a tradition of seasonal agricultural migration across the borders separating Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Exchanges between cities and countryside occurred regularly. Such regional migration went far in preparing would-be migrants for more distant trips. As Thomas and Znaniecki noted in their seminal study, the seasonal migration of Poles to Saxony to work as agricultural laborers was “often the first step preparing the individual psychologically and economically for the idea of transoceanic emigration.” The same holds true for migration to western Germany.¹¹ In addition, for many young Poles who were coming of age, the prospect of becoming more independent by going abroad was exciting.¹²

Extensive ethnic networks connecting migrants with their kin in the homeland also encouraged migration. After early migrants left, most remained in contact with relatives and friends in Poland through letters, continuous financial remittances, and return visits. The constant communication meant that with each successive year, the dangers associated with long distance migration, including potential dislocation and isolation, diminished while the apparent rewards increased. As Poles created “little Polands” in the Ruhr and northeastern Pennsylvania, they urged relatives and friends to join them. The memoir provided by the Polish immigrant Jan Ziołkowski aptly illuminates the role played by ethnic networks in driving the migration phenomenon. In 1903, Jan’s father, a peasant from the Małopolska region near Kraków, arrived in the United States and settled in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Three years later Jan joined his father, finding work in mining. Finally, at the end of 1907, enough money was saved to bring Jan’s mother and his three siblings.¹³ In this pattern, whole communities of Poles migrated from partitioned Poland to the Ruhr and northeastern Pennsylvania. All told, the rise in “chain migration” proved increasingly responsible for sustaining the high level of Polish migration to the Ruhr and northeastern Pennsylvania in the decades prior to World War I.¹⁴

Finally, in understanding the motivations behind the Polish decision to leave, it is essential to bear in mind that most Poles who chose to migrate never had the intention of permanently settling abroad. The majority of Poles migrated za chlebem (for bread); in other words, they left for the opportunity to earn money and gain livelihoods that one day would hopefully enable them to return home and buy land. Well into the early 1920s, exchanges between the Polish homeland and the Ruhr and northeastern Pennsylvania were frequent; the east-west migration flow of Poles is best characterized as circular, not linear. As Prussian citizens, Poles in the Ruhr were unimpeded by national boundaries, and as a consequence Poles migrated repeatedly between the Ruhr and the eastern Prussian provinces. Poles in northeastern Pennsylvania likewise made frequent trips home. Scholars estimate that at least 35 percent of Polish immigrants to the United States returned to Poland prior to World War I. Although a majority of Poles who migrated to the United States and a sizable minority of Poles in the Ruhr eventually abandoned the dream of returning to Poland, all Polish migrants followed political and social developments in Poland with keen interest and sought to influence developments there.¹⁵

The Character of Polish Migration

Polish migration to the Ruhr and northeastern Pennsylvania between the 1870s and early 1890s was quite similar. During the 1870s, the majority of early Polish migrants to each region tended to come from traditional coalmining areas in Upper Silesia.¹⁶ However, a divergence occurred in Polish migration patterns by the 1890s. In the Ruhr, the immigration restrictions placed on non-Prussian Poles after 1885 meant that subsequent Polish migrants came almost exclusively from the provinces of eastern Prussia.¹⁷ The regional origins of these migrants also changed. In the two decades before World War I, Polish workers increasingly arrived from agricultural areas of Posen and East Prussia, as opposed to industrial Upper Silesia.¹⁸ In northeastern Pennsylvania, the 1890s brought a different type of transformation. The numbers of Poles arriving from Prussia rapidly decreased, a direct result of industrial growth in the Ruhr combined with the 1893 economic crisis in the United States, and the majority of migrants now began arriving from Galicia (Austria) and the Congress Kingdom (Russia).¹⁹

The differences in the character of Polish movement to the Ruhr and northeastern Pennsylvania raise two important and related questions. First, did the internal migration to the Ruhr, in contrast to the overseas migration to northeastern Pennsylvania, create a qualitative disparity in the way the migration experience was perceived by Poles? Simply answered, no it did not. Although political borders influenced the choice of destination, the migration experience itself was perceived quite similarly. Regardless of whether Poles went to the Ruhr or northeastern Pennsylvania, they were aware that they were crossing clear cultural boundaries and entering urban, industrial environments that qualitatively differed from agricultural life in the homeland. In the Ruhr, Poles often described themselves as living na obczyznie (in a foreign milieu). Similarly, in northeastern Pennsylvania, there was a clear belief that Poles were forced to go into overseas exile za chlebem, for the bread necessary to survive.

Second, did the fact that Poles in the Ruhr came almost exclusively from eastern Prussia, while those in northeastern Pennsylvania arrived from all three partitions, predetermine the disparities that would later emerge between each community? On the whole, premigration origins were of less importance than might be assumed; while there was significant political mobilization in Polish lands during the nineteenth century, especially among the nobility, clergy, and burgeoning middle class, the majority of migrants to the Ruhr and northeastern Pennsylvania were peasants possessing similar cultural identities grounded in Catholicism and local village life.²⁰ It was in the emigration that most Poles hailing from peasant backgrounds first began to develop a strong Polish national identity. The migratory process exposed many peasants who previously possessed local or, at most, regional identities to the “other” and forced these migrants for the first time to surmount particularistic loyalties and embrace a larger national consciousness. Freed from a society dominated by the szlachta (nobility) and clerics in the homeland, the national awareness that arose in the emigration was decidedly different from traditional Polish nationalism; the experience of living as low status industrial workers in vastly different cultural milieus as well as the greater exposure to more modern democratic forms and practices combined to broaden Polish outlook. Stanisław Wachowiak, a Polish activist in the Ruhr, noted in 1916 that “when the migration [of Poles] began, a political awareness among the lower classes in the homeland was quite small. The majority vegetated there without at all being concerned with political matters. The migrants were completely un-schooled politically. The changed environment, the active trade-union life, the presence of ethnic associations, all of this forced Polish workers in the West to politically orient themselves.”²¹ Wachowiak’s analysis highlights how greater Polish engagement in the political life of the Ruhr and in northeastern Pennsylvania caused multifaceted identities to arise over time. This is not to say that the Polish homeland no longer mattered to Poles. In fact, issues concerning Poland and the “Polish nation” assumed greater relevance in the emigration, where dreams of an eventual national resurrection led the majority of Polish men and women to embrace a positivist program emphasizing the need to preserve and promote ethnic community strength. Great importance was placed on maintaining Polish religious practices, creating ethnic associations, and educating the children in national traditions and language.

Migrant Poles further sought to influence societal developments in Poland both before and after World War I.²² In this regard, the examples of the Zjednoczenie Zawodowe Polski (ZZP—Polish Trade Union), established by Polish miners in the Ruhr in 1902, and the Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC), founded in northeastern Pennsylvania in 1896, are noteworthy. F...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Guide to Pronunciation
• Introduction: Migration and Citizenship in a Globalizing World
• 1. Migration and Settlement: Building Polish Communities in the Ruhr and Northeastern Pennsylvania
• 2. The Face of Mining: The Coal Industry in the Ruhr and Northeastern Pennsylvania
• 3. Breaking Barriers: Polish Entry into the Mines
• 4. Becoming Mining Men: Polish Integration within the Workforce
• 5. Divided Hearts, Divided Faith: Poles and the Catholic Church
• 6. Challenging State and Society: The “Polish Question” and the Rise of Polish Ethnic Associations
• 7. War and Polish Communities Transformed, 1914–24
• Conclusion: Determining the Borders of Integration
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index