HIST 1312-011 History of the United States Since 1865
Dr. Kenyon Zimmer
February 26, 2013
The common folk of Europe in the 1900s suffered from many hardships in their home country. Some of these people, mainly the minority also known as European immigrants, typically left their home country to escape the endless poverty and oppression or to make money in America to send back to their families. However, they faced different hardships once they arrived in the New World. Typically, they faced many social, economic, and political hardships such as discrimination, poor working conditions, and laws preventing them to advance when they arrived in America. These European immigrants tried to improve their position through strikes and starting their own businesses, but they were unsuccessful in their attempts to better their lives.
In the novel Out of This Furnace by Thomas Bell, we witness George Kracha and many other immigrants facing many social hardships when they first come to America. Slavs, like George Kracha, were often called demeaning names such as greenhorns or hunkies at the workplaces. Opportunities for advancement were rare for foreigners as they were viewed as racial inferior. This was seen when Andrej Sedlar put three dollars into the foreman’s pocket. It was only after he received the three dollars that the foreman told Andrej Sedlar to bring George Kracha to work that night and the foreman would see what he could do for George Kracha. Even within the immigrants, there is racial tension between the different ethnic groups.
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In the work place, immigrants’ wages were cut based on their employers’ whims. As a reaction to these cuts, immigrants used organized strikes and pickets as ways of protesting their working conditions and combating the unfair wage cuts. When the immigrants opposed the cuts and went on strike, it created a chain reaction and men from the other departments were laid off as well. They would remain laid off unless the union agreed to accept the wage cuts as well as the longer work hours. These unsuccessful strikes, such as the Homestead Strike and the Pullman strike which failed because of court injunctions and involvement of the federal troops, would lead to inflation, wage cuts, or job losses. Often, immigrants would have to work longer hours to compensate for these consequences, as seen with Kracha and Dubik.
Seeing how strikes were counter intuitive and not advantageous they resorted to another method. This method, which immigrants often took thinking to improve their lives economically, was taking chances in investments and staring up their own business. Some immigrants like Henry Ford, who started Ford Motor Company, were successfully with their business. Others like George Kracha were not so fortunate. George Kracha started a butcher business and although businesses thrived initially, Kracha would slowly lose to the rising competition as well as the established competition such as the Hungarian Jewish butcher named Spetz who opened a butcher shop a few doors down from Kracha’s meat shop. George Kracha’s business began to suffer even more due to his affair with Zuska. Many respectable housewives would not deal with him. Since many of them have boarders, this affected George Kracha’s business significantly. He also had problems with the bank over the lots he bought in eagerness of the railroad expansion. Many immigrants and the American born children of these immigrants later found that it was hard to improve their economic status in America.
The immigrant’s health was greatly at risk while working. Safety precautions at the workplace were not legally needed, because of this injuries occurred often due to the lack of these safety precautions. One such example of this is the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Although it was not the worst fire accident in American history, it raised awareness about unsafe working conditions and the barbaric treatment of workers from their employers. The immigrants could not sue companies for any injury they acquired from working because there was no law mandating safety precautions. Another example of the dangers of working in places without safety precautions was seen in Out of this Furnace where many men, including Joe Dubik, are injured by an explosion in the steel mills. “Officially, it was put down as an accident, impossible to foresee or prevent. In a larger sense it was the result of greed, and part of the education of the American steel industry.” Mike Dobrejcak, who married Mary Kracha, was also another character that was killed in an accident at the steel mill. George Kracha had to deliver the news of Dobrejcak’s death to his daughter, Mary, who received $1,300 dollars from the company that employed her husband as compensation.
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Despite the knowledge of the many hazards the work place possessed, many workers still continued working in dangerous conditions to provide for their families. Often, children would have to work to support their families, which led to a widespread opening of sweatshops and child labor. These European immigrants’ lives mainly consisted of working, going home to eat and sleep, and then going back to work again. Their pay was too low for them to have better economic lives. What little money they would earn would be spent on paying for the tenement that they and their families were staying in. Due to low wages and money spent on paying for rent, immigrants sometimes resorted to stealing in order to obtain what they wanted or needed.
Although America seemed to welcome the immigrants, the citizens of America did not feel the same. Many stereotypes emerged from the Americans who did not welcome the immigrants. Some of these stereotypes included that immigrants were unintelligent, criminals, dangerous radicals, impoverished, lazy, and racially inferior. Numerous immigrants were kept from advancing economically because of political hardships. The 1917 Immigration Act required a literacy test and barred those who were viewed as mentally unstable from coming into America. These tests were unjust because the administrators could decide the outcome of the test. Thus deciding who could enter America. Being diagnosed as an “idiot” and “stupid” qualified as being mentally inadequate to enter America under the Immigration Act of 1924. This law established that one can be considered an “illegal alien” which, at first, referred mainly to southern and eastern Europeans who tried to enter into American from Mexico or Canada. First generation immigrants could not be “real” Americans and only their descendants could be considered as “real” Americans.
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European immigrants came to America looking for change and a better life. Upon arriving though, they found that they could not improve their social, economic, or political positions because attempts at improving them failed due to the conditions set by the U.S. government. Those who went into business had no certain guarantee that their investments would succeed. Strikes often ended in failure because there was no support from the higher authorities to help them better their work condition. It was hard for people to rise above their social standings due to the fact that money spent during the “good” times had to be spent and used for the bad times. Most immigrants did not have time because of the long tedious hours spent working for money to improve their standings in society. Compared to their life in Europe, there was little change to no change in the state of their living conditions. They left hardship to a new found hardship; leaving their old cycle just to move back into the same cycle.
Bibliography
Bell, Thomas. Out Of This Furnance. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979.
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty. Seagull Third Edition Ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012.
Zimmer, Kenyon. “Industry And Work In The “Gilded Age” And Early 20th Century.” Class lecture, HIST 1312-011 from UTA, Arlington, January 24, 2013.
Zimmer, Kenyon. “The Era Of Mass Migrations, 1880-1920.” Class lecture, HIST 1312-011 from UTA, Arlington, January 29, 2013.
Zimmer, Kenyon. “The First World War, 1914-1918.” Class lecture, HIST 1312-011 from
UTA, Arlington, February 12, 2013.
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In the essay, “College Lectures: Is anybody Listening?,” written by David Daniels, he suggests that college lecture classes should be replaced by classes that provide more of an active learning environment. He also points out that the lecture system is outdated, because it originated from the fact that, formerly, people couldn’t afford to buy books. He explains how the large number of students in ...
[ 1 ]. Thomas Bell, Out of This Furnace (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), 94, 123
[ 2 ]. Bell, Out of This Furnace, 124
[ 3 ]. Kenyon Zimmer, “The Era Of Mass Migrations, 1880-1920,” class lecture, January 29, 2013.
[ 4 ]. Bell, Out of This Furnace, 29
[ 5 ]. Bell, Out of This Furnace, 29
[ 6 ]. Bell, Out of This Furnace, 21
[ 7 ]. Bell, Out of This Furnace, 159
[ 8 ]. Bell, Out of This Furnace, 23
[ 9 ]. Kenyon Zimmer, “The First World War, 1914-1918,” class lecture, February 12, 2013.
[ 10 ]. Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012), 682
[ 11 ]. Bell, Out Of This Furnace, 92.
[ 12 ]. Bell, Out Of This Furnace, 92.
[ 13 ]. Bell, Out Of This Furnace, 92.
[ 14 ]. Zimmer, “The Era Of Mass Migrations, 1880-1920.”
[ 15 ]. Kenyon Zimmer, “Industry And Work In The “Gilded Age” And Early 20th Century,” class lecture, January 24, 2013.
[ 16 ]. Foner, Give Me Liberty, 673
[ 17 ]. Zimmer, “Industry And Work In The “Gilded Age” And Early 20th Century.”
[ 18 ]. Bell, Out Of This Furnace, 54
[ 19 ]. Bell, Out Of This Furnace, 54
[ 20 ]. Bell, Out Of This Furnace, 208
[ 21 ]. Bell, Out Of This Furnace, 209.
[ 22 ]. Zimmer, “The Era Of Mass Migrations, 1880-1920.
[ 23 ]. Bell, Out Of This Furnace, 32.
[ 24 ]. Bell, Out Of This Furnace, 213.
[ 25 ]. Zimmer, “The Era Of Mass Migrations, 1880-1920.”
[ 26 ]. Zimmer, “The First World War, 1914-1918.”
[ 27 ]. Zimmer, “The First World War, 1914-1918.”
[ 28 ]. Zimmer, “The First World War, 1914-1918.”
[ 29 ]. Foner, Give Me Liberty, 782.
[ 30 ]. Bell, Out Of This Furnace, 40
