Economic Immigration: 1865-1920’s

Polish Historical and Economic Backgrounds

The immigrants attracted to California’s gold were the harbingers of the third migration movement from Poland, beginning in 1865 and lasting until the United States imposed legislature restrictions on immigration in 1920. This was the era of the Polish peasant. Economically desperate, peasants in Europe had been ravaged by the concerted and unrelenting efforts of Russia, Prussia, and Austria to eliminate political opposition in the Polish sectors of their respective empires.^[1] Jobs, high wages, and relief from crushing taxes were dreams the peasant cherished as he considered emigration.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century, most Poles had been reduced to the status of an agricultural proletariat, or semi-proletariat. In Russian Poland, for example, 73.4 percent of the population were living in villages; in Prussian Poland, 69.3 percent; and in Austrian Poland 80.1 percent. Moreover, the communities were densely populated, exerting an unbearable pressure on the land. Typical of these conditions was eastern Galicia (Russian Poland) where sixty-seven persons in a square kilometer lived by agriculture, and western Galicia with eighty persons per square kilometer. In the rest of old Austria, by contrast, there were merely thirty-six people per square kilometer; for Germany the figure was thirty-four.^[2]

The Poles also suffered from the continuous fragmentation of their lands. While individual holdings varied in size, most people farmed tracts of land that were too small to provide adequate sustenance for their owners. Of the total land-area in Galicia, 84.4 percent had been subdivided into farms of no more than five hectares, i.e., about twelve acres, and many were even smaller. Merely 6.8 percent of Poznan, however, was farmed in such a manner. Shrinkage, moreover, went unchecked throughout the late nineteenth century. By 1882, the average peasant holding in Galicia had declined to approximately seven acres; by 1896 the average dropped to less than six acres.^[3]

Another stimulant to emigration was a high, oppressive tax rate. In 1882, approximately 1,420,020 people in Galicia payed land taxes, and by 1896 the number had increased to 1,743,792. While it would seem that the burden of taxation was widely shared, in fact the brunt of the taxes was borne by the poor peasants. The inequalities are clearly illustrated, once again, by the experience of Galicians: 1,740,814 peasants with land holdings averaging less than six acres paid the bulk, and only 2,978 large landowners of estates ranging 132 acres plus paid the remainder. Similar circumstances prevailed throughout all the Polish lands.^[4]

A lack of industrial development in Poland was another contributing factor to emigration. Forced to seek additional employment to supplement his meager income and to meet the exorbitant land taxes, on the one hand, the peasant was confronted with few employment opportunities, on the other hand. Factories were not numerous and all had ample sources of labor. In part, costly and excessive bureaucratic procedures were responsible for the lack of industrial development, while equally serious obstacles were presented by poor transportation facilities, high taxes and the antipathy of the Polish landed gentry towards trade, commerce and industry.^[5]

Economic disability, however, was only one dimension of the general sordidness of the peasant’s situation. Poles were faced with social discrimination and their culture attacked. In Russian Poland prior to World War I, for example, it was a criminal offense to teach the Polish language. Peasants, in addition, were to be denied any manner of education.^[6] In Prussia, Poles were subjected to a debasing program of assimilation. Under Bismar culture and language were forced upon the Poles. It was the German belief that this policy of Germanization was imperative to make the Poles loyal citizens.^[7] Less abrasive, but with an equally devastating impact, Austrian neglect resulted in large numbers of Polish children being denied an education. While acknowledging the right to an education, the government refused to construct and provide resources for more than a token educational system.^[8] Predictably, illiteracy was endemic to the Polish provinces. By 1900, as much as 52 percent of all male and 59 percent of all female Galicians over six years of age were illiterates.^[9]

The lack of or limited increase in educational standards and opportunities, along with linguistic and religious persecutions initiated by Bismarck’s Kulturkampf policy served as an impetus for Polish emigration from Prussian Poland.

Polish emigration from Russian Poland which commenced in 1876 was due in the main to a crop failure, high rate of unemployment in the textile industry due to labor problems, and the institution of universal military service.

American Economic Conditions

The Civil War accelerated American industrial growth, and expansion in terms of physical plant and productivity continued throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Technological innovation and sophistication transformed industrial methods, ushering in the age of mass production. Rooted in limited individual responsibility and standardized tasks, industrial production was increasingly freed from its dependence upon the services of the craftsman-specialist and the quantitative constraints of an inflexible apprentice-training system. The most valuable labor resource, as well as greatest employment need, quickly became cheap, un- and semi-skilled people who could be molded to perform a mundane, repetitive operation. Like the majority of America’s immigrants in the years 1865-1920, Poles helped to fill this vacuum. Industrialists exploited the foreign borns’ vulnerability; their willingness to work long hours in order to escape the drudgerythat surrounded them; and the immigrants’ historical and nationalistic animosities toward each other. They were an economic blessing for America. An 1864 report by the Senate Committee on Agriculture captured the essence of the nation’s alien treasure:

The advantages which have accrued heretofore from immigration can scarcely be computed. Such is the labor performed by the thrifty immigrant that he cannot enrich himself without contributing his full quota to the increase of the intrinsic greatness of the United States. This is equally true whether he work at mining, farming, or as a day laborer on one of our railroads.^[10]

The majority of Polish immigrants settled in urban areas. Some worked in New England’s textile mills, while others helped to build railroads and produce lumber in the West. Their cohorts in the Midwest found jobs in the meatpacking industry, especially in Chicago; and in the steel mills of Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio; Buffalo, New York; and Gary, Indiana. Poles were also miners of iron, copper, and coal in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, Montana and Pennsylvania.^[11]

After a short term in industry a few of the immigrants were able to purchase farms in the semi-abandoned farmlands of the East, especially in New England. Due to their frugal life style they made a success of farming. In fact, many cities in Massachusetts and Connecticut maintain a large Polish population to this day which attests to their successful agrarian enterprises.^[12]

The Pole was in search of political and social freedoms and the economic opportunities denied him in Europe. While, America, on the other hand, was in great need of his muscle, i.e., manpower to labor in its ever expanding industries. So, it can be seen that emigration and immigration were reciprocal processes which complemented each other to the betterment of the Polish immigrant as well as the American nation.