Impact on Cleveland

Economics

The immigration of tens of thousands of Poles to Cleveland, particularly in the years before 1920, was an event that produced many changes in the city. This influx demographically altered the city, injected new social organizations into its life, and eventually modified the political structure of Cleveland. This final section will explore the Poles’ effects on the city in a more comprehensive manner, looking both at the changes in the city occasioned by their settlement and at the city’s reaction to its new inhabitants.

Besides the obvious geographical and statistical effects of Polish immigration on the city’s structure, size, and demographic makeup, the major effect of the Poles on Cleveland has been economic. Without the mass immigration of Poles, and other Eastern and Southern European groups, the city could not have experienced the massive industrial growth of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The steel mills of Newburgh and the Cuyahoga Valley were particularly dependent upon Polish labor. The price and quality of the labor was the bargain that allowed the industry to function cheaply and grow rapidly. In the 1880’s, the Poles at the Newburgh Rolling Mills worked fourteen hours a day, six days a week for a gross pay of $7.25.^[1] The enthusiasm and drive of the Polish worker were well-described by Charles Coulter in 1919:

The Polish people are workers. It has been said that the Pole does not care for an 8 hour day: he would rather work a 6 hour day with 6 hours overtime. This is remarkable in view of the exhausting physical labor in which more than 90 percent of these people are engaged.^[2]

Though many second and third generation Poles continue to work in heavy industry today, it should not be assumed that the total Polish population is engaged in such work. Many early Poles saved their steel mill wages and became small entrepreneurs. A considerable number of first and second generation Poles had also entered into various professions by the 1890’s. In 1900 there were four doctors, one lawyer and two notaries of Polish descent in Cleveland. By 1920, the numbers engaged in these and other professions had increased to eighteen doctors, fourteen lawyers and four dentists.^[3] After World War II, with more time, money and opportunities for continued education available, the number of such professionals with Polish background increased markedly. Today, professionals of Polish descent can be found throughout Cleveland. Unlike their pre-1940 predecessors, they serve a broader clientele than just the Polish community.

Polish ownership of heavy industry in Cleveland has been limited. The Smolensky Valve Company, founded in 1914, is the major example of an early Polish industry that has thrived to the present.^[4] Another early industry, the Olstyn Carriage Company, was founded by Telesfor Olstynski in 1891. Olstynski sold the business in 1917 and invested his money in real estate and banking.^[5] Many Poles capable of raising capital, like Olstynski, preferred to invest it in real estate and banking enterprises rather than industry. The major Polish-owned industry in Cleveland today is the Freeway Corporation. Established in 1944 by Walter Sutowski, this company has grown into a multi-million dollar manufacturer of washers, bearing assemblies and fasteners.

Much of the money earned by Cleveland’s Poles since their initial settlement in the city has been invested in housing and land. So enormous was the Polish drive to acquire property that by 1920, only fifty years after their initial settlement in the region, the Poles of Newburgh had over $20,000,000 worth of property listed on the city tax duplicate.^[6] This investment has had, and continues to have, a tremendous effect on the city’s tax revenue and the building and home supplies industries in Cleveland. The Pole’s interest in land was best described by Charles Coulter:

It might be said that every Pole is measurably engaged in the real estate business and that he never loses his hunger for the land…The Pole is a keen and careful buyer, and is to be found most largely in the pioneer work of breaking ground and building on the edges of the city, sometimes just across the city line where values are low, but potential.^[7]

Since this passage was written, thousands of second and third generation Poles have continued to invest in real estate. The growth of Parma, Garfield Heights, Independence and Brecksville is, in large part, due to the investments of people of Polish background.

Intercommunity Relations

Despite the demographic, and growing economic impact of the Poles, it took Clevelanders many years to understand, or even learn of their new neighbors. Because the major Polish settlement was located at the southeastern limits of the city, few people came in contact with its inhabitants. The insular, self-sufficient nature of the settlement, in turn, inhibited Polish intercourse with the outside community. In the years before 1900, when the city grew out to meet the Poles, the Irish and Czechs were the only outside groups to have extensive contact with them. As fellow Slavs, the Czechs seemed to get along quite well with the Poles. Indeed, from 1848 on, Czech businessmen often dealt with the Poles prior to the establishment of Polish-owned businesses.

On the other hand, the Irish had bad relations with the Poles since their first encounter. The Polish strike-breakers of 1882 were the chief source of misunderstanding. More difficulty was occasioned by the language barrier and through the differences in Irish and Polish Catholicism. The use of Polish in sermons and schools, and the festival-like celebration of certain saints days and church holidays were particularly strange and troubling to the Irish. The Polish challenge to Irish political hegemony in Newburgh in the early part of this century added more distrust to the relations between the two groups.

If the city of Cleveland, as a whole, gained any impression of the Poles in the years before World War I, it was an unflattering one. Three years after the great strike of 1882 (during which the Poles were first mentioned in the city’s press) a second, more severe strike took place at the rolling mills. This strike was lead by Polish and Bohemian workers and was characterized by frequent violence. Groups of Poles and Czechs marched through the city and forcibly closed down industries related to the mills. At times, the marchers carried the red flag of anarchy–an event that gained much coverage in the local newspapers and left an indelible impression on the city’s populace.^[8] Although “native” (Irish) workers were involved in the strike, the papers noted that they pleaded for moderation, while the foreign workers called for violence. Other newspaper articles went out of their way to portray the Polish strikers as drunkards and cowards.^[9] It was this bad publicity that caused Fr. Kolaszewski to rise to the defense of his people, stating that they had been misrepresented by the city’s press. The impression gained by the city remained.

Few efforts were made by “outsiders” to enter and work with the people of Warszawa. One of the only nineteenth century native forays into the community was made by the Schauffler Missionary Training School. Founded in 1883 by Reverend Henry A. Schauffler, the School attempted to convert Roman Catholic Slavic immigrants into Congregationalists. Schauffler began his work in Cleveland’s Czech community in the early 1880’s and encountered considerable success because of the Hussite traditions of this group.^[10] In the late 1880’s the School began extensive work among the Poles of Warszawa, establishing the Mizpah Mission Church for Poles and Bohemians on Ackley (E. 59th) Street. Schauffler had a special desire in converting the Poles as he wanted to save them from the “tyranny of the priests”:

The work among the Poles is of even greater importance than that for the Bohemians, as there are more than three times as many of the former in this country as of the latter. The spiritual bondage of the Poles is greater than that of the Bohemians.^[11]

Despite his hopes, Schauffler’s work among the Poles was a failure. Poles remained devoutly attached to the Catholic Church.^[12]

During the late 1890’s the city of Cleveland gave its first official recognition of the Poles by assigning Polish names, such as Kosciuszko, Pulaski, Kazimier and St. Stanislaus, to streets in the Warszawa and Poznan communities.

By 1900, the stigma of the 1885 strike was beginning to be forgotten by the general community. However, an incident in 1901 further damaged the reputation of the city’s Polish people. In September, a young, mentally-unbalanced Pole, Leon Czolgosz, from Warszawa assassinated President McKinley at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Though never proved, Czolgosz claimed he was an anarchist and that he had committed the deed because of his belief in the more violent tenets of that doctrine. Cleveland’s Poles were stunned by his act and vociferously denounced him. Many of those who knew Czolgosz when he lived in Warszawa had believed him to be crazy.^[13] Despite the Poles’ protests against the act, the general community again came to feel that the Polish sector was a hotbed of troublemakers.

History and Culture

Most of the fear of Polish radicalism was based on ignorance. Few native Clevelanders had visited or knew much about communities such as Warszawa. Even at the time of the assassination, the city’s newspapers had to hire interpreters to guide them through Warszawa. This pall of ignorance was soon to be lifted. The growing list of Polish men active in city government helped to dispel it. The greatest aid came through community spokesmen, such as Joseph Sawicki and Michael Kniola, and organizations such as the Harmonia Chopin, all of which reached out to the general community in an effort to gain understanding of the Poles.

The twin, and interconnected events of World War I and the Americanization movement, begun before the war, grew quite rapidly during the conflict because of a fear of foreign elements in the American body politic. During these years it was harsh: Polish was abolished in schools, and Polish newspapers censured. Yet it also brought English and citizenship classes to the Polish areas, along with a genuine concern for the Poles’ welfare. After the war, the movement mellowed, realizing the mistake of forcing American culture on the Poles while robbing them of their own language and traditions. It was in this later period that the Cleveland Americanization Committee published the first, and only, English language history of the city’s Poles. The forward of the book notes that

It is hoped that many Americans may read this description of the Poles of Cleveland and recognize that though their culture is different, it is most worthy.^[14]

World War I did much to dispel previous negative images projected about Cleveland’s Poles, usually at the expense of the Germans. The issue of an independent Poland, raised by President Wilson during the latter stages of the war, made many Americans conscious of things Polish. The fact that the Poles had been suppressed by the Germans, now a hated enemy, aroused public sympathy for their cause and a renewed interest in their history and culture. The story of Polish troops being recruited in Cleveland to fight the Kaiser, for example, got wide news coverage and did much to instill a general public admiration of the city’s Poles.

Eight years after the war, interest in the welfare, history and culture of the city’s Poles was manifested in the establishment of the University Social Settlement House in the Warszawa community. The settlement not only tried to aid the physical well-being of the Poles, but also made efforts to study the community and its culture.^[15] From its beginning, the Settlement established liaison with organizations such as the Alliance of Poles, and with several area churches. It tried not to usurp or conflict with their purposes but to work with them in teaching the Polish language and history to second and third generation Poles.^[16]

Since the 1920’s Cleveland has become increasingly aware of its Polish population. The work begun by the Americanization Committee and the University Settlement has been carried on by the W.P.A. and the Cultural Gardens Federation. Recent events, such as the All Nation’s Festivals, have given the Poles and other ethnic groups a popular, commercial exposure.