Robert A. Slayton's (1986) Back of the Yards: The making of a Local Democracy is an analysis of immigrant groups' adjustment to life in Chicago's meat-packing district from 1865 to the present. Slayton identifies three communities of immigrants, and it is the second, middle community of Slavic workers that provide the focus of his study. The Slavic immigrants managed to sustain a vibrant community in all aspects--social, political, and familial--all within the confines of harsh working conditions and inner city repression.
A study of the Slavic group between the period from 1900 to 1970 provides seventy years of sociological subject matter from which to learn about the immigrant working class in the U.S. The fact that the immigrants were largely successful in adjusting to life in an industrial nation enables one to formulate some principles of "melting pot" success. To a large extent, the immigrants were instrumental in shaping their own destinies through the political system in an often-times corrupt Chicago. Their use of politics for their own benefit will also provide valuable insights. The question of upward mobility will also be examined, since the ethnic makeup of Back at the Yards has shifted in the past twenty-five years, as new immigrant groups replace those who have moved on.
In his introduction, Slayton (1986) offers a capsule view on why the Slavic immigrants were successful in governing their own lives:
... workers survived and even prospered. They formed social networks that supplied necessary goods and information which became enormous resources for mutual support and resulted in broad areas of stability and control. Such experiences in freedom formed the basis for collective action to improve their lives. Some of these projects, such as unions, were aimed directly at the packers. Most of them were used to expand the workers' areas of self-regulation from tavern groups and shopping societies at the...