Slovak Immigrants in the Early 1900s

The life of these struggling immigrants is so difficult that they inevitably find sense and comfort in their existence primarily in their families, in their communities. They have left the old country behind in order to pursue the American Dream, but they quickly discover that the dream is more of a nightmare.

Bell writes that George Kracha "came to America in the fall of 1881 . . . It may be that he hoped he was . . . leaving behind the endless poverty and oppression which were the birthrights of a Slovak peasant . . . He was bound for the hard-coal country of northeastern Pennsylvania, where his brother-in-law had a job on a railroad section gang" (3).

He is quickly reduced to an existence which has him on the edge of starvation, begging for food with gestures because he could not speak the language. He is forced to sleep in fields in the freezing weather.

When he finds his family, he is taken in with love and care, and the message of the book from that point forward is, essentially, that that is the only place --- in the family environment---that such love and care will be found in the land of the "American Dream."

Family life was a source of love and togetherness and mutual s

. . .
ell says that "From the time he'd come to her as a boy of fifteen she had seen to it that he got enough sleep, saved his money, went to church and didn't marry the wrong girl" (125). The life in the mill, however, seems to dominate everything in the lives of the immigrants, according to Bell's account. We read, for example, that Mike during one winter had his work cut back drastically, and that his pay was cut for even those reduced hours. It is clear that Bell means to indict the mill owners. The cut in work and pay was a means, Bell suggests, for the powerful mill owners to test the poor and helpless workers to the limit. The immigrants were largely "convinced . . . that the company's offer of . . . stock to its employees had been a device to find out how much money the workers could save on the wages they were getting, how much less they could be paid and still keep alive" (145). The impact of the culture and the forces keeping them in desperate straits is shown to be so steady and evil that it begins to eat away at the bonds that keep the family together. For example, with respect to Mike's mother and her second husband, Bell says that "Apparently each had become so afraid that the other would benefit unduly from thei
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Dream Family, American Dream, Mike Bell, Kracha America, Savings Stamps, Bell Furnace, Bell Apparently, Bill Rights, World War, american dream, mill owners, Dobie Bell, life source, life country, love care, families communities, bell writes,
Approximate Word count = 1349
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)