History Video Reflections

City of the Big Shoulders: Polish Steel Workers (Video Transcript)

Between the Great Lakes, the Grand De Tour, and the Grand Prairie, living, lighted skyscrapers stand. Spotting the blue dusk with checkers of yellow, streamers of smoke and silver, parallelograms of night gray watchmen, singing a soft, moaning song. I am a child, a belonging.

The hands of men took hold and tugged, and the breaths of men went into the junk, and the junk stood up into skyscrapers, and asked, who am I? Am I a city? And if I am, what is my name? And once, while the time whistles blew and blew again, the men answered, long ago we gave you a name. Long ago we laughed and said, you, your name is Chicago.

Every year, Chicago holds a folk fair. 80 nationalities live in the city. They're all invited. The mayor is Richard Daley, an Irishman who has ruled Chicago for over 20 years. The fair was his creation. The people of Chicago are proud of the folk fair. And the mayor shares his city's pride.

Chicago is a cosmopolitan city made up of many people with their own culture and their own background, and that's what we think is a great story of Chicago. Because for hundreds of years, many, many people have been coming in here. The Irish and the Germans. And the Croatians and Lithuanians, and Italians. Swedes and Spanish speaking people. All coming into a city for opportunity and for work.

Mayor Daley forgot the largest European group of all, the Poles. 800,000 Poles live in Chicago, more than in any other city in the world, except Warsaw. Nearly a million of them, yet the Poles have never really made their presence felt in a city where they've lived for 100 years.

Maybe we're not boastful enough. Maybe we're too much like I am. Like I am, just put your head down and blush if they say something. Nice about you. Should say damn right I am. Yeah, I did it. Sure we did it. I think we should do more of it. Palm on the table. Maybe they'll believe it, or they'll think different.

Poles were late arrivals to Chicago. Most came at the beginning of the century.

Many Poles came to this country, and they did the menial jobs, they did the hard work. And they're the people who went out there, and they sweated, and they weren't afraid to work, and they built up the industry, the stockyard, every type of industry there was a Pole in there doing his bit.

In the 1900s, Chicago was the boom town of America. It began as a military fort in a swamp. Within 80 years, it was a metropolis. A city of two million of the world's first skyscrapers and world's largest stockyards, it boasted of having the biggest and best of everything.

Four out of five of its people were new immigrants from Europe, or sons and daughters of immigrants. The first Poles in Chicago clung to their language and their Catholic faith. They wanted to stay together, worship as they always had, so they built their Polish churches, sang their Polish hymns.

[SINGING]

Polonia, their first settlement, was a place to stay Polish, not to become American.

Everybody spoke Polish, even the conductors on the streetcars. And the milkman, the people that delivered ice and packages, everything was in Polish. It was amazing. It was like a little Poland here. The people at that time, my parents, they had a language barrier.

They couldn't spread out too far or attend colleges, or what to better themselves. Because first of all, the sacrifice they made, it was quite a drain on them physically. And secondly, they had families they had to feed.

[? Precopia ?] and Walter [INAUDIBLE] were both born in Poland. She came to America in 1906, he came in 1912. In Poland, they lived in neighboring villages. They might never have met had thy not come to Chicago.

I met Walter because Walter at one time took my girlfriend and me to the show, and of course, when he, we got out, he says we'll take the girlfriend home first, and he took me home last. And that's how we started to date, and then coming around, he'd talk about different places with my folks, what parts of Europe he came from.

Of course Poland, and it was so that he and I were born pretty close by. We belonged, like, in the same county. We were both born there. So that's how we met here. See, not even knowing that we were from there.

Walter was 14 when he came to Chicago to work in the stockyards. His sister Sophie was nine. Walter and Sophie came to join their father. So had Walter's wife, [? Precopia. ?] The fathers had worked in Chicago for years to earn the money to bring their families over.

Then when we got to Chicago, my father wasn't unable to meet us. For some reason, or whether because he works nights and he slept days, so we had no idea how to get here. My mother had the address, but we didn't know what kind of transportation to take. So there were these enterprising peddlers, you know?

And the guy with the wagon, you know, went around, found where your destination was. And he said he's going to take you. It's going to cost you so much and so much. So instead of coming by streetcar or whatever, he got some of us on the wagon, you know? And our luggage and all that, and we sat on the luggage.

It seemed like it took forever from downtown to 43rd and Ashland and as the wagon pulled, you know, the horse pulled, and the kids hopped onto the street and started howling, greenhorns! Greenhorns! Greenhorns!

My father was in bed when we got there. And they had boarders there and they used to sleep in shifts. Those that worked days slept at night, those that worked nights slept days. And the quilt he had was so holey he was all tangled up in it. Do you remember that, Walter?

Yeah, I remember. I was disappointed, because I had a picture, myself, America was cowboys and Indians like they showed in the old country, in the magazines. When I see that, when I came here and the stockyards here, so I was disappointed.

No cowboys, just cows. City stockyards slaughtered and dressed animals from the entire middle west, and canned and shipped them to the world. You didn't have to know how to read or write, or even speak English. You just had to do hard and monotonous work. And you have to live in the west part of the city.

At that time, everybody burned coal, you know? All the yards, all the slaughterhouses, and all that, and on some days, when the pressure was low, that smoke spread around just like a big cloud. The smell was terrible. When the wind just hit the right direction, why we'd get it in the houses. For a few blocks down, you'd get it.

They didn't have no garbage cans in the alley where you could put your garbage in. Everything was out to just the back of the shed. There were more flies, you couldn't pass by for the flies. And we'd have them in the house plenty too, because there were no screens in the windows. You had to shoo the flies out so they wouldn't get into our food.

They used to chase the cattle down the street, you know, from wherever they were getting them. And especially in winter, it used to get horrible. The dung, and the snow, and nobody ever cleaned it. There was no street here. There was mud. And on dry days, it was dusty, ruddy.

But when it rained, you had to go to the corner one way or the other in order to get across, and if you were going in winter, you didn't have good over shoes, you'd be muck up to your knees, almost. There was no consideration given to human comfort as far as surroundings were concerned.

As a six-year-old boy in 1896, Stanley [INAUDIBLE] came to America. Within four years, his father, a steelworker, was dead, and the family was penniless.

His mother had to send Stanley to an orphanage. When he left after two years, he spoke English and liked American ways. His mother had remarried, and was about to return to Poland. 12-year-old Stanley had already made up his mind he wanted to stay in America.

There was an opening in a laundry for a boy there. My stepfather took me there and explained a thing to the owner of the laundry. He says, I'm going to make a man of him, he says. I worked that laundry for three years. But all of them boys coming from Europe, there was a half a dozen or more my age, and maybe younger than I.

They all worked at the National company. While I was making two and a half, I think I got up to $3.00 a week, they were making $0.09 an hour. $0.09 an hour, 10-hour day, 12-hour nights, oh, it came out to something like $6.00 a week. Well, them boys said why should you work for money like that? Come to the [INAUDIBLE] with us. Which I did, and I was sorry ever after.

It was oil, dirty clothes. Wasn't like before with a collar and free laundry. And it was hard work. You'd get cut and dirty. And Poles were at the bottom of the totem pole there. They had the maintenance jobs and everything. It was hard to get a good job for a Polack. It was all Irish and German that held the best jobs.

We had an Irish a welder at a furnace. Each furnace had three. They worked 15 minutes or half hour. We might have two Irish, one German, or one German and two Irish. Never a Pole. There were Hungarians. Hagars as we called them. Had some good friends at the mills with the Hungarians.

They were about on the same level with us. Treated the same way. I don't remember having either an Irish or a German friend. It was all Polish.

Iron and steel made Chicago rich. The iron ore came from Minnesota. The men who fed the furnaces came from eastern Europe.

Well, that's all right. You're the general, you're entitled to call.

Phil [INAUDIBLE] is a child of steel. His father was a steelman 60 years ago. Six boys in the family, all followed their father's path. Five still work in Chicago steel mills.

The Irish ethnic groups had the better jobs because the Irish claim to Chicago has already been laid. And the most of them were American born, anyway. They were probably second generation, see? And they already had benefits of a better education, which furthered them into a better financial position.

Most of the original Poles that came over to this country weren't equipped for any skills. So a person that doesn't have any skill is not in a position to make any demands. Before the union days, the company's attitude was so that you come to work tomorrow. If I got something for you, you'll work. And if I don't, home you go.

And that used to happen quite often. I remember my father would go to work with a lunch. I remember his leaving the house, and then seeing that he was back home again. Because for every man that had a job there, there were probably two more waiting for it. So they knew that the labor market in Chicago was quite plentiful, and you were expendable.

You were expendable. No pay when you were sick or hurt. No money when you're out of the job. Nothing when you were too old to work, and even if you're healthy and willing, you could wait all day for the job that never came. It helped if you knew the boss or the foreman, or the tally clerk. It helped if you spoke English.

My father didn't know the language. He had no special skills, you know? So one thing, I guess to get his family together, took anything that would be offered to him. And the only job he could get was the dirtiest job that was available, because of his limitations. And I think one of the jobs that he did over there contributed to shortening his life.

Because one of the jobs he'd had that I know for sure that he did for a time, at Darling's they used to cook these bones and scraps for fertilizer. And he had to get into these hot tanks after they were emptied, and he had to clean them out. So I think that helped.

And then after he left there, he worked at Swift's, and he worked on the icing gang before refrigerator cars were in. And he would go to work before we ever got up, and he wouldn't come home until after we were in bed many times, because there was no such thing as pay for over time.

You worked as many hours as you were told. And I think cliche that how hard work never killed anybody is a lot of baloney. I think it helped kill my father.

Bob Walinski is a local politician who lives near the street where he was born. His father came to Chicago in 1910 as a young man of 20.

Well, I think that my father was very ambitious, and he wanted to make his way. Evidently, my grandfather must have told him that there is great promise for a young man that should come out there and try to make his way, and that if he could work hard, he could get a hit. He was an adventurer, and he was quite a gent. And I think that he just wanted to make a good life for himself.

Bob's father is now 85.

Hey, Pops. What are you looking for, Pop?

He's had a stroke, and now lives in an old people's home. He did farm work in Poland. In Chicago he worked in steel.

He started as a laborer, and he was able to show his proficiency in his ways of doing electrical work, construction work, all this kind of mechanical work that he went to school to study. Machines, machinery, he became a machinist just by going to school at night and working in the daytime in the steel mills.

I also know that when he did go to visit his homeland, I know that he took some money with him to help his parents out with their expenses. I knew that my father was pretty well to do at that time because he was able to make this trip.

It was a lot of excitement when we saw him off at the train station. He wore a, what they call a sailor's straw hat, which is a hard straw hat, and that was an example of being dressed up. When he came into Poland to show himself to his parents, he was very well dressed. He had a suit on, and of course he had a necktie, which is something they didn't see around there.

It was probably an effort on his part to make himself look prosperous and try to impress his folks. I think that was his main purpose of going back. To show that he was successful, he was able to come back and help them. And I believe at that time, when he did come, they were in poverty there. My dad left a home of poverty, and when he returned, it was still that way.

At the beginning of this century, Poland as a country did not exist. A once powerful people had been crushed and impoverished by 100 years of occupation by Russia, Germany, and Austria. Three million Poles emigrated to America before the first world war. For those who stayed, life was hard and oppressive with no hope of change.

In 1908, Stanley [INAUDIBLE] had earned enough money in America to visit Poland. He wanted to see his old village, and the house his mother had built when she returned from America. Stanley was 18.

Well, the home that I went to, it was a log cabin. But it had two rooms, and it had a wooden floor in one of the rooms. And it had curtains on the windows, believe it or not. Maybe the only house in the village that mother brought from this country. And a lot of things they brought over, like for instance, they're all eating with wooden spoons.

Well, we had silverware that they brought home, but they were polished so thin that it was like a razor blade. I was afraid to eat with that spoon. Anyhow, we had things from America. Other hoses around there were all of course, log cabins with thatched roofs. I didn't like their houses.

It was sort of somber, what you'd see waling into a home. With the clay floors, all clay floors. So I didn't have a very good time in Poland. I just missed America, that's all. It's not Like being away from home. It really meant something. I remember when about the third week, the boys, my schoolmates here, they sent me two complete Sunday newspapers.

Had all the jokes and all, like a Pittsburgh Leader, and another one. Well, I had to get up on a-- right from our house was a hill with some trees. I had to up there, laid down under them trees. I even read the want ads. It was home. I spent a couple weeks with them papers.

I got there in March, last of March somewhere. I think I left in September. Glad to get away from Poland. It was as I say, it was supposed to be my country. But I always considered America my country. I said we were in Poland, Poland couldn't even feed our family. America could.

Stanley [INAUDIBLE] never went back to Poland again. He married and raised a family in Chicago. A son, Henry, two daughters, and four grandchildren. Angel food and coffee for Henry's birthday. Not the apple cake and vodka of the old country.

Henry [INAUDIBLE] grew up in the 1920s, A Chicago boy with no memories of Poland. He lived near the loop, the center of the city in a crowded immigrant area.

I was born on O'Brien Street, which is right next to Maxwell Street. Next to a Jewish synagogue. The house, you know, that's gone. The expressway goes right through it. About three blocks north of O'Brien Street was a street used to be called Bunker Street.

And we lived in one house there for about six months, and then moved a couple of doors down the block, where I live until we were 18. Until I was 18. The average building was a six flat tenement there with stairways in the center and the front. We lived in the third floor in the back, and I watched the board of trade go up.

Morrison Hotel, which has since been torn down. A 45-story hotel. This was the early '20s, when there was a big building boom. You could hear the riveting guns all night. It was very congested in the neighborhood before we got there. There were two houses on every lot. There would be a six flat in front, and maybe a two flat wooden home in the back. There was a lot of people.

You ran right through a whole series of nationalities just walking within blocks of each other. It starts with the Jewish people, like along around Maxwell and 14th Street, and then Taylor Street, which is almost exclusively Italian. It was an exciting place.

There were roving little gangs of these Italian boys, one in particular that I ran afoul of a couple of times. But we developed a sixth sense, you know? You knew, just you could see a situation coming up, and you'd know where to stay away.

In the '20s, Italians, Jews, and Irish all had their own gangs. From simple kids' gangs to notorious grown up gangs like the syndicate. The Poles were not that organized.

See, I don't remember a Polish gang. Poles just don't seem to work together. There's always this rivalry. I just couldn't visualize a gang leader, although there have been some, yeah. But they're not in a Polish gang. There were a few men that got up in the syndicate, of course they didn't stay and live very long.

The funerals, for some reason, stick in my mind, because I've never seen anything like that before. I think they were the Genna brothers. They were dumped off together. And then there were the Aiellos. I'm almost sure they were brothers too.

Huge funerals with just flower cars and a long procession. We used to count flower cars along around into the 70's. Most of the flowers are given by the people that bumped them off.

The hungry '30s. Everyone in America was affected by the Great Depression. In Chicago, nearly half the workers were out of work. The unskilled suffered most of all.

It was a bad time for everyone, but the times were even worse if you were an immigrant and couldn't speak English. Phil [INAUDIBLE] had to act as interpreter for his parents when he was only eight years old, and battle with Chicago's relief system on his own.

I would say that we had a particular problem because I noticed after a few days of going to one particular aid office, which was on 86th and Commercial Avenue, which later became a Buick automobile agency, and we had signed in with our Polish name for two days, and after spending a couple hours each day, we were told that we couldn't get waited on those particular days.

So all I did was take a close look of the name plates on peoples' desks. Of course I didn't expect to see an S-K-I on any one of them, because the Irish were forming their power then, and already had most of these jobs. And it's likely that we were singled out for this wait because of our Polish name.

So the next time we signed in, I decided to sign in under an Irish name. And when I did sign in under the Irish name, it was just a matter of minutes that we were called and we were sitting at the caseworker's desk. But of course, when it came to filling out the forms, I was giving out my mother's and father's Polish name, and then this woman hesitated, and she says, well wait a while.

I thought your name was so, so, the Irish name I gave, which now I can't recall. I says, well, yes, that's my name, but I'm here as an interpreter for these people who are seeking the aid. So I guess she was kind of embarrassed, and decided, well, she would go on with the formalities, and it was soon after that that aid was forthcoming.

Poles had little say in how the city was governed, even less in how its laws were enforced. Chicago police had their own way of keeping law and order. The young Phil [INAUDIBLE] discovered them at first hand.

I got slapped around quite a bit, and it's mostly by Irish cops. We'd get stopped, and if you just voiced yourself a little bit, you'd get belt across the mouth. Because the first thing they'd ask you is for some identification of what your name is, and then you'd give them the name, and soon as they recognized the S-K-I as being published, then they connotated it with something dirty.

And they'd waste no time, and tell you, all right, this is last time I want to see you in this neighborhood, you goddamn Pollock. And I didn't like the idea of being called that name, and I told the cop that, hey listen, you better not call me any names because I go as I please, where I please, when I please.

So all he did was slap me again. And he was too much for me, being I was about 13 years old. So it was then that I decided that I was going to be a little more vigilant of my rights. I would familiarize myself with my rights. And it would be nobody on earth that I will not challenge in the future regarding my rights.

Stand Up For Poland is the hymn. It's sung every Sunday. The choirmaster is Casey Laskowski, local politician and successful businessman.

Casey was born in Polonia, the heart of Chicago's old Polish community. Now like many Poles, he has moved away from the area.

I definitely had my mind made up as a young man that I was going to better myself, become educated. Become somebody. Somehow somewhere I was going to climb over that wall of just common laborer, common person. You know what I mean. When I joined the Air Force, especially in my group, there weren't too many Poles as cadets.

And lo and behold, the first characteristics that I felt, seeing so many of the boys being washed out of pilot training, I made up my mind that this would be death to me personally to be washed out.

Thank God I was gifted athletically, which helped me in the flying characteristic, and of course I latched myself onto a very brilliant German boy, an upperclassman who taught me all the things that I should know. And I graduated, I was successful. Then I got to be an instructor. And always it felt good to see that S-K-I at the end of my name amongst all the other nationalities.

It stuck out like a sore thumb. I wasn't satisfied with just being an instructor. I volunteered for combat on [INAUDIBLE]. So I got to be a bomber pilot. I wasn't satisfied with just being a bomber pilot. I wanted to be a leader, and I got to be a group leader for my last 19 missions of the 40 long ones that I had in the Pacific.

And it was good to see that Laskowski up there at the top of the formation when the poop sheets were passed out. This gave me great pride, and I felt that ethnicity, I felt that nationalistic feeling, that a kid from immigrant Polish parents has become a group leader in the United States Air Force as a Lieutenant Colonel. And it was quite a thrill for me. And I felt, I definitely felt the Polish in me.

The Poles remember with pride the first war they fought for America. Chicago's Polish museum celebrates their heroes of the war for American independence. Pulaski, an aristocrat adventurer who fought and died for America against the British in 1779.

Another Pole who fought in the Revolutionary War, General Kosciuszko, a friend of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. A modern hero has a room to himself, the pianist Paderewski.

This is the Paderewski room now. I say now because originally this was the entire museum. They even tore out four or five walls--

Henry Cygan delivered mail for 34 years. When he retired in 1971, he became a guide at the Polish museum. Through his job, he's discovering Poland's history, learning what he can be proud of in his ethnic past, like other Americans.

I think it's the drive for black power that started all this. When they tried to find their identity, you know? And the Poles, and the Spanish and whoever looked at their own culture, and saw, oh my gosh, we've got a much richer heritage than this, you know? And so everybody's going starting to dig into this a little bit. And it really catches you after a while.

And this is the very bed that Paderewski died on. It's Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening. Over here you see his the last piano he played on. I understand he played it the morning he died. He felt pretty strong that morning. He told a sister they could go to church and leave him. And he got up and played.

For Poles, Paderewski was more than a great musician. He was a statesman, the first prime minister of the new independent Poland after the first world war. A patriot, the soul of Poland.

The visitors that come in there, they'll just reach out and touch one key, just to say that they touched Paderewski's last piano. You have to be there alone after hours, you can almost see it. Feel him there, with all the pictures around the walls, you know? Looking down at you, and his piano standing there.

Polish people, they brought a lot of culture into Chicago. A lot of hard work, a lot of devotion to their jobs. Because they work from the heart, they're proud of their work, their finished product. Sure, they're workers. They don't depend on any street sweeper to come along and sweet their curbs.

They get out there for five minutes or 10 minutes with a shovel and a broom. They are the original street sweepers. We wouldn't need any here. This is the way the Poles feel. It's not to probably become great, or to see how much money they can earn in this world.

But the idea is they live. To be able to pay your bills, enjoy yourself, the greatest pride of a Polish family is to own their own home. They just despise being a renter, to have a place where they can't call their own.

Most Poles live on the city outskirts now. It's only in the past 20 years they've abandoned those little Polands their grandfathers created when they first settled in Chicago.

The old Polish neighborhoods have been taken over by newcomers, poor and unskilled like Poles once were themselves. The Poles don't want to stay.

The black element is growing rapidly in the city, and they find a little difficult. They can't stand the harassment. Crime, things, they run away. And that's what's happening to the area. The area is being changed into a Mexican, Puerto Rican, Spanish kind of element.

Maybe they just don't get along too well, and they're just frightened. And of course the people that are moving in feel probably like the Poles did back in 1910. It's a migration, and they're finding work here, and opportunities they didn't have back home. And it's a repetition of history, it's just a different nationality.

Sorry to see it happen, just for the sake of the churches that are being left behind. They're practically inhabited by ghosts now on Sundays. They're down 100 famolies, 200 families, 300 families, where at one time they had 4,000 families, 3,000 families.

The upkeep of them is very difficult. The funds are not there. We're trying to keep them up as best as we can. They are some of the most beautiful churches in the world, and I've seen a lot of churches all over this world. Holy Trinity, Saint Marys, Holy Innocence, Saint John Cantius. It almost wants to make you cry.

There used to be a saying in Chicago, I don't know whether it's still going around. The Jews own it, the Pollacks work it, and the Irish run it. I had a friend, a very good friend, and I'm still friends with her, who was Irish, who is Irish.

And one time I was at her house, we had a party. And one of them was working very hard, and somebody said, well, why don't you quit? You're working like a Pollack. How about that?

And I think that I've been insulted many times because I was Polish. There's been a rash of Polish jokes. There's one about a Pole came home unexpectedly, found his wife with a lover. So he took out a gun, put it to his head, and said how's this, don't worry, you're next.

They try to portray the Pole as a stupid person. And they could just as easily pick some other nationality. Why do they do it to us? We never do it to anyone.

Chicago has enjoyed a great reputation as a place where you can earn a good living. If you can't, it must be your own fault. But the Poles have found it a good haven for bettering themselves.

In most of Europe, you get cast in a mold, and you're presumed to be stupid because you're poor. And you stay there almost all your life. It would have to be something to enable you to crawl out. I imagine that at age 71, if I was still in Poland, I'd be in a hell of a shape.

There's no country like United States. I don't think you're going to find any other countries. There may be Australia. So I figured it's the best place to be, because you're going to have your family. You get some kind of education. And any place you can make something.

In a way, I am very grateful that my father worked hard to get us here. We had to work too, but then if you don't work, you don't accomplish anything. You have to, one way or another. Whether it's a hard job, or an easy job. If you don't have the brains for an easy one, you've got to put your back to it. And you get there.