Polish American History - Early 20th Century - Early Perceptions

Early Perceptions

The immigrants of the late 19th-early 20th Century wave were very different from those who arrived in the United States earlier. By and large, those who arrived in the early 19th Century were nobility and political exiles; those in the wave of immigration were largely poor, uneducated, and willing to settle for manual labor positions. Pseudo-scientific studies were conducted on Polish immigrants in the early 20th Century, most notably by Carl Brigham. In his book, A Study of Human Intelligence, which relied heavily on English aptitude tests from the U.S. military, he drew conclusions that Poles were of inferior intelligence and their population would dilute the superior "Nordic" American stock. His data was highly damning towards blacks, Italians, Jews, and other Slavs. In the U.S. Congress, a study prepared on Polish Americans cited similar studies and said Poles were undesirable immigrants because of their "inherently unstable personalities". Future U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, in his 1902 historical text, "History of the American People", called Poles, Hungarians, and Italians, "men of the meaner sort" who possessed "neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence." He later called these groups less preferable than the Chinese immigrants. (Wilson later apologized, and met publicly with Polish-American leaders) The 1916 book The Passing of the Great Race similarly drew on intelligence studies of immigrants such as the Poles to argue that American civilization was in decline and society as a whole would suffer from a steady increase in inferior intelligence.

Polish (and Italian) immigrants demonstrated high fecundity in the United States, and in a U.S. Congress report in 1911, Poles were noted as having the single highest birth rate. The 1911 Dillingham Commission had a section devoted to the Fecundity of Immigrant Women, using data from the 1900 Census. Historians debate the accuracy and sample group of this data, as many Polish immigrants arrived young and of child-bearing age, whereas other ethnics had a lengthy and sustained immigration policy with the United States, meaning multiple generations existed. In reports, the birth rate was very high for Poles and by 1910, the number of children born to Polish immigrants was larger than the number of arriving Polish immigrants. In Polish communities such as rural Minnesota, nearly three-fourths of all Polish women had at least 5 children. The Polish American baby boom lasted from 1906-1915 and then fell dramatically, as many of the immigrant mothers had passed out of their prime childbearing age. This was the highest birth rate for American Poles documented in the United States. During the 1920s and 1930s, Polish Americans were coming of age, developing ethnic fraternal organizations, baseball leagues, summer camps, scouting groups, and other youth activities. In large parts of Minnesota and Michigan, over half the population was under sixteen years old. Polish youths created nearly 150 street gangs in Chicago in the 1920s, and in Detroit and Chicago, created the single largest group of inmates in juvenile prisons.

Polish men in particular were romanticized as objects of raw sexual energy in the early 20th Century. Many first wave Polish immigrants were single males or married men who left their wives to strike fortune in the United States. Some were "birds of passage" who sought to return to Poland and their families with strong financial savings. They built a reputation in the United States for hard work, physical strength, and vigorous energy. The 1896 novel Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto describes the life of Jake who left his wife and children in Poland behind and began an affair in the United States, when soon his wife meets him in New York. Central to the 1931 romance novel American Beauty is a theme of attractive Polish men. In one instance, main character Temmie Oakes says, "...You saw the sinews rippling beneath the cheap stuff of their sweaty shirts. Far, far too heady a draught for the indigestion of this timorous New England remnant of a dying people. For the remaining native men were stringly of withers, lean shanked, of vinegar blood, and hard wrung." Historian John Radzilowski notes that the theme of vivacious young immigrants replacing dying old white ethnic populations was common in America until the 1960s and 70s.