In the second half of the 19th century and in the early 20th century, more than 2 million Poles emigrated to the United States. Most of them went out of the ocean for economical reasons, attracted by the imagination of a better life and immense opportunities to earn.
"In letters written to relatives and acquaintances in Poland, the fame of this milk and honey of flowing land was spread. The remittances attached to the correspondence returned to the remainder of the head," wrote socialist activist Władysław Fiszler, who emigrated to the US in 1886.
“As factories go, you live”
When the 18-year-old Alfred Fiderkiewicz went to the United States in 1904, a boy boy from east Galicia was fascinated by socialism, and he met a man who had already been to America twice before on a ship flowing across the Atlantic. “You will see fresh York, the hair on your oak head will stand” he heard from a traveling companion. "Houses above the clouds reach, and people are tingling". After a while, however, he learned that on this seemingly idyllic image there are besides features: “How the factories go – someway you live and everything is all rightand as they stand – hard time, poorness and hunger."
Upon arriving on the American continent, many immigrants found it their own way. If individual found a unchangeable job, he could not only support himself, but even support the household left behind in Poland. Unfortunately, those who had little luck left America alone.
Jan Kozakiewicz, a erstwhile Socialist MP to the Austrian Parliament who emigrated to the United States in 1903, described this wobbly destiny of an employed worker: “Million people with a well-paid job, out of nowhere, are thrown out to the curb, and long months of wandering without work, taking over the savings they could make. Who has not been able to put anything down, in this rich, “milk and honey flowing” America is straight exposed to starvation if it does not lose its head or take its life.”
Workers faced a deficiency of social security, which was only somewhat mitigated by, for example, self-help activities of trade unions. Justyna Budzinska-Tylicka, Warsaw PPS councillor, who visited the United States in 1924, pointed out that “when a individual touches disability, even while working, everyone should be entitled separately, otherwise he lives at the expense of his own savings, and receives only a tiny benefit from his private union money, if it belongs to him. Old age insurance, pensions, and much little unemployment insurance in America is out of the question."
"There is no law on producers"
From an worker perspective, the full legal strategy of the United States seemed to be tailored to the interests of the wealthy. "There is no right on the producers to be forced to bring protective devices" – Marcin Górecki, Chicago correspondent for PPS, “Working Newspapers” wrote in 1899. He added: “A individual or a household killed in a mill may complain about wages, but a mill owner with selling attorneys and judges will almost always prove that the individual himself was guilty of his own misfortune and needs nothing. That's justice in America. mill workers and capitalists are free to use, mutilated to throw away, disobedient to shoot like dogs.”
Another article in the “Working Paper” reads that American capitalists have made the courts “a brake on social progress” and that society is surrounded by “a cunningly intertwined web of laws, which rich people interrupt like wasps and in which mediocre people are simmering like flies.”
In the fall of 1910, the United States visited Ignacy Daszyński, leader of Polish socialists in Galicia. He spent more than 2 months in the ocean helping him get an opinion on the conditions there.
In his memoirs, he wrote that “the power of capitalism, and even more of its unheard, predatory methods of combating socialist ideas, the ability to grow immensely due to free land and natural treasures, and the exploitation of Canada and Mexico, as well as comparatively advanced labour salaries and the improvement of democratic institutions—all together created naive convictions in the mass working that all individual was facing an open way to enriching himself without limits!”
Daszyński believed that the American strategy forces people to focus on peculiar interests and does not let the thought of protecting the public over the individual to spread. In a planet that taught selfishness, it was hard for the socialists to learn the sense of class community.
In her relationship, Budzinska-Tylicka pointed out the formation in the US of "bureau workers". It happens frequently that erstwhile a individual there, after years of sacrifices and overtime, manages to gain his own home and car, he takes a false view of his position in society and ceases to feel a connection with the disadvantaged working class.
According to Daszyński, at the top of the social ladder in the US was a group of wealthiest entrepreneurs, conversed with each another and grouped in various kinds of trusts and cartels, protecting them from economical risks. He felt that the attempts made by the American government to fight these collusions were not effective and “was sometimes a simple comedy.”
Sigismund Piotrowski, 1 of the leaders of the Polish Socialist Union in the USA, who returned to Poland in 1921 and was shortly elected as an MP to the Sejm, said that in America we are dealing with the “world of underground bandits, with Al Capone already in prison”, and at the same time with the “world of Wall Street robbers, with Pierpont Morgan even before the prison”.
"And Republicans and Democrats are parties to capital"
The ideas of changing this strategy caused the fear and violent reaction of the defenders of the old order. Piotrowski wrote that the American proletariat is “known for conservatism” and that it is surrounded by “the fear of panic at the very thought of social-political reforms that reconcile the capitalist economy.”
It is worth noting the reaction that Jędrzej Moraczewski, the erstwhile Prime Minister of the People's Government, initiated in 1922, liable for reforms carried out in Poland during the first weeks of independence, specified as an eight-hour working day or sickness insurance. After returning to the country, in an interview given to the PPS paper “Robotnik”, he stated: “The ambon prince told about me that I was a Bolshevik who armed all the social scum in Poland and disproved the peasants and workers to specified an degree that they demanded a large deal of pay and they wanted nothing to do.”
A household of Polish berries collectors in the Baltimore area. photograph dyed. photograph by Lewis Hine/Wikimedia CommonsSuch allegations were widely formulated across the ocean for environments that advocated social change. Władysław Koniuszewski, an American correspondent for the Polish socialist press, even stated that “bolshevism is called everything in America that does not suit capitalists.”
The socialists spoke unfavorably about the main forces of American politics. Budzińska-Tylicka wrote that: “and Republicans, and Democrats are parties of capital, with only the difference that Republicans are more right-wing, and Democrats take a small more into account the state interest.”
The strongest charges were against the Republican Party. Jan Kozakiewicz wrote that all of her governments proved that she was a "clear enemy" of workers. However, the Democrats were not viewed more lightly. Kozakiewicz said that “when workers are needed, they talk about their relationship for us and promise everything we want. Whenever they glorify their program, they always preach about a fair distribution of wealth, about the necessity of the Ministry of Labour, about folk governments, and all these beautiful things. Unfortunately, all of these are fairy tales, due to the fact that the Democrats, erstwhile they came to power, turned out to be supporters, not workers, but capitalists. The abolition of capitalist exploitation is not what the Democrats want to hear. They only want this exploitation to be “fair”’.
“They interfere in all the interests of the world”
Criticism was besides raised by the U.S. abroad policy. “The unusual are people,” wrote Senator PPS Stanislaw Posner in 1927, pointing out that the Americans “interpreted into all the interests of the world” and at the same time claiming that the situation in the United States is solely their own interior cause. He ridiculed that according to American doctrine Europe can only “look, admire and stay silent” in the US.
The U.S. media, which Ignacy Daszyński simply called "terrible", made a very bad impression. Moraczewski warned that they frequently lie and fabricate false information: “I inform you that interviews in the American press should not be taken seriously. This is because, with all their another advantages, American journalists have the advantage of writing interviews with people they never talked to."
In the eyes of the ubiquitous racism. Ignacy Daszyński wrote on his return from the United States that the celebrated American tolerance concerns only the white race. For this, “blacks were treated wildly and cruelly, “yellows” were not allowed into the country, and Indians were actually destroyed”.
Racial domination was at the foundation of the state. As Kozakiewicz emphasized: “With the real hosts of the “new world”, red-skinned Indians did not number completely.”
Justyna Budzinska-Tylicka added that racism is linked to the US with class oppression. Black Americans, representing mostly proletarian masses, were despite the abolition of slavery constantly "very persecuted and negatively distinguished". She besides pointed out that they were not represented in typical bodies. "There are 1 Indian in the Senate, and 12 million Negroes do not have a single typical in parliament," she wrote in 1924 and explained that she was liable for this "consciously biased electoral ordination".
However, American chauvinism was not limited to the issue of skin color. He besides touched immigrant communities, including Poles. As Wladyslaw Fishler alarmed in 1894, “the opinion of the U.S. bourgeois press refers to Polish emigration in so far as the Pole-Nummita has modest requirements. Many gadzin organs claim Polish emigration as “a horde of wild, bloodthirsty inhabitants of the east of Europe” and consider it an undesirable asset to the United States people.”
Alfred Fiderkiewicz, who returned to Poland in 1922, reported that national prejudices are common in America and that there is simply a "permanent instillation of the venom of rot into the human psyche", as evidenced by mass culture. He cited an example of cabarets in which stereotypes were cultivated and, for example, “Jews as a commodity trader, Negro as a white female rapist, with a razor ready to slit the throat, Italian with a knife in their teeth, Pole with a machure, Greek as a thief.”
"The Wind of Social Reform"
Of course, socialists did not paint American reality exclusively in black colors. In addition to the frequently highlighted issue of working wages, they besides pointed to a wide scope of democratic procedures in political life.
Some cultural differences were besides favorable. Fishler wrote, for example, that “the privileged classes in the United States do not have this shameful human dignity of disregard for a simple worker, or at least they are afraid to show him publicly.” Justyna Budzinska-Tylicka besides pointed to the widespread nature of free education. In 1928, PPS "Robotnik" emphasized that despite a centuries-old hold due to slavery, the percent of illiterates among black Americans is lower than in Polish society.
The reforms carried out in the United States during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency were greatly appreciated. Since 1933, the fresh Deal programme, which responds to the economical crisis, introducing, among others, minimum wage and unemployment insurance, saw socialists as a historical turn in American politics.
"Robotnik" wrote in 1936 that Roosevelt's governments were groundbreaking and directed the US "to a major democracy. For the first time in the past of the United States, entrepreneurs were forced to recognise workers’ organizations and their rights. For the first time, unlimited self-will and dictatorship of capital were abolished. The wind of social improvement swept away. In the country of the highest developed capitalism, the individual felt a citizen for the first time."
Roosevelt's actions were possible due to the fact that the terrible crisis, marked by mass bankruptcys and mill closures, shook the foundations of the United States. A minute was reached when, as Piotrowski wrote, the proletariat began to lose his "faith in the infallibility and brilliance of capitalism, in private property."
However, MP PPS warned against formulating besides far-reaching expectations as regards possible social changes in the United States. In his opinion, Roosevelt utilized “strong medicines” due to the fact that he “realized that weaker drugs would not help.” However, he did not do so to build a fresh system, just to effort to save this existing one: “Roosevelt is simply a spokesperson for private property, he stands on the ground of a capitalist economy, but he is reformed and adapted to changed conditions and requirements. It is self-loathing that humanity can be liberated from the loops of the crisis without affecting the foundations of capitalism."
So the concern about the stableness of the course set by the fresh Deal was understandable. The power and influence of American capitalists meant a constant hazard that reforms would be stopped and alternatively would follow the ocean "return wave of reaction and oppression".
Further events confirmed the average assessments of the chances of a social redevelopment of the United States. American reformers did not effort to change the system, but at most in various ways they tried to adapt the capitalist economy to the changing reality. And looking at the current situation, socialist commentators of the century ago would most likely have concluded that another "wave of reaction" is beginning in the US.
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Przemysław Kmieciak – by education, a political scientist, by the accounting profession, with a lover of the historian on a hard episode of popularization of the past of the Polish left.
