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Working-Class Families Respond to Industrial Decline: Migration from the Pennsylvania Anthracite Region since 1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Thomas Dublin
Thomas Dublin
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Binghamton
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Extract

The decline of coalmining has been a worldwide phenomenon in recent years. In Great Britain, both Labour and Conservative governments have steadily closed down state-owned mines, provoking economic devolution in parts of the north of England and South Wales. European Community nations have collaborated to recovert declining European coal basins in the decades since the 1970s. In the Soviet Union coalminers played a crucial role in galvanzing support behind Mikhail Gorbachev.Nevertheless, despite miners' political importance and union strength, they have been unable to arrest the industrial decline of the Donbass region of the Ukraine.1 A long-term process of substitution among fossil fuels has had a major impact on developed economies over the course of the twentiethcentury. Economic and population shifts have been central features of this broader process. By focusing on the internal migration that accompanied the decline of anthracite coalmining in northeastern Pennsylvania, this article examines an American manifestation of this phenomenon of economicand social transformation. It argues for the importance of viewing working people as conscious actors in this larger process. While working people are certainly affected by economic forces beyond their control, they actively make choices that shape both their own lives and the broader process of economic transformation.2 Examination of the experiences of members of mining families in the anthracite region of northeastern Pennsylvania in the years since World War Two demonstrates the ways in which strong kinship, family, and ethnic networks have led residents in mining communities to resist an entirely economic calculus in responding to the region's economic decline.

Type
Migration, Labor Movements, and the Working Class
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 54 , Fall 1998 , pp. 40 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1998

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References

NOTES

1. “Asset Sales by British Coal,” New York Times, 12 3, 1994Google Scholar, and “The Hard Times of a Coal Town,” New York Times, 04 22, 1997;Google ScholarLeboutte, René, “Les bassins industriels en Europe: Production et mutation d'un espace, 1750–1992,” EUI Working Papers in History 93 (1993):79–87;Google ScholarSiegelbaum, Lewis H. and Walkowitz, Daniel J., Workers of the Donbass Speak: Survival and Identity in the New Ukraine, 1989–1992 (Albany, 1995).Google Scholar

2. This paper draws upon a larger study of deindustrialization in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania which I am conducting jointly with Walter Licht of the University of Pennsylvania. The studies reported on here are part of that collaboration and have benefited from grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation.

3. “Production of Anthracite … 1913–1932,” RG 9, Box 6065, NRA Anthracite Code materials, National Archives, Washington, DC; Bureau of Census, 1992 Census of Mineral Industries: Coal Mining (Washington, DC, 1995), 12A–5.Google Scholar

4. See, for instance, a series of articles in the New York Times, March 3–9, 1996, reprinted as The New York Times, The Downsizing of America (New York, 1996).Google Scholar

5. The Panther Valley consists of five communities in a valley running for twelve miles southwest of Jim Thorpe (formerly Mauch Chunk). These include Nesquehoning, Lansford, Summit Hill, Coaldale, and Tamaqua. Alumni organizations from public high schools in Nesquehoning, Summit Hill, Lansford, and Coaldale and from an area parochial school, Marian High School, were kind enough to share address lists with us. The Marian lists included its own graduates as well as those from St. Mary's and St. Ann's, two high schools that merged into Marian after the period on which we focused our efforts. We are grateful to officers of these groups and to respondents for their support and interest.

6. For discussion of methodological questions involved in the use of the Public Use Microdata Samples, see Gregory, James N., “The Southern Diaspora and the Urban Dispossessed: Demonstrating the Census Public Use Microdata Samples,” Journal Of American History 82 (1995):111–34;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Ito, Rodney M. II, Gratton, Brian, and Wycoff, Joseph, “Using the 1940 and 1950 Public Use Microdata Samples: A Cautionary Tale,” Historical Methods 30 (1997):137–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. The difference here is between 33.8 years on average for men and 36.5 for women.

8. Gabaccia, Donna, From the Other Side: Women, Gender and Immigrant Life in the US., 1820–1920 (Bloomington, IN, 1994), 30–31.Google Scholar

9. Here I must acknowledge that bias no doubt has influenced this finding. High school graduates who have migrated greater distances from their hometowns are less likely to maintain contact with their alumni associations than those who remain nearby. Moreover, nearby alumni are probably more likely to respond to a survey questionnaire than those at a greater distance. These findings should only be extrapolated to the broader population of area high school graduates with extreme care.

10. We have consciously excluded from our count of out-migrants those surveyed whose only period away from the Panther Valley occurred while they attended college or served in the military. If a respondent returned to the Panther Valley immediately after college or military service s/he has been coded as having always stayed in the region.

11. The pattern of out-migration among high school graduates in the Panther Valley was profoundly shaped by the lack of economic opportunity in the region in the postwar years. For an interesting comparative analysis of in- and out-migration in another Pennsylvania community in a slightly earlier period, see Goldstein, Sidney, Patterns of Mobility, 1910–1950: The Norristown Study (Philadelphia, 1958).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. I would like to acknowledge the work of Mary Ann Landis, who conducted roughly one-third of these interviews, and Walter Licht, who did six.

13. Dorothy Pennachio was particularly helpful in locating potential interviewees in northern New Jersey; James Coon of the United Steelworkers retirees' organization, and a story in the Bristol County Courier-Times, proved crucial in contacting appropriate individuals in the Fairless Hills–Levittown area.

14. Joe Rodak interview, Philadelphia, PA, June 6, 1995, 23–24. This and all descriptions and quoted material in the remainder of the paper appear with the permission of the interviewees. Transcripts of all cited interviews are in the possession of the author.

15. Melovich, Paul interview, Levittown, PA, June 7, 1995, 25–26; John Zokovitch interview, Mornsville, PA, 06 5, 1995, 22.Google Scholar

16. Pavuk, John interview, Manville, NJ, March 20, 1994, 29–31; Mike and Mary Vitek interview, Lansford, PA, 11 24, 1995, 23.Google Scholar

17. Hunsinger, Don interview, Carteret, NJ, 06 16, 1995Google Scholar, 13; see also 30 on the Hunsingers' adjustment to life in suburban New Jersey.

18. Painter, Mary interview, Mount Joy, PA, 09 16, 1994, 14–15.Google Scholar

19. Stone, Anna interview, Lansford, PA, March 4, 1994, 16, 18; Irene Gangaware interview, Lansford, PA, May, 1993, 7, 14–15; Anna Meyers interview, White Bear, PA, 10 3, 1994, 27.Google Scholar

20. Ferrari, Grace interview, Summit Hill, PA, 08 24, 1994, 10; Anna Stone interview. 18–19.Google Scholar

21. Sabron, Mike interview, Summit Hill, PA, 06 28–29, 1993, 18.Google Scholar

22. Strohl, Ella interview, Nesquehoning, PA, July 30, 1993, 3; Ken and Ruth Ansbach interview, Nesquehoning, PA, 09 6, 1993, 14.Google Scholar

23. Whitecavage, Ziggie interview, Levittown, PA, April 4, 1995, 20–21; Gloria Rehill interview, Levittown, PA, 04 7, 1995, 9.Google Scholar

24. Sabron, Mike interview, 35; Ken and Ruth Ansbach interview, Lansford, PA, 10 13, 1994, 19;Google Scholar Theresa Pavlocak interview, 34.

25. Gutman, Herbert G., Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class (New York, 1987), 326.Google Scholar