Beginning in the latter half of the 19th century, individuals identifying themselves as Poles, Slovaks, Carpatho-Rusyns, Ukrainians, and others began what would eventually become a mass influx of eastern and central Europeans into Pennsylvania's anthracite coal mining region. These people brought with them languages and customs quite alien to the longer-established groups that had settled the area many years earlier. At times the Slavs clashed with these groups, as well as among themselves. Eventually, however, they wove their way of life indelibly into the multiethnic fabric of the growing region. The Anthracite Coal Region's Slavic Community presents a pictorial history of Slavic people in hard coal country, conveying the unique and rich culture brought to the area with the arrival of these diverse communities.

Beginning in the latter half of the 19th century, individuals identifying themselves as Poles, Slovaks, Carpatho-Rusyns, Ukrainians, and others began what would eventually become a mass influx of eastern and central Europeans into Pennsylvania's anthracite coal mining region. These people brought with them languages and customs quite alien to the longer-established groups that had settled the area many years earlier. At times the Slavs clashed with these groups, as well as among themselves. Eventually, however, they wove their way of life indelibly into the multiethnic fabric of the growing region. The Anthracite Coal Region's Slavic Community presents a pictorial history of Slavic people in hard coal country, conveying the unique and rich culture brought to the area with the arrival of these diverse communities.

This study was prompted by the author's observation of a sharp dichotomy in interpretations written before and after the mid-1960s--relying largely on the same data--regarding the impact of Slavic immigrants on the Pennsylvania anthracite fields. Investigations dated between 1902 and 1964 blamed the Slavic immigrants for the exploitation of anthracite mines, the failure of unionization until 1902, and the relative social backwardness of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The old view led to the "split labor market" theory, which holds that immigrants tend to divide the labor market by their willingness to work for lower wages than those demanded by the established work force. Since 1964 historians such as Victor Greene and Harold Aurand have shown that Slavic immigrants in the anthracite fields were in fact a progressive social influence. Dr. Barendse starts with a hypothesis to explain the interpretive dichotomy: that social reality is a cultural construct created out of the perceptions and expectations of its creators, even when these are professional historians and social scientists. According to this hypothesis--based on studies in the sociology of knowledge by Goffman, Berger, and Luckman--pre-1964 experts expected Slavic immigrants to be poorly adapted to the social environment of the coal region and therefore perceived the behavior they studied as confirmation of that expectation. A very different picture emerges when the same source material is examined without such biases: the Slavic immigrants, despite alien languages and customs, made a remarkably fast adjustment in the 1890-1902 period, as attested to by their acquiring real estate, founding complex organizations such as the Polish National Church, demanding equal treatment on the job, and spearheading United Mine Workers organizing strikes. The monograph includes a brief history of the anthracite industry from 1740 to 1890 (when the Slavs arrived), a survey of immigration history, and an epilogue on the assimilation of Slavic-Americans into American society down to the present.

In 1890, more than 100,000 Welsh-born immigrants resided in the United States. A majority of them were skilled laborers from the coal mines of Wales who had been recruited by American mining companies. Readily accepted by American society, Welsh immigrants experienced a unique process of acculturation. In the first history of this exceptional community, Ronald Lewis explores how Welsh immigrants made a significant contribution to the development of the American coal industry and how their rapid and successful assimilation affected Welsh American culture. Lewis describes how Welsh immigrants brought their national churches, fraternal orders and societies, love of literature and music, and, most important, their own language. Yet unlike eastern and southern Europeans and the Irish, the Welsh--even with their "foreign" ways--encountered no apparent hostility from the Americans. Often within a single generation, Welsh cultural institutions would begin to fade and a new "Welsh American" identity developed. True to the perspective of the Welsh themselves, Lewis's analysis adopts a transnational view of immigration, examining the maintenance of Welsh coal-mining culture in the United States and in Wales. By focusing on Welsh coal miners, Welsh Americans illuminates how Americanization occurred among a distinct group of skilled immigrants and demonstrates the diversity of the labor migrations to a rapidly industrializing America.