Balch Institute: Selections from the Museum Collections
Ethnic Business and Labor
Introductory Essay


A sampling of artifacts from the museum's collections offers insight into trends that helped shape the economic development of the United States.

Whether immigrants to the United States left their homelands for political, religious, or economic reasons, almost all new arrivals needed employment. Their occupations and economic opportunities were determined by a number of factors, including labor needs and requirements here, the skills they brought with them, and their resourcefulness and adaptability.

In the northeastern and western parts of Pennsylvania the coal and steel industries provided employment for immigrants after the middle of the nineteenth century. At first English, Irish, and Welsh workers comprised the main labor force. But by the last decades of the century, large numbers of eastern Europeans had settled in the state's industrial locales. In northeastern Pennsylvania's anthracite region, for example, Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians had started to supplant western European workers by the 1880s, when new technology began to reduce the need for skilled craftsmen.

In the 1880s eastern European Jews and Italians began to settle in Philadelphia, attracted by the city's expanding textile and garment industries and, in the case of Italians, by the demand for construction laborers. The clothing trade was largely organized around sweatshops concentrated in the Old City section and neighboring areas of South Philadelphia--the same locations where the newcomers resided. Working conditions were harsh and unhealthy. Pay was so meager that many families had to put their children to work to make ends meet. In dark, dirty, and crowded lofts men, women, and children worked long hours to produce clothes which they themselves could not afford. Despite some union organization, conditions remained almost intolerable until the 1930s, when strikers demanding better wages and working conditions began to threaten the industry.

Throughout our history, ethnic businesses have arisen to meet the specific needs of groups in the United States. Ethnic groceries, restaurants, importers, publishing firms and mutual insurance associations are good examples of such enterprises.

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© 1996 The Balch Institute For Ethnic Studies

This Internet publication has been supported by grants from
The Equitable Foundation and the William Penn Foundation.


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