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IMMIGRATION to the GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 WAR, POLITICS, TECHNOLOGY, and ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Bruce Garver University of Nebraska at Omaha

IMMIGRATION to the GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 WAR, POLITICS, TECHNOLOGY, and ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Bruce Garver University of Nebraska at Omaha

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Summer 2011 IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 WAR, POLITICS, TECHNOLOGY, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Bruce Garver University of Nebraska at Omaha

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Garver, Bruce, "IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 WAR, POLITICS, TECHNOLOGY, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT" (2011). Great Plains Quarterly. 2711. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2711

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BRUCE GARVER

The advent and vast extent of immigration to of mass immigration to the United States from the Great Plains states during the years 1865 to east-central and southern .1 Facilitating 1914 is perhaps best understood in light of the all of these changes was the achievement of new international context that emerged during widespread literacy through universal, free, the 1860s in the aftermath of six large wars compulsory, and state-funded elementary edu­ whose consequences included the enlargement cation in the United States, , and most of civil liberties, an acceleration of economic western and northern European countries. growth and technological innovation, the Moreover, the extraordinary transformation expansion of world markets, and the advent of the Great Plains from a sparsely inhabited frontier to a of thriving cities and com­ mercial agriculture took place in the remark­ Key Words: dvilliberties, education, Czech Ameri­ ably short time of forty-nine years, during cans, German , , which Europe and enjoyed railroads, religion unprecedented peace and prosperity. Even as Since 1976, Bruce Garver (PhD, Yale, 1971) has been late as 1945, many Americans were aware that Professor of history at the University of Nebraska at the entire history of the Great Plains states Omaha where he teaches courses on the two World had occurred within the living memory of their Wars, the Enlightenment, modern Italy, and transport most elderly citizens. history. He is a fellow of the Center for Great Plains Studies whose A~ri12010 Symposium he co-organized In this essay I discuss these and several with Dr. Miluse Saskova-Pierce on "Czech and Slovak broad, related topics in the history of the Great Americans: International Perspectives from the Great Plains, emphasizing continental European Plains." His publications include The Young Czech immigration facilitated by industrial technol­ Party, 1874-1901: The Emergence of a Multi-Party ogy. It is understood, as did Jacob Burckhardt System, and articles such as "Human Rights in Czech and Slovak History." in defining such essays, that other scholars who examine the same or similar evidence may draw somewhat different conclusions.2 My [GPQ 31 (Summer 2011): 179-203) perspective is primarily that of a historian of

179 180 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2011 modern Europe and of Slavic immigrants to opened the way to Italian unification; (3) the the United States and to a lesser extent that of of 1861 to 1865; (4) the an American who has resided in Nebraska for conflict of 1862 to 1867 in which the Mexicans thirty-five years.3 expelled their French conquerors and reestab­ The article will address four main topics lished a republic; (5) the Seven Weeks' War of related to mass immigration and the social and 1866 in which Prussia and Italy defeated the economic transformation of the Great Plains and several smaller German in the half century following the end of the principalities; and (6) the Franco-German War American Civil War. The first is the extent to of July 1870 to May 1871 in which Prussia and which this transformation was made possible its German allies under Otto von Bismarck's by the liberal political order that emerged in leadership defeated France and established an Europe and North America as a consequence authoritarian constitutional German Empire of the six most destructive wars fought between under the Hohenzollern dynasty of Prussia.4 1854 and 1871. The second considers how the Moreover, in the midst of losing this war, the and labor-saving tech­ French began to establish a Third Republic nology, along with greater political freedom, after overthrowing the dictatorial Second facilitated the rapid settlement and economic Empire of Napoleon III. All in all, the imme­ transformation of the Great Plains. The third diate consequences of these six wars not only discusses how more than a million young, advanced industrialization, urbanization, civil intelligent, and industrious immigrants from liberties, and the rule of law in North America Europe-and smaller numbers from Mexico and most parts of Europe but also accelerated and Canada-joined American-born citi­ immigration to the United States from south­ zens in of new settlements ern and .5 throughout the Great Plains states. In these The defeat of Imperial Russia by France, developments, the experience of Czech, Britain, and Piedmont-Sardinia in the Crimean German, and Italian immigrants will be War of 1854-56 had persuaded Czar Alexander emphasized as having been broadly representa­ II and his advisors to emancipate all serfs on tive of those who came from other continental March 3, 1861, as the first step toward limited European nations. Finally, this article will political and economic reforms that would examine the extent to which railways-whose lay the groundwork for industrialization and capitalization and economic benefits exceeded increased emigration by the turn of the century. those of all other innovations of the industrial The defeat of the Austrian Empire by France revolution-conditioned patterns of immigra­ and Piedmont-Sardinia in the summer of 1859 tion as well as accelerated urbanization, indus­ opened the way to the creation of a united and trialization, and commercial agriculture on the liberal Italian monarchy and persuaded the Great Plains. Habsburgs to transform the Austrian Empire into a constitutional monarchy whose repre­ WARS AS PRECONDITIONS FOR SETTLEMENT sentative political bodies removed obstacles to OF THE GREAT PLAINS emigration and encouraged industrialization and state-supported elementary education. The Facilitating all the above developments were unification of Italy, whose principal political the liberal political achievements-including architects were Camillo Benso di Cavour and the rule of law, representative government, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, had required the military enlarged civil liberties-which were largely defeat of the Austrian Empire, the Kingdom of made possible by six costly wars fought between Naples, and the Papal State in order to estab­ 1854 and 1871: (1) the Crimean War of 1854 to lish liberal Piedmontese law and institutions 1856; (2) the war of 1859 in which France and throughout Italy, to create a national army, Piedmont defeated the Austrian Empire and navy, railway network, and postal system, and IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 181 to inaugurate a bonifica agraria-the reclama­ In defeating the Confederacy, the United tion of marginal lands for agriculture-and to States abolished the economically inefficient begin the conquest of malaria, heretofore the and morally repugnant institution of slavery principal scourge of the Italian people.6 in the most destructive war ever fought in the Prussia's and Italy's defeat of the Austrian Western HemisphereJl By fighting bravely to Empire and its German allies in the Seven the bitter end to preserve this ugly institution, Weeks' War of 1866 enabled Italy to annex the Confederates hastened its eradication and the Veneto and obliged the Habsburgs in their postwar discovery of more profitable and 1867 to grant internal independence to the humane ways to earn a living than by cruelly in a reconstituted dual monarchy exploiting human chattel. Moreover, the vic­ of Austria-Hungary'? In a fifth contempora­ tory of the United States also facilitated the neous war of 1862 to 1867, Mexican patriots implementation of the Homestead Act of led by Benito Juarez expelled a French army 1862 and the completion on May 10, 1869, at of occupation and reestablished the Mexican Promontory Summit, Utah, of the first North Republic, whose commerce with and emigra­ American transcontinental railway along "the tion to the United States soon expanded after Overland Route" of the Union Pacific and 1880 in conjunction with the construction of Central Pacific Railroads,l2 compatible railway networks on both sides of the border along the River and REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT, through the .8 The Franco­ INDUSTRIALIZATION, AND TECHNOLOGY German War of 1870-71 enabled the Prussian IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE GREAT monarchy to take the lead in creating a unified PLAINS Second German Empire whose rapid indus­ trialization, authoritarian political structure, Because the semiarid Great Plains had a and aggressive foreign policy increasingly relatively tiny population before 1866 and was destabilized the European balance of power. largely inhospitable to preindustrial agriculture Contemporaneously with these six wars, the and transport, its emergence within twenty­ British colonies of North America united five years as a region of prosperous cities, small peacefully in 1867 to form a transcontinental , and commercial agriculture cannot be Dominion of Canada, although Canadian adequately comprehended without reference troops were soon obliged to suppress the to mass immigration and improved indus­ River Rebellion of the Metis under Louis Riel trial technology, especially steam railways, in 1869 and 1870 in what then became the telegraphy, internal combustion engines, and Province of Manitoba.9 During the same years, electrical power generation and distribution. the Meiji Restoration created an authoritarian One should also remember that until improved constitutional monarchy in Japan and encour­ internal combustion engines were developed aged a rapid industrialization and expansion for motor vehicles after 1900, horses continued of foreign commerce that eventually resulted to haul most freight and passengers over short in Japan's becoming the second largest trading distances in all urban and rural areas.u partner of the United States.lO The industrial revolution, which had begun Union victory in the American Civil in at the end of the eighteenth War has long been recognized as essential to century and quickly spread to continen­ making and into free states and tal Europe, North America, and enabling the Great Plains territories to become promptly produced an unprecedented expan­ comparable states characterized by representa­ sion of manufacturing and agriculture by tive government, free labor, corporate enter­ introducing new industries based on steam prise, and mass immigration from continental power, fossil fuels, and machine production, Europe as well as other parts of North America. and financed through a new institution, the 182 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2011 corporation-a limited-liability joint-stock Less often appreciated by American his­ company.14 New technologies such as steam torians is the considerable extent to which locomotives, steamships, steam-powered farm the political reforms flowing from the wars of machinery, barbed wire, and the Bessemer mid-nineteenth-century Europe facilitated the and Siemens processes for producing inex­ settlement of the Great Plains states and the pensive steel, facilitated the mechanization of growth of a prosperous American economy. industry, agriculture, and food processing, and Unlike the slave-owning founders of the accelerated the movement of people out of eco­ Confederacy, the European defenders of aris­ nomically backward areas of rural overpopula­ tocratic prerogatives and authoritarian monar­ tion-including southern Italy, Ireland, most chical government at midcentury chose not to of Austria-Hungary, and western Russia-into fight on until their way of life and their armies areas where new technologies and indus­ were utterly destroyed but instead fairly quickly tries prevailed.15 The latter areas initially made peace to preserve as much of their privi­ included Great Britain, France, Belgium, the leges as possible while conceding to liberal-led Netherlands, northern Italy, most of Germany, constitutional monarchical governments the the American northeast and Middle West, the rule of law, state encouragement of industrial­ Canadian provinces of and , ization, and enlarged civil liberties. The latter and ultimately the Pacific coast and Great included the removal of restrictions on emi­ Plains of the United States and Canada along gration, which enabled millions of and with Australia and New Zealand. Italians and hundreds of thousands of , By emphasizing the natural environment , Serbs, Croats, Ukrainians, Russians, and the pioneers who had adapted to it while and Hungarians to leave their homes to seek transforming it, historians have arguably to greater economic opportunities elsewhere­ some extent underestimated the extent to which principally in the United States but also in an international economy and foreign as well the comparably industrializing areas of France, as American values and institutions have con­ Germany, Lower Austria, and and in ditioned the development of the Great Plains the newly opened agricultural lands and grow­ states. The harsh extremes of a generally inhos­ ing cities of Argentina and Brazil. The process pitable climate as well as the attractively distinc­ of peasant emancipation had begun earlier in tive-and even somewhat exotic-landscape the nineteenth century with the abolition of of the Great Plains may partially explain why the manorial system and the last vestiges of we historians have sometimes overestimated serfdom-including the robota, or forced labor, the influence of climate and topography upon of peasants on the lands of their lords-in that region's economic and social development. Prussia after its defeat by Napoleonic France in Moreover, as some untoward long-term con­ October 1806, in the Austrian Empire after the sequences of this rapid transformation of the outbreak of revolutions in March 1848, and in Great Plains by agriculture, mining, railways, Russia on March 3, 1861, as a consequence of and motor vehicles have become increasingly Russia's defeat in the five years earlier evident since 1930, historians have ever more by the armies of Great Britain, France, and critically assessed the extensive damage already Piedmont-Sardinia.1? done to the natural environment of grasslands Before the American Civil War, an enormous and indigenous flora and fauna as well as to political and cultural difference already existed traditional Native American cultures. Although between the frontier areas of Mississippi, the extraordinarily swift and extensive settle­ Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas in contrast ment and urbanization of the Great Plains gen­ to those north of the River, in Missouri, erally brought immense material and cultural and in the Great Plains from Kansas to the benefits to its citizens, this achievement has Canadian border. But this difference cannot come at a very high price.16 be attributed to topography nor even to the IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 183

American South's slightly higher year-round end of the World War II and the onset of the humidity and greater warmth. As early as of 2007-10.21 1831, while traveling westward on the Ohio The Great Plains is not markedly dif­ River, and Gustave de ferentiated from other steppe by its Beaumont perceived many prosperous Ohio climate, topography, physical geography, and farms on the north bank in contrast to the soils. Primarily what has continued to differ­ generally shabby farms along the south bank entiate the Great Plains from the steppes of in Kentucky, a striking contrast that they , , and Sinkiang (Xinjiang) perceptively attributed to the deleterious pres­ is that Americans and have since ence of slaveryJ8 Moreover, amidst the forested 1865 enjoyed representative governmental frontier of lower , Tocqueville and institutions, a market economy, and the rule Beaumont came across an isolated log cabin of law as well as mass immigration and capital in which they were greeted by a pioneer whose investment from Great Britain and continental newspapers had arrived via on a Europe.23 This massive influx of immigrants federal post road. Tocqueville immediately was accelerated by the simultaneous creation of grasped how literate and industrious citizens international steamship lines and of national with governmental support had recently and railway networks in Europe and the . rapidly penetrated what had heretofore been a These new and increasingly more efficient trackless wilderness.19 means of transport not only moved people Before 1865, continental European immi­ and goods worldwide at unprecedentedly grants had come primarily from western, high speeds and lower costs, but railroads also northern, and to America's became one the largest employers and consum­ northeastern and midwestern states where free ers of industrial products and raw materials in labor prevailed. Thereafter, until 1914, they every country undergoing rapid industrializa­ came increasingly from eastern and southern tion and urbanization. Europe and settled also in the states of the The rapid transformation of the Great Great Plains and the West Coast, as world Plains after 1865 by commercial agriculture markets swiftly expanded during an era of con­ and inexpensive railway transport accelerated stitutional representative government, rapid at least three more developments with interna­ industrialization, and unprecedented peace tional repercussions. The first was a worsening and prosperity in Europe and North America agricultural depression in Europe during the and one in which Europe became "the world's late 1880s. Despite protective tariffs, European banker."2o On both sides of the , these farmers proved less and less capable of pro­ accomplishments facilitated nearly a half cen­ ducing and transporting grain to domestic tury of economic growth, rising hourly wages, markets at prices competitive with American, and corporate profits, though this was a process Canadian, and Argentinian grain planted and interrupted by depressions in the early 1870s, harvested by machinery and transported by in the late 1880s and early , and in 1907. rail and steamships to European markets. The Furthermore, this increasing international consequent onset of agricultural depression prosperity was accelerated by the fact that no further stimulated European emigration to the large wars occurred in Europe or the Americas Americas from such agriculturally overpopu­ between 1878 and 1914, even though some lated European regions as Ireland, southern of the short colonial wars during those years Italy, Galicia, southern and southeastern appear in retrospect to have foreshadowed cer­ Bohemia, southwestern Norway, and north­ tain aspects of World War 1.22 In all of European ern Hungary (today's ). Secondly, history, these four decades of widespread peace European immigrants in the and prosperity have been exceeded in length and Great Plains adjusted, as did American­ only by the six-and-a-half decades between the born farmers and small businessmen, to rapidly 184 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2011 changing economic and social conditions, Complementary to Frederick Jackson Turner's even though many of these immigrants had thesis were the equally geographically deter­ initially intended to perpetuate what they ministic views of Walter Prescott Webb and deemed to be desirable features of traditional Ray Billington. The former eloquently empha­ European rural life and religions in what would sized how aridity-and unpredictably severe become their homes.24 Finally, a weather-conditioned agriculture west of the similar though less extensive agricultural crisis hundredth meridian, and the latter somewhat occurred in the United States as farmers in exaggerated the extent to which river systems New England and upstate found determined the flow of trade as well as the loca­ it increasingly difficult to compete in urban tion and growth of cities.29 Moreover, Webb northeastern markets with grain carried by rail and other distinguished historians, including from the mechanized farms of the Midwest and Bernard DeVoto, J. Frank Dobie, and Joseph Great Plains. Consequently, these northeast­ Kinsey Howard, strongly stressed the degree ern American farmers organized the Grange to which the inhabitants and resources of the (the Patrons of Husbandry) in order to agitate trans-Missouri West were exploited very much for governmental regulation of railroad rates like those of a colony by northeastern and designed to prevent alleged discrimination in midwestern American corporations and com­ favor of the long haul as opposed to the short mercial banks.3o Addison E. Sheldon, super­ haul. The railroads claimed that this difference intendent of the Nebraska State Historical in rates was both desirable and fair given the Society from 1917 to 1943, and Everett Dick, identical costs of loading and unloading freight author of The Sod-House Frontier, 1854-1890: cars regardless of the distance such cars would A Social History of the Northern Plains, cel­ travel.25 ebrated pioneering settlers in the Great Plains When viewed from a world historical with some emphasis on community develop­ perspective, the history of the United States ment, anecdotal evidence, local color, and generally and of the Great Plains in par­ individual achievements and shortcomings.3! ticular seldom reflects popular notions of Howard Lamar has properly given more sometimes evident emphasis to the great extent to which the fed­ in American political discourse and less eral government helped to make possible settle­ often in scholarly publications about history ment and the establishment of representative or "American studies.,,26 Frederick Jackson government in the territories and states of the Turner's poetic portrayal of The Influence of trans-Missouri West.32 the Frontier in American History, so perspi­ The Great Plains past and present is the caciously and critically evaluated as early as subject of deservedly popular fictional works, 1940 by George Wilson Pierson, no longer whose authors typically give precedence to greatly influences the writing of history of the the thoughts and actions of individual char­ American West.27 The history of my home­ acters, including those afflicted by troubles of Worthington, Ohio, provides one of of their own making as well as those whose the many exceptions to Turner's distinct phases lives have been shattered by a hostile environ­ in American westward expansion wherein ment, economic crises, or political events. In trappers were followed in succession by farm­ this regard, fiction often provides a desirable ers, miners, and the founders of cities. Instead, antidote and alternative perspective to his­ the settlement of Worthington occurred all at tories colored by American triumphalism or once in 1803 by the migration of thirty-eight exceptionalism, at least to the extent of oblig­ families from North Granby, ­ ing historians to evaluate more critically those including an Episcopal congregation, farmers, institutions whose policies and development factory workers, public schoolteachers, and two have affected the lives of ordinary people.33 innkeepers.28 However effectively literature may facilitate IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 185 historical understanding, particularly of the ited individual achievement in part to the influence of historical and institutional forces mutually beneficial endeavors of colleagues, upon individuals, including those most vulner­ employees, or members of ethnic or religious able to economic crises, literature is generally organizations. Noteworthy in this regard were less effective than history in portraying the the publications of the historian, banker, and development of institutions, laws, businesses, publicist Tomas Capek (1861-1950), including domestic politics, and foreign policy. Moreover, Moje Amerika: Vzpominky a uvahy (1861-1934), one must avoid the temptation to interpret his­ and Povidka meho zivota, the autobiography of tory primarily through literature and so Frantisek J. Vlcek, entrepreneur industrialist as not to base one's evaluation of society and and founder of the Vlchek Tool Company in politics largely upon the personalities, conver­ , Ohio.37 In these memoirs, as in sations, and motives of attractively delineated those of German, Italian, and other immi­ and extraordinarily memorable fictional char­ grants, one discerns no references to differ­ acters. ences within any immigrant group that in Whether in histories, fiction, film, or any way correspond to the U.S. geographical politics, uncritical American celebrations of regions in which individuals from that group ostensibly self-made men typically reveal a dis­ chose to reside. Such differences that did inclination to express gratitude for the positive obtain among immigrants of one nationality influence of families, communities, schools, appear instead to have corresponded primarily churches, and civic organizations in developing to their religion, occupations, or social class, or an individual's knowledge, character, compas­ else to regional linguistic and political differ­ sion, and other qualities likely to facilitate suc­ ences within their European mother country. cess in life. Nonetheless, an equally pervasive Omnipresent in facilitating the settlement American propensity to make generous and and urbanization of the Great Plains was sometimes belated bequests to universities, a mutually beneficial partnership between churches, and charities often reflects a recogni­ government, corporate enterprise, and small tion of personal indebtedness and gratitude to businesses-be they agricultural or mercan­ these and other institutions. tile-whose positive contributions to later Notions of rugged individualism are equally nineteenth- and early twentieth-century evident in the Czech-language memoirs and population growth, economic prosperity, and German-language letters of individual immi­ political stability are unintelligible without refer­ grants who have reported that their greatest ence to each other. However often the owners adventure was achieving professional or busi­ of small businesses have given precedence to ness success or having wrested from farmland a their own interests, they have nonetheless also livelihood for themselves and their families. 34 helped to create local employment, boost local Czech-language memoirs regularly appeared in communities, support law enforcement and periodicals such as the Hospodar (The Farmer), public education, and otherwise promote local published in Omaha, and in and prosperity. Individual and community self­ calendars such as Amerikan (The American) interest have thus usually coincided with and and Narod (The Nation).35 These memoirs reinforced one another.38 were comparable in many respects to those Well understood and delineated by Ameri­ published in English-language newspapers can historians has been the success of the or in histories of particular cities, , federal government in deploying armies to and states. Such histories were often sold drive Indians onto reservations, in undertaking by subscription and usually contained short scientific exploration, and in subsidizing both biographies of individual community leaders, the construction of transport infrastructure businesses, churches, and civic associations.36 and the distribution of inexpensive farmland More nuanced published memoirs have cred- through the Homestead Act of 1862 or by 186 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2011 other means.39 On the other hand, historians attributed to the fact that many of the native­ have occasionally underestimated the extent born Americans among them had already to which governmental institutions, public obtained a public elementary education and schools, and technology have continued to a religious upbringing in states north of the contribute to the growth and prosperity of the Mason-Dixon Line and the .42 A Great Plains states.40 majority of continental European immigrants In the Great Plains, the majority of pio­ also arrived in the Great Plains after having neering settlers-whom many economists of achieved literacy and having learned many of the early twenty-first century would define as the skills desired hy American employers. The "human capital"-arrived as ambitious, intel­ Prussian School Law of 1818 created Europe's ligent, and fully literate young adults, who first national system of universal, free, com­ were usually also married, in the best of health, pulsory, and state-supported public elementary and approaching the prime of life. These set­ education. Its immediate success in diminish­ tlers promptly introduced representative gov­ ing illiteracy and in raising the competence of ernmental institutions to the territories and army recruits and industrial workers soon led to states of the Great Plains-institutions that its emulation by monarchical governments in had originated in Britain or in British colonies almost all other German-speaking principali­ during the seventeenth and eighteenth centu­ ties.43 Comparable were the Czech-language ries and that were still being improved through public elementary schools authorized by the daily practice and occasional reform by citizens school law of 1869 as well as the improved of the states of the Northeast and the Midwest. French primary schools established by the Jules These pioneering settlers included not only Ferry Law of 1886.44 Because literacy in one American citizens but also Canadian, British, language has usually facilitated the learning of and continental European immigrants, most another, an elementary education and knowl­ of whom arrived with some fiscal assets as well edge of agricultural and industrial technology as personal ambition, self-confidence, and a readily enabled Czech, Dutch, German, and capacity for hard work. To a large degree, their Scandinavian immigrants, among others, character had already been formed, just as to obtain employment in America as skilled their knowledge had been acquired, elsewhere. laborers or, given sufficient capital, to become Consequently, none of the newly established self-employed farmers or merchants.45 One rural and urban comtnunities in the Great should not underestimate the extent to which Plains had been obliged to pay for the educa­ the positive contribution of these immigrants tion or raising of most of their energetic and to community prosperity was facilitated by intelligent "readymade" citizens, most of whom their having come from countries with mass were also well acquainted with the rule of law literacy, self-governmental institutions, civic and with local and provincial self-governmen­ associations, and technologically advanced tal institutions such as those established in agriculture and industry.46 Prussia by the Municipal Law of 1808 and in The effeCtiveness of public elementary the Austrian Empire by the legislation of 1862 schools in facilitating agricultural improvement authorizing samosprava (self-governtnent).41 and industrial expansion in the United States Moreover, because many foreign-born as well and in western, central, and as American-born citizens of the Great Plains may be better appreciated if one contrasts these appreciated the utility of the liberal arts and schools to their less well funded and man­ sciences, they were initially generous in pro­ aged counterparts in Italy, in the Hungarian viding funds for the establishment of public half of Austria-Hungary, and in the Russian elementary, secondary, and higher education: Empire. By 1897, illiteracy still prevailed among Much of the knowledge, skills, and civic Russia's more than 100 million inhabitants, of engagement of these pioneering settlers may be whom no more than 104;321 were university IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 187

graduates and among whom only 6,360 were owned six to ten hectares of land, an amount women.47 Although the recently united Italian insufficient to support a family but whose monarchy had promptly created an effective sale would pay for transportation to the New national railway network and postal and tele­ World as well as provide some capital to invest graph system, it did not give the same priority in a farm or small business. Many of these or funding to the establishment of universal, immigrants were the second or third sons of free, compulsory, and state-supported elemen­ families whose eldest sons expected to inherit tary and secondary schools.48 Nevertheless, most of the family property. Moreover, among immigrants to the United States from eastern this large group of young Europeans, the more and , as well as from Mexico, ambitious, intelligent, and adventurous were were on average as intelligent and industri­ those most likely to emigrate. Evidence also ous as their generally better educated western indicates that these European immigrants and northern European contemporaries, and were also among their peers the least willing to most of them readily obtained employment as defer to authoritarian political traditions or to unskilled laborers in manufacturing, mining, privileges conferred by wealth, birth, or social and farming. status. To help illustrate how the remarkable CZECH, GERMAN, AND ITALIAN economic and political transformation of IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS European and American society facilitated immigration to the United States generally Immigration has long been understood in and to the Great Plains in particular, I survey part as a selective process by which emigrants the settlement and acculturation of Czech, from every country usually demonstrated German, and Italian immigrants in the Great greater willingness than their sedentary neigh­ Plains from 1865 to 1914.49 These immigrants bors to take immediate risks in the interests are not only those whose history and ancestral of long-term gain. In leaving their ancestral are best known to me but are also in communities in order to seek a better life most respects comparable in their similarities for themselves and their families in the New and differences to other European immigrants World, they perceived the United States to in the Americas during the late nineteenth and be a land of almost unlimited opportunity for early twentieth centuries.50 farmers, industrial workers, and entrepreneurs. By 1914, , , and Italians, Nonetheless, by choosing to reside, insofar respectively, constituted the three most numer­ as possible, among other immigrants from ous groups of continental European immi­ their own European homeland, and especially grants in the United States. Germans became among those of like religion or from the same the largest of all immigrant groups in the Great community, they sought to preserve as much Plains and midwestern states in urban as well as as possible of their traditional way of life rural areas, whereas Slavs and Italians resided and maternal language while encouraging primarily in cities and towns, especially in the their children to learn English and acquire larger metropolitan areas along the Great Lakes American citizenship. Among every immigrant and in New England, New York, , group, loyalty to one's adopted country, the and .51 Americans of Czech origin United States, almost always took precedence were the largest Slavic-speaking immigrant over any residual loyalty to one's ancestral group in the Great Plains states from Texas to homeland, especially after one's children had but were outnumbered nation­ established their own families in America. wide by citizens of Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Typically neither the wealthiest nor the and Slovak ancestry. 52 poorest Europeans emigrated to the Americas. Today, most are descen­ Those most likely to depart were farmers who dants of immigrants who came to the United 188 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2011

States from Bohemia, , and Austrian among people who spoke their mother tongue Silesia between 1865 and 1914. At least a third and who often had arrived from the same or a of these immigrants settled in metropolitan nearby . and Cleveland while nearly a quarter My research on Czech, German, and Italian of all Czech immigrants settled in the Great immigrants found little to differentiate the Plains states to which they were attracted by experience of each of these groups in the Great affordable agricultural land, greater political Plains from what each experienced in other and religious freedom, and attractive com­ parts of the United States, aside from the mercial opportunities. Just as the history of greater difficulties these immigrants encoun­ these states cannot be comprehended without tered in learning how to prosper as farmers in reference to the rest of the nation, neither can a semiarid climate in which rainfall was highly their economy be understood apart from that unpredictable. One exception to this rule was of the Upper Midwest and especially Chicago, the fact that Czech immigrants who settled in as William Cronon has so thoroughly dem­ the Great Plains were more likely than their onstrated in his imaginative and well-docu­ counterparts elsewhere in the United States mented study of Nature's Metropolis: Chicago to have emigrated from rural as opposed to and the Great West. 53 urban areas of Bohemia and Moravia. The has always held first place in the only other exception was the fact that Czech number of citizens of Czech ancestry, thanks American Protestants became proportionately to metropolitan Chicago in which nearly one more numerous in Texas and North Dakota in every four Czech immigrants chose to reside. than in any other states. 54 But in each of Ever since 1890, Nebraska has been the state these two instances, what differentiated Czech with the greatest percentage of citizens of Czech Americans in the Great Plains had nothing ancestry as well as one of five states-includ­ to do with the region's distinctive topogra­ ing Illinois, New York, Ohio, and Texas-with phy or climate.55 That German immigrants the largest number of such citizens. Omaha in the Great Plains were more likely than continues to rank fourth among American those elsewhere in the United States to be metropolitan areas with the largest number Lutherans or is due primarily to of Czech American citizens after Chicago, two circumstances in Europe during the last Cleveland, and New York, and ahead of Cedar three decades of the nineteenth century, when Rapids, the Twin Cities, St. Louis, Baltimore, mass immigration to the Great Plains was at its and Los Angeles. Up to 1914, most Czech height. Agricultural depression and agrarian immigrants settled in those parts of the United overpopulation in the predominantly Lutheran States in which millions of German and tens northern and eastern parts of Prussia persuaded of thousands of Scandinavian immigrants were greater numbers and a higher percentage of already present. This should occasion no sur­ Germans to emigrate from those areas than prise given that all these groups enjoyed a high from other parts of Germany. Furthermore, the rate of literacy and comparable financial assets. exodus from Russia to North America of more Also, many Czech Americans spoke German than 250,000 German Russians, a majority as a second language and were somewhat more of whom were Protestants, began upon their likely to intermarry with having been subjected to conscription into than with any other non-Czech ethnic group. the Imperial Army in accordance with Dmitrii In the Great Plains states and in nearby rural Miliutin's military reforms of 1874.56 , , and , Czechs usu­ During the latter nineteenth century ally settled together in small towns or in rural and most of the twentieth century, German townships in which they sometimes comprised Americans constituted the largest ethnic a majority of the inhabitants. Like all European group in the United States so long as one sep­ immigrants, they usually chose to live and work arately distinguished Americans of English, IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 189

Welsh, Scots, and Scots-Irish descent among with the dominant immigrant ethnic group those whose country of origin was Great from the European country or province of Britain. Moreover, in the Midwest and Great their birth. This practice appears to have Plains, German Americans outnumbered all facilitated Jewish acculturation in the United Americans of British ancestry. Of all immi­ States as well as having encouraged friendship grants, Germans were the most differenti­ and cooperation among Jewish immigrants ated by religion, social class, politics, dialect, regardless of their country of origin or their and homeland region, thus always making denominational preference, be it Conservative, it difficult to assert broad generalizations Orthodox, or Reformed. Noteworthy is the fact about German Americans as a whole. 57 More that in Czech immigrant communities, Czech than half of all German immigrants to the Jews were more likely than Czech freethinkers United States had been members of various or Catholics to establish English-language as state Lutheran churches. At least one third opposed to Czech-language newspapers. An were Catholics, and the rest were divided outstanding example is Edward Rosewater, a among Calvinist, Methodist, Anabaptist, Czech Jewish immigrant who founded in 1871 and Jewish congregations whose size corre­ the Pokrok zapadu (Progress of the West), the sponded to the order in which they are here first Czech-language newspaper west of the listed. Acculturation generally occurred fairly . Within several years he sold rapidly among German immigrants, but this this paper to one of his employees, the free­ process appears to have taken place somewhat thinking Jan Rosicky, in order to establish more quickly in families where one spouse was the Omaha Bee as a mass circulation daily and Anglo-American or in families of German advocate for the Republican Party. Rosicky Methodists or Calvinists as opposed to fami­ promptly founded other Czech periodicals, lies of German Lutherans or Catholics. including the Hospodar (The Farmer) in 1890, Although Italian immigrants were differ­ which soon became the most circulated Czech­ entiated comparably to Germans according language agricultural weekly in the world and to social class, dialect, and homeland region, helped to acquaint Czech immigrants with almost every Italian was a Catholic. In the all they needed to know in order to compete Great Plains, as elsewhere in the United States, successfully as farmers in the Midwest and the majority of Italian immigrants came from Great Plains, where climate and soils usually Sicily and the other southern Italian prov­ differed markedly from those in Bohemia and inces of Calabria, Campania, Puglia, and the Moravia.60 Abruzzo, all of which were characterized in Churches of all denominations, as well as the later nineteenth century by agricultural synagogues representing different varieties of overpopulation and fairly low rates of literacy. 58 , were quickly established in the Great Like other immigrants, Italians typically chose Plains by the first settlers to arrive from abroad or whenever possible to dwell among friends or from other parts of the United States, often with relatives who had come from the same Old financial support from American denominations World neighborhoods, though rarely in any or from churches overseas.61 Noteworthy among American city did a majority of Italian immi­ the many such denominations were German grants come from the same place in Italy. One , German Congregationalism, and notable exception was Omaha's Little Italy, Czech . German Methodism where nearly three-fifths of its residents came was founded in the Midwest by Wilhelm Nast from the town of Carlentini in eastern Sicily.59 in 1835 to convert fellow German immigrants Jewish immigrants usually associated with to Methodism. He obtained financial support their co-religionists in synagogues or in secu­ from the Gamble family of Cincinnati's Procter lar Jewish communities, regardless of mother and Gamble Company after his daughter, tongue, rather than by identifying primarily Fanny, married William Gamble, the son of 190 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 20ll

Yukon mlyny FIG. 2: This reverse painted glass assertion of religious piety states in German that "1 and my family JIIOU neJlIlooern6jif. nejc1okODalejill a. nojleJ)!fml mltn,. 0. Dlouk u na cel~m Jlhod­ Dad!. l> r '\'~ nynl fie . t\lv ! Jeltfi jct'lfm olevator, D. 500,000 bu .§ IG obllt. At bude 0 0' shall serve the Lord" - "Ich und mein Haus wollen ttaxen. lmdeme mItt IIII a411tnlho nIbil!. n IL 800.000 build oblU, a hullern. mOIl\ . Y_ rlbf tl 1500 bujla mouk,. denl'll. dem Herrn dienen," c. 1875-1885. Zadejte a kupu]te " YUKON'S BEST FLOUR", established in the late 1880s by Vincenc Pisek Yukonskou nejlepii mouku

~1U et . jI obc1 l"1etl kdelloHv ... jlhosioac1n ftlh a jlhoV$'ehod nlc:h , U.tft(:h, Jakol I ., with financial support from the Vanderbilt family New YoJ'ku, BOItt onu. CblcaC\1 .. Jlngeb velkteh mhteC:l!:. 1.1 and other wealthy patrons in order to win con­ YUKON MILL and aRliN CO. verts among freethinking Czech immigrants who J. F . K .... UI. pflfd.. A. F. Dobrt. mbto-ph4.. F. L. Itro1rtU. taJ. a "11: 1. "[UKON. OJUAROJlA.. preferred not to associate with any church.64 The foreign-language parishes of American FIG. 1: The Yukon Mill & Grain Co. of Yukon, Catholicism numbered in the thousands by OK, appeared in an advertisement from Hospodat the latter nineteenth century and were led (Vol. 26 , No. 1, page 109) illustrating how modern technology lowers the cost and accelerates the speed of by priests who spoke the appropriate foreign food production and distribution. All figures from the languages in addition to conducting Mass in author's collection. .65 For example, in Omaha, Catholics founded the Czech-language Saint Wenceslaus (Svaty Vaclav) parish in 1877, the German­ James N. Gamble. Fanny Nast Gamble's sub­ language St. Joseph's parish in 1886, and the· sequent philanthropical generosity to German Italian-language St. Francis Cabrini parish Methodism's educational and charitable work (originally St. Philomena's) shortly thereafter. facilitated that denomination's establishment of Foreign-language Protestant services were con­ 740 congregations by 1915 to serve more than ducted in German at the Kountze Memorial 60,000 members in all areas where German Lutheran Church and other congregations immigrants had settled in large numbers, pri­ and in Czech at the Bethlehem Presbyterian marily in the Middle Atlantic, Middle Western, Church. Before and after the turn of the cen­ and Great Plains states.62 Meanwhile, the much tury, Catholic priests, Protestant pastors, and smaller organization of German Congregational Jewish rabbis assumed positions of national as churches had organized German-language con­ well as community leadership as, for example, gregations in the states of the Old Northwest did the Reverend Jan Vranek of Omaha's Saint and in the northern Great Plains with the sup­ Wenceslaus parish and Rabbi Dr. Frederick port of a denomination whose congregations Cohn of Omaha's Temple Israe1.66 then primarily served native or transplanted Czech immigrants to the United States from New Englanders.63 Czech Presbyterianism was 1865 to 1914 were unusual i n two respects. IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 191

First, they exerted extraordinary efforts to try to perpetuate the use their native language primarily because having done so in Europe had been the principal means by which they had maintained their national identity after the Habsburgs had obliterated Czech political autonomy and Protestant and Hussite congre­ gations during the Thirty Years' War of 1618 to 1648. Second, by 1900, Czech Americans became the only European immigrants among whom a majority initially chose not affiliate with any organized religion. Calling them­ selves freethinkers (svobodomyslne Cesi), they established gymnastic, educational, and service associations, most notably the Sokol Organization, as well as a variety of fraternal and benevolent societies, like the Czecho­ FIG. 3: Plate commemorating the Czech National Bazaar of Freedom in Omaha in September 1918. Slavonic Benevolent Society (CSPS, or Cesko­ Slovansky Podporujfcf Spolek), the Western Bohemian Fraternal Association (ZCB], or Zapadnf Ceska Bratrska ]ednota), the Unity who wished their country to remain at peace of Czech Women OCD, or ]ednota Ceskych continued to advocate loans and material aid Dam), and the Slavic Benevolent Order of to the Allies as the best means to diminish the State of Texas (SP]ST, or Slovanska the likelihood that the United States would Podporujfcf ]ednota Statu Texasu). These be obliged to defend its national interests by institutions served many of the same needs as declaring war on Germany'?o Moreover, moSt churches by encouraging fellowship and com­ Italian Americans welcomed U.S. support for munity service as well as self-improvement in Italy as one of the principal Allied powers, knowledge and physical fitness. Nevertheless, and after the war, the residents of Omaha's an extraordin~rily great emphasis upon per­ Little Italy joined their friends and relatives in sonal responsibility for individual achievement Carlentini, Sicily, in building that town's large sometimes worked against social or community war memorial.71 American Czechs and Slovaks solidarity and may have contributed to the enthusiastically supported their adopted coun­ relatively high rate of suicide among freethink­ try as well as the wartime revolutionary move­ ing as opposed to religious Czech immigrants.67 ment to create an independent Czechoslovak Both world wars accelerated the accul­ Republic.72 Nonetheless, to a great extent the turation of American immigrants and their "isolationism" prevalent in the Midwest and children, as millions of them demonstrated Great Plains before American entry into each their loyalty to their adopted country by of the world wars was a phenomenon primarily serving in the armed forces of the United reflecting a desire by many German Americans States.68 Well before American entry into not to have the Unite4 States go to war against , American sentiment was primar­ Germany and by many not ily pro-Allied as is illustrated by the presence to have the U.S. militarily support Great of immigrants as well as native-born citizens Britain,?3 But upon American entry into each among the more than 41,000 Americans who world war, the vast m:ajority ofcitizens in these joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force and other ethnic groups did their best to help before April 1917 in order to fight against achieve Allied victory and the postwar recon­ Germany.69 Even many of the Americans struction of Europe. 192 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2011

ThE EFFECT OF RAILWAYS ON IMMIGRATION AND ON URBANIZATION, INDUSTRIALIZATION, AND COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE

From 1865 onward, railway and steamship !=ompanies on bqth sides of carried immigrants as well as European manufactured goods to the United States and on return trips carried agricultural produce, minerals, and­ increasingly-manufactured goods to markets in Europe, Canada, and Mexico, thus tying the Great Plains states at the time of their estab­ lishment to a burgeoning and swiftly expanding world economy.74 No technological innovation more profoundly determined patterns of urban and rural settlement in the Great Plains states fr~m North Dakota to Texas than did railways. Their operations made possible the creation of an integrated and ever more prosperous national economy, four standard time zones, and nationwide postal and telegraph systems, FIG. 4: Brakeman's lantern from the Burlington while facilitating the nationwide distribution and Missouri River Railroad in Nebraska marked of such goods as barbed wire, steam-powered "B&MRRR in Neb" on both the lid of the lantern and excavating and farm machinery, and centrally in the mould-blown globe. Patent date, 1878. processed meat, lumber, and grain.75 The rapid construction as well as the economic success of American railways owed much not only to American workers and managers but also to as implied in such frequently used expressions as an enormous investment of foreign, especially "to railroad a man" or "to railroad a bill." British and Dutch, capital and the employ­ Railroads not only shattered time and dis­ ment of immigrant laborers, including Irish, tance and transformed the physical landscape, Chinese, Mexicans, and Italians.76 Moreover, they also established what remain to this day the construction and operation of railways the principal routes of commerce and patterns constituted the greatest adventure in the of rural and urban settlement in the Great lives of many employees, be they managers, Plains states, where federal highways in the mechanical engineers, conductors, telegra­ early twentieth century and interstate high­ phers, stationmasters, or locomotive engineers ways after midcentury have usually paralleled and firemen. Just as railroads became America's the principal east-to-west and north-to-south "first big business" by the middle of the nine­ railway trunk lines. Moreover, the location of teenth century, so did railway workers create most cities and towns between the Missouri and build the first nationwide craft unions River and the was deter­ in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers mined either by that of the transcontinental and the Brotherhood of Locomotive FiremenJ7 railway trunk lines or by their connecting Furthermore, Americans of that era began to branch lines.78 Whereas the former lines had view with concern as well as admiration the been constructed primarily to carry through power of railroad corporations to influence traffic, the latter had been built to feed traffic national, state, and local businesses and politics, to them, including outgoing agricultural pro- IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 193 duce, minerals, and processed food and incom­ land along the main lines or branch lines of ing heavy machinery, furniture, and other the transcontinental railroads and the "greater manufactured items,79 Great national railway grangers."82 Several scholarly monographs have centers emerged on the Great Plains after 1865: shown exactly how these railway companies became the largest such center in recruited European immigrants by offering Texas ahead of Dallas, Fort Worth, and El Paso. to sell them inexpensive land along recently Denver, "the queen city of the plains," served constructed railroad routes. Among these as the gateway to the mineral and agricultural railroads, the Chicago and North Western wealth of the Rockies. Kansas City, Missouri, attracted thousands of Czechs to its "full hand" became a principal center for railways to the of branch lines through eastern Nebraska and south-central Great Plains. The great Overland southeastern , including the line Route began at Omaha and Council Bluffs, and from Fremont through Linwood and Morse the Twin Cities served as the eastern termini of Bluff to Seward and Hastings, and the line the first two northern transcontinental lines; from Norfolk through Verdigre, Nebraska, to smaller centers of regional importance arose Winner, South Dakota. Italian immigrants in Amarillo, Lubbock, City, Tulsa, who typically arrived with little capital found Pueblo, Fort Scott, Parsons, Salina, Topeka, work in the Great Plains principally in railway Wichita, Lincoln, Grand Island, Hastings, construction and maintenance, in mining Aberdeen, and Fargo.8o in such places as Louisville and Lafayette, By the turn of the twentieth century, ever­ Colorado, and in industries in large cities increasing capital investment and techno­ including St. Paul, Omaha, Kansas City, and logical improvements to railways-including Denver. interlocking signals, continuous air-braking, In almost every facet of immigrant life, and cast-integral frames-had steadily reduced the railway was omnipresent. For example, the absolute as well as the inflation-adjusted Omaha's having become the second larg­ cost of carrying freight and passengers.81 est Czech-language publishing center in the Furthermore, in conjunction with European United States was facilitated by its status as railways and international steamship lines, the seventh or eighth largest American rail­ American and Canadian railroads helped way center. The National Printing Company make possible the most extensive and rapid (Narodnf tiskarna) of Omaha not only pub­ mass migration of human beings in all of world lished Omaha's daily, weekly, and monthly history. For example, one could purchase a Czech-language secular periodicals for state­ single ticket to travel swiftly from Bologna or wide or national distribution, it also printed any other Italian city directly to Omaha via and distributed by rail almost all the weekly the ports of Naples and New York, or one could or monthly Czech-language newspapers that travel from in Bohemia by way of the bore the names of smaller towns in Nebraska, ports of Hamburg and New York directly to Kansas, or South Dakota. Not surprisingly, such Czech American communities as Prague, railroads attracted customers and enthusiasts Nebraska, Prague, Oklahoma, or New Prague, among native-born Americans generally, as Minnesota. well as immigrants and visitors from Europe, Patterns of immigrant settlement in the including such famous Czechs as the classical Great Plains were frequently determined by composer Antonfn Dvorak and the future the location of railways. For example, most president-liberator of , T. G. Czech immigrants arrived in Nebraska and Masaryk. During the first six decades of the Texas and other Great Plains states too late twentieth century, Italian American engineers to obtain farmland under the generous terms managed the design and production of toy of the Homestead Act of 1862. But they came trains by the Lionel Corporation while Italian just in time to purchase slightly more expensive American immigrants predominated not only 194 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2011

FIG. 5: Illustration of the Omaha printing plant of the Ntirodnf Tisktirna (National Printing Co.), the second largest Czech-language publisher in the United States.

among that firm's factory workers in Irvington, sonal memoirs and thoughtful histories based New Jersey, but also among those of the A. C. primarily upon his more than three decades of Gilbert Co. of New Haven, Connecticut-the experience in the building and management of manufacturer of American Flyer Trains from Texas railroads, notably the and 1938 to 1967. Furthermore, during the years Aransas Pass Railway and those that came to 1922 to 1937, the dies for Lionel toy trains were comprise the St. Louis Brownsville and Mexico designed and manufactured by the Societa Railroad and subsequently the Gulf Coast Meccanica La Precisa in Naples, Italy.83 Lines. His Gringo Builders and Uriah Lott: Texas is one of many states whose modern Dauntless Pioneer and Man of Vision are among history is virtually unintelligible without refer­ the best informed of the histories of railway ence to the many ways that railways facilitated construction anywhere in the United States, its settlement, growth, and prosperity. The his­ given the author's clarity of exposition and his tory of railroads in the southern Great Plains skill in illuminating quantitative evidence with began with the Texas Legislature's having in clever and appropriate anecdotes.86 Both books December 1836 chartered the Texas Railroad, are also noteworthy in revealing not only the Navigation and Banking Company. Moreover, international context in which Texas railroads no state has a richer, more analytical, or better were designed, built, and operated but also in documented railway history than does Texas, portraying explicitly and sympathetically the appropriately enough for this state whose rail­ work of Mexican American as well as Anglo­ way mileage has since 1880 far exceeded that American railway employees. of any other.84 S. J. Reed's A Another one of the ablest and most articu­ Railroads and of Transportation Conditions late railway builders in the Great Plains was under Spain and Mexico and the Republic and General Grenville Dodge, who surveyed and the State is still renowned as the most compre­ supervised the construction of the transcon­ hensive scholarly history of railways in a single tinental Overland Route of the Union Pacific American state.85 James Lewellyn Allhands's Railway (1863-69) between Council Bluffs and (1879-1978) classic publications are both per- Promontory Summit, Utah, as well as most of IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 195

the 972-mile main line of the Texas and Pacific the Soviet Union and its satellites to establish Railway from Texarkana through Dallas, Fort their rule over all Slavic nations as well as the Worth, and Midland to EI Paso (1873-81), homelands of Saxons, Prussians, Hungarians, and portions of other western railroads.87 and Romanians, a rule that endured until the Other outstanding railway entrepreneurs in collapse of these "People's Republics" in the fall the Great Plains and the greater American of 1989 and of the Soviet Union itself in 1991. West included James J. Hill of the Great Furthermore, ever since 1918, the prosperity Northern Railway; Charles Elliott Perkins of the Great Plains states has continued to be of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy tied to that of broader American, European, Railroad and the Burlington and Missouri and world markets in good times as well as in River Railroad in Nebraska; Cyrus K. Holliday periods of financial panic or economic depres­ of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe; and E. sion. These began with the worldwide agricul­ H. Harriman, who in association with Kuhn, ture depression during the 1920s and the Great Loeb and Co. purchased the bankrupt Union Depression of 1929-38, and continued through Pacific at auction in Omaha on November 1, the oil embargo and recessions of the early 1897, and who subsequently took control of the 1970s and 1980s, the dot. com bust of 2001, and Southern Pacific, the Illinois Central, and the the Great Recession of 2007-10. Chicago and Alton.88 These main lines consti­ To a great extent, mass immigration from tute the larger part of today's rebuilt and pros­ continental Europe facilitated the settlement perous Union Pacific and Burlington Northern and prosperity of the Great Plains states from Santa Fe railway systems, almost all of whose 1865 to 1914. But this rapid transformation of unprofitable branch lines have been abandoned a semiarid and heretofore sparsely inhabited during the past thirty years.89 region into one of thriving cities and farms cannot be adequately understood apart from CONCLUSION contemporary political, educational, eco­ nomic, and technological developments in This article has briefly outlined how, from Europe. Furthermore, in an even broader sense, 1865 to 1914, the expansion of civil liberties, an appreciation of world as well as European industrialization, mechanized agriculture, and American history is essential to our steam transport by land and , and immigra­ understanding of the past and present of Great tion to the Americas helped make possible the Plains states and of the diverse origins of their settlement of the Great Plains. These develop­ citizens. ments also fostered an unprecedented period of prosperity and peace in Europe as well as North NOTES America. This great transformation was tem­ 1. I presented an earlier, abbreviated version porarily halted by World War I and thereafter of this paper, entitled "Immigration to the Great retarded by postwar political developments, in Plains, 1865-1914: War, Politics, Technology, and part by congressional restriction of immigra­ Economic Development," on March 10, 2010, as a tion to the United States and to a larger extent Paul Olson Seminar at the Center for Great Plains by the triumph in Europe of reactionary politi­ Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. On April 9, 2010, I read a revised and shortened version cal movements that curtailed civil liberties and of this paper at the Center's symposium devoted discouraged emigration: communism in the to "Czech and : International Soviet Union, fascism in Italy, and Nazism in Perspectives from the Great Plains." Germany. Allied victory in World War II led 2. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the to Italy's becoming a republic in 1946 and to Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1929), 21. American, British, and French occupation and 3. Although the United States is the oldest of democratic "reconstruction" of western and the large republics of the world and the only one southern Germany. The same victory enabled whose longevity approaches half that of the ancient 196 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2011

Roman Republic, historians of Europe and ­ to the classic 1954 edition; Alberto Mario Banti, and especially those of the ancient and medieval n Risorgimento italiano (Bari: Laterza, 2006); Aldo worlds-are accustomed to studying developments Mola, Giolitti: Lo statista della nuova Italia (Milano: through much longer periods of time than is typi­ Mondadori, 2003); Giovanni Montroni, La societa cally the case for historians of the United States. italiana dall'unificazione aHa Grande Guerra societa The latter's areas of specialization tend to be more (Bari: Laterza, 2007); Alfonso Scirocco, Garibaldi: restricted in time and subject matter, though not Citizen of the World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton necessarily in geographical extent, as is evident University Press, 2007); and Frank M. Snowden, in the enormous size of North America and in the The Conquest of Malaria: Italy, 1900-1962 (New current enthusiasm for studying Atlantic history. Haven, CT: Press, 2006). Moreover, because historians of the United States 7. Geoffrey Wawro, The Austro-Prussian War: tend to be monolingual, they are less likely than Austria's War with Prussia and Italy in 1866 (Cam­ historians of Europe to examine foreign-language bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), is the best sources, SOme of which provide useful perspec­ study of this conflict.. tives or information concerning such aspects of 8. This occurred from the May 1862 Mexican American history as immigration, commerce, and defeat of a French army at Puebla through the June foreign policy. 1863 French occupation of Mexico City to the 4. Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Unification January 1867 withdrawal of all French forces at the of Germany: The Process of Unification, 1815-1871 behest of the United States. The French puppet (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963); Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg was executed in Eugene N. Anderson, The Social and Political Quetaro in May 1867 in reprisal for his having in Conflict in Prussia, 1858-1864 (Lincoln: University 1865 ordered the shooting of any Mexican troops of Nebraska Press, 1954); and Michael Howard, who were wounded or captured by the French. The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of 9. Maggie Siggins, Riel: A Life of Revolution France, 1870-71 (New York: Macmillan, 1962). (Toronto: Harper Collins, 1994). 5. A smaller contemporary conflict with equally 10. Growing trade with Japan added to the momentous consequences for world history was the transcontinental freight traffic and earnings of the Boshin War of January 1868 to May 1869 by which Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Great Northern, the Meiji emperor suppressed rebel troops loyal to and Northern Pacific Railroads and thus contrib­ the Shogun in order to inaugurate the "moderniza­ uted in a small way to the economy of the Great tion" of Japan. In November 1867, upon the Meiji Plains states. Japanese immigration to the United emperor's ascending the throne and his "restoration" States would also have grown rapidly had it not been of Imperial executive authority, power was relin­ largely curtailed by the Gentlemen's Agreement quished by the fifteenth and last Tokugawa Shogun, of 1907 by which the Japanese government ceased Tokugawa Yoshinobu, who resigned; but samurai to issue passports to its citizens wishing to obtain loyal to Yoshinobu rebelled against the emperor in employment in the continental United States, with January 1868 until they were defeated by Imperial the exception of children, spouses, and parents of troops from the Choshii and Satsuma domains. On Japanese who were already U.S. residents. Japanese the Meiji Restoration and its consequences, see immigrants continued to come to the Territory of Hugh Borton, Japan's Modern Century (New York: . See also note 5 above. Ronald Press, 1955), and Jonathan Bailey, Great 11. An enormous scholarly literature discusses Power Strategy in Asia: Empire, Culture, and Trade, the American Civil War. Arguably the best single­ 1905-2005 (New York: , 2007). volume survey is James McPherson, Battle Cry 6. Throughout this essay, I refer to European­ of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford: Oxford as opposed to American-liberals and liberal­ University Press, 1992). ism. Readers should also be aware that local and 12. Technically, this transcontinental line was regional representative government after 1860 in not completed until the Union Pacific's opening in Italy, Germany, and Austria-Hungary was based 1872 of a bridge across the Missouri River between on"class" or "curial" voting weighted in favor of Omaha and Council Bluffs. The most thorough wealth and higher education. Such suffrage in the scholarly study of the construction of the Overland Austro-Hungarian context is discussed by Bruce M. Route is that of David Haward Bain, Empire Express: Garver, The Young Czech Party, 1874-1901, and the Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (New Emergence of a Multi-Party System (New Haven, CT: York: Viking Penguin, 1999). Concerning this Yale University Press, 1978). On the unification of enterprise, as well as the subsequent history of the Italy and its consequences, see Dennis Mack Smith, Union Pacific, see Maury Klein, Union Pacific, vol. Cavour and Garibaldi (Cambridge: Cambridge 1: The Birth of a Railroad, 1862-1893, and Union University Press, 1985), with an updated introduction Pacific, vol. 2: The Rebirth, 1894-1969 (Garden City, IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 197

NY: Doubleday, 1987). Vol. 1, pp. 219-27, describes 21. This prosperity was interrupted by ten reces­ the meeting at Promontory Summit. sions, of which only two lasted more than one year: 13. See Ann Norton Greene, Horses at Work: that of November 1973 to March 1975, and of July Harnessing Power in Industrial America (Cambridge, 1981 to November 1982. MA: Press, 2008). 22. These short wars included the Italians' 14. See Sidney Pollard, Integration of the European attempt to conquer Ethiopia, which ended in their Economy since 1815 (1981; London: Routledge, 2006); defeat at Adowa in 1896; the Spanish-American Sidney Pollard and Colin Holmes, Documents of War of 1898; the American suppression of the European Economic History, vol. 2: Industrial Power ensuing Filipino insurrection of 1898-1903; the and National Rivalry, 1870-1914, (New York: St. Boer War of 1899-1902; the Russo-Japanese War Martin's Press, 1972); and James Belich, Replenishing of 1904-5; the Austro-Hungarian annexation of the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908; and the Italian con­ Anglo-World, 1783-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University quest of Tripoli (now Libya) beginning in 1911. Press, 2009), who clearly indicates the extent to 23. In this respect, comparable to the Great which worldwide settlement by British emigrants Plains of the United States and Canada are the preceded as well as flourished during the industrial semiarid regions of Australia whose citizens, like revolution. all Australians, have enjoyed representative institu­ 15. See Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches: Tech­ tions, the rule of law, and since 1945, mass immigra­ nological Creativity and Economic Progress (Oxford: tion from all parts of Europe. Belich, Replenishing , 1990); Joanne S. Liu, the Earth, stresses the ongoing importance of British Barbed Wire (Missoula, MT: Mountain Press trade, investment, and institutions, as well as emi­ Publishing, 2009). gration, in fostering the prosperity and rapid growth 16. See, for example, Michael Forsberg, Dan of the United States as well as the English-speaking O'Brien, and David Wishart, Great Plains: America's overseas dominions of the . He also Lingering Wild (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, demonstrates how German and Scandinavian 2009), and John Price, Not Just Any Land: A Personal immigrants readily adapted to Anglo institutions, and Literary Journey into the American Grasslands values and expectations. By contrast, my essay gives (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004). more emphasis to the comparable experience in 17. Emancipation of the serfs of Russia occurred the United States of Czech immigrants and of the on February 19, 1861, by the Julian calendar. Surveys American-born children of those Italian and Slavic of this event and its long-range consequences include immigrants who had arrived with little capital or Hugh Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 1801-1917 formal education. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967);W: E. Mosse, 24. Jon Gjerde, From Peasants to Farmers (Cam­ Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia, rev. bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), discusses ed. (New York: Collier Books, 1962), and Geroid in explicit detail the experience in the Upper Tanquary Robinson, Rural Russia under the Old Midwest of Norwegian immigrants from Balestrand, Regime (New York: Macmillan, 1932). Norway. 18. "On the two sides the soil is equally fertile, 25. Albro Martin, Enterprise Denied: Origins of the position as favourable, yet everything is dif­ the Decline of American Railroads, 1897-1917 (New ferent." Tocqueville also advocated the immediate York: Columbia University Press, 1971); William Z. as opposed to the gradual emancipation of slaves, Ripley, Railroads, Rates, and Regulation (New York: contending that "only the experience of freedom, Longmans, Green and Co., 1912). a long-term freedom contained and directed by 26. Though American participation was essen­ an energetic and moderate power, will suggest and tial to achieving Allied victory in both world wars, give men opinions, virtues and customs worthy of our allies did most of the fighting and suffered by citizens of a free country." George Wilson Pierson, far the greater casualties. For example, the French Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (Oxford: Army killed more Germans in World War I than did Oxford University Press, 1938), reprinted as any other army, and the Red Army accomplished Tocqueville in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins the same feat in World War II. University Press, 1996),566-69. 27. See George W. Pierson, "The Frontier and 19. Ibid., 242-44. American Institutions: A Criticism of the Turner 20. Herbert Feis, Europe, the World's Banker, Thesis," New England Quarterly 15 (June 1942): 1870-1914: An Account of European Foreign 224-55, and also Richard C. Wade, The Urban Investment and the Connection of World Finance Frontier: Pioneer Life in Early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, with Diplomacy before World War One (1930; New Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis (Chicago: York: W. W. Norton, 1965). University of Chicago Press, 1964). 198 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2011

28. E. McCormick and Robert W. (1867-1957) whose Little House on the Prairie intro­ McCormick, New Englanders on the Ohio Frontier: duced a best-selling series of related books; Willa Migration and Settlement of Worthington, Ohio Cather (1873-1947), author of My Antonia and (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1998). The other studies of frontier life; Elmwood, Nebraska's heads of these thirty-eight families, constituting Bess Streeter Aldrich (1881-1954), who wrote Rim the Scioto Company, established Worthington on of the Prairie and many short stories; Wright Morris high ground one mile east of the Olentangy River (1910-1998) of Central City, Nebraska, whose in central Ohio in 1803, the same year Ohio became novels include The Home Place (1948), Ceremony in a state. Worthington's Episcopal congregation was Lone Tree (1965), The Field of Vision (1965), and In the first established west of the Alleghenies, and Orbit (1967); Louise Erdrich, author of such popu­ its Masonic lodge, founded in 1804, is the oldest lar novels as LiJve Medicine and The Beet Queen; in continuous use west of the Alleghenies. For the and Mari Sandoz (1896-1966), best known for her broader context, see R. Douglas Hurt, The Ohio biographies Old Jules and Crazy Horse and for many Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830 novels, including Capitol City, whose characteristics (Bloomington: University Press, 1996). resemble those of Lincoln, Nebraska. 29. Ray Allen Billington, The Far Western 34. A representative collection of German­ Frontier, 1830-1861 (New York: Harper and language letters from German American immi­ Brothers, 1956); Walter Prescott Webb, The Great grants appears in Briefe aus Amerika: Deutsche Plains (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1931). Auswanderer schreiben aus dere Neuen Welt, 1830- 30. Outstanding histories of the settlement 1930, ed. W. Helbich, W. B. Kamphoefner, and U. of the territories and states in the Great Plains Sommer (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988). include Bernard DeVoto, The Course of Empire 35. Translations of such memoirs from Czech (: Houghton Mifflin, 1952); J. Frank Dobie, immigrants in Texas appear in Clinton Machann The Longhorns (Boston: Little, Brown, 1947); and James W. Mendl Jr., Czech Voices: Stories from Joseph Kinsey Howard, High, Wide, and Texas in the Amerikan Narodnf Kalendar (College Handsome (New Haven: Yale University Press, Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991). 1943); Elwyn B. Robinson, History of North Dakota Founded by Joseph Svoboda, the Czech Heritage (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966); Collection in Love Library at the University of Michael P. Malone, The Battle for Butte: Mining and Nebraska-Lincoln includes comprehensive runs of Politics on the Northern Frontier, 1864-1906 (Seattle: Amerikan as well as other Czech-language almanacs University of Press, 1985); Patricia like the Catholic Narod. Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The 36. Examples include Arthur C. Wakeley, ed., Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W. Omaha: The Gate City, and Douglas , W. Norton, 1987); and James C. Olson and Ronald Nebraska: A Record of Settlement, Organizations, C. Naugle, , 3rd ed. (Lincoln: Progress, and Achievement, 2 vols. (Chicago: S. J. University of Nebraska Press, 1997). Clarke Publishing Co., 1917); and Addison Erwin 31. Everett Dick, The Sod-House Frontier, 1854- Sheldon, Nebraska: The Land and the People, 3 vols. 1890: A Social History of the Northern Plains from the (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1931). In each of Creation of Kansas and Nebraska to the Admission of these titles, the first volume discusses history, and (1954; Lincoln: University of Nebraska every other volume contains short biographies, most Press, 1979). See also Everett Dick, Vanguards of of which celebrate men of wealth and civic influ­ the Frontier: A Social History of the Northern Plains ence. and Rocky Mountains from the Fur Traders to the 37. Tomas Capek, Moje Amerika: Vzpominky a Sod Busters (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, uvahy (1861-1934), (Praha: Frantisek Borovy, 1935), 1965). and FrantiSek J. Vlcek in Povidka meho zivota, 2nd 32. See Howard Lamar, Dakota Territory, 1861- ed. (Praha: Druzstevnf Prace, 1929). The latter work 1889: A Study of Frontier Politics (New Haven, CT: was also published as Frank Vlchek, The Story of My Yale University Press, 1956), and The Far Southwest, Life, trans. and ed. Winston Chrislock (Kent, OH: 1846-1912: A Territorial History (New Haven, CT: Kent State University Press, 2005). Yale University Press, 1966). 38. Allan G. Bogue demonstrates how improve­ 33. Authors of such works pertaining to the ments in agriculture and corporate enterprise Great Plains include Ivan Doig, whose Montana advanced the settlement and prosperity of Illinois, childhood is reflected in his autobiographical Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. See his From Heart Earth and This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Prairie to Corn Belt: Farming on the Illinois and Western Mind; Frank L. Baum (1856-1919), whose Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: allegorical The Wizard of Oz inspired a movie as University of Chicago Press, 1963), and Money at well as many fictional sequels; Laura Ingalls Wilder Interest: The Farm Mortgage on the Middle Border IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 199

(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Bison Arnold, had decades earlier advocated Britain's emu­ Books, 1969). lation of German primary and secondary education. 39. Michael L. Tate, The Frontier Army in the See Matthew Arnold, Democratic Education, ed. R. Settlement of the West (Norman, OK: University H. Super (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, of Oklahoma Press, 1999); Joseph C. Porter, 1962); and Schools and Universities on the , Paper Medicine Man: John Gregory Bourke and ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan His American West (Norman, OK: University of Press, 1964), vols. 2 and 4, respectively, of The Oklahoma Press, 1989); William Goetzmann, Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. Army Exploration in the American West, 1803-1863 45. A classic autobiography that emphasizes (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959); an immigrant's education before and after arrival Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the in America is that of Serbian immigrant Michael Scientist in the Winning of the American West (New Pupin, From Immigrant to Inventor (New York: York: Alfred Knopf 1967); and The West of the Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923). Imagination (Norman: University of Oklahoma 46. After 1871, the newly united German Empire Press, 2009). See also Howard R. Lamar, ed., The promptly surpassed France in the production of New Encyclopedia of the American West (New iron, coal, and steel, and overtook Great Britain Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). in this respect by 1910. Moreover, by that time, 40. In exaggerated form, this point of view Germany led the world in the size and quality of is evident today in the disinclination of some its chemical industry and was second only to the Americans to acknowledge gratefully such positive United States in the generation of electricity as achievements of the federal government as national well as in the production of iron, coal, steel, and defense, Social Security, Medicare, FDIC-insured aluminum. Within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, bank accounts, farm price supports, and measures Czech firms excelled in food processing and in to promote public health and safety. the manufacture of machine tools, internal com­ 41. On such institutions generally, see Eugene bustion engines, and transportation equipment N. Anderson and Pauline R. Anderson, Political generally. Each of the Scandinavian countries Institutions and Social Change in Continental Europe manufactured and exported high-quality consumer in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of goods. Belgium was the world's sixth largest steel Press, 1967). On samosprava, see Garver, producer; Italy led in the generation of hydroelec­ The Young Czech Party, 89-98. tric power and in mileage of electrified railways; 42. Not all pioneering settlers from the American and France possessed Europe's largest automotive South had received a comparable education. industry and retained its leadership in high-quality Universal, free, compulsory, and tax-supported porcelain and art glass as well as in the fashion elementary schools did not generally begin to industry. appear south of the Mason-Dixon Line until after 47. Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire, 477-78. the advent of "radical" Reconstruction in 1867. In the same year only 1,072,977 students-less than 43. See Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern half of whom were women-were enrolled in sec­ Germany, vol. 2: 1648-1840 (New York: Alfred A. ondary schools throughout the vast Russian Empire, Knopf, 1963),472-84; and Gordon Craig, Germany, whose population exceeded 100 million. 1866-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 48. Albert Schram, Railways and the Formation 186-92. of the Italian State in the Nineteenth Century 44. Michel Gaillard, Jules Ferry (Paris: Ubrairie (Cambridge: Cambridge Uriiversity Press), 2008; Fayard, 1989), examines the Ferry Law and its con­ Maurice Neufeld, Italy: School for Awakening sequences. The Guizot Law of 1833 had authorized Countries (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1961); French communes to establish public elementary Luigi Salvatorelli, The Risorgimento: Thought and schools but had provided no national funding for Action, trans. Mario Domandi (New York: Harper them. Garver, Young Czech Party, 94-95, 112-13, and Row, 1970); and Christopher Duggan, The Force and 203-4, discusses the establishment of universal, of Destiny: A History of Italy since 1796 (New York: free, compulsory, and state-supported public schools Houghton Mifflin, 2007). in Bohemia and Moravia in the context of other 49. Pertinent to this essay are various short political and economic reforms introduced by self­ entries in David Wishart, Encyclopedia of the Great governmental bodies in the Austrian Empire after its Plains (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, military defeat by France and Piedmont at Solferino 2004), including one in which I discuss "Czechs" in July 1859 and by Prussia and Italy in the Seven on page 228~ The best bibliography of publications Weeks' War of 1866. A comparable system of primary by and about Czechs in the U.S. and Canada is schools was gradually established in Great Britain Esther Jefabek, Czechs and Slovaks in North America: by 1902, though official observers, notably Matthew A Bibliography (New York: Czechoslovak National 200 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2011

Council of America and the Czechoslovak Society Renee M. Leigreid, "German Russians," in Wishart, of Arts and Sciences, 1976). Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, 232. 50. I have addressed the history of "Czech 57. Particular groups of German immigrants and Slovak Americans from an International are addressed in growing scholarly literature that Perspective" in the March and April 2010 issues of includes Frederick C. Luebke, Immigrants and Prairie Fire (Lincoln, NE) and in a longer online ver­ Politics: The Germans of Nebraska, 1880-1900 sion, http://www.prairiefirenewspaper.com/201O/03j (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969); czech-and-slovak-americans-from-an-international­ Andreas Reichstein, German Pioneers on the perspective. : The Wagners of Texas and Illinois 51. By 1920, German immigrants constituted (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2001); nearly one-half of the population of North Dakota, and Linda Schelbitzki Pickle, Contented among one-third that of Nebraska, and were a large Strangers: Rural German-Speaking Women and Their presence in the other Great Plains states, espe­ Families in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest (Urbana: cially Texas. See Terry Jordan, German Seed University of Illinois Press, 1996). in Texas Soil: Immigrant Farmers in Nineteenth­ 58. Works on Italian immigration include Century Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, Piero Bevilacqua, Andreina De Clementi, and 1966). On German immigrants generally, see Hans Emilio Franzina, Storia dell'emigrazione italiana, W. Gatzke, Germany and the United States: A vol. 1: Partenze, and vol. 2: Arrivi (Roma: Donzelli "Special Relationship" (Cambridge, MA: Harvard editore, 2001 and 2002); Dorothy Hoobler and University Press, 1980); and Albert Bernhardt Thomas Hoobler, The Italian-American Family Faust, The German Element in the United States, with Album (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Special Reference to Its Political, Moral, Social, and and Patrizia Varetto, ed., The World in My Hand: Educational Influence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Italian Emigration in the World, 1860-1960 (Rome: 1909). Centro Studi Emigrazione, 1997). The latter work 52. On Slavic immigrants generally, see Charles celebrates a 1997 exhibition at Ellis Island. A. Ward, Philip Shashko, and Donald E. Pienkos, 59. Trish Coate is completing a master of arts Studies in Ethnicity: the East European Experience in thesis in history at the University of Nebraska at America (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, Omaha on this subject. See Lori Rice, "Little Italy: distributed by Columbia University Press, 1980); A UNO Student Studies the Small Sicilian Town and on Polish immigrants in particular, see John J. that Shaped Omaha and Its Italian Community," Bukowczyk, ed., and Their History: UNO Magazine, Summer 2010, 22-24. Community, Culture, and Politics (Pittsburgh: 60. The Czech Heritage Collection of the Archives University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996). & Special Collections of the University of Nebraska­ 53. William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago Lincoln has in print or in microfilm a complete run of and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991). the Hospodar from its first issue in 1890 through the 54. Bruce M. Garver, "Czech-American Protes­ 1960s when its editorial office moved to West, Texas. tants: A Minority within a Minority," Nebraska Pokrok zapadu was published in Omaha from 1871 History 74, nos. 3-4 (Fall/Winter 1993): 150-67. through most of 1920. I edited this double issue on The Czech-American 61. D. Michael Quinn, "Religion in the American Experience in which appear eleven other articles West," in Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's about different aspects of this experience, by Joseph Western Past, ed. William Cronon, George Miles, Svoboda, Josef Opatrny, Gregory Ference, Zdenek and Jay Gitlin (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), SolIe, David Murphy, Clinton Machann, Karel 145-66. Pichlfk, Ivan Dubovicky, Mila Saskova-Pierce, 62. Paul Douglas, The Story of German Metho­ Frederick C. Luebke, and jointly by Lawrence H. dism: Biography of an Immigrant Soul (Cincinnati: Konechny and Clinton Machann. Methodist Book Concern, 1939). Pages 11, 23, 55. In the conference paper from which this and 148 discuss ties between the Nast and Gamble article has been developed, I briefly described my families. For information about individual con­ childhood introduction to Americans of Czech, gregations and ministers, three books are invalu­ German, and Italian origin. My ethnic background able: C. Golder, John H. Horst, and J. G. Schaal, is predominately Finnish and German and to a eds., Geschichte der Zentral Deutschen Konferenz: lesser extent English and French. Einschliesslich der Anfangsgeschichte des deutschen 56. Forrest A. Miller, Dmitrii Miliutin and Methodismus (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, the Reform Era in Russia (Nashville: Vanderbilt c. 1907), covers congregations in Ohio, Michigan, University Press, 1968); and Janet Warkentin Rife, Indiana, Kentucky, , and western Germans and German-Russians in Nebraska (Lincoln, Pennsylvania. E. C. Magaret, Friedrich Munz, et NE: Center for Great Plains Studies, 1980). See also aI., eds., Jubilitumsbuch der St. Louis Deutschen IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 201

Konferenz (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, TX, Commander-in-Chief of all U.S. Navy forces in c. 1900), presents congregations in Illinois, Iowa, the Pacific after mid-December 1941. and eastern Missouri. Otto E. Kriege, Gustav 69. T. J. Harris, ''' Who Fought for the Becker, Matthaus Herrmann, and C. L. Korner, Leaf': A History of the American Citizens eds., Souvenir der West Deutschen Konferenz der Who Enlisted Voluntarily and Served with the Bischoflichen Methodistenkirche (Cincinnati: Jennings Canadian Expeditionary Force before the United and Graham, 1906), surveys congregations in States of America Entered the First World War, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and west­ 1914-1917" (master of arts thesis, University of ern Missouri. Nebraska at Omaha, December 1997). 63. George J. Eisenach, A History of the German 70. By providing food, credit, and even munitions Congregational Churches in the United States (Yank­ to the Allies, Americans increased the likelihood ton, SD: Pioneer Press, 1938). that the Allies could win the war without direct 64. Garver, "Czech-American Protestants," American military involvement. Among popular cited in note 54; Bruce Garver, "Czech-American politicians who sought to maintain American neu­ Freethinkers on the Great Plains, 1871-1914," in trality were Nebraskans William Jennings Bryan Ethnicity in the Great Plains, ed. Frederick C. Luebke (1860-1925), a three-time unsuccessful Democratic (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), presidential candidate, and George W. Norris 147-69. In the same book, see also Josef J. Barton, (1861-1944), a senator who in 1917 and again during "Czech Farmers and Mexican Laborers in South 1940 and 1941 cultivated isolationist German Texas," 190-209. American voters as opposed to supporting Wilson 65. The American Czech-language Catholic and FDR, respectively, in defending American parishes and priests are individually described national interests and preventing any German in Antonfn Petr Houst, Ceske Katolicke osady v domination of Europe. Americe, 1865-1890 (St. Louis: Brath Wandasu, 71. Trish Coate's forthcoming master's thesis 1890). The much fewer Czech-American Protestant on Omaha's Little Italy includes a chapter on the congregations and ministers are descussed by Vilem construction and dedication of the war memorial in Siller, Vaclav Prucha, and R. M. De Castello, Carlentini. Pamatnfk Ceskych Evanjelickych drkvf v Severnf 72. Noteworthy is the fact that in September Americe (Chicago: Kfestansky Posel, 1900). 1914, Czech Americans in Omaha undertook the 66. Jan Vranek achieved international recog­ first public subscription of funds to support the nition for his published poetry, for example, Na interests of Czechs in Bohemia and Moravia against pude americke: Basne [On American Soil: Poems] Austria-Hungary. See Vojta Benes, "Omaha v cele," (Chicago: Tiskarna Ceskych Benediktinu, 1905). in Ceskoslovenska Amerika v obdobi, vol. 1: Od Dr. Frederick Cohn served as rabbi of Temple Israel cervna 1914 do srpna 1915 (Prague: Pokrok, 1931), from 1904 into the mid-1930s and also as a national 130-36. On Czech- and Slovak-American par­ spokesman for Reformed Judaism. ticipation in the wartime struggle for Czechoslovak 67. I discuss these benevolent associations independence, see also Vojta BeneS, Vojaci zapo­ in "Czech-American Freethinkers on the Great menute fronty (Prague: Pamatnfk odboje, 1923); Plains," 158-62. Among them, only the SPJST, and Frantisek Sindelar, Za boje za svobodu otciny affectionately called the "special people Jesus sent (Chicago: Narodnf Svaz Ceskych Katolfku, 1924). to Texas," was composed of members who resided On the prewar background to these developments, solely in one state. Founded in Omaha in 1897 by see Bruce Garver, "T. G. Masaryk and Czech representatives of the western American lodges of Politics, 1906-1914," in T. G. Masaryk: Thinker the CSPS, the lCBJ admitted women as well as men and Statesman, ed. Stanley Winters (London: to full membership and based benefits in part on life Macmillan, 1990), 1:225-57. expectancy. 73. See Frederick C. Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty: 68. Appropriately enough during World War II, German-Americans and World War I (DeKalb: three descendants of German immigrants in the Northern Illinois University Press, 1974). On Great Plains numbered among the highest ranking isolationism before and after World War II, par­ and most influential U.S. commanders: Dwight ticularly with regard to German American and D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), the Supreme Allied Irish American voters, see Samuel Lubell, The Commander of forces in ; Albert Future of American Politics (New York: Harper and C. Wedemeyer (1897-1989) of Omaha, the author Row, 1965); and Samuel Lubell, The Future While It of the U.S. Army's Victory Program of 1941 for the Happened (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974). defeat of Germany and commander of U.S. forces in 74. Fred A. Talbott, The Railway Conquest of the China during the last ten months of the war; and World (London: William Heinemann, 1911); Carlos Chester W. Nimitz (1885-1966) of Fredericksburg, A. Schwantes and James P. Ronda, The West the 202 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2011

Railroads Made (Seattle: University of Washington had obtained no railway service, see Daniel C. Press, 2008); and Christian Wolmar, Blood, Iron, Fitzgerald, Ghost Towns of Kansas: A Traveler's and Gold: How the Railroads Transformed the World Guide (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988), (New York: Public Affairs, 2010). and Faded Dreams: More Ghost Towns of Kansas 75. On excavating and mining machinery, see (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994). Harold F. Williamson and Kenneth H. Myers II, 80. For example, see Carroll Engelhardt, Gateway Designed for Digging: The First 75 Years of Bucyrus-Erie to the Northern Plains: Railroads and the Birth of Company (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Fargo and Moorhead (: University of Press, 1955). On the use of such machinery in the Minnesota Press, 2007); A. Theodore Brown and southern Great Plains, see Simon W. Freese and Lyle W. Dorsett, K.C.: A City, Deborah L. Sizemore, A Century in the Works: Freese Missouri (Boulder, CO: Pruett Publishing Co., and Nichols, Consulting Engineers, 1894-1994 (College 1978); Carla Johnson, Union Pacific and Omaha Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994). Union Station (David City, NE: South Platte 76. See Augustus J. Veenendaal, Slow Train Press, 2001); and the DVD film, "Denver Union to Paradise: How Dutch Investment Helped Build Station: Portal to Progress " (Denver, CO: Havey American Railroads (Stanford, CA: Stanford Productions, 2010), which may be previewed at: University Press, 1996). http://www.haveypro.com/unionstation.html. All 77. See Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Railroads: railway centers mentioned in my essay may be found The Nation's First Big Business (New York: Harcourt in Andrew M. Modelski, Railroad Maps of North Brace and World, 1965); and Alfred D. Chandler American: The First Hundred Years (Washington, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution DC: Library of Congress, 1984). in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Belknap 81. Carl W Condit, The Port of New York: Press of , 1977). On the A History of the Rail and Terminal System from Brotherhoods, see Paul Michel Taillon, Good, the Beginnings to Pennsylvania Station (Chicago: Reliable, White Men: Railroad Brotherhoods, 1877- University of Chicago Press, 1980); Carl W. 1917 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, Condit, The Port of New York: A History of the 2009). Rail and Terminal System from the Grand Central 78. On the building of transcontinental railroads Electrification to the Present (Chicago: University across the Great Plains, see Albro Martin, James of Chicago Press, 1981); Albro Martin, Enterprise ]. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest (Oxford: Denied; John H. White Jr., The American Railroad Oxford University Press, 1976); Keith L. Bryant Jr., Freight Car: From the Wood-Car Era to the Coming History of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway of Steel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, (New York: Macmillan, 1974); Julius Grodinski, 1993); and John H. White Jr., The American Railroad Transcontinental Railroad Strategy, 1869-1893 Passenger Car (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University (: University of Pennsylvania Press, Press, 1978). 1962); Richard C. Overton, Burlington Route: A 82. Paul Wallace Gates, The Illinois Central History of the Burlington Lines (New York: Alfred A. Railroad and Its Colonization Work (Cambridge, MA: Knopf, 1965); i-I. Roger Grant, The North Western: Harvard University Press, 1934). See also works by A History of the Chicago and North Western Railway H. Roger Grant and by Richard C. Overton, cited in System (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, note 78. 1996); Stuart Daggett, Chapters on the History 83. Ron Hollander, All Aboard! The Story of Joshua of the Southern Pacific (New York: Ronald Press, Lionel Cowen and His Lionel Train Company (New 1922); and Donovan L. Hofsommer, The Southern York: Workman Publishing, 1981), 96, 132, and 159. Pacific: 1901-1985 (College Station: Texas A&M The firm's founder, Joshua Lionel Cowen, was the son University Press, 1986). On some of these railways' of Jewish immigrants as were most of the firm's execu­ eastern connections, see Julius Grodinski, The Iowa tives in finance, marketing, and sales. Pool: A Study in Railroad Competition, 1870-1884 84. The scholarly and stylistic quality of this his­ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950); and tory remains unsurpassed by that of any other state H. Roger Grant, The Corn Belt Route: A History even though the number of publications-especially of the Chicago Great Western Railroad Company those containing copious photographs-on the his­ (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1984). tory of Colorado's railroads is much larger. Besides, 79. The most thorough discussion to date of in contrast to the generally prosperous railroads of the founding and development of cities in a single Texas, those of Colorado did not avoid bankruptcy, Great Plains state is James Shortridge, Cities on the and even the best among them were marginal to the Plains: The Evolution of Urban Kansas (Lawrence: performance of the American economy. University Press of Kansas, 2004). On the disap­ 85. S. J. Reed, A History of Texas Railroads and of pearance of some Kansas towns, many of which Transportation Conditions under Spain and Mexico IMMIGRATION TO THE GREAT PLAINS, 1865-1914 203 and the Republic and the State (Houston: St. Clair in the mid-nineteenth century first critically com­ Publishing Co., 1941). See also Jane P. Baughman, piled, analyzed, and published information about Charles Morgan and the Development of Southern American railways of interest to stockholders, bro­ Transportation (Nashville: Vanderbilt University kers, and investment banks. See also note 78 citing Press, 1968); and Vernon Gladden Spence, Colonel works by Bryant, Grant, Hofsommer, Martin, and Morgan Jones: Grand Old Man of Texas Railroading Overton. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971). 89. This rebuilding and prosperity required the 86. J. L. Allhands, Gringo Builders (privately abandonment of thousands of miles of unprofitable printed, 1931); and J. L. Allhands, Uriah Lott: branch lines and the eradication of much of the late Dauntless Pioneer and Man of Vision (Houston: St. nineteenth- and early twentieth-century railway Clair Publishing Co., 1947). infrastructure. The number of "ghost towns" on the 87. Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Great Plains has grown accordingly. On twentieth­ Pacific Railway (Council Bluffs, IA: Monarch century railways in the United States, see Richard Printing Company, [c. 1911-1914]' reprinted in Saunders Jr., Merging Lines: American Railroads, Denver, CO, by Sage Books, 1965). See also Bain, 1900-1970 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Empire Express. Press, 2001); and Richard Saunders Jr., Main Lines: 88. Klein, Union Pacific, 2:26-29. Mention Rebirth of the North American Railroads, 1970-2002 should also be made of Henry Varnum Poor who (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003).

Fall 2011: new online university classes about the Great Plains Great Plains Studies 377: Women of the Great Plains Who is a woman of the Great Plains? Such a question frequently conjures up an inaccurately conventional image of a female with specific characteristics regarding her race, class, ethnicity, and religion as well as the place and time in which she lived. This 3-credit online course examines gender throughout time and space in the American and Canadian Great Plains. Various disciplines-such as anthropology, geography, and history-inform explorations of gender in relation to topics such as the environment, popular culture, and violence. Great Plains Studies 378: Cultural Encounters on the Great Plains This is a 3-credit online upper-division interdisciplinary course focusing on the interaction of the diverse cultures that have immigrated and migrated to the Great Plains. We will study instances of first contact between Native people and European cultures, the movement west by Euro-American and non-European cultures, and post-settlement intercultural relations. Additionally, we will examine the impact of contem­ porary cultural contact among the diverse people of the Plains.

For more information about these courses, contact: Dr. Charles A. Braithwaite Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1155 QStreet, Room 504, Lincoln, NE 68588-0245 Tel.: (402) 472-6178; fax: (402) 472-0463; e-mail: [email protected] Undergraduate Major in Great Plains Studies website: http://www.unl.edu/plains/academics/undergrad.html