Bohemian Voice: Contention, Brotherhood and Journalism
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BOHEMIAN VOICE: CONTENTION, BROTHERHOOD AND JOURNALISM AMONG CZECH PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 1860-1910 A Dissertation by DAVID ZDENEK CHROUST Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2009 Major Subject: History BOHEMIAN VOICE: CONTENTION, BROTHERHOOD AND JOURNALISM AMONG CZECH PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 1860-1910 A Dissertation by DAVID ZDENEK CHROUST Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, Chester Dunning Committee Members, Walter Kamphoefner Arnold Krammer Clinton Machann Head of Department, Walter Buenger May 2009 Major Subject: History iii ABSTRACT Bohemian Voice: Contention, Brotherhood and Journalism among Czech People in America, 1860-1910. (May 2009) David Zdenek Chroust, B.A., Kent State University; M.L.S., Kent State University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Chester Dunning This dissertation examines elite and popular consciousness among Czech speakers in America during their mass migration from Bohemia and Moravia, the two Habsburg crownlands that became the largest part of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. Between 1860 and 1910, their numbers increased tenfold to almost a quarter-million, as recorded in the United States census, and to over a half-million with their children. That was almost one-twelfth of their population in Bohemia and Moravia. In the same half- century, a stable group of men made Czech-language journalism and publishing in America. They included Karel Jonáš in Wisconsin, Václav Šnajdr in Cleveland, František Boleslav Zdrůbek and August Geringer in Chicago, and Jan Rosický in Omaha. Students of the first Czech-language secondary schools in Bohemia, they came to the 1860s American Midwest in their twenties and modernized a print culture launched by bricklayers and tailors. They also became leading voices in what the subtitle calls contention and brotherhood among their countrymen. Contention formed the three large camps, subcultures and allegiances—liberal/Freethinker, Catholic and Socialist. Brotherhood denotes the forms of association and security that made the fraternal benefit societies the largest and most durable platforms for Bohemian identity and advocacy in America. The dissertation uses Czech-American newspapers from the period, historiography and new archival sources from both sides of the Atlantic to more closely examine definitive episodes, personalities and institutions among Bohemians while they iv formed important urban and rural communities in American society from New York to the Great Plains. v DEDICATION For my parents and for Tanya, Zachary and Daniel vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This is to thank my committee chair, Dr. Chester Dunning, and my committee members, Dr. Walter Kamphoefner, Dr. Arnold Krammer and Dr. Clinton Machann, for all their kind encouragement and guidance during my Ph.D. coursework, research and writing. I will always remember it. It was indeed a wondrous experience, and I am thankful to many other individuals and institutions for the knowledge and generosity that made my pursuit of sources on two continents easier and more successful. They include but are not limited to the following, in order of distance from College Station: Texas A&M University Libraries, my employer; the Texas A&M History Dept. for its Charles C. Keeble ’48 Graduate Dissertation Fellowship; Fr. James Flint, OSB, St. Procopius Benedictine Abbey, Lisle, Illinois; Paul Nemecek, Chicago; June Pachuta Farris, University of Chicago Library; Donald Tipka and Milos Markovic, Cleveland Public Library; Ann Sindelar, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., for its Short-Term Grant in January 2006; Milena Secká and Hana Popelová, Náprstek Museum, Prague; Michal Sejk, Státní okresní archiv, Benešov, Czech Republic; and Laděna Plucarová, Státní oblastní archiv, Třeboň, Czech Republic. Finally, I thank my wife for her great patience and support. vii NOMENCLATURE BANC Bohemian American National Committee CLU Central Labor Union CMCO Cigar Makers Central Organization CMIU Cigar Makers International Union CNCA Czechoslovak National Council of America ČSA Československé spolky v Americe (Czechoslovak Society of America) ČSPS Česko-slovanský podporující spolek (Czecho-Slavonic Fraternal Benefit Association) DN Dennice novověku IWPA International Working People’s Association SPJST Slovanská podporující jednota státu Texas (Slavonic Benevolent Order of the State of Texas) ZČBJ Západní česko-bratrská jednota (Western Bohemian Fraternal Association) viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iii DEDICATION .......................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................................................................... vi NOMENCLATURE .................................................................................................. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................... viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 II HISTORIOGRAPHY OF 19TH-CENTURY CZECH-AMERICAN IMMIGRATION .................................................................................. 17 In the Immigrant Communities ..................................................... 17 In American Scholarship ............................................................... 25 In the Czech Lands ........................................................................ 29 III BOHEMIAN AMERICA .................................................................... 50 In Numbers: When and How Many? .............................................. 50 Where from? Classes and Places .................................................... 55 Their Culture and Consciousness? ................................................. 62 To What Places? Bohemian America ............................................. 75 IV WISCONSIN SLAVIA ......................................................................... 97 V CLEVELAND PROGRESS IN CONFLICT WITH CATHOLICS ..... 143 VI NEW YORK PATRIOT IN CONFLICT WITH ANARCHISTS ........ 188 ix CHAPTER Page VII SELF-MADE MEN AND BROTHERS ............................................ 234 Self-Made Men ............................................................................... 234 Brothers .......................................................................................... 253 VIII A BOHEMIAN AMERICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE ................ 285 IX BOHEMIAN VOICE ............................................................................. 333 X AFTER THE VOICE ............................................................................ 384 REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 434 VITA ......................................................................................................................... 470 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In September 1892 a group in the American Midwest that called itself the Bohemian American National Committee (henceforth BANC) began publishing a monthly journal, The Bohemian Voice, to influence American public opinion on the “Bohemians” as a Slavic immigrant ethnic group, to counter the perceived influence of German sources on American perceptions of ethnic conflict in the Habsburg Empire and its Czech-speaking crown lands, and to foster a Bohemian identity among the children of Bohemian immigrants. The journal was one part of a broad agenda of efforts devoted to these three goals, but it was the most striking part and greatest success of that ambitious agenda. For over two years The Bohemian Voice and its young immigrant editors and Michigan- educated attorneys, Thomas Čapek (1861-1950) and Josef Jiří Král (1870-1951), parried American nativists and Habsburg authority on behalf of the Bohemian immigrant ethnic group, other Slavs in America, and the Czech-speaking majority in Bohemia and Moravia and its struggle for “home rule.”1 Czech mass immigration to the United States had begun at mid-century, and by 1890 the national census recorded 118,106 natives of Bohemia, although many of the additional 123,271 natives of Austria were probably Czech-speaking Bohemians and Moravians. By then Poles probably displaced Czechs as the largest Slavic immigrant ethnic group in the United States: they included 147,440 natives of “Poland” and probably a share of the census tallies recorded for natives of Austria, Russia and Germany, since Poland unlike the Kingdom of Bohemia no longer existed as a legally and territorially defined entity. Nevertheless, Czech speakers would remain not only the second largest Slavic immigrant ethnic group but also the conspicuously most literate and socioeconomically privileged one. Thus, the 1911 Reports of the Immigration Commission found illiteracy among immigrant “Bohemians and Moravians” at just 1.7 percent in 1899-1910 but in the range of 24 to 53 percent for other Slavs, while by occupation it found 25 percent of This dissertation follows the style of The Journal of American History. 2 1Czechs but only 2 to 9 percent of other Slavs in the “skilled labor”