THE POLISH MICROFILM PROJECT A Guide to Polish American Newspapers and Periodicals in Microform COMPILED BY FRANK RENKIEWICZ and ANNE BJORKQUIST NG IMMIGRATION HISTORY RESEARCH CENTER UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 1988 INTRODUCTION Polish American journalism, accessible until the last decade only to a few specialists outside the ethnic community, is an immense, richly varied resource for the study of the history of the United States and Poland in the last century. In the last comprehensive summary, in 1966, Jan Wepsiec listed 38 Polish American dailies, at least 350 other newspapers, more than 700 serial publications, and numerous church and school bulletins-a world in print that at once mirrored and was a pa.rt of the landscape of an ethnic group then at least six million strong. The earliest Polish publications in the United States-the magazine Poland (New York, 1842) and the newspaper Echo Polskie (Echo from Poland, New York, 1863-1865)-were both simple extensions of the home­ land's culture and politics, the work of i?()litical refugees at mid­ century. The great migration that began from Prussian Poland in the 1870s created a genuinely Polish A:n~rican journalism. Orze.t Polski (The Polish Eagle, Union, Missouri, 1870-1872) was the first, somewhat crude, example of the form. As emigration from Poland grew, reaching the level of hundreds of thousands yearly just prior to World War I, the press in America grew rapidly. The first daily newspaper, Michael Kruszka's Kw-yer Polski (Polish Daily Courier) was founded in Milwaukee in 1888. More representative of the overall settlement pat­ tern of immigrants and especially of their educated and business leadership, however, New York, Chicago and Detroit eventually came to be the centers of Polish American journalism. By 1900, Polonia published at least 53 newspapers, six of them dailies. Newspaper publication reached a peak in 1921-1928, when the number ranged be­ tween 103 and 108. In 1925, twenty-five of those were dailies. Circulation of Polish-language publications was estimated at 1,320,000 in 1925. As might have been expected the Polish American press acted as a conserving force in the immigrant community-promoting the retention of the Polish language (though the quality of that langauge was often criticized by visitors from Poland), relaying news of the old country, stressing values associated with Catholicism and rural family life in Poland. Yet, quite soon, it distinguished itself as an immigrant or eth­ nic institution. Peasant farmers who had paid little heed to the printed word in Europe and who (especially in Austrian and Russian Poland) were often illiterate, became accustomed, as immigrant workers, to Copyright 1988 by the Immigration History Research Center, systematic reading, often under the influence or with the assistance of University of Minnesota. All rights reserved. their children in America. The press, moreover, supplied usable interpretations of both new and old homelands, effectively contributing Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 87-083429 to the resocialization of peasants as immigrant workers and as members of a self-conscious ethnic group. On the one hand, it offered explana­ ISBN: 0-932833-06-3 tions, more or less comforting, of the exotic industrial environments in which the immigrants suddenly found themselves; on the other, fami­ liarity with events throughout Poland and with other settlements in the Printed in the United States of America United States-reporting news to any local community had to reflect its - 3 - diverse origins-stimulated a supra-territorial Polish consciousness. early journalist. Rabatnik Polski (The Palish Worker, New York, Poland as a nation and Polonia as the extension of that nation abroad Chicago, Brooklyn, Detroit, 1896-1967) and Dziennik Ludowy (People's meant more than they had in the old village. For most people, the Daily, Chicago, 1908-1925) were the landmark publications in the press, through its reportage, features and serialized literature, was the flo~v'ering of Polish socialism in the United States in the first third of first and major continuing introduction in print to the history and the century. Only Gros Ludowy (People's Voice, Chicago, Detroit, national culture of Poland and of their fellow immigrants. 1924- ), edited by the veteran labor organizer Stanley Nowak, carried on the struggle on the left into recent times. Individual publishers, sponsoring organizations like the insurance fraternals, editors and intellectuals, prominent community leaders, each Sharing the patriotic and improving missions of the others, but of these also found in the press an instrument of financial gain, status, earning distinction from its unique constituency and mission, the Polish influence and power. The first publications often had well-defined women's press emerged early in the century in conjunction with the social and ideological roots in the clerical, nationalist and socialist Polish Women's Alliance. With a dedication to women's rights bordering movements of nineteenth century Poland. The clergy, loyal to the tra­ on feminism and to progressive social reform, Stefania Laudyrt­ ditional Roman Catholicism of Poles, and the nationalist lay intelli­ Chrzanowska and others used Glos Polek (Polish Women's Voice, gentsia, inspired by the ideal of an independent and culturally pluralist Chicago, 1902- ) as a forum for educating and modernizing, if not Poland, worked mightily through the written word to shape an informed liberating, Polish women that they might preserve themselves and their and patriotic Polish opinion in the United States according to their spe­ children for the cause of the Polish nation. Eventually, in the passions cial visions. The Resurrectionist priest, Vincent Barzyrtski, and the of World War I, their nationalism eclipsed their commitment to social printer-publisher, W-l'a.dyslaw Oyniewicz, personified the difference in change, and in the aftermath of war, like most Polish Americans, they late nineteenth-century ChicagO, generating such major newspapers as turned inward. Yet they remained a significant, autonomous woman 1s Dziennik Chicagoski (Chicago Daily News) and Gazeta Polska Narodawa voice in the ethnic community and played an important role in relief (Polish National Gazette). Zgoda (Harmony, Chicago, 1881- ), the for Poland after the outbreak of war in 1939. organ of the Polish National Alliance, and Nar6d Polski (The Polish Nation, Chicago, 1897- ), which speaks for the Polish Roman Catholic Well before the turn of the century, the Polish American press Union-they are now the oldest Polish American newspapers-still repre­ supplemented reports from abroad with local Polish news, an emphasis sent their separate traditions, though in attenuated form. Several major which was particu1'1.rly important for the papers which proliferated in independent publishers also took nationalist positions easily interpreted the growing number of small and medium-sized communities after 1900 as anti-clerical. Michael Kruszka, for one, was frequently at odds with and which lacked captive institutional audiences. Slowly they absorbed the Polish clerical establishment and German American bishops of and adapted techniques characteristic of American journals, such as Milwaukee. Antoni Paryski, for another, proved to be the outstanding women's sections, sports pages, cartoons and comic strips, certain kinds. personality and most widely read publisher-editor in the history of of advertising. multiple editions and mail subscriptions. Advertising was Polish American journalism. The national weekly edition of his vital to their prosperity-the promises of patent medicine salesmen, the Ameryka-Echo reached a peak circulation of 100,000 in the early 1920s. services of professionals and businessmen in Polonia's maturing economic In the best tradition of the Polish national revival and the accom­ structure and of the migration network (steamship companies, railroads, panying movement to educate the Polish masses, A. meryka-Echo gave land agents, foreign-exchange banks), and the appeals of political par­ over much space to the literary and artistic culture of Poland. The ties and candidates whose purchase of space in an era of frequent publishing company associated with it published or reprinted over five elections could put a paper in the black for months at a time. Spurred million books for distribution in Poland and the United States. Paryski, by an ever-growing immigrant readership for fifty years, Polonia's jour­ however, never affiliated with the major institutions of Polonia and nalists reached the peak of their influence in the 1920s. remained aloof from the bitter factional struggles which divided the community during the rebirth of Poland. The traditions of independence After 1925, the Polish-language press entered a period of tran­ and popular education. which he exemplified, still survive strongly in sition which amounted to relative decline, and by the 1950s, an absolute such newspapers as Gwiazda Palarna (Pola Star, Stevens Point, falling off in size and impact. For a while, the adverse impact of Wisconsin, 1908- ) and Nowy Dziennik (New Daily News, New York, immigration restriction, the Great Depression and the loss of foreign 1971- ). advertisers in World War II was masked by reducing the frequency and size of issues, by the profits of collateral printing 09erations or simply In the 1880s, the arrival in the United States of members of the by writing off deficits as t9.x losses. More economical bulletins, still inchoate Polish socialist movement offered the immigrant worker a ne1,vsletters and journals capable of reaching special audiences, were third ideological choice. Ognisko (The Hearth, New York, 1887-1889), established and drew off old readers or picked up new ones in the though vague in its orientation, was the first regular publication on the English-speaking generations. The number of Polish American publica­ left; ·Joseph Zawisza, publisher and editor of socialist journals in tions of all kinds reached a peak in 1940-1948, when they ranged at New York, Buffalo and Chicago prior to 1900, was its most energetic least between 180 and 189.