Patterns for Getting By: Polish Women's Employment in Delaware County, 1900-1930
Polish Women's Employment in Delaware County, 1900-1930 AS IN MUCH OF THE EASTERN UNITED STATES, the industrial working class of Pennsylvania since the mid-nineteenth century has largely been an immigrant workforce. Understanding the work experience and household strategies of the peoples who inhabited the mill towns and industrial neighborhoods of the state necessarily involves an awareness of both the background experience in the natal country as well as the process of Americanization. By analyzing household patterns in three industrial neighborhoods of suburban Philadelphia, I have found an intersection between immigrant status and working-class needs in the work strategies of Polishborn women in the first three decades of this century. Since the early 1970s social scientists have explored the ethnic differences among immigrant peoples in the United States. Part of this effort has been tied to an ongoing debate within the social sciences about the nature of ethnicity. Early writers often defined ethnic identity as the continuation of cultural traits from the immigrant's country of origin in America. Their studies set up a dichotomy between the "traditions" of the home culture and pressures for assimilation in the United States. Life in the country of origin was frequently characterized as having unchanging values regarding family roles. By describing