Appalachian History

Great numbers of Hungarian immigrants came to the United States around the turn of the century. The wave of immigration from 1880 to about 1915 was called the 'Great Economic Immigration' for Hungarians, and it drew about 1.7 million Hungarian citizens, among them 650,000-700,000 real Hungarians (Magyars), to American shores. These immigrants came almost solely for economic reasons, and they represented the lowest and poorest segment of the population. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 halted mass migration, but by 1922 7,300 Hungarian-born Magyars had found their way to West Virginia. The exclusionary U.S. immigration laws of 1921 and 1924 pushed the Hungarian quota down to under 1,000 per year.

Many Hungarian immigrants came hoping to make money and then return to their home country with enough capital to make themselves into prosperous farmers. Few of them achieved this goal---25% of Hungarian immigrants returned to Hungary---and virtually all of them became unskilled or semiskilled workers in America's bustling industries. They were the peons of America's Gilded Age, who contributed their brawn to American coal mines and steel smelters, and who produced the mythical Hungarian American hero, Joe Magarac, who could bend steel bars with his bare hands. It was they who unwittingly created the negative "Hunky" image of Hungarians, which then was transferred to all of the East and Southeast European immigrants.

Michael Bartucz’ story is fairly typical: born in Debrecen, Hungary in 1879, he became a barber in the Hungarian Army, according to his grandson, James Nagy. When he read in a newspaper that he had been declared dead, he deserted a wife and the army and fled to the U.S. around 1900. With his uncommon name, he feared that he would be easily found out, so he changed his name to Charles Nagy. He became a coal miner in West Virginia but finally settled in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area.

Family structure was very important to Hungarian immigrants, and they created close knit communities with their churches and other cultural societies. For example, the Hungarian Evangelical and Reformed Church in Morgantown, WV offered Sunday school instruction in Hungarian between the two World Wars.

Hungarian immigrants were likely victims of exploitation: they were handicapped by language barriers, used to abominable working conditions and were usually willing to take almost any kind of work. Traditionally, Hungarians typically look down on government aid and very few Hungarians ever received handouts. Some Hungarians, totally unaware of the labor conditions in this country, were brought to the coal mining regions of West Virginia and Virginia as strikebreakers. Much hatred and violence was directed against them because of this.

Új Elore, a Hungarian-language labor newspaper based in Cleveland, published countless short stories and poems, starting in 1921, which conveyed the many hardships endured by Hungarian immigrant laborers. The stories were written about fictional characters, however, they were based on actual incidents related by the immigrants themselves.

There were short stories published about the mining towns of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where many of the Hungarians found initial employment. The writings conveyed the degradation of living in shabbily constructed company shanty towns, of having to work underground and breathing the soot and smoke of the mine. There were many other stories as well: of children who were orphaned due to industrial accidents and of young girls who worked in sweatshops under stifling, unhealthy working conditions for meager wages.


sources: www.clevelandmemory.org/Hungarians/pg241.htm
http://feefhs.org/ah/hu/hurl.html
www.energyofanation.com/f2790e65-0b2d-438e-925d-1175535c4053.html?NodeId=:
www.everyculture.com/multi/Ha-La/Hungarian-Americans.html


Hungarians+in+West+Virginia Magyars Morgantown+WV Új+Elore appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history west+virginia+history Joe+Magarac

The Metropolitan Theatre in Morgantown, WV is one of that city’s best examples of Neo-classical Revival architecture. The 1,300 seat theatre opened on July 24, 1924 with "seven acts of vaudeville sent by the BF Keith Amusement Company from its New York Office." Over the years Gene Autry, Peggy Lee, Count Basie, the Andrews Sisters, Bob Hope & Bing Crosby, and Duke Ellington all graced its stage.

The theatre hosted both live acts and films. Owner George Comuntzis installed a $50,000 "Mighty Wurlitzer" organ in 1928 to provide accompaniment for that era's silent films. The Met was one of a handful of theatres around the country to show films on a pre-release basis, so that production companies could gauge response. As an "index town," Morgantown was privileged to see new movies as early as 60 days prior to national release.

The Met was the first theatre in northern WV to install Vitaphone sound systems, and one of the first theatres in the country to install air conditioning.

The theatre also sponsored games that were played on the screen for cash from the mid - 1930s to late 1940s. One such game was "Wahoo," a spin game projected on the screen in which a button would be pressed by those in the audience causing the spin; the jack pot increased by $25/week, and, when the spin stopped, the Comuntzis paid whatever percentage (l00%, 50%, 25%, 10%) showed on the screen.

"Bank Night" was another popular game; those entering the game daily signed a journal opposite a number, which was placed in a large drum. On "Bank Night" a number would be drawn for each $500 increment in the jackpot, and if the winner was in the audience, he or she received the cash immediately.

Bank Night caused quite a controversy nationwide, in fact. "According to figures released last week, gross box-office receipts for the cinema industry in 1936 were a billion dollars, $250,000,000 more than last year," reported Time magazine on Jan 11, 1937. "A contributing reason was undoubtedly 'Bank Night'—currently a weekly fiesta at 5,000 of the 15,000 active U. S. cinema theatres.

"Bank Night is a copyright scheme invented by a onetime Fox booking agent named Charles U. Yaeger, who leases it to theatres for from $5 to $50 a week depending on their size. What it amounts to is a clever evasion of state & municipal lottery laws whereby, by registering his name at a theatre, a patron becomes eligible to win a substantial prize if he is present at the theatre on 'Bank Night'— when the prize is awarded to the holder of a lucky ticket after a drawing on the theatre stage.

"Since Bank Nights started in 1931, Inventor Yaeger's enterprise has grown from a two-room office to a Denver building and a chain of theatres. [Bank Night is] perpetually under fire from state and municipal authorities who hope to find some way in which to bring it under local lottery laws. In Topeka, Kans., the Supreme Court ruled that Bank Night as practiced by certain Fox Theatres was illegal. In Albany, N. Y., the Court of Appeals ruled Bank Nights legal."


Sources: www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,757281,00.html
www.wvculture.org/shpo/nr/pdf/monongalia/84003631.pdf


Morgantown+WV bank+night The+Metropolitan+Theatre appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

From the mid-19th century to the 1920s, when the refrigerator was introduced to the home, the icebox was the place to keep foods cold. Iceboxes were typically made of wood, lined with tin or zinc and insulated with sawdust or seaweed. Water pans had to be emptied daily.

Initially municipally-consumed ice was harvested in winter from snow-packed areas or frozen lakes and stored in ice houses. With metropolitan growth many of the sources of natural ice became contaminated from industrial pollution or sewer runoff. As early mechanical refrigerators became available, they were installed in large industrial plants producing ice for home delivery. Able to produce clean, sanitary ice year-round, their product gradually replaced ice harvested from ponds.

The ice man became an American institution, delivering ice as needed when consumers posted the 'Ice Today' sign in their windows. "He stopped his wagon in front of each house and hollered 'ice man!' or sometimes rang a bell," says Mars Hill, NC resident Theresa Hammack. Mars Hill is 19 miles from Asheville, where the Carolina Coal and Ice Company built a large ice plant in 1896.

Photo caption reads: Harry Selby of the Acme Store cutting ice, Morgantown, W. Va.[ca.1900-1910]

"The ice man worked with the ice pick, a saw and a pair of tongs. He could cut a nickels worth or a big piece that went into high finance, such as a quarter or even 50 cents worth. Only commercial or rich folks ever bought that much. A nickel piece of ice was about all a small boy could carry.

"The ice man would put a piece of heavy cord around it for a handle. When you began your return journey by holding the ice away from your leg, but as your arm tired the nickels worth of ice would melt on your britches leg and run down in your shoes, if you were wearing any.

"If you stopped to play marbles you had to think up a good reason why it melted. Just to tell your mama it was a sorry grade of ice that melted fast didn’t work. If you had to get 10 or 15 cents worth of ice to make homemade ice cream you had to take your express wagon. Sometimes I shudder at the ignorance of the younger generation. Not knowing how big a nickel's worth of ice is. And how cold water is when you empty the drip pan from under the ice box."

Sources: Mars Hill [NC] Retirement Community newsletter, Vol. 1, Issue 7
http://www.rogersrefrig.com/history.html
http://www.history-magazine.com/refrig.html


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Carolina+Coal+and+Ice icebox iceman Mars+Hill+NC Morgantown+WV