Steelton: Immigration and Industrialization, 18701940 [Paperback]

A study of the immigrants who flocked to this Central Pennsylvania steel town in the late nineteenth century in search of employment. Comprised primarily of Southern blacks and Eastern European immigrants, they formed the lower class of this town.  Analyzes the social structure and dominance of the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant elite.

“One of the best and most carefully researched studies of Slavic workers in an industrial city. A sound, scholarly analysis of ethnicity in one American mill town.”
—The Journal of American History

“[Bodnar’s] analysis of Slavic-American community life, and his descriptions of both limited ethnic mobility and its disastrous effect on Steelton’s blacks, make this a significant contribution to twentieth-century social history.”
—Journal of Interdisciplinary Study