Suzanne M. Zukowski | From Peasant to Proletarian: Home Ownership in Milwaukee's Polonia | Polish American Studies, 66.2

From Peasant to Proletarian:
Home Ownership in Milwaukee's Polonia

by

Suzanne M. Zukowski

To find my home in one sentence, concise, as if hammered in metal. Not to enchant anybody. Not to earn a lasting name in posterity. An unnamed need for order, for rhythm, for form, three words opposed to chaos and nothingness.

Czesław Miłosz

Land—a continually valued American commodity, serving as one of our country's earliest currencies and underpinning the foundation of the "American Dream." Nineteenth century reformers, as well as journalists, documented the development of America's land through colorful accounts of burgeoning urban centers and immigrant living conditions laced with social deterioration, disease, and despair. Development, both business and residential, dwelling types, and home ownership were commonly linked to culture, and cultures frequently compared to accentuate differences and deficiencies. During the influx of European migration to Milwaukee, various nationalities were singled out as assigning special importance—social, as well as economic—to the possession of property with tendencies toward home-ownership assuming such value as to become a major goal of the group's activity. Among these were Germans and "Yankees," who occupied Milwaukee's upper economic echelon, together with the Poles, who occupied the lowest rungs of the city's economic ladder. In 1908, the British Board of Trade conducted a study on the living conditions of the American working class. Their published report concluded that Germans and Poles were "more determined than other ethnic groups to own their own homes," the Poles at the expense of "great self-denial."¹ The intent of this article, however, is not to debate a culture-specific propensity toward land and home-ownership, but to broaden the discussion of the lesser known means toward achieving this end. For the Poles who made up a good portion of the laboring class in nineteenth century America, the answers transcend simple expenditure and loans.

Immigrant analysts such as Ewa Morawska's study of East Central Europeans in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, examined economics in part, and found that immigrant strategies were designed as both survival mechanisms, and a means toward advancing the family's status and success (as they defined success.) Morawska depicts Poles as advantage conscious, albeit family centered, when approaching economic and cultural advance in America, an attitude, she argues, that developed prior to immigration to America with the commercialization of agriculture in partitioned Poland. This view contrasts with and was, in part, a response to work undertaken by John Bodnar who considered Poles family centered, defensive, and survival oriented. Morawska however, found this view to be mono-dimensional.²

Perhaps³ the most comprehensive study of the economic pursuits of specific immigrant groupings is Lives of Their Own, a socio-historical study of Blacks, Poles, and Italians in Pittsburgh by John Bodnar, Roger Simon, and Michael Weber. Housing data drawn from a variety of sources including deed transactions traced from 1978 back to 1890, and home mortgages reviewed from 1900 to 1930, were used to determine how individuals acquired homes. The authors found that for the Polish Hill area of Pittsburgh—named for the extended Polish population that developed and occupied the area prior to the turn of the century—"the Building and Loan financed the vast majority of home purchases through the 1920's." In Lives of Their Own, the authors note that "a large number [of Poles] were already home owners at the time of the 1900 census."⁴ The data collection related to mortgages, however, is focused from 1900 forward. Other authors such as Julius John Ozog tested the generalizations of home ownership as a cultural trait maintained after immigration, the effect of immigration on property ownership, and the means used to achieve this end. Ozog employs data derived from case studies between 1930 and 1939. He found that for the Poles, the "evidence points to the fact that the Polish building and loan associations played the most important role in financing the purchase of residences." Ozog also found that there was no significant evidence to support the common belief that the Pole was able to achieve his goal of home ownership "only at the sacrifice of certain other important values."⁵

There are studies documenting the tendencies of specific cultural groups toward home ownership, and there are studies documenting the reasons why Poles, as immigrants with agrarian backgrounds, were one of these groupings.⁶ Morawska thought that the reasons were somewhat more complex—on one hand the acquisition of material goods was a type of safety net, yet seen in the comparative framework of old to new worlds, assets were considered achievements. These included money, "city food," clothing, possessing a house, and certainly a house with electricity and running water. However, some of Morawska's informants preferred to accumulate capital and not purchase a home. The various studies that document the "why" behind the Poles' decision to pursue home ownership and "how" the Poles, as a low-income immigrant group, secured this goal consistently attribute their success to the "Building and Loan Association," or Skarb as it is called in Polish.⁷ Oliver Zunz's comparative study of Polish immigrants in the working class city of Detroit notes, however, that location must be considered when assigning the "Building and Loan" as the key to immigrant home ownership.⁸ The results of the following study based on a nineteenth century Polish immigrant neighborhood in Milwaukee suggest that specific time periods must additionally be taken into consideration as well.

Home ownership can be viewed in two ways: the point at which any debts incurred toward home acquisition are repaid and both land and dwelling are owned outright, or the point at which the immigrant commits to the purchase of land and dwelling and undertakes the process of paying off the costs associated with this commitment, so that payments made are towards acquisition, as opposed to paying rent. In this study, the latter definition will be used and the process of repayment reviewed. This paper examines the economic strategies of Polish immigrants in Milwaukee using the microcosm of a "little community" reviewed by a Milwaukee Sentinel reporter in 1874. The study traces the process of Polish home acquisition through overview, as well as in-depth analysis of select family dwellings over a thirty year period. In 1874 the Sentinel reporter described this "little community," as "complete with a school" and a "neat brick church, tastefully ornamented." Inhabited by "low-sized, awkward looking" men and "thick wasted, homely" women, the men were considered "very strong and healthy, possessing great powers of endurance." The women, too, were considered "very strong ... plodding home in squads of a half dozen, each having on her back a bundle of wood large enough to make one shiver just to think of it." Nearly all were poor and "the first money they could call their own" was put into the purchase of a lot, or part of a lot, on which they would "erect a house as soon as possible" for they were found to have "a strong prejudice for paying rent."⁹

Milwaukee Poles are an instructive group for study based on the extent of city homes—as opposed to tenement houses—paired with the Poles' low-income status and high rate of home ownership. An impressive amount of loan activity was undertaken to meet this end. The results of the analysis of the "little community" suggest that the Poles, although benefiting from and promoting the use of building and loan associations, also heavily relied on loans from private lenders, as well as business owners within their cultural group. The process of repayment suggests that the Poles relied more heavily on a complex system of socio-cultural and kinship structures, work ethic, incremental approach to building, and a specific house form that came to be known as the "Polish Flat." This composite system provided the Poles, who occupied one of the lowest rungs of Milwaukee's economic ladder, with the ability to achieve a remarkable level of home-ownership. Prior to the twentieth century, however, the role of the Building and Loan in Milwaukee, was limited to one of many finance mechanisms, due in part to the nature of the Association itself.

Historical Context

Milwaukee's urban growth had been very rapid. An influx of Irish and German immigrants in the mid-1840s quickly transformed the city from an Indian trading post into one of three great manufacturing and distribution centers for the vast area of the north-west states. Milwaukee's industrial expansion, unlike other American urban centers, was directly linked to urban waterways due to a dependence on steam power. As tanneries, ice-houses, breweries, and factories spread out along the river, so too did immigrant settlements. The effect was a clustering of unskilled laborers in residential groupings near their places of employment. As small wood framed cottages dotted the banks of the urban waterways, Milwaukee came to be known as the "City of Homes."¹⁰

A drawing of a typical "Polish Flat."
Courtesy of the author.

Between 1870 and 1910, the city's population increased five-fold, growing from 71,000 to nearly 375,000. Milwaukee was ranked as one of America's major Polish population centers and Poles were the second largest immigrant group in a city dominated by Germans. The Poles arrived to Milwaukee in two successive waves of immigration from Prussia in 1870, and again between 1880 and 1882. By 1874 Milwaukee was home to approximately 7,000 Polish immigrants who had settled primarily on the city's south-side in the Twelfth and Fourteenth Wards, on Jones Island, and in the First Ward (later the Eighteenth) at the city's north-east edge. By 1888, there were 30,000 Milwaukee Poles. A third wave of Polish immigrants arrived from Galicia between 1895–1896 and by 1900 Russian Poles began to arrive. In 1905 Milwaukee was home to more than 65,000 Poles. This number escalated to 70,000 in 1910, and peaked at 100,000 by 1920. Although somewhat artificial, these dates assist in identifying periods of time where substantial population increase occurred and housing for the expanding population was required. These waves of immigration, however, should not be misconstrued as independent period of times, for economic activity was a continuous process.¹¹

In 1910, the Dillingham Commission's report to the Sixty-First Congress indicated that nearly 80 percent of Milwaukee Poles arrived with agrarian backgrounds. Chastised for their recluse nature, lack of the English language, and tenacity for holding to cultural traditions, the Poles remained primarily a laboring class at the bottom of the city's economic ladder. Their success in achieving home-ownership, however, rivaled both the prominent German and Yankee populations throughout the history of Milwaukee's urban development.¹² Given the Pole's economic circumstances during their early years in America, how was this possible? The building and loan association has to date been noted for playing a preeminent role, but as Ozog's study indicated, the extent of this role may have varied by location.¹³ If other mechanisms were at work, such as a peasant economic system bridging with capitalism as suggested by Morawska, what were these mechanisms? To investigate more fully the Poles' system of economics, three interrelated aspects require further discussion:

The "Building and Loan" (Skarb)—why its role may have varied over time and been limited prior to the turn of the twentieth century, as well as additional sources for mortgage lending that supercede the Skarb. The Building and Loan is first addressed in general terms relevant to all U.S. associations, followed by specific aspects of Milwaukee associations.
Agrarian Heritage—how a cultural marriage with the land, paired with a family centered work ethic contributed to the successful transformation of a "peasant turned proletarian" economic system.
America's Polonia—how land use, house form, and an incremental approach to building, when combined with kinship structures and work ethic, created a complex, though successful, system of home ownership.

Each of these aspects will be discussed, select examples from the Sentinel's "little community" will be reviewed, and a model arrived at to demonstrate elements of the Poles' finance system that transcends the contributions of the building and loan associations. The results of the study suggest that not only was home ownership a tendency of Polish immigrants as described by previous authors, but the process employed by the Poles to meet that end was, in part, a cultural phenomena as well.

The Building and Loan Association

Building and loan associations existed in America since the 1830s with the first organization on record at Frankford, a suburb of Philadelphia, in 1831. The term "building and loan" is used in a general sense to include organizations that have similar cooperative purposes such as: mutual loan associations, homestead associations, cooperative banks, and cooperative savings and loans. The object was to furnish a safe means for individuals to accumulate savings, accompanied by an opportunity to secure money at reasonable interest rates for the purpose of building homes. These organizations were considered nearly absolutely safe and were undertaken as private associations or corporations that engaged in a semi-banking business conducted by men who were rarely, if ever, trained as bankers.

In all forms of cooperation, as is illustrated by the Building and Loan Associations, the individuals that make up the organization desire to secure for themselves advantages which they believe could not be gained in any other way under their individual economic conditions. Each person, with a very small personal savings or capital, could only slightly, or over time, advance his or her own interest. When these individual savings were combined, however, they became powerful assets in assisting all members of the group. Cooperation was on a purely voluntary basis and early American developments were largely confined to the poorer working class whose hours were long and wages quite small. The first American associations were governed by legislation passed in 1850. The charters of this act restricted the total number of shares per organization to five hundred for a period of ten years. In 1851, the amount of shares was increased to 2,500. Two years later in 1853, the law was extended to include the power of conveying lands; however, associations were limited to a maximum of fifty acres. It was under this legislation that all building and loan associations in America began to function.¹⁴

A single class of shareholders represented the association whose assets, typically in the form of property, were represented by stock. Loans were rarely, if ever, made for the purchase of land for land was the backing of the association's stock. Each association member would subscribe to a certain number of shares representing the value of money he or she would ultimately like to borrow. The assets of the association, as well as an individual member's investment and subsequent loan, should not be confused with traditional banking. The capital fund of a bank is merely a safeguard for the deposits and other liabilities that the bank incurs. A bank's business is conducted largely with the money of its depositors, while that of a building and loan association is conducted almost entirely of funds in the form of dues paid in by its shareholders. The essential difference is that the shareholders of an association are "virtually the only persons with whom the Association transacts its business."¹⁵ Banks, on the other hand, have few stockholders and those that they do have act primarily as owners, not customers. All funds received by the building and loan are primarily directed into mortgages for the finance of a home, although some loans are also used for small business endeavors, as well as marriage dowries. Monthly dues paid by the association's stockholders, and profits accumulated from loans to association members, are immediately loaned out again, backed by the member's real estate or upon the stock of the association itself. The association is organized for the sole purpose of accumulating this single fund and lending it back to its members. When all shares have matured, the value is paid out to the association members, or if the member has borrowed from the association, the matured shares are used to cancel the loan.

"The Building and Loan is not a philanthropy," but rather "a straight business proposition," concluded H. F. Clark and F. A. Chase.¹⁶ The success of the association lies equally in the provision of loans to its members, as well as the provision of a method for the amortization of the loan through small periodic installment payments. In this sense, the building and loan is equally a product, as well as a process. If this method is compared with "straight mortgage loans," whether through a bank or private individual, the benefit of the building and loan association becomes evident. When a straight mortgage loan was made in the nineteenth century, the terms were set for the full amount to be paid at some given time in the future, typically three years from the date of the loan. The common experience for the lender of a straight mortgage loan was for the borrower to make the required interest payments, usually semi-annually at five to seven percent, with the full value to become due in three to seven years. The borrower, however, typically did not establish a fund to pay off the principle of the loan, nor was the process of amortization used where small installment payments were made over time to reduce the value of the principle, as is the case today.

When loans became due, the borrower often had difficulty finding the large sum required to meet the full lump-sum loan payment. The debt was rarely paid in full except after several renewals—that is, when the same sum of money was borrowed for another period of time from the same lender—or as a "refund," where the original loan was paid off by borrowing from another lender on the same security (that is, the property deed). In either of these situations the borrower was left in the same, if not poorer position. The process of amortization employed by the building and loan association, in theory, avoided this difficulty. In addition, the term of the loan from the building and loan association was somewhat shortened because the borrower not only paid weekly dues on the number of shares he held, but was also credited with a profit earned by the association from lending these dues to its members at a specified interest rate. This additional sum was deducted from the borrower's principle and the loan was paid off at a slightly faster rate.

Associations were classified as either "Local" or "National." Local associations, which included all three Polish associations in Milwaukee, confined their business to small neighborhood areas, while the business of the "National" associations crossed state borders. The distinguishing feature of every building and loan association was the plan or method by which its business was carried out. This operating plan was the type of contract between the association and its members which defined how the payment for shares was accepted, the time and manner in which shares were issued, the arrangement for distributing the earnings on the association's account, and the provisions for retiring the shares and paying the investment back to the association members. It is within this type of operating plan that we find an indication of "why" the role of the building and loan association, at least in Milwaukee, may have been limited prior to the beginning of the twentieth century. As of 1925, there were four different types of operating plans in use in the United States: Serial, Regular Permanent, the Dayton Permanent, and the Terminating Plan. The "Regular Permanent" plan and the "Terminating Plan" are of most interest in this study as they were the most frequently used plans in the latter half of the nineteenth century. What is significant is that only the Terminating Plan was used by the three Polish associations in Milwaukee until after the turn of the century—three Polish building and loan associations, all of them Local and Terminating in structure.

The "Terminating Plan"

A Terminating Plan association started as a neighborhood group that met once each week or month. All members started to save at the same time and made regular weekly or monthly contributions toward the association's common fund. As with all associations, this fund was represented by installment shares similar to shares of stock in a corporation. Each installment share had a matured value, typically $100, and members could subscribe to as many shares as they desired. At each meeting, members paid a stated amount of dues, typically 25 cents on each share they held. For example, the member that subscribed to five shares would pay $1.25 to the association each week, or $5.00 per month, from the onset of the association. A system of fines was enforced for delinquency on dues as a means of keeping all members on an equal footing, at all times. All money that was taken in each week—or each month based on the association's schedule—from dues and fines was loaned out again that same night to at least one association member. Earnings on the association's fund consisted of interest paid by borrowers on their loans—typically five to seven percent paid quarterly—and by fines paid by members delinquent on their dues. The profits made from loaning the dues, however, were shared between members and credited toward the matured value of their individual shares. In this way, the time to reach the matured value was then reduced. Associations typically were able to meet the matured value of all shares within a six year period of time, a savings of approximately $140 for the member owning five shares.¹⁷

Terminating Plan associations issued only one group of shares. Individuals who desired to join the "Terminating Plan" association after the first month of activity found that the members who had joined from the onset already had funds saved. New members could only join by putting in as much money for each new share as the original shares were currently worth. For example, if $1.00 was paid each month on each $100 share, by the end of the first year $12 per share had been invested. The earnings on each share from dues may additionally amount to thirty or forty cents per year. If a new member was to join, he or she must first pay the $12.40 for each share desired, as well as the current dues. Thereafter, the new member could keep in step with the rest of the original members. As time went by, the cost of joining the "Terminating Plan" association simply became cost prohibitive to new members and few were attracted to the idea.¹⁸

Association meetings consisted of two things: (1) receiving and recording payments such as dues, interest, and late fees, and (2) lending to members the money that was received. It was the object of the association to lend out all funds received at each meeting and to never have a balance of cash that was not at work.¹⁹ All loans were secured by holding a mortgage against the member's real estate together with the borrowing member pledging his or her shares. Because loans were backed by members' real-estate, it was mandatory that the real estate be held debt-free to qualify as sufficient backing. Loans, therefore, were rarely, if ever, granted for the purchase of land.

Shortcomings of the Terminating Plan

It was intended by the structure of the "Terminating Plan," that all shareholders continue their membership until everyone had secured loans and the payments of dues and earnings had matured to the value of the total shares held. This, unfortunately, seldom occurred. The difficulty was that after four or five years, the accumulating capital increased beyond the demand for it. By this time, all members that had previously desired loans, had received them. Any new members who might desire loans, could not afford to join the association based on the previous discussion of "standing on equal footing." This resulted in a deadlock, which typically could only be resolved by dissolving the association, which might occur prior to the matured value of the shares. This was considered an inevitable end to a group that functioned with only one issue of stock. "Carried to its logical conclusion," noted Bodfish, "the association would have to lend all of its receipts at each meeting right up to the last meeting. There would be nothing to pay back to any member on the last night—except to the last borrower and he would borrow the full value of his shares."²⁰ All other members would have received the value of their shares by borrowing on previous occasions. The shortcoming was not a lack of savings merely; it would take as many borrowers as there were meetings to make this system work.

Based on these deficiencies, two other plans, the Serial Plan and the Permanent Plan were developed. The Serial Plan was a direct outgrowth of the Terminating Plan and was based on many of the same principles. The primary difference, however, was that instead of offering a single group of shares, new groups or series of shares were made available as often as desired by the group (annually, semi-annually, quarterly, or even monthly). Dues would begin when the new shares were issued and shares would then mature at different times. In a sense, it was an association made up of an indefinite number of associations of the terminating type. The Permanent Plan differed from the Terminating and Serial Plans in that each shareholder had an independent ledger account. Individual shares began and matured without regard to others with payments made in equal installments similar to the Serial and Terminating Plans. After the turn of the twentieth century, all associations, including the Polish skarbs, moved to a Permanent Plan of operation.

Cooperation, and the U.S. Government Ninth Annual Report

The idea of cooperation and mutual aid were not foreign concepts to the Poles. During the second half of the nineteenth century, an indigenous mutual aid movement swept Poland. Political leaders referred to it as "organic work." The intent was to extend the opportunity for work, learning, and resources that would provide opportunity for the Poles to "concern themselves with their own problems and not those of others."²¹ William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki believed that the Poles in America were concerned, for the most part, with their own well being, removing mutual assistance from the roots of social life.²² In contradiction, Bodnar argued that persons heading mutual assistance associations received increased social standing. Findings within Milwaukee's "little community" corroborate his argument.²³ Mutual assistance, however, was not limited to formal associations. It could equally take the form of credit extended at the butcher, an exchange of skilled labor services, or the tavern owner who provided a mortgage loan. Given the history of organized cooperation in Poland, it is not surprising to find aspects of support networks within the "little community," or to find that the building and loan initiative was undertaken by Milwaukee Poles at an earlier date than those first reported in the U.S. government's Ninth Annual Report issued in 1893.

The Ninth Annual Report focused entirely on building and loan associations. The purpose of the report was to provide an overview on how these associations functioned and conducted their business. Details were given on associations in every state. Philadelphia served as one of the centers of the building and loan movement with over four hundred associations on record by 1874. Milwaukee listed fourteen associations, three of them Polish: the Skarb Polski organized on December 1, 1891; the Skarb Pułaski organized April 2, 1892; and the Polish National Building and Loan Association organized April 9, 1892. The Skarb Polski by date, was the Polish forerunner. This date, however, represents the second term of activity for the Skarb that had begun its activity six years early, in 1885, without state registration.²⁴ In November of 1891 Milwaukee's Polish newspaper, the Kuryer Polski, ran a short article that served as review and accolade for the first Skarb endeavor, as well as advertisement for the second "Skarb Polski" that was about to begin. The author of that article notes that at the onset there was a general attitude of "humbug," and "that it couldn't be done."²⁵ He then went on to praise the results of the association that had just concluded its cycle of investment and return.

The original Skarb Polski had been in operation since 1885 and based on its terminating status, was closing its activity and paying out returns on 657 shares of "sold" stock, six years after its initiation. The article then announced a new "społka," or organization. A new Skarb society was to begin and all interested parties were invited to participate based on this successful precedent. The new enrollment period would be open for two weeks, closing on November 20, 1891. The group specifically called on laborers, young couples, "marriage worthy people" wishing to establish a "kitty to be used as marriage dowry," or people desiring to start a business, in short, "anyone interested." The article notes that at the onset of the first association, "few stuck with it, due to the length of time, however those that remained profited. ... You can obtain shares at 25 cents per share paid weekly ... for a total of $77.00 on this installment plan, you receive in return $100. A good return for only a few cents per week."²⁶ The article closed with mention of a "new constitution of by-laws" being generated, which was perhaps required by law as the association filed formally with the state for conducting business in Wisconsin.

Of the fourteen building and loan organizations in Milwaukee, seven were serial and four were permanent in organization type. Only the three Polish associations had local and terminating structures of organization. A comparison of Milwaukee's fourteen associations reveals that the three Polish organizations were below an overall average of the number of members and well below average for the number of members as borrowers. On the other hand, these three Polish associations were well above average for the number of shares held per member. In effect, fewer skarb members were holding more shares, which in turn suggests an opportunity to borrow larger sums of money over the duration of the association's existence (see Table 1).

Table 1 Milwaukee Building and Loan Associations
Association Name	Date of Organizing	Local or Nat'l.	Organizing Plan	Shareholders			Shares
Association Name	Date of Organizing	Local or Nat'l.	Organizing Plan	Male	Female	Total	Borrowers	in Force	Loans
Polish National	Apr 9, 1892	Local	Terminating	191	35	226	32	1,563	0
Skarb Polski Loan	Dec 1, 1891	Local	Terminating	340	72	412	64	5,104	0
Skarb Pułaski	Apr 2, 1892	Local	Terminating	83	2	85	21	711	0
Northside B & L	Dec 3, 1887	Local	Serial	135	21	156	122	960	0
National B & L	May 10, 1887	National	Permanent	2,400	660	3,000	496	7,000	0
Home B & L	Oct 17, 1887	Local	Permanent	271	196	467	190	1,658	0
Mutual B & L	June 27, 1892	Local	Permanent	78	26	104	19	1,105	0
Bohemian #2	July 1, 1888	Local	Serial	81	31	112	43	435	0
Bohemian #1	Oct 28, 1885	Local	Serial	390	35	425	287	1,751	0
Cudahy Mutual	Sept 12, 1892	Local	Serial	335	76	411	28	3,912	0
Slovan L & B	Feb 10, 1890	Local	Serial	30	11	41	19	121	0
Union Savings	Jan 4, 1890	Local	Permanent	390	30	420	54		0
Wisconsin Mutual	Mar 23, 1887	Local	Serial	336	95	431	161	2,493	0
Milwaukee Mutual	Mar 12, 1884	Local	Serial	672	248	920	201	4,434	0
Average				629.8	158	775.8	147	3,068	0

If Milwaukee building and loans are compared to those from Bodnar, Simon, and Weber's study Lives of Their Own, we find that in 1893 there were more than 160 Pittsburgh building and loan associations, compared to Milwaukee's fourteen.²⁷ Not one of the Pittsburgh associations functioned under a terminating plan, which suggests that these associations would continually be open to new members joining over time, unlike Milwaukee's terminating plan associations which would become cost prohibitive over time. This could explain, in part, why Bodnar, Simon, and Weber, found the building and loan to be the "primary mechanism towards homeownership" for the Poles of Polish Hill. Not only was there a difference in operating plan, but the extent of borrowers as well. For example, in Pittsburgh the Pułaski Building and Loan had 121 borrowers (roughly 43 percent of its members,) as compared with 24 percent of the Skarb Pułaski members in Milwaukee. Pittsburgh's Skarb Pułaski additionally had made 71 loans for real estate purchases, while Milwaukee Polish building and loans had made none. As previously mentioned, real-estate loans were considered an unusual practice as traditionally the borrower's land served as security on the loan together with the future value of the borrowing member's shares. Table 2 looks at two building and loans specifically mentioned by Bodnar, et al., in regards to the Polish Hill area, as compared with Milwaukee's Polish building and loans.

Table 2 Comparison of Pittsburgh and Milwaukee, Polish Building and Loan Associations
Association Name	Date of Organizing	Local or Nat'l.	Organizing Plan	Shareholders			Shares
Association Name	Date of Organizing	Local or Nat'l.	Organizing Plan	Male	Female	Total	Borrowers	in Force	Loans
Polish National Loan & Bldg (Milwaukee)	Apr 9, 1892	Local	Terminating	191	35	226	32	1,563	0
Skarb Polski Loan & Bldg (Milwaukee)	Dec 1, 1891	Local	Terminating	340	72	412	64	5,104	0
Skarb Pułaski Bldg & Loan (Milwaukee)	Apr 2, 1892	Local	Terminating	83	2	85	21	711	0
Polish-American Bldg & Loan (Pittsburgh)	May 21, 1892	Local	Permanent	77	3	80	8	656	0
Pułaski Bldg & Loan (Pittsburgh)	Nov 12, 1887	Local	Permanent	236	42	278	121	2,110	71
Average				185.4	30.8	216	49.2	2,029	14.2

Milwaukee Skarbs and Other Mortgage Lending Sources

In Milwaukee, by 1893, there were a total of 723 members of Polish building and loan associations. Although records from these associations are not available for review, based on the well-documented, reclusive nature of Milwaukee's Poles, it is possible that the majority of members in the Polish building and loan associations were Polish and that for the most part, Poles participated in Polish building and loan associations if they were to participate at all. All three of Milwaukee's Polish associations functioned on the Terminating Plan, which suggests three things:

The majority, if not all shareholders, had joined at the onset of the association's organization.
All members held real-estate debt free, prior to qualifying as an association borrower.
Beyond the number of members in each Polish building and loan association, few, if any, additional Poles were receiving loans from these terminating plan associations, for associations lent only to members.

This meant that for a period of approximately six years, from 1893 until 1899, 723 Poles would have the ability to secure loans through Polish building and loan associations, an average of 120 persons per year (assuming all loans taken out were for the purpose of home finance). Five years earlier in 1888, Milwaukee already had a Polish population of 30,000. Six years earlier in 1887, the city tax rolls for the "little community" listed 235 individuals paying taxes on 285 lots. Nearly 86 percent (245) of these lots already had houses of some value built upon them. Although a portion of these land and home owners did employ the building and loan as a mortgage finance mechanism, based on a sample of sixteen lots representing fifty-five loans, the majority did not. Of the sample's fifty-five loans, thirty were made prior to the turn of the century, with the remaining twenty-five loans made after 1900. Only two of the thirty loans surveyed prior to 1900 (3 percent) were through a building and loan association. Both individuals who had borrowed from the building and loan had already taken two mortgage loans from private interest investors, as well as having already built a house on the lot they had purchased.

In March of 1890, Maik Skiba (976 Warren Avenue) borrowed $900 from the Polish National Building and Loan backed by his property deed and nine shares of stock. Skiba had purchased his land three years earlier in 1887 under a land contract for $600 with a mortgage of $400 taken from the seller, William Bradley. In December of that same year, Skiba borrowed another $100 from Bradley and used this loan to construct a four room, wood frame cottage. Two years later, Skiba had the opportunity to borrow $900 from the skarb and with this sum he repaid Bradley approximately $340 to clear his debt on his lot and house. In this way, the money provided by the skarb, was used to "refund" William Bradley. Skiba was required to pay 25 cents on each of his nine shares ($2.25) every Thursday, with interest at 7 percent paid quarterly. In just three years, in 1893, Skiba owned his home and property free and clear having successfully repaid the association.

Borrowing from a skarb, however, did not always ensure debt free home ownership as evidenced by Anton Feltzkowski who lived around the corner from Skiba at 944 Sobieski. Feltzkowski had purchased his lot for $237.50 in 1881 with a $50 down payment. As part of the deed transaction with F. B. Van Valkenburgh, Feltzkowski was required to build a house with a value of $200 within six months of the purchase date of the lot. Feltzkowski built his house and additionally managed to repay his loan to Van Valkenburgh within the following year. A month after clearing this initial debt, he took a second mortgage loan for $500 from John Mathwig, a special interest lender who did substantial business within the neighborhood. Feltzkowski used this loan to expand his living quarters. In 1888, six years later and while still holding his debt with Mathwig, Feltzkowski borrowed $800 from the Polish National Building and Loan, backed by his eight shares of stock and an unencumbered property deed. However, within a year's time, the association filed a lispendens on Feltzkowski's property due to delinquent payment. Two years later, in 1890, Feltzkowski went on to borrow $900 from Henry Veit, another special interest investor, and used this money to repay the skarb (as another example of the refund process). Feltzkowski, however, still held his debt with Mathwig. It was not until June of 1892, when he sold his property to his next door neighbor Albert Miller, that Mathwig was repaid.

Both Skiba and Feltzkowski demonstrate by date of their loans that the Poles had organized their skarbs prior to their formal state registration. Although Skiba was successful in achieving debt free home ownership by borrowing from a skarb, Feltzkowski was not. What is further evidenced through the study is that although the Poles undertook and participated in building and loan associations early on in their American residency, these associations do not appear to be the primary means of home finance prior to the twentieth century. Table 3 outlines the source of loans sampled within the "little community." Prior to the twentieth century, the more widespread occurrence was for a few special interest investors, such as John Mathwig and Henry Veit, to undertake extensive loan activity within a single neighborhood. Following the turn of the century, local tavern owners and real-estate agents provided more mortgage loans than any skarb or special interest lender combined.

Table 3 Sources of Mortgage Loans
Source of Loan (Sample of 55)	Pre-1900 % of Loans	Post-1900 % of Loans	Pre-1900 Avg. Amount	Post-1900 Avg. Amount
Private (relative, (neighbor, etc.)	35	12	$300	$550
Special Interest Lender	55	5	$680	$900
Tavern Owner	0	30	0	$1,600
Real Estate Agent	0	30	0	$1,250
Skarb	5	10	$850	$2,000
Benevolent Society	3	3	$400	$700
Brewery	0	10	0	$3,239.50
Fire Insurance Company	2	0	$500	0

The loan source, however, is just one aspect of financial lending. Other aspects include the repayment terms related to time frame, proposed installments, as well as interest rates. Although the skarb was not the primary lender within the sample of this localized area, it did provide the largest loan amounts prior to 1900. The skarb also provided an amortization process of weekly installment payments, as well as a longer period of time to retire the debt when compared with private interest lenders (six years as opposed to three). Private interest lenders on occasion provided payment plans; however, these averaged $100 annually as opposed to small weekly or monthly installments. Interest on special interest investor loans averaged five to seven percent, which is similar to the skarb as well. Private mortgage lenders, which are considered here as family, relatives, and neighbors, tended not to list interest rates or dates of prescribed payment, although the loan amounts were typically small, relative to other mortgage lending. Upon closer investigation, many private mortgage lenders held some familial relationship to the person borrowing the money.

Mortgage loans provided by tavern owners, real-estate agents, or breweries, were prevalent after the turn of the century and offered varied terms as well. Breweries, more than any other source, provided the largest monetary sums of any loan in the sample. Their terms of "payment on demand," however, embodied extremely high risk. A business-savvy immigrant in a position to take that risk, however, could also prosper from the availability of extended funds. For example, Boleslaus Jazdzewski, a tavern owner on Franklin Street, borrowed $2,500 from the Schlitz Brewery and backed his loan, not with his tavern, but with property he had just purchased from his daughter-in-law's mother at 968 Warren. His mother-in-law continued to live on the lot in the original cottage built together with her now deceased husband. With the brewery loan, Jazdzewski moved his in-law's cottage to the rear of the lot, added a lower story to this cottage, as well as built a large, two story house at the front of the lot. Although the terms "on demand" meant that on any day, at any time, the Schlitz Brewery could ask for their money to be returned, Jazdzewski, who later went into real-estate investing, successfully repaid the loan within two years.

Joseph Galewski, a mason who purchased the lot at the 954 Warren in 1887, was not as fortunate. Together with his wife Marzianna, Galewski had successfully borrowed upwards of $1,500 prior to their $3,979 loan taken from the Val Blatz Brewery, on June 30, 1915. Galewski backed this loan with his property deed, which he owned free and clear. Blatz provided an amortization plan with repayment terms at $25 per month, payable on the first of each month at five percent interest. Unfortunately for Galewski, things went financially awry. Only a year had passed when he contracted with Michael and Josephina Puza to assist in relinquishing the brewery debt, which now stood at $4,075. Together, over the course of the following year, they were able to repay $1,225 of the loan, but hardly enough to satisfy the brewery. Val Blatz foreclosed on Galewski's property in June of 1917 and assumed the remaining $2,850 of the original mortgage. The brewery held the house for four years and finally sold it for $116.06 to Ida Manegold, a relative of Albert Blatz, president of the Val Blatz Brewing Company.

Brewery loans were perhaps less common based on the nature and risk of the repayment terms. Prevailing were loans from tavern owners or real-estate agents that lived and held their place of business within the neighborhood. Boleslaus Jazdzewski, who began as a tavern owner, over time became a real-estate agent. The fact that tavern owners and real estate agents had funds not only to support their own financial endeavors, but in excess to the point that they could lend to others in the community, suggests a hierarchy of economy within a community that was commonly portrayed as impoverished throughout. Unequal forms of economic interaction between households are considered a characteristic of laboring class or peasant societies and are conceptually an important element of the picture. S. W. Mintz, writing about laboring and peasant class economics, supports the concept of internal differences, both social and economic, aspects which were seen as constantly changing over time.²⁸ James S. Pula identifies ethnic merchants as the immigrant upper class, followed by skilled tradesmen and small business owners.²⁹ This is similar to Bodnar who found that skilled tradesmen, small business, and tavern owners typically became catalysts, or leaders in establishing mutual aid organizations to benefit their ethnic group.³⁰ This form of mutual aid, however, did not have to be elevated to the level of state registration such as the building and loan associations, but could equally be effective while remaining as socio-familial or community support networks.

From Tavern to Immigrant Bank

In reporting on immigrant banks in 1910, the Dillingham Commission demonstrated that tavern owners, grocers, and butchers quite often were placed in an elevated position within ethnic communities because area residents often ran monthly tabs. Taverns, in particular, often served as licensed labor agents, as "idle men" congregated there. They also provided meeting rooms with business conducted over a desk in the back room. Although most small businesses took on alternate functions such as steamship ticket agents, facilitating the transfer of funds to the immigrant homeland, or serving as an immigrant bank, the Commission found that saloons, more than any other establishment, took on these roles with nearly "every immigrant saloon keeper conducting a banking business of this character."³¹ The Dillingham Commission notes that in the process of holding these "penny capitalist savings," tavern owners would put the funds to work either to better their own business standing, or by loaning the funds to others. This ad hoc position of providing community financial services, as well as providing links with the immigrant homeland, not only elevated the social standing of these business owners within the neighborhood group, but could work to the business owner's economic advantage as well.

Ad hoc immigrant banking systems such as tavern owners were considered a detriment to the formalized institution of the American bank. Certain obstacles, however, were difficult to overcome. For the immigrant, local bank hours were incongruous with a laborer's work schedule and most immigrants lacked the ability to read or write the English language necessary to complete bank transactions. In general, the American banking system failed to meet the immigrant's needs for they lacked the specialized services that the immigrant bank provided. The Commission also noted that most immigrants held a "positive suspicion" of the rich furnishings and extravagant equipment used by banks, thus deterring many immigrant laborers from utilizing these institutions. One Slovak immigrant banker apologized to the Commission on the state of his banking room, noting that most men came in with muddy work clothes, "frequently intoxicated," which together with "spitting and smoking" kept the room in a constant state of disarray.³² For the U.S. government, the only qualification of the immigrant banker was one of culture, he was "an Italian among Italians" who held a place of business. Although these transactions could be conducted in a "thoroughly honorable way," the fact remained that in the eyes of the Commission thousands of dollars belonging to immigrant laborers were handled by "ignorant, incompetent, or untrustworthy men."³³

Whether a shared culture, a common homeland, or proximity of residence instilled trust among immigrant laborers, the American banking system record did not. In July of 1893, a financial panic caused five banks in Milwaukee to close including the South-Side Savings and Loan, the Plankinton Bank, the Commercial Bank, the Milwaukee National Bank, and the Milwaukee Marine and Fire Insurance Company. Only three of these five were able to recover financially without loss to their depositors.³⁴ This event may have underscored the reliance of immigrants on their ad hoc saloon-banking systems, or on skarbs that were created within their cultural group. The fact remains that the Poles of the "little community" undertook an impressive amount loan activity from the mid-1800s onward through the twentieth century. Although mortgage loans were undertaken with Milwaukee skarbs, their terminating status, together with the sampled loan activity of the "little community," suggest that this was only one of several financial venues that the Poles embraced. Individuals that did benefit from the building and loan associations, however, had additionally undertook mortgage loan activity prior to these contracts, while some undertook additional loan activity after retiring their skarb debt. In effect, the skarb was just one of several options available to the immigrant for financial lending.

Within the first decade of the twentieth century, all building and loan associations in Milwaukee, including the Polish building and loans, had altered their structures to a Permanent Plan of operation. Although schematic, the characteristics of Milwaukee's Polish building and loan associations did differ from those in Pittsburgh prior to 1900 to the extent that these differences not only support Ozog's call for consideration of location when assigning the building and loan as the "key" to Polish home ownership, but equally to include the aspect of time. By 1910 there were approximately 70,000 Milwaukee Poles with nearly 29 percent (20,300) of them listed as homeowners. Data from the "little community" suggests that the extent of building and loan associations operating under a Terminating Plan, while benefiting some Poles, could not benefit the vast majority. Loan activity after 1915, suggests that formal banking institutions, including the revised skarb associations, or American banks, became a more common means of home finance although tavern owners, as well as real-estate agents, continued to play a role. In general, loan activity can be considered just one of many aspects leading to the Poles' success with home ownership. No matter which lender was employed, the process of repayment becomes the more interesting aspect of immigrant economics and perhaps the more telling of the immigrant economic tale. Although an in-depth review of these aspects is beyond the scope of the present study, the Poles of Milwaukee's "little community" demonstrate that heritage and their process of shaping the urban landscape lent clues as to what other aspects were involved as they endeavored towards their own version of the "American Dream."

Agrarian Heritage

It is generally accepted that the majority of America's Poles arrived with agrarian backgrounds and little financial wherewithal. Prior to their arrival in America, and as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century, census documents in Poland identified three peasant groups in relation to land tenure: those who, in theory, possessed enough land for subsistence, paying rent on their land to a land lord; those who lacked sufficient land and had to seek additional work, or offer labor, as well as rent to a land lord; and those who possessed no land, who labored for land lords, or independent peasants as occasional or seasonal workers. Even within the intermediate group of those who had too little land to be self-sustaining, there were various levels of economic standing: "ogrodnik, who possessed a small garden around his house; zagrodnik, who had a house and farm buildings, but no garden; chałupnik, who had a cabin (a chałupa), but no farm building; komornik, who lived in a komora, the smaller room of a peasant household; and the katnik, who lived with his family in a kat, or corner of someone else's room."³⁵ By the middle of the nineteenth century, large segments of Poland's population were completely landless or possessed insufficient holdings to support themselves, with the situation deteriorating as the century progressed. In partial response to these dire circumstances, ogrodniks, komorniks, and katniks began to be established in America. The Dillingham Commission found that 94 percent of Milwaukee Poles were involved in subsistence farming, or as laborers to landlords (pans) throughout Poland.³⁶

Peasants in Education, Vocation, and Economic Standing

Alfred L. Kroeber, who offers one of the best known early definitions of peasants, describes them as "part societies with part cultures."³⁷ In this way, the Poles (as a peasant class) exist as a part of the larger surrounding society, but retain cultural identities that set them apart. Milwaukee Poles were thought to hold tenaciously to their cultural traditions while the only American custom they were found to participate in was voting. In general, the Poles, who became Milwaukee's predominant laboring class, were considered inferior. They neither controlled or influenced aspects of the dominant culture's structure, but simply lived amidst the framework.³⁸ However, the identification of Poles as a distinct social or economic group, and stressing the homogeneity of their cultural heritage as the Dillingham Commission statistics tend to do, presents the risk of overlooking internal group differences. My intention here is to identify general aspects relevant to economics that would deserve extended study.

The typical household in the Milwaukee's "little community" can be viewed as both consumer and producer—or having a dual economic character. In this way, the "income" generated by the household cannot solely be looked at through wages earned from outside employment, for the unit of production was "both a family and an enterprise."³⁹ John Radzilowski's study of a Polish rural community in Minnesota provides an excellent example of the purported peasant aspects of Poles by demonstrating the success of Polish farmers as "entrepreneurial yeomen" who maximized their use of family labor and defined "success" through the purchase of land to pass on to their future generations.⁴⁰ The combination of the entrepreneur with yeoman is similar to Morawska's findings of the Poles' amalgamation of "old and new" in Johnstown.⁴¹ Minnesota Poles were able to achieve a level of successful family farms that rivaled both German and American farmers. This success rate was due in part on making use of intensive family labor, subsistence farming strategies, and off-farm income through children working in urban centers, or winter labor positions assumed by men. Radzilowski considered reliance on family labor as a defining economic feature of the Poles' peasant-based household. "Family labor is what defines peasant from capitalist labor markets—this feature however does not rule out using hired labor in peak periods of work—or sale of their own labor on an ad-hoc basis."⁴²

Sobieski Street looking north from Pulaski Street. To the left is the former boot and shoe shop of Paul Frimark. The right illustrates residential architecture typical of this area in 1910. Courtesy of the Milwaukee Public Library.

In Milwaukee, similar to rural Minnesota, family labor contributed to the household economy at all age levels and through various means. It was quite common for one parcel of land to house four generations of a single family; in a sense, four generations of wage-earners. As early as 1874 the Milwaukee Sentinel noted that "there are about 250 families in the settlement and it will be noticed that but a very small percentage of the children attend school. Indeed, they are taken out of school and put to labor in factories, or are sent out to gather swill, rags, paper, and wood."⁴³

The former saloon of Joseph Uhlenberg at the corner of Sobieski and Pulaski Streets as pictured in 1902. Courtesy of the Milwaukee Public Library.

Prior to an organized system of trash removal, adults and children alike were admonished for gathering "swill" (discarded rags, lumber, or food scraps) from the affluent homes along the lakeshore. In July of 1876, the Sentinel noted, "a crowd of Polackers who live in the First Ward [the area of the "little community"] were brought before Judge Mallory—for collecting garbage. His honor decided that they had a perfect right to collect garbage, provided they kept their carts off of the sidewalk."⁴⁴ With the onset of a citywide garbage removal system, Milwaukee's Polish children, who came to be known as "swill children," began scavenging at night or in the early hours of dawn prior to the city collection. The Sentinel notes that "ever since the collection of garbage has been let by contract, the poor Polacks of the First Ward have started out early enough to get ahead of the contractors, and have entered the premises of our citizens at the hazard of being mistaken for thieves and burglars and shot down. It was to avoid these consequences that the Police were ordered to break up the custom."⁴⁵ The Sentinel notes an incident with the son of the Waisnoski family who lived on Sobieski Street in 1876:

For several weeks past the police have been trying to break up the practice of swill-gathering at all hours of the night, as it proved annoying to residents in the upper portion of the East Side. The police have made it their duty to follow and intercept the gatherers and send them home." Two police officers noticed a pair of boys enter into an alley near Franklin and Prospect. When the boys ran off in opposite directions, the Police gave chase. One boy was distancing himself from the Officer who yelled, "Halt, or I'll shoot," merely to scare the boy. The Officer fired his gun "at an angle of 45 degrees" and was "surprised to find that he had hit the boy," as he had only "deigned to frighten him with a leaden "whistler" over his head.... The boy ... more frightened than hurt, aroused his parents and for a time there was considerable indignation in the Pollack settlement over this unwarranted act by the police.⁴⁶

The practice of children contributing to the household economy through "swill," in the form of food scraps for livestock, wood for cook stoves, or rags for clothing continued well into the twentieth century. Walter Zukowski, a Pole whose family immigrated to Milwaukee in 1900, recalls that he, together with other children, would "pick up coal adjacent to the train tracks, or shorts [wood discarded by builders] to fuel their family's cook stove." Parents would send their children to "sweep up the box cars that carried grain" to be used as chicken feed as "many families in the neighborhood raised chickens." Children would also "assemble at one of the neighborhood corners" to be picked up by a farmer from Shorewood to weed gardens and for this they "would be paid 15 to 20 cents a day."⁴⁷ Thirty-seven years later, in 1911, a study by the U.S. Senate Committee for the 61st Congress found that Milwaukee Poles still had the lowest percentage of youth in school, with the highest percentage at work (see Table 4). The implication of these findings is that "work," as well as "wages," cannot be limited to traditionally employed, income earning adults. Ad hoc contributions that decreased the family's dependency on traditionally earned income to purchase food, fuel, or clothing, would assist in keeping the family's operating budget to a minimum. A decrease in income for sustenance would, in turn, free commerce wage income to be put towards savings, or potentially mortgage payments.

Table 4 Children Ages 6–16 at Home and Work
Race	At Home	At School	At Work
Poles	12.6	69.8	17.6
Bohemians	4.7	84.4	10.9
Germans	6.1	84.8	9.1
Average	7.8	79.7	12.5

In addition to family labor, the Poles relationship to, and use of urban land for subsistence farming, through both gardens or raising livestock, is a distinguishing attribute of agrarian, as well as peasant-based households. Frank Ellis equates "peasant" with "farmer," or those who obtain their livelihood from the land.

The⁴⁸ Dillingham Commission found that 77 percent of Milwaukee Poles were engaged in farming prior to their arrival in America. It is hardly surprising then that the Poles made extensive use of their lots by raising chickens, geese, rabbits, "and rarely growing grass."⁴⁹ Craig Reisser's study on immigrants and house form in Milwaukee found that "Poles traditionally planted large gardens at both the front and rear yards.... Vegetables of low perishability such as cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes and beets, as well as flowers. In the Yankee and German yards lawns were common, for the Poles, lawns were virtually non-existent."⁵⁰ What this begins to suggest is that the Poles, although living in congested surroundings, managed to live quite frugally, maintained an extremely high work force per capita, and made considerable use of their available land through subsistence farming. The "little community" was cited as holding to the tradition of keeping livestock, including chickens, pigs, and cows, well beyond the provision of the city ordinance to do so. The Milwaukee Sentinel notes that "Some time ago the Polacks were compelled to remove the hogs they kept, contrary to City Ordinance, but I know that there are over fifty hogs kept there at the present time, and political considerations are the only reason why the effort isn't made to remove them. A near relative of the policeman on that beat, I know to keep swine."⁵¹ By "political considerations" the newspaper meant that the Poles, having embraced a citizen's right to vote, and due to the their solidarity as a group, were then considered a strong political block in Milwaukee.

The 1894 Sanborn maps indicate that cows were kept on Sobieski and Pulaski streets, while as late as 1921 a woman living at 948 Warren Avenue raised rabbits to the extent that she could barter for other products. "In [certain] societies, land is more than just another factor of production which has its price — it is the long term security of the family against the hazards of life, and it is part of the social status of the family within the village or community."⁵² This concept was supported by William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki who devoted considerable attention to what is described as the "land hunger of the Poles" and the effect this had on their social and economic motivations,⁵³ as well as Helena Znaniecka Lopata who believed that America's Polonia was rooted in a strong heritage of status competition.⁵⁴ These authors hypothesize that the peasant land hunger led ultimately to a higher state of economic advance expressed in the development of shop-keeping and the acquisition of property, which in turn became indicators of status. Maintaining an agrarian based use of urban land, as well as employing a family based labor force where all age groups representing four generations of income-earners contributed to the family's sustenance, could equally contribute to a peasant turned proletarian system of economics and home ownership.

The Lincoln Avenue Loan and Building Association, seen here in 1914, was located next to Roman Kwasniewski's photography studio. Courtesy of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Pulaski Street in 1902 was a mixture of housing and small shops. Wolski's Tavern is the light colored structure in the center. Courtesy of the Milwaukee Public Library.

Land Use, House Form, an Incremental Approach to Building

In addition to land use and a family based labor force, the Sentinel's "little community" revealed specific examples that suggest where the Poles built, what they built, and their process of building could equally have played a role in affording home ownership. In 1857, Milwaukee, like most American urban centers, had adopted the grid plan into law with the standard plot comprised of lots measuring 30 × 120 feet. While Germans and Yankees held prominent street addresses such as 333 Juneau Avenue or 546 Lake Drive overlooking Lake Michigan, the earliest addresses in the "little community" were listed in City Directory as, "patch north of Brady and west of Prospect." Poles were located in the Twelfth and Fourteenth Wards south of the city, and in the north-east along the Milwaukee river, where trolley and sewer lines had yet to run and land prices were at their lowest.

Offices of the Skarb Kosciuszko at 1st and Lincoln Avenues. Courtesy of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

As early as 1875, the approximately eight-block area of the "little community" represented a hierarchy of land values. Property along Warren Avenue running south towards Brady Street held higher land values based on the proximity to neighboring Yankee and German neighborhoods. By size however, Warren Avenue lots were similar to the lots along the west end of North Water (now Kane Street) and Sobieski (now North Arlington) where land values diminished up to two-thirds. The intersection of North Water and what eventually would become Pulaski Street (originally a ravine leading to the Milwaukee river), was the lowest geographic elevation in the neighborhood. Prior to an organized system of trash removal and the installation of city sewer lines, the ravine and its surroundings had gained the reputation as the "filthiest place in the city." In 1874, a Sentinel reporter described the area and its inhabitants in an article entitled, "Sniff at Many Smells."

The [Pulaski Street] gully, in the First Ward, has long been known as the filthiest spot in Milwaukee. Garbage is thrown into it in utter disregard for the law. Refuse of all kinds is deposited there and left to breed disease and become a nuisance to all living in the vicinity.... On arriving within a block of where the gully turns off from Pulaski Street, an aggregation of smells that would have done honor to several glue factories, with a half dozen tanneries thrown in, greeted the nostrils. At the gully the scene was anything but inviting. Lean and hungry geese, ducks, and chickens wallowed in the slimy clay, or picked for a living with might and main in the great manure heaps which decorate the landscape. In the depressions between the heaps of garbage pools of slimy water sent forth "five and seventy smells, and each separate smell a stink." Some of these pools might properly be called ponds as water which naturally flows from the surrounding high ground, settles at the lowest level. These pools are the receptacles of all the garbage of the houses which occupy all the available space. Dead chickens, cats and dogs were seen floating on the surface of the pools, together with decaying cabbages, squashes, potatoes and other vegetables, the remnants of last winter's supply, probably deposited there by some garbage collector.⁵⁵

The reporter went on to describe the Poles that lived in the adjacent houses,

sitting on their doorsteps in their best, evidently enjoying their Sunday holiday gazing over the enchanting stretch of scenery which was visible. The women, some barefooted and with bare arms, dressed in the costume of their native land, sat on steps and gossiped with their neighbors, or watched their numerous flocks of children as they disported themselves on manure piles with the winged flocks. At one place, situated on the side of the slanting hill, eight strapping men sat in a row on a fence, and were calmly enjoying the afternoon.⁵⁶

The emphasis on degradation and decay, paired with the somehow oblivious nature of the Poles to their environmental plight, was a typical journalistic review. There was a underlying fear of cholera as noted by the reporter that "a prophetic imagination could readily conjure ... the spectral and sure-winged messenger of death ... rising from this scene, and if Milwaukee is so unfortunate to be visited with that plague, it will be able to obtain a sure foothold in this locality."⁵⁷ The danger was seen not only to the "little community," but equally, if not more so, to the "fine residences of Farwell Avenue" four blocks to the East, "where every breeze wafts."⁵⁸ When sewer contracts were finally awarded in June of 1875, it was found more cost effective to follow the line of the existing gully, than to force the standard grid pattern over the entire neighborhood, resulting in the curious angle that defines Pulaski Street today. Although far from a "desirable area" to set up house and home, the "little community" that included Pulaski Street was indeed home by 1874 to more than thirty Polish families. In less than a decade, Poles occupied this entire area and by 1880 the Milwaukee City Directory listed more than 270 families residing in the "little community" with one baker, one butcher, one bookmaker, and eight taverns.⁵⁹

In addition to the variation in land values across the small area, early commercial activity viewed over time demonstrates that specific streets developed as shopping districts. Shops and commercial districts typically paralleled the trolley line stops. Trolley lines did not transgress the neighborhood, however, and in the absence of a trolley stop the majority of shops were located on Franklin Street, which ran adjacent to the Poles' church of St. Hedwig. Here the majority of pedestrian traffic from the neighborhood to the church would most likely occur, fostering "good business." Over time, a butcher, a grocer, two taverns, a barber, a shoe repair, and a baker were all located along Franklin's half block length adjacent to the church. Occupations such as seamstresses and tailors were frequently scattered throughout the neighborhood, while barber shops were partnered with taverns that eventually occupied nearly every corner of the study area.

Tradesmen were scattered throughout the neighborhood, frequently assisting in the construction of neighboring houses. Zunz found in nineteenth century Detroit that there was a marked difference between building permits of the "elegant houses of Woodward Avenue" and those of the Polish occupied Hamtramck area. In Detroit, 79 percent of the Yankee houses on Woodward Avenue had permits taken out by "professional builders and architects."⁶⁰ In Milwaukee's little community, 92 percent of all surveyed permits were taken out by Polish homeowners. If a separate contractor was employed, individuals residing within the neighborhood were most commonly listed. For example, permits for masonry work often listed Frank Niezorawski at 866 Franklin Street or Joseph Galewski at 914 Doty. John Dombrowski residing at 879 Sobieski was often listed as carpenter, while house moving was undertaken by John Treziabowki at 1091 North Water. Overall, the "little community" established a level of business that provided a degree of autonomy in terms of food products, household goods, and repair services, a local economy where residents were both producers and consumers. Business owning Poles had, at worst, a subsistence level of economy with opportunity to employ family and friends, as well as be placed in a position to barter for products or services their own business did not accommodate. In this way, Polish business owners began to establish a hierarchy of economy, as well as participate in the provision of goods and services for the surrounding community.

Restrictive Covenants

The physical character of the immigrant neighborhood was often considered a hybrid of the immigrant's country of origin, paired with the influences of the "New World." Conzen addresses the debate that geographers have "waged over landscapes as evidence of either vernacular habits and preferences brought with the (immigrant) group or landscape styles adopted by those willing to follow national aesthetic trends."⁶¹ The independence of this marriage of influences is subject to debate as New World influences were often imposed, rather than adopted, through city ordinance, deed restrictions, and covenants. In early land development, covenants were employed to protect the interest of the original landowner and were most often found in affluent areas where property values were at a premium. Covenants assisted in assuring buyers, as well as sellers, that their investment would be protected. The restrictions usually required a house of minimum size, minimum price, with a standard setback from the street. Factories and stables, which were considered adverse uses, were often forbidden and in some instances groups were excluded both by race or ethnicity. This provided the sub-divider with patience and assets the ability to influence and shape neighborhood development. After the individual plots of a particular parcel were fully developed, the importance of the restrictions declined. Covenants had the effect of neighborhood zoning and were effective in "creating neighborhoods homogeneous as to both residences and residents."⁶² Equally influenced were initial housing costs, basic house form, and, for immigrants, an initial step in the process of assimilation. Jackson believed that before 1910 this was possible for only the "most exclusive" communities.⁶³ The "little community," however, was far from exclusive, though not exempt from the influences of covenants.

While some covenants could be quite restrictive, those in the "little community" were limited to a set of physical requirements set in place by Otis Waldo, a prominent and well-respected Milwaukee attorney. Waldo owned 32 lots scattered throughout the study area, in groups of 4 to 6 parcels. He additionally owned 14 parcels located in the Walker's Point Subdivision on Milwaukee's south side and in 1866 sold all of his lots to Joseph Ody for $2,000. There were no deed restrictions in place at this time. A year later, Waldo repurchased the 32 lots of the "little community" from Ody for $2,500, again without any deed restrictions in place. By 1875, however, Waldo began to sell off his 32 parcels, with each specifying a minimum house value of $200 to be constructed within "six months from the date of signing," as well as specific materials required for construction — wood frame and clapboard siding with "shingles covering the whole roof." In addition, a minimum 50 square foot area of grass was to be maintained at the front of the house, a "straight and substantial board fence" was to be erected at the street face, and no "stable, pig-pen, privy, or other objectionable shrine" was to be constructed within 50 feet of the front of the house."⁶⁴ All deed transfers were conducted under land contract. This meant that if any purchaser failed to fulfill the requirements, the property would revert to Waldo's ownership. The covenant, although not limiting in terms of race or nationality, had the potential to influence the outward appearance of the lots, as well as their potential use. Thirty-two properties of the six-block area developed prior to 1880 could have set a precedent in terms of residential character, which in turn could potentially influence additional residential structures that were not subject to such requirements. Conzen points out that "location was important to the ethnic imprint. When new immigrants entered already settled districts and filled in the remaining open land, they were not likely to create separate landscapes."⁶⁵ Deed restrictions continued to assist in protecting the interests of Polish homeowners well into the twentieth century. This cautionary approach was used for both familial and non-familial property transfers. For example, John Paszolek of 1166 North Water sold his home to his son-in-law Lorenz Wielicki with the condition that Paszolek was allowed continued use of the cellar for vegetable storage through the remainder of his natural life. Maik Skiba when selling his property at 976 Warren to his daughter and son-in-law, claimed through covenant the use of the front two rooms of the house, as well as access to the yard "for walks," for he and his wife Julianna through the course of their natural lives. Maik died two days after the deed transfer. Julianna, however, lived for another twelve years. In November of 1877 Tomas Roszk, home owner at 867 Sobieski (now 1723 N. Arlington), provided Frank Sokolofski the right to build a dwelling and a small stable at the rear of his lot for $7.00 paid annually. Frank would be provided access to, and use of, the rear of Roszk's property for a period of ten years. At that time, if Sokolofski and Roszk could not mutually renegotiate this contract, Sokolofski would be allowed to take his house and stable and move on.

Formalizing specific conditions of use into the transfer of a deed recorded at the City Hall essentially had the effect of law and left little to challenge. The influence of deed restrictions on the economics of home ownership, although somewhat tenuous, could potentially influence building cost, as well as spatial use of the lot, which for the agrarian based Poles was a significant aspect of survival. This suggests additional variables of consideration when attributing house form to cultural assimilation, as well as the overall cost of home ownership.

The Lot

The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps from both 1894 and 1910 are an excellent source of what eventually was built in the community and to what extent. The maps provide indications of building footprint, the number of stories, the structure's cladding, and if there was commercial use through house shops. Lots typically held a front house, a smaller rear cottage, a privy, a shed, a coop, or an occasional barn. Frequently a third, or even fourth cottage was added to the rear of the narrow, deep lots. The density of structures, together with the use of the yard, was a defining characteristic of the Poles' neighborhood development. In 1909, inspectors of the Dillingham Commission noted that the "Poles, have not allowed any extra space to lie idle."⁶⁶ The triangular block bounded by Pulaski, North Water, and Sobieski had 53 rear houses that had no direct access to the street. Reformers considered rear houses to be among the primary housing evils of the era, inhabited by "undesirable" ethnic groups.⁶⁷ Rear houses, however, provided shelter for extended family, as well as an additional source of income for the prospective homeowner who could bring in three or even four rental payments based on the number of cottages on his lot.

House Form

The houses in the "little community" were typical of post-Civil War worker housing—wood frame, clapboard siding, and gabled roofs. The cottages, with typically a three or four room first floor plan, were placed on wood foundations without basements. Gabled roofs provided attic space typically used as a sleeping area for children. Hubka and Kenny point out that this house form was "an efficient ... solution in an era of rapid industrial development," one that provided for flexibility and expansion over time.⁶⁸ One form of expansion included raising the cottage on wood posts to create a second story below. Elevating the structure was an incremental process. Built on wood foundations, it was relatively easy to position a trundle or rotating jack beneath. This jack was raised in stages with wooden blocks added as the cottage was elevated. In this way, the occupying residents and their belongings were undisturbed, and children continued to play above as the house was raised from below. The five foot raise was accompanied by a three to four foot excavation with the resulting story "in and out" of the ground — the typical profile of the "Polish Flat." The new, lower addition was in-filled with temporary siding and, as finances permitted, wood and eventually masonry replaced the temporary enclosure. The work could progress as both time and money permitted in an open ended approach to building.⁶⁹ More than 33 percent of the dwellings in the "little community" were raised. This house form, although not exclusively Polish, was a common enough occurrence in Milwaukee's Polish neighborhoods to be granted the name "Polish Flat." As early as 1860, however, Germans employed this raised cottage as evidenced by an 1862 letter from Veronica Frank, a German immigrant, to her mother in-law:

We had a lot of confusion in our house due to its being raised. There was much building, some changes and improvements, so that we are not completely in order even now. It is true dear mother, that [it] is one of peculiarities here—that one can raise a large house 5 feet in 6 hours without the residents leaving it....⁷⁰

Convenience and the undeniable economy of adding additional space in a relatively short amount of time without displacement of the occupying residents may suggest why this particular house form became most prevalent in the ownership-inclined Polish neighborhoods.

Kinship

Statistics provided by the Dillingham Commission reveal that Milwaukee Poles not only differed from other immigrant groupings, but differed amongst themselves between foreign born and second generation Poles. The Commission found that the Poles were "very tenacious of their language and religion."⁷¹ They demonstrated both the highest birth rate per 1,000 occupants, as well as the highest death rate.⁷² Of all nationalities surveyed in Milwaukee, the Poles were found to have had the highest number of adults per room in each household, as well as the highest number of persons sharing individual sleeping rooms. They were comparable to the Southern Italians in terms of number of persons per household, however, the Southern Italians had nearly double the number of boarders while the Poles had fewer rooms per dwelling.⁷³

Collectively, the Poles paid the lowest city rents—averaging $7.25 in 1910—yet it is the second generation Poles who paid an even lower monthly rent than their foreign born compatriots at $5.38 per month as opposed to $6.08. Poles were the most limited in plumbing facilities with fifteen percent of all second generation Poles sharing one toilet with three families compared to the 1.4 Southern Italian families to one toilet; however, nearly thirty percent of second generation Poles surveyed owned their own homes compared to a mere 6.2 percent of the Italians. Forty percent of all Poles surveyed had homes with basement apartments, as compared with 8.5 percent of the Germans and only 2.75 percent of the Southern Italians. The Poles had below average incomes, with the highest contribution of income from working wives. They additionally had the highest number of children at work, and consequently the lowest number of children in school. The Commission concluded, "Industry and thrift are peculiarly characteristic of these people, as is generally admitted by employers and evidenced by the strength of their benefit and cooperative building societies."⁷⁴

The process of securing income and saving in addition to sustenance was perhaps a unique experience for every immigrant that struggled to define a new life in America. Letters from immigrants to family and friends in their homeland provide a glimpse into individual lives and their experiences with an American economy.⁷⁵ For example, in February 1891 Franc Kryger wrote to his brother in Poland describing how he, as well as his wife and children, worked in a factory that employed 500 people. In the same month, Faustina Wisnieska wrote to her parents regarding friends "who go out each day at dawn with bags—to the barrels that are put out for trash—and collect food scraps—loaves of bread and whole lemons." She also speaks of the difficulty to acclimate—that it "takes 2 or 3 years to learn the language, to accustom oneself to the language and customs of the country—how could one save anything?" But save they did as Faustina indicates that a land owner purchased a drugstore for "$5,000 with $2,000 down and a $3,000 mortgage." This man "worked 6 years to save the money, denying himself all luxury and slaving like a horse."⁷⁶ Michael Kmieciak recommended to his brother in January 1891 to come to America with his wife for it is "more costly to live as a bachelor than as a married man."⁷⁷ On February 1, 1891, Michael Golombiewski, who lived at 919 Pulaski, wrote to his "panna" to convince her to come to Milwaukee where everyone was dressed nicely and lived close to the church. He pledged to convert to her religion if she would come, informed her that he was working every day, and noted that "here everyone dresses nicely." He recommended she bring her girlfriends for there were many eligible bachelors, while in her home province there are only "bandy-legged ones who do not even know how to love women."⁷⁸ "Slaving like a horse," working extensive hours at arduous positions in factories, in the streets, in mines, and along the railroad lines, became commonplace for the struggling Polish immigrant. Morawska notes the monetary rewards tied to work as a quantifiable means to preferred goals. For the Poles, "this was a work ethic enriched by a proletarian defiance toward the boss, the exploitative factory system, and the shear exhaustion of work." In America goals were expandable, "you could eat more richly, dress more nicely, give more generously to the church, and have your name read from the pulpit."⁷⁹

What becomes evident from these brief accounts is the complexity of relationships, and multiplicity of aspects that could potentially influence the process of home ownership. The selection of land, an incremental process of building the role of family members—from great grand parents through grand children—the role of neighbors and kin, work ethic, working hours, the undertaking of a mortgage contract, the process employed to retire this debt, and the multiple ways that earnings could be saved and expenditures reduced. No single aspect can be considered primary and each played a role in the overall process of home ownership. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this study is the call for an expanded framework of discussion, for it simply falls short of a well rounded review to attribute the success of Poles in achieving home ownership as belonging to the building and loan association. Although these associations provided opportunities for individual independence and to some extent devised a "workingman's way to wealth," they were not, however, the last word in home ownership prior to 1920. According to Theodore Abel, the ability of the immigrant to establish himself so quickly and to pay off staggering mortgages in a short period of time was owing to the cheap labor offered by numerous family, and their willingness to do hard work combined with a low standard of living.⁸⁰ This "low standard of living" can only be viewed in light of external references. Poles did not maintain a competitive standard of living with non-Polish neighbors, but rather relied on status symbols relative to their own cultural group.⁸¹

Summary

Of the sources employed for this study, including the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, government reports, newspaper articles, property deed transfers, building permits, census data, city directories, tax records, immigrant letters, as well as previous research, none can be considered comprehensive. Information was available at varying levels of specificity, the national level, the state level, the city level, or specifically related to the study area of the "little community." To some extent this presents a level of inconsistency. Certain aspects of the study, however, such as the operating structure of the building and loan, are independent of location and based on the characteristics of the association itself. Within the study area, the "little community" was addressed from both a general perspective as well as individual lots selected for in-depth analysis. These lots were chosen for the availability of information, accessibility, as well as to arrive at a cross section of dwelling types in terms of scale and location within the neighborhood that would represent varying land values. Simon, et al., note in Lives of Their Own "the census typically under enumerates blue-collar workers and those at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum."⁸² Multiple data sources were employed in an attempt to round out the profile of each dwelling under investigation, as well as to confirm the accuracy of information gleaned from a single source.

If mortgage loans are isolated as a mechanism toward home ownership, the Poles of the "little community" engaged in an impressive amount of activity from the outset. Contracts were made with a variety of sources including the original landholders and private lenders from neighboring cities or states serving as a source for loans to multiple persons within the neighborhood area, with tavern owners additionally playing an influential role. The study of immigrant home ownership would benefit from comparative reviews of other ethnic groupings, other house forms, specific forms of employment relevant to retiring mortgage debt, as well as extended studies across cultures over time and within the Polish culture across generations. This study falls short of a clear definition of differences between first and second-generation Polish immigrants and would undoubtedly be enhanced by more intensive research into differences across generations over time.

New ethnic groupings, new immigrant populations continue to challenge our definition of what it means to be American. Land and home ownership continue to represent social status and stability. Clark and Chase treat homeownership as middle class phenomena, or a middle class character of the working class.⁸³ Zunz, however, in writing about Detroit at the turn of the century, adopts a view that owning a home was not a middle class phenomenon at all, nor was it a sign of any movement in to the middle class. Homeownership was "more an emblem of a working class immigrant culture, than of an established middle class of native, white American culture."⁸⁴ Home ownership continues to be a pervasive aspect of American culture across income brackets, while new immigrant groups to America are continually in need of adequate housing. Looking to historic models, specifically to low-income groups that successfully achieved the status of homeowner in America, can be of relevance today and groups such as Milwaukee's "little community" serve as useful models for comparison.

¹� Board of Trade, Cost of Living in American Towns. Report of an Inquiry by the Board of Trade of London into Working Class Rents, Housing, and Retail Prices, Together with Rates of Wages in Certain Occupations in the Principal Industrial Towns of the United States of America (London: Darling and Son, Limited, 1911; Document No. 22; 62d Congress, 1st session), 266.

²� Ewa Morawska, For Bread With Butter. The Life-worlds of East Central Europeans in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 1890–1940 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1985); John Bodnar, The Transplanted. A History of Immigrants in Urban America (Blooming-ton: Indiana University Press, 1985).

³� John Bodnar, Roger Simon, and Michael P. Weber, Lives of Their Own. Blacks, Italians, and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900–1960 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1982).

⁴� Bodnar, et al., Lives of Their Own, 163.

⁵� Julius John Ozog, "A Study of Polish Home Ownership in Chicago [Illinois]" (M.A. Thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1941).

⁶� For status see Helena Znaniecki Lopata, Polish Americans. Status Competition in an Ethnic Community (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1976); for a comparison with gentility, see Witold Kula, N. Assorodobraj-Kula, and Marcia Kula, Writing Home: Immigrants in Brazil and The United States 1890–1891 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986; Josephine Wtulich, ed. and transl.).

⁷� Morawska, For Bread With Butter, 136.

⁸� Oliver Zunz, The Changing Face of Inequality. Urbanization, Industrial Development, and Immigrants in Detroit 1880–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).

⁹� "The Polacks," Milwaukee Sentinel, November 30, 1874, 2.

¹⁰� Judith Walzer Leavitt, "Public Health in Milwaukee, 1867–1910" (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1975), 15.

¹¹� Bayrd Still, Milwaukee: The History of a City (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1948), 271–75; Victor Greene, For God and Country. The Rise of Polish and Lithuanian Ethnic Consciousness in America, 1860–1910 (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1975), 45.

¹²� William P. Dillingham, Immigrant in Cities. Reports of the Immigration Commission. A Study of the Population of Selected Districts in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Milwaukee (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1911; Vol. 1; Document No. 338, 61st Congress, 2d session).

¹³� Ozog, "Polish Home Ownership."

¹⁴� Edmund Wrigley, The Working Man's Way to Wealth; A Practical Treatise on Building Associations: What They Are and How to Use Them (Philadelphia: James K. Simon, 1869).

¹⁵� Henry Morton Bodfish, ed., History of Building and Loan in the United States (Chicago: United States Building and Loan League, 1931).

¹⁶� Horace F. Clark and Frank A. Chase, Elements of the Modern Building and Loan Associations (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1925), 4–5.

¹⁷� Wrigley, Working Man's Way; Clarke and Chase, Modern Building and Loan; Bodfish, History of Building and Loan; Commissioner of Labor, Ninth Annual Report. Building and Loan Associations, 1893 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1894).

¹⁸� Clarke and Chase, Modern Building and Loan, 25.

¹⁹� Bodfish, History of Building and Loan, 37–38

²⁰� Bodfish, History of Building and Loan, 37–38.

²¹� Alexsander Swiętochowski, leader of the "Organic Work" movement, as noted in Frank Renkiewicz, "An Economy of Self-Help: Fraternal Capitalism and the Evolution of Polish America," in Charles A. Ward, Philip Shashko, and Donald E. Pienkos, eds., Studies in Ethnicity: The East European Experience in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 74–75.

²²� William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, "A Polish Peasant Family," in Teodor Shanin, ed., Peasants and Peasant Societies, Selected Readings (Oxford: Basil Blackford Press, 1986), 2nd edition, 16–20.

²³� Bodnar, The Transplanted, 120.

²⁴� Bodfish, History of Building and Loan, 80–83.

²⁵�Kuryer Polski, November 3, 1891, 8.

²⁶�Kuryer Polski, November 9, 1891, 5.

²⁷� See Bodnar, Simon, and Weber, Lives of Their Own, 161–63.

²⁸� S. W. Mintz, "A Note on the Definition of Peasantries," Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1974), 93.

²⁹� James S. Pula, Polish Americans: An Ethnic Community (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995), 29.

³⁰� Bodnar, The Transplanted, 124.

³¹� Dillingham, Immigrant in Cities, 220.

³²� Dillingham, Immigrant in Cities, 216.

³³� Dillingham, Immigrant in Cities, 216.

³⁴� John G. Gregory, History of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Chicago & Milwaukee: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1931), Vols. I & II, 1212.

³⁵� Caroline Golab, Immigrant Destinations (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977), 71–72.

³⁶� Dillingham, Immigrant in Cities, 727–29.

³⁷� Alfred L. Kroeber, Anthropology (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1948), 248.

³⁸� Eric R. Wolf, Peasants (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1966), 11.

³⁹� Frank Ellis, Peasant Economics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 7–8.

⁴⁰� John Radzilowski, "Family Labor and Immigrant Success in a Polish American Rural Community, 1883–1905," Polish American Studies, Vol. LI, no. 2 (Autumn, 1994), 48–66.

⁴¹� Morawska, For Bread With Butter, 136.

⁴²� Radzilowski, "Family Labor and Immigrant Success," 59–61.

⁴³�Milwaukee Sentinel, November 30, 1874, 2.

⁴⁴�Milwaukee Sentinel, January 13, 1876, 7.

⁴⁵�Milwaukee Sentinel, July 14, 1875, 5.

⁴⁶�Milwaukee Sentinel, August 1, 1876, 8.

⁴⁷� Walter Zukowski, Small Manuscript Collection, #13, Golda Meier Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

⁴⁸� Ellis, Peasant Economics, 7–11.

⁴⁹� Dillingham, Immigrant in Cities, 731.

⁵⁰� Craig Reisser, "Immigrants and House Form in Northeast Milwaukee" (M.A. thesis, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1977), 133–38.

⁵¹�Milwaukee Sentinel, June 22, 1885, 3.

⁵²� Ellis, Peasant Economics, 7–8.

⁵³� Thomas and Znaniecki, "A Polish Peasant Family," 190–205.

⁵⁴� Lopata, Polish Americans, 8–11.

⁵⁵�Milwaukee Sentinel, June 22, 1874, 3.

⁵⁶�Milwaukee Sentinel, June 22, 1874, 3.

⁵⁷�Milwaukee Sentinel, June 22, 1874, 3.

⁵⁸�Milwaukee Sentinel, June 22, 1874, 3.

⁵⁹� Milwaukee City Directory, 36.

⁶⁰� Zunz, Changing Face of Inequality, 165–66.

⁶¹� Kathleen Neils Conzen, "Patterns of Residence in Early Milwaukee," in Leo F. Schnore, ed., The New Urban History: Quantitative Explorations by American Historians (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 221–48; Judith Kenny, "Polish Routes to Americanization: House Form and Landscape on Milwaukee's Polish South Side," in Robert C. Ostergren and Thomas R. Vale, eds., Wisconsin Land and Life (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 2.

⁶²� Roger Simon, The City Building Process: Housing and Services in New Milwaukee Neighborhoods 1880–1910 (Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 86, Pt. 6, 1996), 4. For additional information on the early use of restrictive covenants, see Helen C. Monchow, The Use of Deed Restrictions in Subdivision Development (Chicago: The Institute for Research in Land Economics and Public Utilities, 1928).

⁶³� Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 52–54.

⁶⁴� Land contract between Otis H. Waldo and Anton Lipski, February 1, 1875, from Property Deed Vol. 141, 155.

⁶⁵� Conzen, "Patterns of Residence," 241.

⁶⁶� Dillingham, Immigrant in Cities, 685.

⁶⁷� "The Housing Problem in Wisconsin," Twelfth Biennial Report, Part IV (Madison: Wisconsin Bureau of Labor & Industrial Statistics, 19060, 321–24.

⁶⁸� Thomas Hubka, "The Polish Worker's Cottage: Vernacular Housing and the Process of Americanization," paper presented to the annual meeting of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Lawrence, Kansas, May 25, 1996; Kenny, "Polish Routes to Americanization," 40.

⁶⁹� On the open-endedness, see Amos Rapoport, Human Aspects of Urban Form (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1977), 8–11.

⁷⁰� Letter, Veronica Frank to mother-in-law, November 2, 1862, Golda Meier Library.

⁷¹� Dillingham, Immigrant in Cities, 258.

⁷²� See also Leavitt, "Public Health in Milwaukee."

⁷³� Dillingham, Immigrant in Cities, 258.

⁷⁴� Dillingham, Immigrant in Cities, 258.

⁷⁵� Kula, et al., Writing Home, Introduction.

⁷⁶� Kula, et al., Writing Home, 444.

⁷⁷� Kula, et al., Writing Home, 301.

⁷⁸� Kula, et al., Writing Home, 242–43.

⁷⁹� Morawska, For Bread With Butter, 116.

⁸⁰� Theodore Abel, "Sundeland: A Study of Changes in the Group-Life of Poles in New England Farming Community," in Edmund DeS. Brunner, ed., Immigrant Farmers and Their Children (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1929), 216.

⁸¹� For conclusions on the importance of status, see Lopata, Polish Americans.

⁸²� Simon, et al., Lives of Their Own, 268.

⁸³� Clark and Chase, Elements of the Modern Building and Loan Associations, 4–5.

⁸⁴� Zunz, Changing Face of Inequality, 161.

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From Peasant to Proletarian: Home Ownership in Milwaukee's Polonia

by Suzanne M. Zukowski