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Greek Workers in the Intermountain West: The Early Twentieth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Helen Papanikolas
Helen Papanikolas*
Affiliation:
Salt Lake City, Utah
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Extract

The Greeks were among many national and racial groups to inundate the Intermountain West at the turn of the century and in many parts of it were the largest group of workers. Payrolls and newspaper reports, the many self-sufficient ‘Greek Towns,’ large chapters of Panhellenic Unions, and the early establishment of Greek Orthodox churches give us cause to believe that the 1910 Census represented only a portion of Greek immigrants. The men were constantly moving and census-taking was haphazard.

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 5 , 1979 , pp. 187 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1979

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References

1. 1910 Census: Utah 4,039 Greeks; Idaho 1,869; Wyoming 1,915; Nevada 1,060; Montana 1,934. 1910 reflected the first significant immigration figures.

2. See Handlin, O., Race and Nationality in American Life (New York, 1957), pp. 77-8 Google Scholar; Higham, John, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860-1925 (New Brunswick. Rutgers University Press, 1955), chaps. 8-11 Google Scholar; Fairchild, H. P., Greek Immigration to the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911)Google Scholar, was a leading proponent of nativist notions on the inferiority of Greeks.

3. Burgess, T., Greeks in America (Boston, 1913), pp. 165-7 Google Scholar; Saloutos, T., The Greeks in the United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 62, 66-9 Google Scholar; Bitzes, J. G., ‘The Anti-Greek Riot of 1909 – South Omaha,’ Nebraska History, LI (1970), 199-224 Google Scholar; Papanikolas, Helen Zeese, Toil and Rage in a New Land: The Greek Immigrants in Utah, 2nd ed. rev., reprinted from Utah Historical Quarterly, XXXVIII (1970)Google Scholar; Louis Lingos autobiographical sketch, Greek Archives, Marriott Library, University of Utah.

4. Reminiscences of Emily and George Zeese, and Mrs. Nick Poulos.

5. Interview with Mrs. Pete Georgelas, 8 September 1974.

6. Reports of the Immigration Commission: Immigrants in Industries, Part 25: Japanese and Other Immigrant Races in the Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountain States, Vol. Ill (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1911), p. 202.

7. This discrimination was practised in Mid-West labour gangs also. For a description of a Greek labour camp in Wisconsin, see W. M. Leiserson, Adjusting Immigrants and Industry (1924; reprinted ed., New York Times, 1969), pp. 71-2.

8. Greene, V. R., The Slavic Community on Strike: Immigrant Labor in Pennsylvania Anthracite (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), pp. 118, 120 Google Scholar, shows this widespread view at work in the anthracite strike of 1897. White Pine Daily News (Ely, Nevada), 28 October 1907.

9. Maria Sarantopoulou Ekonomidou, (New York, 1916), pp. 65, 85.

10. For additional details on Skliris, see Papanikolas, Helen Z., ‘The Exiled Greeks’, in Papanikolas, , ed., The Peoples of Utah (Salt Lake City, 1976)Google Scholar. An excellent survey of Greek labour agents in the West is found in L.J. Cononelos, ‘Greek Immigrant Laborers in the Intermountain West: 1900-1920’ (Master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1978), chap. 5.

11. Alter, J. C., Utah, the Storied Domain, I (Chicago and New York, 1933), p. 379.Google Scholar

12. A copy of Skliris’s contract is filed in the American West Center, University of Utah.

13. P. F. Notarianni, ‘Italianita in Utah’, in Peoples of Utah, p. 307.

14. Governor’s Correspondence, State of Utah, 1911, contains two letters and a petition signed by more than 500 Greeks protesting Skliris’s extortion. During the Pocatello, Idaho, railyard strike of 1911, the leading Greek labour agent in Idaho, William Karavelis, was accused by Greek workers of peonage (Pocatello Tribune, 3 December 1911); on 8 December, the newspaper reported the charges had been dropped and extolled Karavelis as a ‘strong leader of the Greeks’.

15. A full-page advertisement in the Salt Lake City Greek newspaper ‘O 7 April 1908, gives the same address of Skliris’s office for the steamship lines agency. The anecdote is well known and has been told to the author by many people, including Paul Borovilos, George Zeese, Louis Lingos, and Mike Lingos.

16. Louis Lingos interview, 3 November 1973.

17. Letter in Greek, signed by John Stefanakis, dated 9 December 1920; translation by Ernest K. Pappas, notary public. In files of Utah Historical Society.

18. James Galanis autobiographical sketch, Greek Archives, University of Utah.

19. Ibid. (The writer signed a paper absolving the company of responsibility for his broken nose and was given a silver dollar.) Interview with Zack Tallas, 17 January 1964, whose brother lost a leg in the Utah Copper Mine. James Zeese, a cousin of the author’s father, experienced the same loss and subsequent payment.

20. Ekonomidou, op. cit. p. 20.

21. Humphrey, H. B., Historical Summary of Coal Mine Explosions in the United-States 1810-1958 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1960), pp. 17, 22, 38-41 Google Scholar. This figure includes New Mexico where many immigrant Greeks worked.

22. Papanikolas, Helen Z., ‘Magerou: The Greek Midwife’, Utah Historical Quarterly, XXXVIII (1970), 50-60.Google Scholar

23. H. K. Kambouris, Greek Archives, Marriott Library, University of Utah.

24. A custom traced to antiquity. See Lawson, J.C., Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (New York, 1964), pp. 545-62.Google Scholar

25. Papanikolas, Toil and Rage in a New Land, p. 177, photographs pp. 176, 178.

26. Dillingham report, Vol. III, p. 200. Greek workers in the smelting industries of the same period received $1.75 per day: Bureau of Immigration, Labor and Statistics, Report… 1911-1912, p. 31.

27. Papanikolas, Toil and Rage, p. 155; Papanikolas, Helen Zeese, ‘The Greeks of Carbon County’, Utah Historical Quarterly, XXII (1954), 153-4.Google Scholar

28. For an account of incidents in a coal mining community that have become folklore, see Papanikolas, Helen Z., ‘Greek Folklore of Carbon County’, in Lore of Faith and Folly, ed. Cheney, T. E. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971), pp. 61-77 Google Scholar. For newspaper accounts of the killing of labour agent George Demetrakopoulos see the Salt Lake Tribune, 17 and 18 June 1908; Eastern Utah Advocate 18 and 25 June 1908. The 28 October 1908 issue of the Eastern Utah Advocate reported on a reward being offered by a Greek ‘Black Hand’ organization to murder two Greeks, one an interpreter who dictated the loss of a miner’s job.

29. In the Utah copper strike of 1912, the Greeks were referred to in the 20 September issue of the Deseret Evening News as ‘Cretan gunmen [who, with other immigrants] are dominant in a situation to which the “white” element has been forced against its will. Hundreds leave camp daily on every train… the two daily trains carry about 200 [a gross exaggeration] of the better element of the camp.’

During the Colorado coal strike of 1913-14, the Trinidad (Colorado) Chronicle News printed hearsay in every issue. The 13 November 1913 issue quoted a Greek as saying, ‘The miners union is greater than the United States government and when the union gives the word to fire upon soldiers, we will obey the order. ‘The immigrants were stigmatized as anarchists. The 8 October 1914 Denver Post reported that the editor of Il Risvoglio, a Denver Italian-language newspaper, wrote a letter of protest to the governor of Colorado objecting to a sheriff’s remark that ‘the Greeks and Italians were dangerous anarchists’. The Denver Post of 30 October 1914 quoted the governor as saying the ‘foreign element… had gone into the hills waving the red flag of anarchy…’. The Trinidad Chronicle News was hostile to the immigrants; the Denver Post often sympathetic.

An editorial in the 27 November 1907 White Pine Daily News of Ely, Nevada, said of the Greeks and Italians: ‘Greed and grasp is all they know.’

The county newspapers reporting the Carbon County strike of 1922 were, except for the Helper Times, hostile to the Greeks. The 13 October Price Sun said ‘… feeling is high in Spring Canyon with a bunch of red-blooded citizens out to clean up on disturbers’.

30. From the famed Cretan guerrilla song:

When will the sky clear, when will it be February
To take my rifle, my lovely mistress,
To come down to Amalo, on the road to Mousoure,
To make mothers sonless, and wives widows.

31. Kazantzakis, N., Report to Greco, trans. Bien, P. A. (New York, 1965) p. 60.Google Scholar

32. Roumeli: Adventures in Northern Greece (New York, 1962), pp. 126-44. Greeks from the Mani, south of Sparta, as celebrated for its militancy as Crete, did not come to the Intermountain West. Only one is recalled by elderly Greeks, Louis Maniates, who was killed by a rival gambler in Reno, Nevada.

33. Powell, A. K., ‘A History of Labor Union Activity in the Eastern Utah Coal Fields: 1900-1934’ (Ph.D. Diss., University of Utah, 1976), p. 161 Google Scholar. Pages 160-8 give a good picture of the relationship among Cretans, mainland Greeks, and Charles Soter, Skliris’s representative.

34. Papanikolas, Helen Z., ‘Life and Labor Among the Immigrants of Bingham Canyon’, Utah Historical Quarterly, XXXIII (1965), 289-315.Google Scholar

35. Jensen, V. H., Heritage of Conflict: Labor Relations in the Non Ferrous Metals Industry up to 1930 (New York, 1930), pp. 262-3 Google Scholar. The Bingham Press Bulletin, 29 November 1909, upheld the mine guard saying, ‘The deluge of foreign riff-raff is sweeping over us…. These outlaws should be taught their place.’

36. Deseret Evening News, 19 September 1912.

37. Kambouris journal, pp. 132-3.

38. For accounts of the strike see Graham, H. D. and Gurr, T. R., Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Washington, D.C., 1969), pp. 254-6 Google Scholar; Colorado, Ludlow, Report of the Special Board… (Denver, 1914); McGovern, G. S. and Guttridge, L. F., The Great Coal Field War (Boston, 1972)Google Scholar; Beshoar, B. B., Out of the Depths: The Story of John R. Lawson, A Labor Leader (Denver, 1958).Google Scholar

39. Interviews conducted by Zeese Papanikolas with survivors of the strike and men who knew Tikas include : Mike Livoda, Denver, Colorado, 27 August 1973; John Tsanakatsis, Oak Creek, Colorado, 29 August 1973; Gus Papadakis, Oak Creek, Colorado, 29 August 1973, 24 July 1974, 1 August 1974, and Hania, Crete, 30 May 1975; Mike Lingos, Price, Utah, 23 July 1973; Mary T. O’Neal, Hollywood, California, 4 April 1974; Peter Loulos, Chicago, Illinois, 4 April 1974; Louis R. Dold, photographer, whose pictures of the strike are filed with the Colorado Historical Society, San Francisco, California, 27 July 1974, 17 August 1974, and 12 October 1974. All interviews are tape-recorded, except for that of Mike Livoda, and in the interviewer’s possession. A tape-recorded interview of Livoda by Joseph Stipanovich, 20 June 1973, is on file at the American West Center, University of Utah.

40. Ludlow, Report of the Special Board…, p. 7.

41. Salt Lake Tribune, 26 April 1914.

42. United Mine Workers Journal, 28 May 1914.

43. Addressed to United Mine Workers officials, 10 February 1914.

44. Gus Papadakis interview.

45. Balch, Emily G., Our Slavic Fellow Citizens (New York, 1969), Appendix, p. 472 Google Scholar, shows that Greeks led all other immigrants in remittances to their native countries. The methods used in harassments were: denying business licences; accusing men of having been ‘strike agitators’ and therefore un-American; in Carbon County, Utah, refusing American citizenship applications for five years to Greeks who balked at enlisting in WWI; and by openly resisting attempts of Greeks to establish themselves in business. This resistance began as soon as Greeks left the labour ranks to enter business. The Great Falls (Mont.) Daily Tribune, 9 April 1908, published accounts of mass meetings to ‘consider ridding Great Falls of undesirables…. Greeks have located in this city and invested money in business blocks, restaurants and other small business enterprises…. The Resolution provided that a committee be appointed to confer with the Greeks and induce diem to leave the city.’ The Standard (Ogden, Utah), 9 April 1909, voiced similar feelings.

46. News Advocate (Price, Utah), 18 May 1922. Almost a quarter century after the strike, men involved admitted to the author that Tenas armed himself in preparation for confronting the deputy whose car had broken down a mile from the Helper, Utah, tent colony and that a ‘hot head’ had set fire to the flag before others could restrain him. See Papanikolas, Toil and Rage, pp. 167-75 for an account of the strike.

47. News Advocate, 13 July 1922.

48. Ludlow, Report of the Special Board…, p. 7.

49. White Pine News (Ely, Nev.), 2 June 1908.

50. The author’s parents and other Greeks in Pocatello, Idaho, would not attend theatres because of this restriction. In the mill town of Magna, Utah, the owner of the company store built himself a house on prime land he owned, but was forced to mortgage it to the Greek owners of the Central Lumber and Hardware Company as collateral for building materials needed to finish the structure. A subsequent reading of the abstract revealed that Greeks were not allowed to buy land on his property. Mary P. Lines recalls her father Gust Pappas appearing before the Price, Utah, city council to plead the case of a fellow Greek, a World War I American army veteran, who had earlier been denied the right to purchase city land. ‘You see this man’s dark face, but the scar on it came from fighting for mis glorious country.’ Similar stories are part of the immigrant experience of almost every first-generation Greek the author has interviewed.

51. Interview with Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Dallas, 26 June 1972.

52. A study on the last of coffeehouse habitués is J. Patterson’s ‘The Unassimilated Greeks of Denver’, Anthropological Quarterly, XLIII (1970), 243-53.

53. Cavafy, C. P., ‘Days of 1909, 1910, and 1911’, The Poems of C. P. Cavafy, trans., Mavrogordato, John (London, 1952), p. 140.Google Scholar