POLES AS FARMERS.
Texas, the largest of the Southern States, has the distinction of containing the first permanent Polish settlement in the United States. This colony was established at Panna Marya, Karnes County, in the year 1855 by about 300 persons from Austrian Poland. There are records of a few Polish families, chiefly political refugees from Europe, settling in different parts of the United States prior to 1850, but no evidence of a sufficient number in any one locality to constitute a colony. Poles settled in Wisconsin shortly after 1850, and the records of several Roman Catholic Churches show that as many as 16 Polish rural colonies were established in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Texas between the years 1854 and 1870.
Previous to 1860 the immigration of Poles to the United States was irregular and was seriously affected by the American Civil War. After 1865 the movement assumed the character of a popular exodus of the peasantry of Polish Europe, as a direct result of the Austro-Prussian war and the resulting political and economic conditions in Germany.
The real immigration of Poles to the United States, however, began after the year 1870. Between 1870 and 1880 nearly 40,000 entered the country. The majority of the Poles entering the United States during this period went to the larger industrial communities and cities to engage in industrial pursuits. Some migrated to the North-western States, where they found employment in lumber camps and sawmills, while a comparatively large number settled on the farms of Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Texas. In 1880, 17 Polish churches were reported in Texas, 16 in Wisconsin, and 6 in Missouri. By 1887 there were more than 50 Polish agricultural settlements in the United States.
About 1885 the tide of Slavish immigration began to sweep through our ports of entry in an annually swelling stream, and Polish agricultural colonies were sspidly established in the Great Lake States, Minnesota, and in the Dakotas. A distinct change in the character of the colonists began about this time. Instead of the Polish peasants who had emigrated from Europe direct to the agricultural regions of this country seeking permanent homes, the movement became an immigration of Poles to the agricultural regions from the cities and industrial communities of the United States, where they had been engaged in the coal and ore mines, quarries, steel mills, and other industrial establishments.
This change was largely due to the efforts of land agents and their advertisements in the Polish newspapers. Having been farmers or farmers’ sons abroad, and with savings from their earnings in the industrial pursuits, these groups made good pioneers and were soon firmly fatablighed on the cut-over and prairic lands of the Northwest, the poorer farms of the Middle West, and on the fertile acres of Texas.
Poles are often spoken of as “lovers of the land,” and many among even the lower classes consider it a degradation to work as industrial laborers. In the United States they have proven themselves excellent pioneers, and after acquiring property, become exclusively farmers. They are independent, self-reliant, self-supporting, thoug possibly inclined to be clannish, and are efficient husbandmen.
