Generations of Workers, Waves of Immigrants

Imagine leaving behind all you know and starting a new life in a foreign place with few friends and little money. From the 1880s to the 1920s, millions of European immigrants arrived in the US in hope of finding work and a better life. Many found jobs in Bethlehem's iron and steel industry. Europeans were not the only foreign workers. In the 1920s, Bethlehem Steel recruited hundreds of Mexicans to fill in the labor force. In the late 1940s, Puerto Ricans moved to the area to take jobs at the plant, too.
Ethnic organizations and churches sprang up all around South Bethlehem, where immigrants could speak their own language and socialize with people from home. Within the mill, workers were often assigned to jobs by ethnicity, with Europeans working in the mills, blast furnaces and on labor crews. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans worked in the hot, grimy coke works. People from around the world became part of the plant's and the town's social fabric.
[Photo captions, from left to right, read]
· Charles Michalerya came to Bethlehem from a small village in Austria-Hungary in 1910, taking a job in the rolling mill. He and his wife Mary had eight children. All of the boys-except the youngest, Charles Jr.-followed their father into careers as steelworkers.
· This sign, written in English, German, and Hungarian,



was posted near the employment office in the early 1900s.

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Show me all markers in:  Bethlehem, PA  |  Northampton County  |  18015  |  Pennsylvania  |  United States of America

Making Iron
Blast Furnace
Hot, Loud, & Dangerous
Moving Materials
A Community of Workers
The Beginnings of Bethlehem Steel
Iron and Steel: A History
Air Products
The Blower House
Bethlehem Built

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