- Welsh Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields
The Welsh were hardly the most numerous of immigrants to America, but their importance to industrialization and the coal industry in particular was essential, far greater than their modest numbers might suggest. Furthermore, the cultural foundations they shared with mainstream white America allowed them a rapid, successful acculturation and a unique role in labor organization. This is the main thrust of Ronald L. Lewis's Welsh Americans.
Lewis begins with a masterful survey of the background to Welsh emigration, including the rapid industrialization of Wales, working conditions, internal migration, attempts at reform and labor organization, and the patterns of the two phases of their migration to the United States—an early agricultural one, and an industrial one that became dominant in the mid-nineteenth century. Then he presents a chapter on Welsh settlement patterns throughout the United States and presents the ways in which the Welsh directly transferred modern coal mining to their new nation. Through many examples Lewis shows how the Welsh were most adept at opening and developing America's coal mines and at rising within the industry. Using a large number of Welsh biographies from county histories and obituaries and newspapers, and an extensive data base from the Ohio census manuscripts, Lewis builds on the work of Rowland Berthoff, Bill Jones, and other scholars to add depth and context to an immigrant group that was crucial to American economic development. Particularly interesting and important is Lewis's exploration of Welsh communities in America and how the Welsh entered a society that was "long familiar to them" because of a shared British and American culture based on the steady migration that began in 1607. Like other British immigrants, especially the English, the Welsh were seen not so much as foreigners or outsiders, but "cousins," who were bringing vital skills, assimilating rapidly, and embracing republicanism and Protestantism. Thus they were generally welcomed and embraced by most Americans. They were not as "invisible" as many English immigrants, but were more so than other immigrant groups because most Welsh were fluent in English and were seen as adding to the prevalent Anglo-American culture.
After the Welsh established modern coal mining in America, owners and operators opted to hire unskilled workers from eastern and southern Europe, who were seen as more pliable and less likely to organize. Thus the Welsh moved more into supervisory roles, or they left mining altogether and enjoyed considerable social mobility in other areas of work. But in the meantime, they used British models to reform mining conditions and established and led the UMWA, culminating in the long reign of John L. Lewis, the son of Welsh immigrants. Chapters on the violent struggles between miners and capital, and details on the nature and conditions of mining in America—together with many fine illustrations—round out this superb and important addition to immigration and labor history.