When we start labeling people
Charles M. Madigan - the
Chicago Tribune, April 25, 2006
I have names for you to think about.
Anthony Folia, Frank Boras, Peter Resor, Paul Hurtack Sr., Antonio Pino.
I found them in the archives of Pennsylvania's Department of Mines andMinerals Industries. They are among thousands of names I have collected inmy pursuit of important questions: Who was my father? Who was mygrandfather? Who was my great-grandfather?
Of course I knew two of the three. But I could not know them as young men,between 1898 and 1949, when they were all coal miners.
In this search, I learned something about people who come here to work. Itis as important today as it was over the past century, when these men workedwith my family in the bituminous coal mines in Cambria County, Pa.
The nation is in a political debate about immigration. One little chapter ofthe struggle focuses on what we should call the people who come here, withpapers or not, for work. Aliens, immigrants, migrants, illegals. We castaround, searching for something politically acceptable, something correct.
When we finally settle on this question, we will have committed one of ourmost common cultural offenses, the labeling of people as members of a class.No names. No stories. No personalities. Just members of whatever group titlewe settle upon.
In the category of wrongs, it might not seem like a great offense until youthink about what labeling does. It creates an inhuman description of veryhuman people.
It diminishes them.
I know quite well how we referred to the people whose names I have listed.They were whatever convenient, diminishing label we could paste on them,anything but what they deserved, their names. Eastern Europeans somehowbecame "hunkies." Italians, Germans, Irish, they all collected titles thatwere equally diminishing.
What I can tell you about all of these men is that they are officiallydescribed in the archives as "alien," a broad category that lumped togethereveryone who was not a U.S. citizen. Nationality is listed, too, and thenthe small stories of how it ended for them.
I am presenting them in tribute, because before we are members of any group,we are individuals. They gave us fuel to make steel, energy for light andheat in our homes, coal for our steam engines, all for very little money andat great risk.
Frank Boras, 43, died at Sonman Drift Mine on Jan. 22, 1902. He wasHungarian and left a widow and seven children.
He was crushed when coal fell from the roof of the mine.
Peter Resor, 31, was Polish. He was killed Nov. 13, 1903, in a roof collapseat Eureka Mine No. 37. He was survived by his widow and four children.
Anthony Folia, 61, Italian, died at Brush Valley Mine in Cambria County,Pa., on April 23, 1909, in a fall of slate from the roof of the mine. Heleft his widow and five children.
Paul Hurtack Sr., 42, Czecho-Slovakian and a veteran of 28 years in themines, was killed March 23, 1935, at Springfield No. 1 Mine, when the coalhe was undercutting at the face of the mine collapsed. He was survived byhis wife and five children.
Antonio Pino, 50, was Italian and he died at Westland Coal Co.'s No. 7 minein November 1945 (the date is lost) in an accident while setting a jackpipe.He was survived by his wife and two children.
When you pay attention to the record, what you notice is that as timepasses, the last names of those killed or injured in the mines don't changemuch. They are still Eastern Europeans, Italians, Irish, Germans, almost allof them described as "miner," which, in the early years, demanded noeducation, no language skills, just a fearlessness you cannot imagine inthis era and a willingness to go deep into the earth for backbreaking work.
What changed was the description of their status. The closer you get to theend of these sad mining accident and death records, the more the mininginspectors pencil in "citizen" in the nationality block. All these lostnames became small, individual parts in the only broad description I feel iseternally acceptable.
Americans.
It is something to remember today when you look at the cabdrivers, therestaurant workers, the hotel workers, the people cutting the neighbor'slawn, every one of them. They are not aliens, illegals, migrants, whateverlabel we glue to them.
They are individuals first, with names, lives, families, joys and despairs.We owe them that, at the very least, so their stories are not lost.
