The HAZARDOUS QUEST: Hungarian immigrants in the United States 1895-1920 / A DOCUMENTARY / Edited and translated by ALBERT TEZLA / CORVINA Books 1993 / Hardcover 

ISBN-13: 97896313346437 / 978-96313346437 

ISBN-10: 9631334643

Printed in Hungary

Pages 560 

Language:  English

With this thoughtfully wrought documentary, assembled in tribute to his parents and their generation of immigrants from Hungary, Albert Tezla, a na- tive of South Bend, Indiana, and professor emeritus of English, makes a unique contribution to the understanding of the ethnic and immigrant experience. He has combed archives and libraries in Hungary, Austria and the United States for primary sources that shed significant light on the experiences of about one million Hungarians, most of them peasants, who trod the breadth of America from 1895 to 1920 in valiant quest of a free and se- cure way of life. Articles and advertisements from the American-Hungarian and Hungarian press, per- sonal letters, travel accounts, government memoranda and reports, ambassadorial, judicial and church documents, immigrant literary works, and photographs and cartoons acquaint the general reader with the chief aspects of f their lives. Throughout the thematic text, the immigrants, as well as those involved in their destiny, address in their own words the often grim reality in which they are striv- ing to achieve their goals; and though Professor Tezla has crafted introductions to chapters based on recent scholarship and his own analyses of sources, he does not muffle the immigrants' statements or force the reader to relate to them through someone else's interpretations.
Members of Parliament and government officials confront the political and economic threat to the Hungarian nation triggered by soaring emigration, and immigrants declare their own reasons for uprooting themselves from the beloved homeland. Then scenes of departure, shipboard life, and the reception on Ellis Island roll vividly by, the last a fear- fully anticipated event. Arriving amid sweeping social and economic changes, entrenched nativism and relentless pressures to Americanize, and, es- pecially vulnerable to racial discrimination as a com- ponent of the new immigration, they express their views of America and tell of their hunt for work and efforts to learn English, frequently settling for "Hung- lish," an odd mixture of English and Hungarian that evolved principally in the work environment. Eyewitnesses present brief but intimate glimpses of life in several Hungarian colonies, mostly in small in- dustrial towns, including observations about immigrant attitudes toward human values prevalent in the old country and the new. Their chronicle con- tinues with their work experiences in the factories, mills and mines, emphasizing industrial disasters and the difficulties of securing compensation for vic- tims and their families. Boardinghouse operators, boarders, humorists and community leaders de- scribe life in the boardinghouse, often decrying its impact on the morals of its occupants. 

Title: The hazardous quest : Hungarian immigrants in the United States, 1895-1920, a documentary
Author: Tezla, Albert (editor, translator)
Subject: Hungarian Americans -- History -- Sources; United States -- Emigration and immigration -- History -- Sources; Hungary -- 
Publication: Budapest, Hungary : Corvina, c1993