Out of This Furnace: A Novel of Immigrant Labor in America

The book was published in 1940. The author was perhaps 35 years old at the time. He describes three generations of a family that originated in a village in Slovakia. His family, and others were from a small village in Slovakia. They all wound up in the steel mills at Braddock Pennsylvania. The Irish laborers, who had come before them, derided them as "Hunkies". The writer describes the experiences of the first two generations (1885 or to 1920) in a way loosely based on his own family. Steel mills are dangerous places and people get killed or severely injured.The male in the third generation becomes a union organizer and that part of the story is not based on the writer's own family experience. Rather it's based on the notes and other information from a different person who was in fact a union organizer. The story ends with the birth of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Industrial workers such as the Hunkies "didn't get no respect" from the American Federation of Labor which favored skilled craftsmen as union members.All of these novels about the immigrant experience of various ethnic groups are interesting. It might be Rolvaag;s "Giants of The Earth" [Norwegians on the prairie" or more recently Karl Marlantes "Deep River' Finnish immigrants in the logging industry in Southwest Washington state. But each them has a lot to say about the lived experience of different groups.They are also reflective of their time. Out of This Furnace was published in 1940. The third generation "Hunkie" is now assimilated--he expresses the American creed with optimism which might appear a bit much in these days. But it's a good book, a good story, and worth the reader's time.

I am not done reading this book yet, but I find it extremely hard to put down. As a 58 years old granddaughter of a Slovak coal miner, I grew up hearing the stories of 'the bosses', 'the company store', 'scabs' who dared to break a strike and many others. My Slovak Grandmother "Baba" was widowed before the age of 30 with 5 children. Her husband died at age 38 from Pulmonary Fibrosis, known also as Black Lung from years of coal mine labor. As in the book, she took in boarders, did what had to be done, and never asked for charity from anyone. I grew up with a work ethic second to none, because in my Slovak family we believed that all work was noble as long as you did your best. None of my relatives had an education past 6th grade, but my Dad and his brothers got "Out of This Mine" and all graduated from college. All 4 served in WWII as well. This book uses Slovak colloquialisms, makes me remember the good food and customs we were treated to, and underscores beautifully the honor and pride Slovaks possess, even when they were called 'Hunkies' and treated as less than slaves. It really is a book of hope- the characters are made real, and Bell's detail and vividness may be redundant to some readers, but I am thoroughly absorbed in his words and the stories of 3 Slovak generations. All in all, it is a beautifully written book, and I am glad someone documented the Slovak Immigrant experience as well as Bell did. D'akujem, Mr. Bell!

Thomas Bell's "Out of This Furnace" is a powerful saga that chronicles the struggles and triumphs of three generations of the Dobrejcaks, a Slovak-American family in the Pittsburgh-area steel-making city of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Bell's clean, disciplined, no-nonsense prose style complements well his story of people who cope with entrenched ethnic discrimination while seeking to build their own American dream within the dangerous world of the Braddock steel mills. Because Bell drew upon his own family's history (his original family name was Belejcak), he writes with authenticity and verisimilitude about the steel towns -- not just the specifics of a mill's operation, but also the grim look of a steel-making community and the strained social dynamic between supervisors and workers.In Bell's multi-generational saga, the immigrant first generation is personified by George Kracha, who comes to America, struggles to cope with the bewildering transition from old-country traditions to a new life in the United States, and makes some bad choices that cancel out the initial promise of his life in America. The second generation is represented by Mike and Mary Dobrejcak, who work hard and do their best but run up against tragic circumstance. And the third generation is embodied by Dobie, a young man who learns, through becoming involved in labor activism, how to fight back effectively against the injustices of 20th-century American industrial life.Pittsburgh-area readers may particularly enjoy the way in which this novel chronicles part of the history of Western Pennsylvania. This University of Pittsburgh edition of "Out of This Furnace" includes a helpful afterword by Pennsylvania literature scholar David Demarest of Carnegie-Mellon University. I think that Bell's ancestors who labored so hard in the steel mills would have taken pride in the spirit of conscientious workmanship with which Bell crafted this strong and effective novel.

I believe this would be a great read for a AP US History course that was on a year or 2 year track. The author gives such a realistic feel to life from the perspective of struggling mill worjers and their families in a specific ethnic neighborhood. Easy read along with a history course would tie it to specific issues and politics during the indistrial age and Big Business control over the government at the cost of the people abd workers.