Hungarian Americans

Tidal Wave, 1870–1920

More than 3.5 million immigrants arrived in the United States from Hungary during this period. Mostly economically distressed agricultural workers, they sought work in the mines and factories of an increasingly industrialized United States. The coal mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, as well as the steel mills, claimed the lives of many Hungarians, but they continued to come. Relatives and friends from various villages in Hungary would arrive together, or would follow others, forming links in the chains of migration.

Those who arrived during this 50-year period hoped to make enough money, as quickly as possible, so that they could return to Hungary, buy some land, and return to farming. Hungarians tended to migrate back and forth across the Atlantic more than did other immigrants. Single men, or married men who had left their [Page 663]families behind, lived together in boarding houses (burdos gazda or burdosházak) run by Hungarian women, usually wives or widows of fellow countrymen. The Hungarian immigrants, however, tended to move more readily than others; seeing themselves as temporary workers in the United States, they continually sought better opportunities despite the discrimination they faced nearly everywhere they went.

The industries in Cleveland, and by the 1910s the automobile industry in Detroit, drew the Hungarians from the mines and mills of the East. However, Hungarians continued to find employment in New Jersey factories (e.g., textile, rubber, wire, cigar, chemical, paper), and the textile industries especially attracted female workers. Bridgeport, Connecticut, claimed the third-largest Hungarian population in the pre-World War I United States. With its active Hungarian American community, this city played a significant role in laying the foundation for several national organizations.

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