Document text
ORIGINAL MSS. OR FIELD NOTES (Chock 'one)
PUB. yi.:045 Lore
EWMIluMi
TITLE Adam Laboda
WRITER Clai.r Porn
DATE 12/208S. P.P
CSECKER
SOURCES GIVEN rvisir
COMMENTS
FOV'eilk
3
STATE MASSACHUSETTS /93t4
NALE OF WORKER CLAIR PERRY
ADDRESS PITTSFIELD, MASSAChJsiSETTS
SU3t..ECT LIVING LORE
NAME AND ADDRESS OF INFORMANT ADAM LAODA, PITTSFIELD,
LASSAOhUSETTS
Adams Laooda is a square faced genial man about fifty-five
years old. Of Polish descent he has been naturalized for many
years. he is an expert spinner employed oy the 3erksnire Woolen
ana viorsted -,ompany. About fifteen years ago, he purchased a
five tenement wooden block on the onota Street hill where he
lives, his grown son and a daughter in her late 'teens live
with their parents. Lrs. Laboda is a dark eyed, quiet women
evidently very proud of her family and particularly of her
son although she is reluctant to be drawn into the conversation.
Both Lr. Laboda's children attended high school. The son
who accompanied his father to Poland last summer works, in the
same factory as his father. The Labodas are known as a thrifty,
hard working family, well liked oy friends and neighbors. Mk.
Laboda was dressed carefully in good street clothes when called
upon following his work which ends at 3:15 p.m.
Name: ‘aair W. Perry Assignment: Berkshire County
Title: Living Lore Topic: Adam Laboda
"I was born in the village of Zowisezbie, near Tarnow. I
was the oldest son of nine boys and two girls and we had a farm
of what is about 20 acres, America; our acres equal 4 of those
here. ky family of eleven persons lived in a two room house,
such as a log cabin that you have, with a straw thatched roof
and a great brick stove for heat and an iron range for cooking.
It was whitewashea up to the eaves, the law chinked with clay
to keep out cola and wind. Our older people lived in one room
cabins out the law would not allow any leas than two rooms to be
built at that time. The roof is now shingled with clay4 made
like bricks or tile. I was in Poland last surnther and took more
than 200 pictures. I will show you some.
.1wr. Laboda brought out a fine collection of snapshots,
including one of the neat white cottage where he was born with
its thatched roof and anoth r showing it with the tile roof, still
another was of the home of a brother who still lives nearby in
a larger frame house with wood sLingled roof and trim chimneys.
"We worked the farm together and raised everything from wheat
to vegetables and had cattle and pigs and geese and ducks and
o
chickens. .Lou can see the fence, pointing to one of the snapshots,
"that we made by sticking posts in the ground and weaving slender
willow saplings in and out to keep the poultry. and pigs in their
yards. Those white things are sheets drying on bushes and fences.
Page 2
Name: Clair W. Perry
Title: Living Lore Topic: Adam Lo„ooda
Assignment: Berkshire County
We made our own butter and cheese, threshed our own grain,
slaughtered our own pigs. Here is a picture of a reaping machine
in the field.
The photo showed a type of reaper used in America forty
years ago. The grain had to be bound by hand into sheaves after
being cut and withes of the straw were used to bind them. kr.
Lobada and the interviewer exchanged memories of farm work, such
as the agonizing labor of 'shocking up' barley, with its sharp
peards that cut the wrists to rawness and bleeding and dug into
the skin wherever the clothing was tight, so that one must work
with his shirt outside his trousers and preferably sockless.
"I went to school for eight years, two of them the same as
junior high school in America. I studied German two years and
could speak it out not much now. There are many Germans in
Poland toady.
"Our life on the farm was not easy out it was not too harsh.
We lived comfollably by all working together, our family. But I
had an uncle in 6yracuse who wrote us about America and so a
party of 14 boys from around our village was made up, with a man
for a leader, to go to America. We took train and traveled two
days to Bremen, there we took ship and voyaged for 12 days. The
ooys were all from 14 to 16 years of age. This was in the great
emigration period from 180 to 1.02 about. I remember we landed
Name: Clair W. Perry
Page 3
Assignment: 3erkshire County
Title: Living Lore Topic: Adam Liaooda
in New York harbor on April 2, and then went up the river to
4.1bany on another boat and took train to tailpertaville, Massa-
chusetts, where there are big woolen mills. I had a friend
there and I got a job in the spinning room. I had worked in
a mill in Germany about two weeks, one time, but had gone back
to the farm before I came to America.
"The thing that seemed strangest to us boys when we came
to America were the black people, you know, the Negroes. We
saw many of them in New York and some on the river boat to
Albany aha we could not understand why there would oe black
people here.
"In Giluertsville all we boys went to work and rented rooms
from Polish people who lived in company houses. Four boys to
a room at $3 each a month and we bought our own food and cooked
it. We earned to start with $2.77 a week and worked 64 hours
a week, then we got up to ,A.76 a week and for a year it was
$4.64. It cost only four cents a loaf for bread and four cents
a pound for meat but we had no chance to go to shows or arliything;
we could just squeeze by as they say now. After nine years I
was earning $8.12 a week and I had got ahead faster than some of
the older men who got only $5.08 a week. Our pest fun was dancing
in the houses and then the company built a dance hall for us so
that it cost nothing to dance. There were girls living there,
Page it
Name: Clair W. Perry Assignment: Berkshire County
Title: A -Jiving Lore Topic: Adam Lapoda
working in the mills, too, Polish girls who were nice.
"In 1908 I went back to Poland to see my people. My father
was very sick and he wanted me to marry and have the wedding before
he died. Well, that did not look so good. I did not want to marry
a girl in Poland for I wanted to go back to America and I was
afraid I would be kept there but I knew a girl from Gilbertsville
who had gone home to a place near °A village before me and so I
said to my father, 'All right I will get married then. I went to
see her, this girl, and she said 'Yes' because she knew me quite
well and so on October 8, 1908, we were married and on November
12, we were back in America and glad of it. I had a good job and a
good wife. I was 23 years old. I came to Pittsfield then and got
work in the Berkshire Woolen and have been with them since,
always as a pinner.
°I went back to Poland this last siumler, leaving here June 22
and returning August 20. I visited four of my brothers and a
sister. You see, it is the thing in Poland for a farmer's family
to leave the youngest son at home to care for the old folks and
when they die he gets the farm for his own. It is a sort of tradi-
tion, and my youngest brother now owns the farm. He has kept it
up as well as you can see from the pictures. But I should not
want to live there; I am more glad that I came to America. It in
a great country.
Page 5
Nam.: Clair W. Perry Assignment: Berkshire County
Title: Living Lore Topic: Adam Lapoda
“The greatest moment of my life was in Poland when I went to
the first mass said by my godson, a nephew, in his church in Poland.
I was the guest of honor, you see; everything was done for me to
welcome me. I was not called a Polack, I was always called an
American and it made me very proud. They had big banquet at the
parish house and another, later, at the priest's home and little
girls in costume sang songs and made speeches of welcome to me
and then I visited the graves of my father and mother. I also
went to see a man whom I had known in schoo], who was now a member
of Parliment. he had returned to school as a grown man to study
German. his name is Jacob Rojho, and he is now 90 years old.
he is called a iiharshal or 6enator. He wears many decorations
and he sat in the first Parliment after Poland was restored.
The country has been twice torn apart, once by the Russians and
once by Germany. I fund that the lower class people, the poor
ones think that hitler is all right. I talked with many German
people in Poland about it and I had a two hours talk with a pro-
fessor at Cracow University who told me that a man like Franklin
D.. Roosevelt ik; born only about every 50 years and that what
Europe needs is a itoosevelt to join the nations peaceably and
help them to get over their troubles. The poor German people have
been given work so that they can eat and they like Hitler for
that. They say he is a great man but the higher classes, the
Name: Clair W. Perry
Title: Living Lore
Page 6
Assignment: Berkshire County
Topics Adam Lauoda
richer ones, the government classes (in Poland) do not like him.
They are afraid of him and of the independence of Poland of which
they are very jealous. The Poles are proud of their country.
They are fighters, too, and will fight to preserve their autonomy.
"I traveled around Poland on an extiirsion tr,tin for 15 days.
-Lt cost but 419 for the whole trip and I visited Cracow and Warsaw
and other large cities and talked with many persons. I found them
all believing that Roosevelt is the sort of man that they should
have if they could fine one. They do not wapt a dictator there
in Polana.
"We will come out of this depression here in America, yes, indeed;
things look very much better now. Our plant is running well
and often night and day. it was not wiped out like those otter
textile mills here that went under, because the Berkshire Woolen
turned quickly to making cheaper cloth which is in demand and
many pattersn. Then, too, Nr. Noonan (the present mRnAger and
cheif owner) was a labor man, dMself, from north Ireland and he
knew how to treat his people. (r) did Ir. Savery who is dead.
Be was a fine man. I knew him well.
"I do not uelong to any union. I did not belong to the
United Textile Workers which was here years ago. It has gone out
of business here. The C.I.O. is trying to organize but I do not
know how much they are getting ahead, not much. The company treats
Name: Clair W. Perry
Title: Living Lore
Page 7
Assignment: Berkshire County
Topic: Adam Laboda
its workers well. No, they did not have any old age pension
oefore the law. I like the Social Security law very well, indeed.
..)ut in Poland we have a different one that is for unemployment,
there everyone gets paid when he cannot work, and they have
government inspectors who inquire why one does not work and if
he doesn't want to work he does not get anything, out if he
cannot find it or is unable, he is paid. His case is studied by
a committee of three, one from the Government, one from the workers
and a neutral one.
"In that way everyone gets paid not or ,just a few weeks
as here out so long as he cannot find work or is unaole to work.
It is a good law.
"I will tell you about what happened to those 14 Polish boys
who came to America together. Four of them committed suicide,
one shot himself, one hung himself, one took poison, one drowned
himself. ihere is one who is a big contractor in buffalo, another
who has a large store in 3oston. The lour who killed themselves
haa left the church and took to drinking and that finished them.
lhe rest are working something like me.*