Himlerville: Hungarian Cooperative Mining in Kentucky - The Filson ...

516 The Filson Club History Quarterly [October
Because he had worked alongside other Hungarian coal miners
for several years, Himler realized that thousands of his country-
men were employed in the industry. As a former miner Himler
understood the problems Hungarian miners faced and the needs
they had. He realized that they had, in the words of Oscar Hand°
lin, been "uprooted" in coming from Hungary to America and
that they were forced to relinquish an agricultural lifestyle in
favor of an industrial one to earn a living. 8 Himler also recog-
nized that immigrants were often hapless and destitute. The
search for economic opportunity and the spirit of independence
that drove them to America were often extinguished by indus-
trial employment. For months Himler thought about the uprooted
condition of his countrymen as they searched for the American
Dream. Eventually he realized that a solution to the problems of
the uprooted involved combining Hungarian culture with ideas
of American industrialism. As scholars have since documented,
Himler knew the importance of immigrant reliance on Old-World
habits, values, and lifestyles to forge a meaningful life in Am-
erica. Himler's vision of Himlerville was that of a community
that would unite the Hungarian peasant's landowning, home-
making agricultural instincts with American ideals of industri-
alism. Although the Hungarians would work in industry (a coal
mine), this work would take place in a rural setting (the hills
of eastern Kentucky), on land the immigrants owned. While
coal mining was dirty and tiring work, it kept the immigrant
in touch with the land much as agriculture had in the old coun-
try. Unlike factory employment, which alienated immigrants
issue of this largely Hungarian-language paper that was printed at Himlerville,
Kentucky, from 1919 until 1928. The paper is on microfilm at the Midwest
lnterlibrary Center in Chicago, Illinois.
8Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1954)
proposes the idea that immigrants were uprooted during the transition from the
old country to America. Bagger, "Himler," 147 also states that the Hungarians
were "doubly uprooted."
9 Nelli in Italians in Chicago demonstrates conclusively that immigrants relied
on Old-World customs to adjust 1o life in America.