This is a photograph of a sign in a West Virginian factory, taken by photographer John Vachon. The sign reads, “NOTICE: If you are injured, no matter how little, tell your foreman about it right away” in seven different Central and Eastern European languages. The photograph was taken in May 1939, just three months before Germany invaded Poland and began World War II.
Eastern European immigration to the US peaked between 1880 and 1920, and most people settled along the East Coast. A large percentage of these immigrants were Jewish, seeking better opportunities and an escape from rising antisemitism in Nazi-influenced Europe. They found plenty of work in American cities, but the jobs were often grueling and based on physical labor. Most immigrants worked in factories to support themselves and their families. By the 1930s, the United States had established workplace safety laws, but factory work still had risks. Therefore, most factories would have a sign like this one, reminding workers to report illness or injury to their bosses.
Eastern European immigrants saw America as more than just a good work opportunity. Many of them wished to start and raise families in the new country, rather than just send money back home across the ocean. This meant that women were just as likely to move to the United States as men were. This was very uncommon at the time. Ashkenazi (European) Jews were one of very few ethnic groups to have gender-balanced immigrants. Oftentimes, this resulted in families where both parents worked factory jobs, while the children went to school in hopes of attaining better careers in the future. For many families, this decision was a lifesaving one. Living in the United States protected them from concentration camps and the general destruction of World War II in their birth countries.
Ellis Island- Statue of Liberty
Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation
These are the websites for the historic immigration sites at Ellis Island and Angel Island. While Ellis Island is better known as the center for Atlantic immigration, Angel Island was the center for the Pacific. Approximately twelve million people successfully passed through Ellis Island. Another 500,000 went through Angel Island. At both sites, large numbers of people were also detained and deported from the United States. At Angel Island especially, this was often the result of xenophobic immigration bans. Today, the historic sites aim to preserve both the triumphs and hardships of immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Ford's assembly line starts rolling- History.com
From 1870 until 1914 (the start of World War I), the United States experienced the 2nd Industrial Revolution. The 2nd Industrial Revolution stemmed from improvements in science, technology, and architecture. It also led to a shift in factory production that continued throughout the 20th century. One of the biggest developments of this time came from Henry Ford’s automobile factories- and no, it wasn’t the Model T car. Ford invented a system of making his Model Ts called an assembly line. This article provides a brief account of Ford’s assembly line and how it revolutionized factory production. By 1939, when the photo of the multilingual sign was taken, almost all production in the United States had become reliant on the assembly line.
Slavic Languages- Czech, Polish
Lithuanian- Lithuanian is a Balto-Slavic language
Germanic Languages- English, German (and Yiddish)
Hungarian- Hungarian is a Uralic language
Italian- Italian is a Romance language
Here are samples of native speakers using all seven of the languages on the multilingual sign (plus a few extras). These languages have some very diverse origins and speech patterns; even if they sound similar to our ears, a person who speaks one of these languages cannot understand the other ones (ie. English, German, and Norwegian are all Germanic, but a monolingual English speaker can’t understand German or Norwegian). As shown on the sign, the written forms of these languages also look completely distinct from each other.
