NEW BOOK: PICKING, PACKING AND SHUCKING

Picking, Packing, & Shucking: The Migrant Experience of Baltimore's Polish Community. Thomas L. Hollowak, 412 pages, illustrated, paper. $30.00 [ISBN 978-1-887124-32-4]

Picking, Packing, & Shucking tells the story of Baltimore's Poles, who, during the spring and summer, worked on farms in Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, picking strawberries, string beans, and tomatoes. When the season ended, they returned to Baltimore, where they worked in the numerous packinghouses. Beginning in 1890, many traveled South, shucking oysters in the canneries often established by Baltimore packinghouse owners.

While newspaper articles, government records and reports off some insights into the lives of those who toiled on farms, in packinghouse, and canneries, they are often contradictory, fragmented, and disparaging. This book, however, aims to rectify this by bringing together the various components of the migrant existence and allowing their voices to be heard. Thus taking these various strands to weave a tapestry of Baltimore's Polish immigrants and their families migratory experience.

 

The work is supplemented by photographs at work and relaxing when their days work ceased. Provided by family members and Progressive photographer Lewis W. Hine in his efforts to document child labor. These provide an added dimension to their story.

 

 

Historyk Press
7 Dendron Court
Baltimore, MD 21234

For more information, or to order, see:
HP 120. Picking, Packing, & Shucking: The Migrant Experience of Baltimore's Polish Community. (http://historykpress.com/migrant.htm)

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