Murdering McKinley, Part II

I. Immigrants and the American Dream

A. Immigrants as Transient Workers

1. Young Males--better than sixty percent of immigrants from the 1880-1920 were males between the ages of 15-35, most of whom came to better their economic circumstances. Of this cohort, many would move back and forth between their home country and the United States several times.

2. Wages--White Americans often complained that the "new immigrants" kept wages lower than they should be; there was some truth to that, because immigrants were willing to work for lower wages, largely because they saw that condition being only temporary--either they would take the money they made and head back home to Europe, or their lower wages would be supplemented by other family members (if they were in the country)

B. Immigrants as permanent settlers--not all immigrants in the era of greatest migration activity were transients, but came expecting to settle in the United States for a variety of reasons.

1. Urban settlers--most of the immigrants who settled permanently in the United States did so in urban areas--in cities. There are important exceptions to this, of course (and Garrison Keillor has made a career out of one of these exceptions--Norwegian farmers in Minnesota),  but most immigrant families put down roots in cities before getting together enough money to buy any farm land.

2. Rural settlements--although urban settlers made up the majority of immigrant population, there were important pockets of rural immigrant settlements, as well; northwest Ohio is home to numerous German-American farming communities, for instance, and there area also numerous settlements of the quintessential urban immigrant group--the Irish--in the Great Lakes region, as well

II. Leon Czolgosz

A. Early Life

1. Born in Detroit--Leon Czolgosz was the first in his family born in the United States. After only a couple of years, the family moved to rural northern Michigan (first Rogers City, then Alpena, the a little Polish-American community called Posen)

2. Education--Czolgosz,  because of his intelligence and aptitude for school, was allowed to attend classes until he was 16, an unheard of occurrence for someone of his background at the  time

B. Work Life

1. Glassmaking--at the age of 16, Czolgosz found work at a glass factory in Pittsburgh, where his family  was now living. The family makes enough from a variety of employments to put together a nest egg, move to Cleveland, were the patriarch of the family, Paul Czolgosz, bought a saloon. Paul Czolgosz then leased the saloon to the Findlay Brewing Company.

2. Wire-making--Czolgosz and his brother Waldeck found steady employment at a steel wire manufacture in Cleveland, until the Depression of 1893

a. Watered  stock--claiming more capitalization than actually exists (that is, more equipment than  actually on hand), derived from the cowboy practice of salting cattle feed after a long drive to encourage the consumption of copious amounts of water--hence "watering the stock."

b. Tariff--while offering protection for home goods, it also brought in less revenue, as foreign trade ground to a halt. At  the  same time, the government had to purchase large amounts of silver with gold (done to get the votes from  western states to pass the tariff by McKinley), causing gold reserves to be greatly diminished and then  a run on banks when word of this condition leaked out.

c. Manufacturing--Manufacturers attempted to weather the storm by first cutting prices (to get more business), and then by cutting costs (by cutting wages and employees)

d. Strikes--workers responded to this situation--which was not of their making--by going on strike. Many strikers, like Leon Czolgosz, were then "blacklisted" by their employers. Czolgosz remained unemployed because of this until a new foreman was hired, and he was re-hired as "Fred Neiman (Fred Nobody)"

C. Self-Education--Czolgosz while unemployed embarked on a program of self-education during his unemployed time. Since prayer did not work, he and his brother gave up Catholicism. Leon Czolgosz became especially enamored by a hugely popular book by Edward Bellamy called Looking Backward

D. Illness--about 1897, Czolgosz stopped working at the wire mill, and moved full-time to the family farm, where he spent his time hunting and tinkering, until he took his investment in the farm out and began his path toward his encounter with William McKinley

1. Self-treatment--although Czolgosz saw at least 4 different doctors that his family knew of, he never divulged what his illness was to his family.

2. Withdrawal--Czolgosz while living on the farm did not take his meals with the family, but in his room or sometimes in the barn.

3. Fear of syphillis--one of the main things doctors looked for when Czolgosz was autopsied was any evidence of syphillis, since this would indicate the possibility of mental illiness, especially after doctors noticed genital scarring. But doctors found no other evidence of syphillis--which says nothing about whether Czolgosz feared that he had the disease.

E. Nothing to loose--Czolgosz was an immigrant outsider, possibly ill with syphillis, when he decided to strike at the symbol of this life's difficulties.