The Immigrant Community

the community comprised of a number of families is the simplest form which society has assumed in the universal struggle against death. All the primary human needs can be satisfied in the community. Polish peasant communities, before 1860, lived as practically self-sufficient groups. They knew by report that there was a great world, and they had some relations with it, through Jews and manor owners; they had a priest and the religious-magical traditions of Christendom. But practically the extent of their world was the “okolica” “the neighborhood round about,” and their definition of this was, “as far as a man is talked about.” Their life was culturally poor, and they showed no tendency either to progress or to retrograde, but they lived. The peasant did not know he was a Pole; he even denied it. The lord was a Pole; he was a peasant. We have records showing that members of other immigrant groups realize first in America that they are members of a nationality: “I had never realized I was an Albanian until my brother came from America in 1909. He belonged to an Albanian society over here.” ¹