ABSTRACT
In America hearty immigrant survivors had held families together; had hung onto jobs, homes, and small pieces of land; had "made it" in the New World more or less on their own terms. Most Polish immigrants spared themselves the disillusionment and abuse of going "home." In the 1920s, Bishop Paul Rhode himself emerged as a proponent of rownouprawnienie, Polish equality in the hierarchy of the Church. The most destitute Polish-American families got help from organizations like the parish-based St. Vincent de Paul Society, which paid out small sums in the 1930s in order to help the very poor. The efforts of Polish-American small-property holders were aimed at conserving the stake they had won in American society. In the 1930s, Polish-Americans like Mary Zuk were not afraid to say that traditional values like economic justice, human dignity, and the notion of a "just price" were better than the American way of avarice and greed, which had aggravated their families' plight.
