Oilcloth Stories

When immigrants from Central Europe arrived in America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they often came to cities like Bethlehem, Pennsylvania – cities bursting with the new energies and opportunities of industrialization, and with the challenges of assimilating dozens of cultures into what had been pastoral communities only a few decades before.

For most immigrants, industrial working conditions were harsh and brutal, and living conditions were not much better. But the immigrants – Windis...