Joe magarac

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Just as the loggers and lumberjacks had a hero in big Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox, Babe, so did the steelworkers of the Monongahela valley of Pittsburgh have a hero in "Joe Magarac." As with any folk character, Joe's origins are unclear. He appeared in the 1930s. It is said he was created from the imagination of steelworkers. A journalist named Owen Fisher, himself a former steelworker, may have been his creator. Seeking a story in the mills, Fisher was told about Joe as a joke. "Magarac" (pronounced mah-gah-rats) means "jackass", or "dumb jackass" in the Croatian tongue. Whatever his origin, a man made of steel, who could squeeze steel rails with his bare hands, caught on rapidly, and was well regarded by the hard working steelmen.

This story takes place in Hunkietown, home not only to the many immigrant Hungarians and their families who populated the steel mills of the Monongahela valley, but to the Serbs, Croats, and Slovaks who were also drawn to early 20th century Pennsylvania by the promise of work and wages. It could have been any of a dozen mill towns, but it wasn't - it was Hunkietown where it all happened.

A day the people of Hunkietown will never forget was the day when Steve Mestrovic held a contest to see who would marry his beautiful daughter, Mary Mestrovic. Mary was a prize worth trying for. Her eyes were as blue as the flames of a steelman's torch; her cheeks were as bright as red-hot iron; and her hair was the color of melted steel. Mary was eighteen years old, an age that her father thought proper for marriage.

"The man that wins my Mary," said Steve, "will of course have to be a steel man. More than that, he will have to be the strongest steel man of all!"

The contest required suitors to lift three dolly bars that Steve had brought home from the mill, each one bigger and heavier than the next. The smallest weighed 350 pounds; the middle one weighed 500 pounds; and the heaviest as much as the other two put together. Steel men and their families had come from Homestead, and Duquesne, and Braddock, and just about every other place along the river. They were great strong square men, with huge muscles stretching tight their Sunday clothes.

Everyone who tried lifted the smallest dolley bar over their head without so much as a grunt - well everyone except a few fellows from Homestead, who explained that they had not had time to eat breakfast before coming to the contest. Everyone laughed at them anyhow. Then everyone's attention was turned to the second steel bar.

The way the men's faces got red, and the way they grunted, made it clear that this second bar was much heavier than the first one. When everyone who wanted to had tried it, only three men had managed to lift this bar over their head. Pete Pussick from Homestead, Eli Stanoski from Braddock, and another fellow from Johnstown were the only ones who did it. The three men moved on to the third bar - the biggest one.

Eli Stanoski tried it first. He took hold of the bar, squared his legs and squatted down. He grunted and started to straighten up. But all of a sudden he stopped, because he had come to the end of his arms. The bar wouldn't budge any more than if Eli were trying to lift the world. Eli tried again, but he couldn't do it.

Then Pete Pussick stepped to the bar. Mary Mestrovic secretly hoped that Pete would lift the bar, because she liked Pete very much. He rolled up his sleeves, spit on his hands and rubbed them together. He squatted down and took hold of the bar. He straightened up and the bar rose from the ground. When it was about one and three-quarters inches off the ground it started to go back down. Pete tried again. He got the bar six inches off the ground before it went back down. When it hit the floor, the walls of Steve Mestrovic's house shook like an earthquake had come along.

"Ho ho!" laughed the man from Johnstown. "Move away from that bar and let me show you how to lift it. In Johnstown, steel men are so strong they can take hold of their own belt and hold themselves out at arm's length." He continued to brag about how strong he was until Steve pointed to the bar.

The Johnstown man stooped to grab the bar, and started to lift. His face got as red as the skies above the mills at night. His mouth turned white, as white as the limestone that went into the furnaces. The sweat dripped off his head and face like the sweat of three men tending an open hearth furnace on a hot day. But the dolley bar didn't budge. Finally the Johnstown man let go and stood up, glaring at all the crowd, daring someone to even snicker. Then from the back of the crowd came another loud, "Ho ho ho!"

The Johnstown man turned and faced the stranger who was coming through the crowd. He bent down and started a haymaker about at his shoes, and brought up his fist hitting the huge man in the chest, which was as high as he could reach. There was a metallic pinging sound, like the sound you would hear if you hit a steel barrel. Then the Johnstown man grabbed his hand and held it to his chest. "My fingers," he said. "They're busted!"

Well the big man grabbed the Johnstown man in one huge hand, and picked up the heavy dolly bar in the other, and held them both over his head just as easily as if they had been a butterfly and a fountain pen. He tried to stoop, but both the man and the bar hit the ceiling anyway. Then he put the Johnstown man down, and took the bar in both hands and bent it into a figure eight.

Steve Mestrovic came hustling up to the big man. "You win, fair and square. What is your name?"

"My name," the stranger told Steve, "is JOE MAGARAC."

Not only was Joe a steel working man, he was actually made of steel. He worked night and day, stopping only occasionally to eat. Joe tapped the furnaces with his finger. He dipped molten steel into the molds with his cupped hands. He squeezed the cooling steel into railroad rails between his fingers.

About this time, Mary Mestrovic began to cry. "I don't want to marry a man who works all the time," she blubbered. As for Joe Magarac - "Wait. What's this about m-m-m-marry? I never heard about that before."

Well Steve explained to Joe what marriage was all about, and how Joe would be expected to stay home when he wasn't working. Joe asked if he could get out of the staying home part. He just wanted to work all the time.

So in the end, Pete Pussick, who had done better than anyone else but Joe, and who was the one Mary wanted to marry anyway, won Mary Mestrovic's hand in matrimony. When they were married a little later on, they tried to get Joe to be the best man, but he said he couldn't stop working for such foolishness.

Joe Magarac later came to an untimely, but appropriate end, when he jumped into a ladel of red hot steel, to add his own strength to that of the steel being made to help the USA during World War 2. But there are those who say that in the economic downturn after the war, Joe was asked to take "a rest". After all, he did the work of dozens of steel men who really needed the jobs. Joe agreed, saying he hadn't taken a long rest in many years, and so he went off, to who knows where, and he still waits to be called back to his beloved steel mills.

This story has been adapted from several traditional sources.

Joe Magarac was an imaginary folk hero, like Paul Bunyan, whose story came from eastern European immigrants working in Pittsburgh area steel mills. His physical power and his brave, generous, and hard-working character made Joe Magarac (whose name "Magarac" means "donkey" in Croatian) the greatest steelworker who ever lived.

A gigantic Joe Magarac squeezes steel rails between his fingers in this mural from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Courtesy of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

Physical traits

Joe Magarac, the story goes, was a man made of steel. He was born in an iron ore mine and raised in a furnace.

Some versions of the story said Magarac was seven feet tall. Others claimed he was as tall as a smokestack! His shoulders were as big as the steel-mill door and his hands like the huge buckets (ladles) used to pour molten steel. He ate that hot steel like soup and cold steel ingots like meat. He could drink a gallon of liquid in one swallow.

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The mighty Magarac could do the work of 29 men, because he never slept, working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. He stirred vats of hot steel with his bare hands and twisted horseshoes and pretzels out of iron ingots. He made railroad rails by squeezing molten steel between his fingers. As the steel cooled, he made it into cannon balls as easily as kids make snowballs.

Character

Besides being physically strong, Joe Magarac was generous, self-sacrificing, and brave.

Once, for example, he won a weight-lifting contest and the prize was marrying the mill boss' daughter Mary. But Mary was in love with Pete Pussick. Instead of claiming his prize, Joe stepped aside so she could marry her true love (after all, if Joe had a wife, she would be very lonely while he worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week!).

Joe could appear just about anywhere in the mill in seconds by walking from one hot furnace rim to another. He used this ability to appear out of nowhere to save steelworkers from danger. When a crane holding a ladle with 50 tons of molten steel broke right above his crew, he caught it with his bare hands. Not a drop of hot "soup" splashed on anybody.

A whole train of loaded ingot-buggies broke loose and headed full steam downhill toward a group of employees. Just in the nick of time, Joe caught the last buggy and pulled the train back up hill, saving everyone!

No one is sure what happened to Joe. In one version of his story, he jumped into a Bessemer converter to save a load of steel and lives on in the girders of a new building or bridge. Another version claims that he is still alive, waiting in a abandoned mill for the day that the furnace burns again.

To the old steel mill, Big Joe went down
Joe Magarac.
He said, 'All you hunkies gather round.'
Big Joe Magarac.
I heard they gonna build a railroad to Frisco and back
From Maine down to Mexico.
And whose gonna make the steel for that track?
Big Joe Magarac.
— The New Christy Minstrels

Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh

Croatian Joe Magarac, according to Owen Francis’ legend, only lived (and died) to make steel.

For over a hundred years, Pittsburgh held the nation's steel industry with an ironclad grip. In 1865, Andrew Carnegie established the Carnegie Steel Company and developed the steel industry in Southwestern Pennsylvania. By 1911, Pittsburgh produced somewhere between one-third to one-half of the nation's steel. Southwestern Pennsylvania's influence is everywhere in our nation's identity, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Empire State Building. And it would not have been possible without the sweat and toil of thousands.

Most of the mills were located in the city's industrious and polluted mill towns located in regions of downtown, Homestead, Braddock, Duquesne, McKeesport and Clairton. While Pittsburgh was one of the largest cities in the Union at this point in history, there were not enough citizens to satisfy the need for unskilled labor. This problem was easily solved as immigrants from Eastern and Central Europe flooded Pittsburgh's Monongahela Valley in search of low-skill, stable work.

Historymatters @ George Mason U.

Russian immigrant steelworkers in Homestead, PA, circa 1908.

Conditions were not exactly comfortable in the mills or the mill towns. Steelworkers were both overworked and underpaid at 15 cents an hour for the average 12 hour day. These wages were considerably below the living wage of the time, $3 per day. Jobs in the steel mill were hot, dangerous, and grueling but immigrants considered it better than no work at all. Not only were conditions uncomfortable, but the jobs were segregated. Prejudice ruled the mills as easier jobs were given to citizens and Northern Europeans, while the most dangerous tasks were assigned to Eastern Europeans. The same was true in the mill towns; Eastern Europeans lived in the dingier houses, in the more dangerous neighborhoods, and had to cram multiple children in a room with boarders. But mill jobs were a steady source of income, so immigrants worked through the inhumane conditions. Legend has it, that to ease the pain of a 12-hour day, immigrant steelworkers created a fictional man who was not only happy to work all the time, but that was his only desire. His name was Joe Magarac, meaning "donkey" in Croatian, and he was the immigrant workers' own folk hero.

Industrialized America of the nineteenth and early twentieth century valued the larger-than-life, blue-collar folk hero. There was Paul Bunyan, the giant and courageous lumberjack; Pecos Bill, the cowboy who could ride a tornado like a bronco; and John Henry, the strongest railroad man alive. They were mythical representations of the working class, often considered saviors of the average working man and producers of giant proportions. "Big Man" folk heroes all shared similar qualities of strength, courage, and heart. Joe Magarac with his work in the steel mill was no exception.

University of Pittsburgh Art Gallery

Joe Magarac, as depicted by Walter Gropper.

Joe Magarac was born in an iron ore mine and made of solid steel. He could "[stir] vats of hot steel with his bare hands and twist horseshoes and pretzels out of iron ingots. He made railroad rails by squeezing molten steel between his fingers. As the steel cooled he made it into cannon balls as easily as kids make snowballs." He worked 24 hours a day, never slept or took a break, and could do the work of 29 men. Joe was a man whose only purpose in life was to work for the steel mill, something his exploited creators could relate to. In one tale, he wins a lifting competition and his prize is the prettiest girl in town. Joe realizes that she is in love with another man, Pete Pussick, and he allows her to marry him instead. After all, when would Joe Magarac, the steelman, have time for a family?

Joe Magarac appeared in print for the first time in Scribner's Magazine in 1931. Former steelworker Owen Francis documented the legend of Joe Magarac, with word of mouth as his only source. His article, "The Saga of Joe Magarac, Steelman" tells of Joe's final heroic sacrifice for industrialization. The mill boss decided to shut the mill down on Thursday and not open again until Monday because Joe's production put them ahead of schedule. Joe became so depressed at the thought of time off that he decided to melt himself in the furnace to create the finest steel in the world. On Monday, the boss found Joe in the furnace about to melt and let him die. After chopping him up to build a new mill, the melter-boss said to everyone: "You see dat steel? By Gods, nobody ever see steel lak dat before and dats joost because Joe Magarac he makit dat steel."

Francis' 1931 article concluded that being called a "magarac" was a compliment to immigrant steelworkers. After all, to be hard-working was a virtue for an immigrant hoping to establish a livelihood from nothing. Francis' Slavic co-workers described a "magarac" as a man who "eats and works, that's all." They jokingly ribbed one another about being "magaracs," signing donkey ears with their fingers from across the mill. Yet it is hard to miss the twinge of verbal irony behind the steelworkers' laughs.

It is debatable whether Joe Magarac was a genuine hero for these men, or just a satirical joke. Men in the mill often worked six or seven days a week, and every other week a 24 hour shift occurred because of a swing shift. Meaning, the extensive hours that the "donkey," Joe Magarac, worked were a reality rather than an exaggeration. He thrived in these conditions, and because of them, he did not have time for family or anything else in life. Furthermore, the same men who apparently valorized Joe Magarac also fought for better working conditions and shorter hours in battles like the Homestead Rebellion in 1892. This rebellion is one of the best known labor strikes in American history; it further stressed the tension between workers and bosses that finally snapped with the Great Steel Strike of 1919. Joe Magarac was happily married to the steel mill and these men were trying to spend more time away from it.

Croatia.org

U.S. Steel’s comic book was published in 1950 with a sequel following within a year, “The Return of Joe, Genie of Steel.”

Even more surprisingly, it appears that Joe was not as famous with the overworked as originally thought. Hyman Richman of the New York Folklore Quarterly interviewed Slovakian steelworkers in 1953 and found that most of them had never heard of Joe Magarac. I had a similar experience upon interviewing my Slovakian grandfather and uncles who worked in the mills in the 1930's. If Joe Magarac wasn't famous among Slovakian steelworkers, then where did he come from?

Arguably, Joe Magarac is not a creation of the immigrant workers, but rather a prototype for the industry's ideal steelworker. Francis writes, "'The Saga of Joe Magarac' is more typical of the [immigrant steelworker] than any tale or incident or description I might write. It shows his sense of humor, his ambitions, his love of his work�a good-natured, peace- and home-loving worker." These are assumptions Francis made based on his own perceptions of the Slavic people, not fact. In the Journal of American Folklore, Jennifer Gilley and Stephen Burnett believe the corporations needed to portray the ideal steelworker as content with hard work to ensure the steel industry's security. In 1951, U.S. Steel Corporation even published a comic book, "Joe, The Genie of Steel." The corporations were using Joe to convey their ideal of a hardworking steelworker: "All I want is to work all the time except when I eat, just like a jackass." Joe Magarac was everything the industry needed to succeed, and possibly the antithesis of what the workers wanted.

Bruce S. Cridlebaugh, pghbridges.com

A sculpture of Joe that once sat atop the Manchester Bridge. When the bridge was torn down, the sculpture was sent to Pittsburgh’s North Side for preservation

Joe Magarac's true origin or meaning to the immigrant steelworkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century aside, he has been used as an icon for Pittsburgh steel-making and Pittsburgh history alike. If Joe Magarac stood for the ideals of the steel industry at one time, he now stands as a historical reminder of the struggles faced by the city's workers over time. As early as 1948, artists were using Joe as a subject, like William Gropper's famous painting, "Joe Magarac." Today, a statue of blond haired, blue-eyed Joe Magarac bending steel, stands in Pittsburgh's amusement park, Kennywood Park. Thirty historical murals scattered throughout downtown Pittsburgh feature him, including the mural above of Joe making steel. Doris Dyen works to preserve cultural heritage for Pittsburgh's Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area. She believes that, "In the wrenching process of the steel industry's precipitous declining�Joe Magarac�has become immensely important to displaced workers, whose self-esteem and sense of identity have been severely challenged."

The controversy over the origin of Joe Magarac is as hot as a Bessemer blast furnace, but with the steel industry in our past, the debate loses relevance. To the modern-day Pennsylvanian, Joe Magarac symbolizes a century of multi-cultural explosion amidst labor exploitation obscured by the Pittsburgh smog; a century that influenced Western Pennsylvania into the twenty-first. A city known for its emphasis on the preservation of heritage, Pittsburgh is claiming their Slavic "hero" as their symbol of a difficult but cherished past.

Sources:

• Francis, Owen. "The Saga of Joe Magarac: Steelman." Scribner's Magazine. Nov. 1931: 505-11.
• Gilley, Jennifer, and Stephen Burnett. "Deconstructing and Reconstructing Pittsburgh's Man of Steel: Reading Joe Magarac against the Context of the 20th-Century Steel Industry." The Journal of American Folklore. 111 (1998): 392-408.
• The New Christy Minstrels. Tell Tales! Legends and Nonsense/Land of Giants. Rec. 8 July 2003. Collector's Choice Music, 2003.
• Richman, Hyman. "The Saga of Joe Magarac." New York Folklore Quarterly. 9 (1953): 282-293.
• Scarpaci, Joseph L. Pittsburgh and the Appalachians: Cultural and Natural Resources in a Postindustrial Age. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.
• Shapiro, Irwin. Joe Magarac and His U.S.A. Citizen Papers. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1948.
• "Western PA. Has Its Own Folk Hero In Legend of Mighty Steelworker." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 21 Aug 2001: C6.

Photo credits include Bruce S. Cridlebaugh at pghbridges.com