Steel Mills
The industrial background of the story is about life working in steel mills. The opportunity for employment stimulates the growth of “steel towns” in which generations of workers are born, live and die. Thus, the mills become symbolic both of opportunity and bondage. Children are born almost with an instant job waiting for them, but at the same time this very lure of automatic employment becomes a temptation which enslaves them, keeping them from exploring more risky avenues of opportunity.
Dobie
John Joseph is called Johnny by his family as a young boy. Once he goes to work and gets an education in the exploitation of workers, he adopts the nickname given him by “the fellas in the shop.” When he returns home to see his mother at Christmas, it is as a Ward Captain and he notably requests to no longer be addressed as Johnny anymore, but as Dobie. The name change is symbolic of the shifting of the balance of power from being completely in the hands of the owners as it has been since his grandfather came to America to a more reasonable balance between owner and worker.
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene V. Debs is an actual historical figure who was one of the titans of the organized labor movement. Running as a Socialist for President on four occasions, he manages to get nearly a million votes in his final run even though he was in jail at the time. In the book, Mike secretly bucks the Republican machine running the town by voting for Debs who loses to Woodrow Wilson. The vote for a candidate viewed as the nemesis of the company, industry and entire community reflects his intellectual engagement of political activism and becomes symbolic of first-generation immigrant assimilation into American society.
Djuro “George” Kracha
George Kracha is also a first-generation immigrant from Slovakia. Unlike Mike—who is younger and more ambitious—George refuses to participate in politics, learn English or just generally make any particular effort at assimilation. Mike is representative if the immigrant experience that tries to fully “Americanize” whereas George ultimately becomes a symbol of the immigrant experience that tries to merely link the cultures of the “Old World” with those of modern America society while reinforcing their existence as two separate identities.
Labor Unions
America is the land of opportunity and potential for those immigrants escaping the various forms of oppression in their European homeland. But merely reaching the shores of the new country does not guarantee fulfillment of the American Dream. Neither, more surprisingly, does finding work. Labor unions become the symbolic pathway for the immigrant family to attain the American Dream.
