111789

Page 2492

186 Utah Historical Quarterly cause h a r m and could be transmitted by a mere glance—was held by many southern European peoples. Among Carbon County Greeks the authority for folk beliefs prescribed cures, explained dreams, predicted the sex of unborn children, and read the shoulder blade of the Easter lamb, feeling its bumps to foretell what the year would bring. 15 T h e desire for cultural maintenance was natural, but the realities of the new environment often produced irony in the attempt. I n trying to maintain and foster cultural ties, immigrants altered or adapted to new conditions, customs, traditions, and beliefs; thus their practices were assuming new meaning and form. Gradual change occurred as immigrants came into contact with American institutions and ideas, but those who favored 100 percent "Americanization" of the new immigrants sought to expedite the process by the abrupt stripping away of cultural differences. It must be said, however, that many viewed this Americanization as a panacea for the country's ills in the post-World W a r I period. As mentioned earlier, some immigrant men began taking brides in the post-1910 years. Greek women wrere summoned from Greek villages by anxious miners. In some cases prospective brides arrived alone with tags on their clothing that identified future husbands. Such was the case of one Cretan woman who traveled to Carbon County and was left waiting near the railroad tracks in a sagebrush flat thirty miles from Helper. Greek women traveling alone were burdened w7ith the concern that their morals would be suspect, since in the homeland daughters were chaperoned w7ith "paranoid obsession." At the Latuda Japanese camp second cousins were wed, a marriage unthinkable in Japan. Likewise, South Slavs chose brides through correspondence, not only contrary to custom but beset with many difficulties.1G Italian, Greek, and South Slavic men also eventually intermarried with women of other immigrant groups or resident American women. T h e Japanese, however, stayed to themselves and did not attempt to enter American social life. Thus, while clinging to old ideas, the immigrants developed new approaches and responses. T h e role of unionization in creating a gradual change in immigrant life was especially significant in Carbon County. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries unions struggled for life in Carbon County, and in that fight the immigrants were of signal importance. During the lu Philip F. Notarianni, "Italianita in U t a h : T h e Immigrant Experience," Peoples of Utah, p. 327; Papanikolas, Toil and Rage, pp. 149-50. 111 Papanikolas, Toil and Rage, pp. 141-42; Papanikolas and Kasai, "Japanese Life in U t a h , " p. 342; Stipanovich, South Slavs, p. 75.