DEFINITION:

Mill-Hunky (mil-hunk-ee); noun
1. Historically (early 1900s), Root: BoHunk (Bohemia-Hungary). Hunky was an incorrectly used term used for all immigrants regardless of actual ethnicity, this often included immigrants from Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe, typically areas covered by the Austro-Hungarian Empire . A derogatory term used by "Native whites" to label all immigrants from Europe that spoke broken English and were from unfamiliar places, otherwise know as foreigners.
2. From around the 1940s to today, in Western Pennsylvania, this term referred to anyone, regardless of nationality, that worked/labored in a mill.
3. Modern: The attitude and culture that grew from areas with large populations of Mill workers.

*Note: Some theorize that the current term "Honky" derives from the mispronunciation of "Hunky".

"A migrant worker joins the Wobblies" (Industrial Workers of the World)
By Henry Pfaff
(From; Solidarity Forever - the IWW: An Oral History of the Wobblies. (Bird, Georgakas, Shaffer; Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1987.))

"I had no connection with any organization or union, so I decided to talk with the AF of L business agent in the community. I didn't understand the structure of the AF of L or its policy. He told me that "Hunkies" couldn't be organized. "Hunkies" to them meant any unskilled labor. Anybody who wasn't a tradesman or a craftsman was a Hunkie. I wouldn't take his say so. Because of the experience I already had with these men, I knew they could be organized and they needed to be organized."

(SOURCE: http://libcom.org/library/migrant-worker-wobblies-iww-pfaff)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Moneychangers by Upton Sinclair

"Oh!" said the other. "Too bad. But one finds that steel can't be
made without accidents. We had a blast-furnace explosion the other
day, and killed eight. They are mostly foreigners, though--'hunkies,'
they call them."

(SOURCE: http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Moneychangers3.html)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Mill-Hunky.com. What is it? Well that is open for interpretation. I was born in Western PA amidst the Steel Mills. Where every generation before me had the goal to get a good job in the Mill. Today there are no or very few mills left in that region. But the attitude, culture and pride of Mill-Hunkies lives on. The mills created an entire way of life, that is carried on by generations that will never work in a mill and who may not even remeber what a steel mill looks like. Growing up my Grandma always referred to my Grandfather as an old "Mill-Hunky" and that was not necessarily a compliment. But I see it as a badge of honor, they are heroes of this country and the reason Pittsburgh was once called the "City that built America".

My Grandfather worked at American Bridge as did his father and even his fathers father who came from Eastern Prussia in 1891, worked in a steel mill. Previous generations of my paternal relatives also worked in the Steel Mills. But Mill-Hunky is more than whether you work or worked in a mill, its about where you come from and the culture and attitude that comes with it. So I created this website, to start a community of Mill-Hunkies. Some still working in the mill, some trying to figure out how to work outside of the mill.

NOTE: This is a great book about those of us with blue collar backgrounds, trying to operate in the white collar world. -Jason

BRICKLAYER'S SON: THE BIRTH AND CLASH OF VALUES

My father and I were college buddies back in the late 1970s. While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, he was on a bricklayer's scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once, we met up on the subway going home--he with his tools, I with my books. We -didn't chat much about what went on during the day. My father -wasn't interested in Thucydides, and I -wasn't up on arches. We shared a New York Post and talked about the Mets.

My dad has built lots of places in New York City he can't get into: colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he -wasn't welcome anymore. It never bothered my dad, though. For him, earning the dough that helped pay for my entree into a fancy, bricked--in institution was satisfaction enough, a vicarious access.

We didn't know it then, but those days were the start of a branching off--a redefining of what it means to be a workingman in our Italian--American family. Related by blood, we're separated by class, my father and I. Being the white--collar child of a blue--collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life. It's the part of the American Dream you may have never heard about: the costs of social mobility. People pay with their anxiety about their place in life. It's a discomfort many never overcome.