While the houses are of the American type, the interior arrangement of the living rooms remains that of the European Slavic peasantry--the bedcover is often fancy handiwork, the walls are profusely covered with family photographs, pictures of Polish heroes, and magazine illustrations. However, an honored place is given to the picture of the President and the American flag. Furniture is placed against the wall around the room. The premises are kept comparatively clean and in order.
Diet is rather mixed, though the Polish meals and the Polish ways of cooking predominate. The settlers claim that their housewives are more frugal than the American housewives in their neighborhood.
There are very few intermarriages; nationality alone is considered a drawback for intermarriage between a Pole and non-Pole. In cases where the two people are of different faith, the Church is another drawback.
Family discipline, in respect to the authority of the husband as the family head, is less strict than in the old country. The settlers believe that this is due to the American influence. Here the husband has to consult his wife in every important question and the children are not so often punished.
The relations between the colonists and the national groups in the neighborhood are generally friendly and help is given mutually in cases of need. But there is very little social visiting between the groups, the difference in nationality being a bar.
The settlers secure agricultural advice from two sources--the company's adviser and the county agent. They raise wheat, rye, oats, potatoes, grasses--clover and timothy--while their main income is derived from milk production.
The products are sold to the local agents; there is no discrimination in prices. Necessities are bought in the near-by towns, prices being too high and goods not always suited to the needs of the settlers.
Money is loaned by the local banks at 7 to 8 per cent. This rate, the company stated, was on short-time, unsecured paper. The settlers, it maintained, have always been able to secure money on farm mortgages at 6 and 7 per cent.
Economically stronger families compel their children to do chores and work in the field outside of school time, while poorer and weaker families, especially those of more recent settlers, often let their children work even during school time.