Stories about Joe Magarac, a heroic steelworker in Pittsburgh, straddle the boundary between legend and tall tale. There are only a few narratives about him, but the stories’ content is typical of legends about folk heroes such as Davy Crockett, Mike Fink, Sam Patch, and Casey Jones. Unlike these actual folk heroes, Magarac is a fictional character. The stories reflect the fantasy of a tall tale more than the realism of stories about historical figures. Stories about Magarac also are situated between the boundary of folklore and fakelore, Richard Dorson’s term for the highly self-conscious literary creations of known writers. It is possible that Croatian immigrants did use the figure of “Joe Magarac” as a simpleton figure in the workplace in Pittsburgh’s steel mills. It is not likely, however, that anyone told full-fledged tales of a heroic steel giant prior to Owen Francis’s publication of a short feature story in a 1931 edition of Scribner’s Magazine. Francis’s publication remains the primary text for these stories even though the figure of Joe Magarac has now gained currency as an icon of western Pennsylvania’s steel industry.
Magarac’s name is a Croatian slang term for “jackass.” The term may have been used as an ironic compliment for workers who toiled like donkeys in the mills. Francis’s 1931 article claims that Slavic workers identified with the hardworking beast. He also writes that they joked about fellow workers whom they identified as magaracs by casting donkey ears on coworkers via the use of hand signs. The satirical nature of the donkey figure is further evident in other scholarship. Researchers suggest that early twentieth-century steelworkers may have used the term magarac to chide foolish workers or perhaps to create a fantasy figure who served as an example of what not to do in the workplace. Documentation is sketchy, at best, and the folklore about Joe Magarac is likely far removed from the prototypical story that Scribner’s Magazine published in 1931. The figure in Francis’s article probably bears little resemblance to the numskull figure in the occupational folklore of Eastern European steelworkers.
Owen Francis worked in the Pittsburgh steel industry before putting a smattering of stories about Joe Magarac into print. He claimed to have heard stories of Joe Magarac from other workers, but these assertions cannot be verified. Support for the claim that the stories were invented by Francis is most evident when one considers that no stories about him were documented prior to the 1931 article and that there has been no success in subsequent attempts to record Joe Magarac stories. In this respect, Joe Magarac is known for a series of adventures that first show up in print in Francis’s prose. He writes how Magarac stood close to seven feet in height and how he was made entirely of steel. Physical descriptions portray him with arms the size of smokestacks. He could use his great strength and a superhuman resistance to heat as he dipped his bare hands into molten steel to stretch out steel rails or roll cannon balls. Joe Magarac is completely devoted to the steel industry, working twenty-four hours a day and doing the labor of twenty-nine men.
He rose to fame through a contest that involved lifting three dolly bars. Only three men could lift the bars in the second round. They all failed when they attempted to lift the largest bars in the final round of the competition. Joe arrived and won the contest not only by lifting the last bar but also a competitor. Although he won the competition, he refused the prize, foregoing the hand of Steve Mestrovich’s daughter in marriage. Joe recognized that Mary was in love with Pete Pussick, one of the competitors, and he readily consented to Pete and Mary’s wedding by claiming that marriage and family life would interfere with his work. Following the competition, Joe worked so hard and produced so much surplus steel that it shut down the mill. The story and Joe’s life both end when he subsequently became despondent about not working for even a brief time period. Consequently, he chose to melt himself down in the blast furnace to create the world’s finest steel. In sum, the story portrays him as an altruist who sacrificed himself to create the steel for a new mill.
The overall narrative involves elements of legends and tall tales. As with many legendary figures, Joe Magarac is identified with actual places and with an industry that played an important part in the nation’s history. The figure of a remarkably strong man is a common folkloric motif as is the contest of strength. Many tall tales and legends also include characters with remarkable features such as Joe’s hefty arms and his ability to withstand intense pain. Joe Magarac’s depiction as a model worker who displays virtuous loyalty to his trade is another common characteristic of legendary characters who show up in various tall tales and legends. Although we may never know whether or not steelworkers told these tales, it is worth considering how the figure has captured the public imagination of those connected to the history and culture of steelmaking. Joe Magarac represents common perceptions of how a steelworker could be cast as a superhero.
If this story primarily is a literary invention modeled after folk narratives, then it is a prime example of what Richard Dorson termed fakelore. Dorson viewed these spurious attempts to create folklore as complicit with mass marketing in capitalist economies. Along with the more prominent figures of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill, he cited Joe Magarac as a prime example of this kind of fakelore. Dorson viewed fakelore as a misrepresentation of the actual occupational folklife of working communities, and he critiqued ways that folkloric inventions could be used as propaganda in both capitalist and communist political and economic systems. In various configurations, the stories and images of Joe Magarac may embody both the ideals of sacrificing oneself to the captains of industry as well as being the embodiment of a working-class hero.
Since the original publication of the story, Joe Magarac’s image and deeds have, indeed, become fodder for supporting western Pennsylvania’s steel industry. He was the subject of a famous painting by William Gropper, and statues and other representations of Joe are on display in amusement parks and heritage sites throughout the region. He is featured in a mural, and stories about him form the basis of Bob and Tim Hartman’s play Joe Magarac: Man of Steel. The Tri-State Conference on Steel established the annual Joe Magarac Award to recognize achievements in promoting reindustrialization in southwestern Pennsylvania. Even though stories about him likely were born more in a writer’s imagination than through an oral tradition, he has now become an important figure in Pennsylvania’s cultural identity. In symbolic imagery and in legendary deed, he represents the ideals of hard work, sacrifice, and importance of industry within the state’s history and current economy. Complicit with Dorson’s observations on the appeal of invented traditions, Joe Magarac has now become an important figure in the representation of the region’s heritage.
Gregory Hansen
See also Captain Alfred Bulltop Stormalong; Fakelore; Febold Feboldson; John Henry; Paul Bunyan; Pecos Bill; Tall Tales
Further Reading
Dorson, Richard. 1976. Folklore and Fakelore: Essays toward a Discipline of Folk Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Francis, Owen. 1931. “The Saga of Joe Magarac: Steelman.” Scribner’s Magazine (November): 505–511.
Gilley, Jennifer, and Stephen Burnett. 1998. “Deconstructing and Reconstructing Pittsburgh’s Man of Steel: Reading Joe Magarac against the Context of the 20th-Century Steel Industry.” Journal of American Folklore 111: 392–408.
Misko, Stephanie. 2008. “Pennsylvania Folklore … or Is It Fakelore?” Pennsylvania Center for the Book website. http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/JoeMagarac.html. Accessed November 5, 2015.
Richman, Hyman. 1953. “The Saga of Joe Magarac.” New York Folklore Quarterly 9: 282–293.
Joe Magarac—Primary Document
Selections from Owen Francis, “The Saga of Joe Magarac: Steelman” (1931)
The emergence of Paul Bunyan tales from the logging camps in the upper Middle West in the 1890s birthed a number of copycat stories for workingmen in other industries, such as sailors, cattle ranch hands, steel workers, and so on. Perhaps the best example of the “fakelore” heroes is Joe Magarac, who was contrived by Owen Francis in this Scribner’s Magazine article in 1931. As a way of enhancing the authenticity of the story, Francis tried to invoke the regional dialect of Serbo-Croatian immigrant mill hands in western Pennsylvania.
While working in the steel mills along the Monongahela valley of Pennsylvania, I often heard one of the many Slavs who worked in the mills call one of his fellow-workers “magarac.” Knowing that literally translated the word magarac meant jackass, but knowing also, from the tone of voice and the manner in which it was used, that it was seldom used derisively, I questioned my Hunkie leverman as to its meaning as understood by the Hunkie workers. He gave me a vivid explanation. He said:
“Magarac! Dat is mans who is joost same lak jackass donkey. Dat is mans what joost lak eatit and workit, dats all.”
Pointing a finger toward another of his race, a huge Hunkie by the name of Mike, who was walking from the open hearth, he yelled:
“Hay! Magarac!”
At once, Mike’s thumbs went to his ears, and with palms outspread his hands waved back and forth while he brayed lustily in the best imitation of a donkey that he could give.
“See,” my leverman said, “dere is magarac. Dat is Joe Magarac for sure.”
Then they both laughed and spoke in their mother tongue, which I did not understand.
It was evident enough there was some definite reason for the use of the word, and obviously that reason was, to their way of thinking, very humorous.
By working for a considerable number of years with a Hunkie on my either side, by sitting many evenings in their homes, and, since turning my thoughts to writing, by spending a good deal of my time with them, I have been fortunate enough to hear considerably more about Mr. Joe Magarac.
I find that Joe Magarac is a man living only in the imagination of the Hunkie steel-mill worker. He is to the Hunkie what Paul Bunyan is to the woodsman and Old Stormalong is to the men of the sea. With his active imagination and his childlike delight in tales of greatness, the Hunkie has created stories with Joe Magarac as the hero that may in the future become folklore of our country. Conceived in the minds of Hunkie steel-mill workers, he belongs to the mills as do the furnaces and the rolling-mills. Although the stories of Joe Magarac are sagas, they have no tangible connection, so far as I have been able to find, with the folklore of any of the countries which sent the Hunkie to these United States. It seems that the Hunkie, with the same adaptability that has made him into the best worker within our shores, has created a character and has woven about him a legend which admirably fits the environment in which he, the Hunkie, has been placed. Basically, the stories of Joe Magarac are as much a part of the American scene as steel itself.
I did not hear the story which I have set down here as accurately as I have been able, at one time. Some of it I heard in the mill; some of it while sitting on the hill above the mill on pleasant Sunday afternoons; the most of it while sitting in Agnes’s kitchen with Hunkie friends at my side and well-filled tin cups of prune-jack before us.
The saga of Joe Magarac is more typical of the Hunkie than any tale or incident or description I might write. It shows his sense of humor, his ambitions, his love of his work, and, in general, shows what I know the Hunkie to be: a good-natured, peace- and home-loving worker. …
So Joe Magarac livit by Horkey’s boarding-house and he catch job in mill. He workit on Noomber Seven furnace by open hearth and he workit all night and all day without finish and he no get tired nothing. He standit before Noomber Seven and he throw ’em in limestone, ore, scrap and everyting and den he go sit in furnace door with fires from furnace licking ’round chin. When steel melt ’em up, Joe Magarac put in hands and stir steel ’round while she was cookit and when furnace was ready for tap ’em out he crawl into furnace and scoop up big handfulls steel and dump ’em into ingot mould. After dat he run down to lower end and grab dat steel in hands and squeeze ’em out from fingers and he makit rails. Eight rails one time, four by each hands, he makit by Gods. Pretty soon he makit more steel as all other furnace together. Nobody ever see before such business lak dat, so boss of open hearth have big sign made and he put sign on mill fence where everybody see and dis sign say:
THE HOME OF JOE MAGARAC
Joe Magarac was workit every day and every night at mill and same lak before he was makit rails with hands. Pretty soon dat pile of rails in yard get bigger and bigger for Joe Magarac is workit so hard and after coople months yard was full, everyplace was rails. When Joe Magarac see dat he joost laughit and workit harder as ever. So one day roller-boss he comit up from down by finishing mills and he say to Joe Magarac who was workit by his furnace in open hearth. Roller-boss he say:
“Well, Joe Magarac, I guess we gone shut mill down early dis week. Dis time we catch plenty rails everyplace and we no catch many orders. So by Gods, we gone shut mill down Thursday night and we no start ’em up again until Monday morning. Mebbe you gone put slow heat in furnace: you tell stockman give you fifty-ton stock. You put ’em in stock and give furnace slow fire so dat she keepit warm and be ready for start ’em up on Monday.”
Source: Francis, Owen. “The Saga of Joe Magarac: Steelman.” Scribner’s Magazine 19 (November 1931): 505–511.