"They Roamed All Over Fixing Things": The Migratory Tinkers of Slovakia

Zecker talks about the migratory tinkers of Slovakia. As with other craftsmen, some Slovak tinkers developed strategies such as unionization, worker cooperatives, and other class-conscious mechanisms for adapting to their de-skilling under industrial capitalism once they reached America. Craft traditions were traded between migratory tinkers, and in this respect, their transnationalism seems to have been occupational as much as it was ethnic or national. As with many other craftsmen, 19th-century industrialization de-skilled many tinkers and imperiled their artisan independence. On the road, tinkers were often derided as vagabonds, featuring as comic rogues in folktales.