Italian:US Immigration Study

Aspects of Italian Immigration to Philadelphia Author(s): Joan Younger Dickinson Source: The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 90, No. 4 (Oct., 1966), pp. 445-465 Published by: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20089965 . Accessed: 06/10/2014 20:10

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aspects of Italian Immigration to Philadelphia

"XT 7HOLE streets formerly occupied by Irish-American

%/%/ families have become populated by Italians," noted an * Irish priest of South Philadelphia in the iScp's.1 A hous

ing investigator studied the new community: "The black-eyed chil

dren rolling and tumbling together, the gaily colored dresses of the

women, and the crowds of street vendors all give this neighborhood a wholly foreign appearance," she wrote.2 Because the

newcomers

included no historians and because few Philadelphias paid them any

heed, the story of the Italian immigration to Philadelphia and the

growth of the Italian-American colony from a handful of people in

the colonial period to upwards of half a million Italian-Americans

today has yet to be told.

Why did the Italians come here? What were they leaving? What did they seek? What skills, attitudes, and contributions did they bring to the city? How were they received? So long have these ques

tions gone unanswered and so complex are they that only a partial

answer can be provided. The nineteenth-century histories of Phila

delphia did not concern themselves with these immigrants; the immi

grants themselves produced few journalists, and, if there were

diarists, their diaries have yet to be discovered. Little exists to record

what was a great wave of humanity. In the colonial era only a few Italians trickled into Philadelphia.

Most of them, particularly the priests, the sailors, and the intellec

tuals, were from northern Italy; a few musicians came from southern

Italy. By 1850 it is likely that there were about 200 Italians in the

city?artists, singers, and political dissidents. In 1870, census records

tabulated 300. By 1880, there were 1,656 within the city limits, a

1 Joseph L. J. Kirlin, Catholicity in Philadelphia From the Earliest Missionaries

Bown to the

Present Time (Philadelphia, 1909), 449. 2

Emily W. Dinwiddie, Housing Conditions in Philadelphia: an investigation made by her

under the Octavia Hill Association (Philadelphia, 1904), 2.

445

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446 JOAN YOUNGER DICKINSON October

number that increased in the next ten years to 6,799. Then began an

astonishing influx, with laborers and peasants joining the previously slim list of artists, artisans, and merchants. Philadelphia census

records in 1900 report 17,830 Italians, slightly more than there were

in Boston or Chicago, although way behind greater New York's

145,433. By 1910, Philadelphia's Italian population had risen to

76,734, most of whom were located in South Philadelphia, with small

clusters in Chestnut Hill (notably the north Italian stone workers),

Overbrook, and Germantown.

Although it can be argued that the early, pre-1870 Italian immigra tion of individuals has small relation to the brawny army of workers

who later came in such numbers, there are some links between the

two that are both curious and interesting. There was, for instance, that tiny band of Protestant Waldenses who arrived at New Castle,

Delaware, in 1665, following a frightful massacre and rout in their

home area of Piedmont in northern Italy. Their language and

records were in French and it is difficult to follow them into the Italian life of later Philadelphia, but the 1880-1910 immigration included a sizable number of Italian Waldenses.3

There are also links between the early Italian priests and the later

immigrants. The Catholic church congregations?and Philadelphia boasts the first permanent Roman Catholic Church in the British colonies4?were French, Spanish, and German in the eighteenth

century, and Irish in the nineteenth. However, since priests were

always assigned from Rome, some of the earliest clerics to arrive were Italians.5

The musicians show a clear line of descent. Some of the first

Italians to come were instrument players, who, because of their lack

of easy association with the colonial gentry, opened public "night clubs" in order to perform. The later group, coming in the mid

nineteenth century and early twentieth, struggled to make Italian

opera an important part of Philadelphia life.6

3 Sophia V. Bompiano, The Italian Waldenses (New York, 1899), 79, 103, 110; George B.

Watts, The Waldenses in the New World (Durham, N. C, 1941), 10-13, 124. Both the Tenth

Presbyterian Church and the First Baptist Church today include Italian Waldenses. 4 St. Joseph's, Willing's Alley, founded in 1733. Kirlin, 25, 33, 35. 5 Giovanni Ermenigildo Schiavo, Italians in America before the Civil War (New York,

1924), 206. 6 Robert A. Gerson, Music in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1940), 67, 70-72, 76-77.

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1966 ITALIAN IMMIGRATION 447

In 1757, John di Palma gave the first public concert in Philadel

phia; his second was attended by George Washington.7 The Quakers,

however, frowned on musical shows and Palma went to New York.

One of his orchestra, Gaetano Francheschini, remained, dividing his

time between Philadelphia and Charleston, South Carolina, playing the harpsichord, the violin, and the "viol d'amour" at private

gatherings.8 A more important musician was Giovanni Gualdo, who

advertised in 1768 that he brewed spruce and sassafras beer and

taught music.9 He opened a shop and sold musical instruments and

secular music, much of which he composed himself. In 1769 he gave the first concert of composed-in-America music. A subscription series

followed in 1770, but, although he was accepted into the English and German circle of music lovers, his concerts did not pay.10 Another

Italian, Vincent Pelosi, somewhat later ran an exchange coffee house

where he sold wine and offered "al fresco" concerts. In 1774, a Pietro

Sodi gave a concert and ball, and then, reportedly by request, opened a dancing school for young gentlemen in the mornings, young ladies

in the afternoons.11

There were also Philadelphia Italians in the eighteenth century who were solely engaged in trade, forerunners of the large Italian

market operators who flourished in the late nineteenth century.

Giuseppe Mussi imported dry goods by package or piece from

Amsterdam until the journalist-botanist Count Luigi Castiglioni came to town, when he closed his store to travel throughout Pennsyl vania with his fellow Milanese.12 As early as 1772, Anthony Vitalli

boasted of his fine Italian sausages, fit to eat "boiled, fried, or

broiled"?and purchasable opposite the sign of the Indian King. By

1778, he had simplified his name to Vitaly and had added sugar and snuff to his wares.13 In 1791, Stephen Ceoni ran a butcher shop;

Thomas Allibone was a flour merchant.14

7 Ibid., IO.

8 Schiavo, 231.

9 Howard R. Marraro, "Italo-Americans in Pennsylvania in the Eighteenth Century,"

Pennsylvania History, VII (1940), 164. 10 Carl and Jessica Bridenbaugh, Rebels and Gentlemen, Philadelphia in the Age of Franklin

(New York, 1942), 157-159. 11

Marraro, 164-165. 12

Luigi Castiglione, Viaggio Negli Stati Uniti deW America (Milan, 1790). 13

Marraro, 165. 14

Philadelphia Birectory, 1791.

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448 JOAN YOUNGER DICKINSON October

Among Italian intellectuals coming and going in the capital city,

probably the most important in sending news to Italy about Amer

ican freedom and opportunity was Filippo Mazzei, who was encour

aged to come to America by Benjamin Franklin and persuaded to

stay by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was so impressed by Mazzei's

plans for a great vineyard and olive orchard that he arranged for

him to have 2,000 acres in Virginia. Mazzei, in due course, was so

impressed with American political developments that he assisted

Jefferson in his political writings, acted as an agent for Virginia in

Italy, and wrote a history of the Revolution.15 Another Italian

thinker of note, Francesco Vigo, financier of the battle of Vincennes, was in intermittent touch with Philadelphia.16 Through the Sardinian

consul in Philadelphia he brought in his nephew, Paola Busti, who as chief agent for the Holland Company became a Philadelphian. He

was a pewholder at St. Mary's in 1800 and died in 1824 at Blockley, now Philadelphia General Hospital.17 The Milanese balloonist Count

Paola Andreani stayed in Philadelphia only briefly, yet, like another Italian visitor, Dr. J. B. Scandella, the Venetian friend of architect

Benjamin Latrobe, Andreani was made a member of the American

Philosophical Society.18 Much has been said about the ties between the colonies and France

during this period, but little about those with Italy. Both Jefferson and Franklin were keenly interested in Italy; Jefferson studied

Italian agriculture extensively, once going so far as to smuggle rice

out of a Piedmont paddy.19 Franklin, however, was more renowned

there. Although he never set foot in Italy, he represented for the

Italians, as he did for the French, the new American type, the "noble

savage." His experiments in electricity and his stove were renowned

through Italy, his books of practical morality were published and

republished there, and statues and portraits of him were frequently made.20 Through him, the aims and dreams of the Revolution gained

15 Richard C. Garlick, Jr., Angelo Flavio Guidi, Giuseppe Prezzolini, Bruno Roselli, Luigi

Russo, Italy and the Italians in Washington's Time (New York, 1933), 13, 16-17, 2I?

16 Ibid., 83-109.

17 Schiavo, 215.

18 Ibid., 136; List of the members of the American Philosophical Society from 1760-1838

(Philadelphia, 1838), 13, 15. 19

Garlick, 64-66. 20 Antonio Pace, Benjamin Franklin and Italy (Philadelphia, 1958), 55-70.

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1966 ITALIAN IMMIGRATION 449

a large audience.21 When a small town in Calabria was destroyed by an earthquake, the new one was named Filadelphia (probably by

Freemasons) in honor of the American capital and was laid out on a

similar plan, complete with an Avenue of Independence.22 Others in

Philadelphia had ties with Italy: young artists went there, encour

aged by the success in Rome of Benjamin West; doctors studied

there; and fashionable young men who had made the Grand Tour of

Rome, Paris, and London were called "Macaroni."23 As early as 1765 we find the Italian doctor Joseph Battachi advertising his Roman

surgical training to Philadelphians and offering to treat the poor free

at his home in Southwark or visit the rich for a fee.24 By 1791 another

Italian doctor had arrived, George Alberti, whose offices were at 59

Mulberry Street.25 Of the eighteenth-century Italian artists who

came, the best known was Giuseppe Ceracchi, an eccentric sculptor. It was his dream to immortalize in stone the spirit of the American

Revolution, but he found that Americans were not yet ready to put their money into statuary. Nevertheless, during his two stays in

Philadelphia in 1790 and 1793, he persuaded such notables as

Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and Madison to sit for

him.26

Few Italian laborers came to the colonies before the late nineteenth

century. Italy was still in the grip of feudalism and workmen were

rooted to the soil. Sailors were the chief exception. A saw of the time

was "Crack an egg anywhere in the world and out will jump a

Genoese.,, It is probable that a number of early Italian arrivals were

once sailors out of Genoa who had jumped ship upon arriving at the

port of Philadelphia. The city was changing rapidly. In the eighteenth century non

English immigrants tended to live on its fringes. Washington Square on the southern edge, for instance, was a burial ground in part for

Catholics, in part for Revolutionary soldiers, and in part for paupers. South of it lived the Germans who were not part of the German town

21 Ibid., 170-173, 209-212.

22 Ibid., 157-165.

23 Bridenbaugh, 170-175, 284.

24 Marraro, 160-161.

25 Philadelphia Birectory, 1791.

26 National Encyclopedia of American Biography, VIII, 289.

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45o JOAN YOUNGER DICKINSON October

group, some Finns, Swedes, Irish, and a few Italians. In the early nineteenth century, some French came and more Irish. This area was

known as Southwark. South of its main street, Passyunk, was

Moyamensing, which was not taken into the city until 1812 when it

had a population of 3,000 inhabitants. It included farms and grazing lands along South Broad Street, a prison, and two famous gardens,

Lebanon at Tenth and South and Moyamensing Botanic on Love

Lane, soon to be renamed Washington Street. On Sunday, it was

customary to promenade in the gardens or go by horse for a picnic at Point Breeze. In the i84o's a large number of Irish began to crowd

the area. It is doubtful that there was an Italian colony in South

Philadelphia as such in this period, but the number of Italians living there increased steadily from 1800 to 1850; the best known of them

were still musicians.

It has been said that it was an accident that Mozart's one-time

lyricist Lorenzo da Ponte arrived first in Philadelphia, rather than in

New York where his wife awaited him. His name is written large in

his own hand in the port's register of June 5, 1805. It was prefaced with Mister, although it is now known he was fleeing both his London creditors and his Italian training as a priest.27 Although da Ponte

did not reside permanently in Philadelphia, he was in and out of the

city from 1805 until his death in New York in 1838. He wrote an

opera in Philadelphia, produced at least fifteen, and his best friend, the Marquis Santangelo, was a Philadelphian, although a singularly obscure one. It was Santangelo who helped back da Ponte in his

building of the New York Opera House and who aided him in import

ing Italian books.28

It was doubtless through da Ponte that Maria Garcia, known pro

fessionally as Signorina Malibran, first sang for the Musical Fund

Society in 1827.29 She was the daughter of Manuel Garcia, the direc

tor of the first troupe of Italian opera singers to perform in the

United States, and Garcia, a Spaniard, was da Ponte's friend.30

27 Garlick, 127-131; Ships Manifests, Philadelphia Arrivals, 1800-1838, National Archives,

Washington, D. C. 28 Elizabeth Abbott, tr., Memoirs of Lorenzo da Ponte (Philadelphia, 1929). 29 William L. Mactier, A Sketch of the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia (Philadelphia,

1885), 13. 30

Garlick, 129.

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1966 ITALIAN IMMIGRATION 4SI

Certainly it was da Ponte who brought Garcia's troupe to Philadel

phia in 1832, the Mon tr?sor troupe, and the Riva-Finoli troupe in

1833, when the audience that was expected to throng da Ponte's

opera house in New York failed to materialize.31 The officers of the

Musical Fund Society and the Philharmonic Society relied heavily on Italian performers. Although the first troupes were not financial

successes,32 by 1847 Italian musicians had attracted enough opera

buffs to have a remunerative season, and the Italian Opera Company, financed by a German slave trader from Havana, was formed. It

lasted five years and was particularly notable because the daughter of two of the singers was Adelina Patti, who in 1852 at the age of

eight made her debut as an opera singer at the Musical Fund Society and from there went on to world fame.33

How many Italians constituted the Philadelphia community be

tween 1800 and 1850 is difficult to estimate. Ships' manifests disclose

that approximately 150 Italians arrived in the port of Philadelphia between 1800 and 1838. Some moved on to New York

or proceeded to Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires, the destination of the first waves

of Italian immigration to the New World. Until 1818 national origin is suggested by patronym. After 1818 immigration law demanded

"origin" be listed and Italians can be identified more accurately.

Following these Italian arrivals through church, business, and art

directories, it is possible to obtain some data about their activities.

In the 1855 city directory there are twenty-six Italians, eleven of

whom are also recorded in other local records. For instance, Antonio

Antelo, merchant, arrived on the schooner Stephanie from Havana

in 1814; in 1855 A. J. Antelo was listed in the city directory and

reported at St. John's as a pillar of the church.34 In 1807, Nicholas

Guilberti arrived with two trunks of wearing apparel and bedding;

by 1855 he was listed as Nicholas Guilbert, printer. There is no

record of Nicholas Monachesi's arrival, but between 1832 and 1851 he painted the fresco at the Merchant's Exchange and a mural at

St. Joseph's church. He lived with F. Monachesi, another fresco

painter, who may have been his son. In 1855 an Ellen Monachesi

31 Ibid., 131.

32 Mactier, 15, 29, 31-43.

33 Ibid., 37.

34 St. John's Sodality Records [Philadelphia, 1870], 24.

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452 JOAN YOUNGER DICKINSON October

lived at 156 Pine and she too was listed as a fresco painter. The Citti

brothers were also Italian artists, well known at the Pennsylvania

Academy of the Fine Arts; in the city directory of 1855 John Citti listed himself as an image maker?Orelius and Louis were lithog

raphers.35

Other Italians can be found in the business community. There

were the Perrets, two watch-making brothers who arrived from

Cuba as Perretti, and Viti, the merchant, who clung firmly to the

family name but not the occupation. Described in the ships' manifest

as "artist," he was noted in the city directory as being in "alabaster

imports." Probably he made some of the religious images hawked

through the streets. He may even have employed some of the image

peddlers who were so famous?or infamous?in this period, for it is

possible this peddling of religious objects began as a sideline of

struggling artists whose products were quickly exploited by large scale producers both here and in France. It is strange, however, that

in the directories of the 1850's there were no grocers or wine mer

chants with Italian names.

In the late 1840's, the first congregation of Italian Catholics began

gathering in the chapel of St. Joseph's. In 1852 they secured their

own church, St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi. Unfortunately no records

were kept of attendance and the marriage and birth records of these

early years are difficult to decipher. The only Italian name recorded

in the fund raising committee formed to build the church is John

Raggio; the rest are of Irish descent or, as is the case of John Questa,

probably Spanish.36 Dr. Bartholomew Fair, church historian of

St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, assumes that there were at least

fifty in the congregation, and that most were Florentines or Genoese

since St. Mary Magdalen was a patron saint of Florence and Raggio is a Florentine name. The pastor, Carlo Mariano, was of course

Italian; he is recorded in the ships' manifest as first coming to

Philadelphia in September, 1818, with a group of fourteen Italian

priests. Each had his own books, habits, bed, bedding, and some

"mechanical tools." Not all Italians left their old church for St. Mary

35 George C. Groce and David H. Wallace, Bictionary of Artists in America i564-1860

(New Haven, 1957), 45? 36

Kirlin, 363.

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1966 ITALIAN IMMIGRATION 453

Magdalen; neither Antelo nor J. de Angeli, his fellow pewholder at

fashionable St. John's, joined the new parish.37

During this mid-century period, a number of Italian contract

laborers arrived, recruited often by steamship agents and brought into Philadelphia by way of New York in gangs of twenty or thirty to do road or construction work. Although a few became settlers,

many of them returned home.38 Among other arrivals were north

Italian artisans, notably John Casani who came from Venice in 1850 and in 1877 was employed by the sculptor Alexander Calder. Casani

was the caster of the great statues for City Hall, including that of

William Penn.39

In 1852 Lorenzo Nardi, a machinist from north of Florence,

arrived and reportedly searched the city for seven days before he

found another Italian; subsequently he set up a hat block factory at

Sixth and Girard streets.40 In 1871 Augustina Marcolina and his

brother-in-law, Emilio Roman, emigrated from Poffabria, north of

Venice, in search of stone work and discovered a stone quarry at

Cheltenham and Waverly Streets in Chestnut Hill.41 From Basili

cata, musicians continued to come. Half of the operas produced at

the new Academy of Music and at the Walnut Street Theater in

mid-century were Italian.42

Other southern Italians, Sicilian farmers, began to trickle in during the eighteen-sixties and seventies. Because there was no steamship line running directly between Italy and Philadelphia at this time,

most of these farmers drifted down from New York or Boston. In

1870 an Italian farming colony was formed at Vineland, New Jersey, when the illustrious Count Chevalier Secchi de C?sale, New York

publisher of the first Italian newspaper in America, persuaded the

landowner Charles Landis to put large tracts of sandy New Jersey soil at his disposal to lease or sell to Italian farmers. Within a few

years the new Vineland colony was self-supporting through the

production of grapes, wine, and sweet potatoes, and in nearby

37 St. John's Sodality Records, 24. 38 Robert F. Foerster, The Italian Immigration of Our Times (Cambridge, 1924), 65-71. 39

Obituary of Casani in Philadelphia Public Ledger, Jan. 24, 1898. 4?

Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 24, 1952. 41

Philadelphia Public Ledger, May 15, 1927. 42

Gerson, 78-80.

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454 JOAN YOUNGER DICKINSON October

Hammonton and Landisville, other plots were being rented out to

Sicilians for berry raising.43 Prior to this, some Sicilians apparently had been farming south of Philadelphia and peddling their products through the city in push wagons. As the New Jersey area prospered, it attracted more and more Italians, some of them recruited in Italy

by Landis himself, and some of these preferred peddling to farm labor.44 Socially distant from these south Italy newcomers though the

older north Italian immigrants were?factionalism between the in

dustrial north and the rural south of Italy is of long tradition?

Philadelphia's Italians welcomed the Sicilian peddler. The street

market at Ninth and Christian, where the peddlers gathered, soon

became the nucleus of South Philadelphia's fast growing Little Italy, a position it continues to hold today.

By 1880, unskilled laborers were appearing in noticeable numbers.

Lured by the promise of work, they were "birds of passage"?when the job was completed they were expected to go home. Usually, all

arrangements were made for passage here and back through a

padrone or patron, who served the laborers not only as "boss," but

also as landlord, banker, interpreter, and employment agent. It is

estimated that about one-fifth of all Italian immigration between

1870-1910 were "birds of passage" organized by padroni. Some

laborers were married men, hirelings on Italian estates, owners of

one-room houses crowded with children, but many were teenagers, middle sons whose services were needed neither in family endeavors

or as helpmates to their aging parents, but whose "dollaro" were

welcome indeed.45

The abuses perpetrated by the padroni upon these migratory workers were many; the record is full of vanishing payrolls, empty

banks, slummy rooming houses.46 The first padroni apparently learned

their skills through contract labor gangs; after these were banned, the

padroni began to work with American industry directly. The Penn

sylvania Railroad needed men in gangs for track laying, roadway

43 Eliot Lord, John J. D. Trenor, Samuel J. Barrows, The Italian in America (New York,

1906), 129-131. 44

Foerster, 367. 45

Ibid., 39-43, 390-392 46 Sister M. Agnes Gertrude, "Italian Immigration into Philadelphia," Records of the

American Catholic Historical Society, LVIII (1947), 140.

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1966 ITALIAN IMMIGRATION 455

maintenance, land-clearing; the coal mines of western Pennsylvania wanted Italians for rock blasting; construction agents sought labor

ers (as well as stone workers and masons) for help in the building of

massive structures like Philadelphia's City Hall, Grand Central Station in New York, and the subways.47

No federal action was ever taken against the padrone system. But

while the cities of New York and Boston were slow to curb the

abuses, in 1883-1884 an Italian physician in Philadelphia, Dr. D. A.

Pignatelli, waged a successful fight against them in Pennsylvania.48 The federal Department of Labor recognized differences in Italian

colonies, declaring that while in Philadelphia "the bosses have also

entrenched themselves . . . they do not appear to carry things in

such a high-handed manner as in New York," adding that three

special characteristics influenced the socio-economic pattern of Phila

delphia's immigration. First, the fact that Philadelphia was not a

port for Italian ships meant that the Italian arriving there usually had lived somewhere else in this country. Second, since Philadelphia was known as a city of homes, it had attracted immigrants who

sought permanence. Third, new immigrants in Philadelphia were

taken in hand soon after their arrival by "politicians," "who

naturalize them and form them into clubs."49

These Philadelphia politicians, who have yet to be examined in

depth, were both like and unlike the more famous padroni of New

York. They were unlike in that they were local residents of some

stature with ties to the city's social structure who apparently pre ferred power and prestige to cold cash?only through them did the

Italian laborers get privileges and jobs. Their chief job area was the

exclusive right to keep the city streets clean, a right which was

important not only because it cut into Irish political power, but

because it also led to a claim on several jobs of importance in the

City Hall establishment.50

47 Foerster, 357; Philip M. Rose, The Italians in America (New York, 1922), 57.

48 Edwin Fenton, "Italians in the Labor Movement," Pennsylvania History, XXVI (1959),

135. 49

John Koren, "The Padrone System and Padrone Banks, Bulletin, United States Bepart ment of Labor, 1897 (IX), 123-128.

50 Hugo V. Maiale, The Italian Vote in Philadelphia between IQ28 and I?46 (Philadelphia,

1950), 9.

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456 JOAN YOUNGER DICKINSON October

The method of job control was intricate, however, for the poli ticians could not afford to have a padroni revolt. Together they formed a central organization which the immigrants had to join before they could secure jobs, an organization aptly named the

Societa Operaia di zMutuo Soccorso?the Workingman's Society of

Mutual Aid.

Technically, the bosses controlled the organization, but inasmuch

as the politicians who belonged to it had control of whole areas of

contracts and jobs which the bosses could not touch, not to mention

some voice in legislation, both gained from working amicably to

gether. In due course they also gained a joint name which was

peculiarly Philadelphian despite its Italian origin. They were called The Trominenti.11

The Trominenti were both admired and fought, but most Italians

of this generation and group were, in the main, only too happy to

share a little of their pay, however hard-earned, with the men who

made their jobs, their savings, the roofs over their heads possible. Few knew any English and few were welcome at the American banks

since they never let their savings rest for long; few had the cash

necessary on arrival for a private room, and few knew the intricacies

of exporting their money back to their families. In short, they em

bodied all the alleged American virtues of hard work, thrift, and

devotion to home and country, but since there was little in the

American culture, except work, adapted to their particular needs,

they continued their family organizations, and defended with tradi

tional Italian vigor their relatives or countrymen, even when they swindled them out of their full pay or bedded them down on a slim

strip of bare and filthy floor.52

How many of these unskilled laborers were there generally in

Philadelphia? It is certain that their numbers never rose as high as

in New York. A count in 1900 of occupations in a group of Philadel

phia Italians disclosed that slightly more than one-third were un

skilled laborers.53

Many of those who began as "birds of passage" undoubtedly became permanent residents. By 1900 it was reported that in

Philadelphia two out of three Italian immigrants owned their own

51 Koren, 123-124.

52 Foerster, 375.

53 Dinwiddie, Table 24.

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1966 ITALIAN IMMIGRATION 457

homes?a startling and probably exaggerated contrast to the New

York figure of only 637 houses, mostly tenements, owned there by

Italians, although by then it was quite clear that if an Italian worker

was not sending four out of five dollars home he was investing in

real estate.54

Three-fourths of the immigrants of this period were peasants from

southern Italy and Sicily; those who came to Philadelphia were in the

main from Ubrizzo-Molino, the province that stretches east and

south of Rome, but some were from Campagna, Calabria, Basilicata, the heel of Italy's boot, and many came from the port towns of

Sicily. Why had they left? It is generally held that the chief reason for the southern and eastern European mass emigration of the late

nineteenth century was poverty, but this is an oversimplification. The amount of Italian emigration varied from province to province,

yet all of southern Italy suffered equally during this period from high taxes, exhaustion of the land, a decline in the lemon market, a grape

vine disease, and a rise in population. The difference between the

provinces that emptied and those that did not was that the latter

contrived to organize successfully and work together so as to manage what land there was communally, while the former did not. The

Italian peasant suffered almost as much hunger (although not

famine) as did the Irish peasant during the i84o's and 1850*8, but the

social upheaval that took place in both Ireland and Germany in this

period was delayed in Italy by the continuous wars that were fought within and over the Italian states. Wars, no matter how demanding or how disliked, bring with them their own ties of morale and unity even to a hungry populace. Not until the foreign invaders from

Austria and France left, not until the dukes of the northern Papal states and the great landholders of the southern kingdoms settled

their scores, not until the Church hierarchy had lost its hold, was the

Italian little man, the artisan and the farmer, the small tradesman

and the laborer, in any position to manage for himself. With Italian

unification, new modes of organization were necessary. For those who

could not find them in Italy, emigration appeared the answer.55

In 1869, when the Italian government first began recording its

population losses, 84,000 shipped out, most of them to Europe for

54 Foerster, 375.

55 Rudolph J. Vecoli, "Contadini in Chicago: A Critique of The Uprooted," Journal of

American History, LI (1964), 406-408.

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458 JOAN YOUNGER DICKINSON October

temporary work, but 36,000 were listed as leaving for South America

as permanent settlers. Despite various laws passed against emigra

tion, the outward flow continued and some of it was directed to

North America. In 1886, the great wave of immigration into the

United States which was to bring in 3,000,000 Italians in the next

three decades began to gather power. Unlike the earlier influx, most

of these Italians were from rural southern Italy, and centuries of

domination by church, state, warlords, and landlords had left them

fatalistic, provincial, and trustful of no one except their family

groups, their paesani, the people of their own village who shared with

them local dialect, including gestures, traditions, superstitions, and

usually blood ties as well.56 While many of the young men had a

tradition of migratory work in France or Austria, those families who

broke away for good from their small plots of land, from the familiar

reassuring sound of the church bell, and from the stone house which

had been the family's home for centuries, ventured forth only on the

repeated advice, encouragement, and financial assistance of relatives

and friends.57 This pattern is well-termed "chain migration," for as

one or another person in a family or a village began sending for

others, literally chains of people wound out of Italy into the Little Italies of the United States. Until this pattern of grouping was

revealed, the Little Italies of the United States were seen as cohesive

Italian groups; closer inspection alone revealed the clusters, the

groupings on a street, or even one side of a street, by what the

Italians call campanillismo^ the sound of the village bell, but which

is in actuality the grouping by family and paesani, or townspeople.58 The Italians' first organizations in Philadelphia thus were village

or family organizations, but a few, probably in reaction to the pres sures of American society, were occupational groups. By 1886, there

were eleven Italian clubs in the city, eight of which were of paesaniy

only three of which were occupational groups.59 By 1900, the village

organizations numbered in the scores.

56 Foerster, 6.

57 Phyllis H. Williams, South Italian Folkways in Europe and America (New Haven, 1936),

1-18. 58

J. S. MacDonald, "Chain Migration and the Formation of Ethnic Neighborhoods," Social Research, XXIX (1962), 433-448.

59 Fenton, 136.

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1966 ITALIAN IMMIGRATION 459

Most Italians, although gregarious, were not responsive to union

organization. Italian barbers, slowly pushing the French out of the

business, were more likely to be proprietors than hirelings. In 1900 when some 800 Italian barbers were in the 4,000-strong Philadelphia local of the Barbers International, a strike was called to raise prices and outlaw Sunday work, but the Italian barber-proprietors would

not co-operate, and, when shaves went down to a nickel, most of

them resigned.60 Although Italian tailors and needle workers organ ized a mutual benefit society in Philadelphia in 1884, and, seven

years later, one hundred of them joined the Journeymen Tailors

International, they pulled out a year later because the union had no

communications written in Italian. It was of little value for them to

be organized anyhow; most of them did home or piece work, many were women working long hours at home; others were finishers in

sweat shops; some were proprietors who owned their own small retail

stores. In 1903, 180 of them rejoined the International, but four

years later they refused to strike, maintaining that the union had

done nothing to improve their conditions or wages and they had

little hope that it ever would.

If not much interested in joining labor unions, Philadelphia's Italians were inclined toward parish affiliation. In part this religious

loyalty was due to the women rather than the men, and in part to

local proselytizing Irish priests and lay Catholics in the local churches. Although the first comments by church authorities on the

increasing numbers of Italians in South Philadelphia carry a note of

complaint, later ones suggest some pride. Because the growing number of Italians in the district around Ninth and Christian could no longer be accommodated at St. Mary Magdalen, two Italian

priests (Augustinians) were sent for in 1898 and the Lady of Good Counsel on South Eighth was proclaimed an Italian church.61 In the

next two years, a school was opened at St. Paul's Church, at Chris

tian between Ninth and Tenth Streets, to teach Italian boys manual

training and English; soon a priest who had at first eyed the new

wave of immigration with astonishment declared he could "success

fully mould the Italian nature along American lines." Another

60 Ibid., I44-I45.

61 Kirlin, 504.

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460 JOAN YOUNGER DICKINSON October

school, Madonna House, well supported by The Trominenti and

including adult medical care facilities, was founded in 1904.62 By

1907, there were two more Italian churches, one of which was in

Overbrook and the other at Broad and Ellsworth, where land that

was once grazing ground for cattle now was fast filling up with

Italians.63

At first the Italian churches were supported financially by other

ethnic groups, but Philadelphia's Italians soon organized fund-rais

ing processions which wound through the streets of South Philadel

phia. Men, women, and children carried plaster images, candles, and

poor boxes, singing as they went.64 Local groups were helped, too, by sister orders in Italy; as early as 1874 three Franciscan nuns came to

Philadelphia to run a school for orphaned Italian children, and by

1903 the Franciscans were also running a kindergarten. Despite this

pious work, however, the majority of the first and second generation Italians in Philadelphia went to public schools?at least between

October and April when there was no work in the fields and little

room in their overcrowded houses?and attended church rarely.65 Few Italians became Protestants, although Protestants from time

to time were inveighed against by Catholics for attempting to sub

vert Italians. In 1889, an Italian scholar, Te?filo Malan, started a

Methodist church on Catharine Street; in 1902, an Italian Presby terian and Waldense church with a soup kitchen and poorhouse was

endowed in part by John Wanamaker, who also supported a colony of Italian Waldenses in North Carolina. In 1908, Presbyterians were

circulating a national church paper in Italian and running a settle

ment house in South Philadelphia, while other city groups had

opened two other settlement houses.66

There can be no question that this outpouring of public charity was necessary, as vividly disclosed in the detailed study made by

Emily Dinwiddie for the Octavia Hill Housing Association in 1900. Through this study it is possible to concentrate attention on the

daily life of a single block, the block bounded by Carpenter and

62 Ibid., 450.

63 Ibid., 363, 508.

64 Rev. Antonio Isoleri, Souvenir and Bouquet (Philadelphia, 1911), 24-25. 65

Maiale, 122-124. 66 Sister Gertrude, 204-205.

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1966 ITALIAN IMMIGRATION 461

Christian, South Eighth and Ninth, the very heart of Little Italy. Miss Dinwiddie viewed the black-eyed, playful children, the bright dresses of the women, and the street vendors with pleasure, but

noticed with pain the deplorable lack of sanitary facilities, the ram

shackle growth of alley houses and lean-tos, and the pitiful over

crowding. The business dwellings were sturdy and many Italians

lived over-the-store in customary city fashion. A few also lived in

handsome single residences, but, while there was only one actual

tenement, there were houses so added on to by shacks and alley

houses, that she named them "horizontal" tenements. This arrange ment resulted in several families sharing a single hall, doorway,

lavatory, and cellar just as they did in a vertical tenement.67

One in three families, indeed, had but one room for kitchen,

bedroom, and eating room purposes, a situation which thrust most

of the inhabitants onto the street a good part of the time. In the tiny

yards lay beds and old mattresses; it was considered bad luck to

keep a bed in which someone had died. The only plumbing was a

hydrant every four or five houses which served as the city counter

part of the old village pump. There were no gutters, no sewers; often

the yards were flooded with water. Some houses had toilets in out

door shacks, but almost none had baths. Startlingly, however, de

spite these foul conditions, Miss Dinwiddie reported the Italian bed rooms and living rooms were clean and scrubbed, except those in

which men lived without women. The kitchens, however, were not so

clean and many Italians, still peasants at heart, kept chickens in

their bedrooms and goats in their cellars.68

In the one block inspected by Miss Dinwiddie lived 366 families, 338 of which were Italian. They occupied 180 houses, ran five banks, two saloons, and the Marionette Theater. Thirty-four families owned

their own houses and lived in them alone, while another twenty-six owned the houses they lived in but shared them with others. There

was a boarding house, run by Walter Palumbo, but many single men

lived with other families, three or four to a room. Family overcrowd

ing was also serious. Statistically there were about 200 people to an

acre; the second, third, and fourth wards in 1900 contained one

67 Dinwiddie, 2-4.

68 Ibid., 23.

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462 JOAN YOUNGER DICKINSON October

sixteenth of the city's population in one-fiftieth of its space. The

one-out-of-four families who lived in a single room suffered most.

Because of the overcrowding, Miss Dinwiddie reported, "families

stay outdoors as much as possible, the rooms are unendurable, clean

liness impossible, decency is utterly disregarded, contagious diseases

spread with frightful rapidity, there is no home life anywhere" for these families. "To call such a habitation a home is but a mockery," she wrote. "Moral and physical evils of every kind result."69

The men's occupations ranged from a single junk man to thirty four storekeepers, from ninety-three day laborers to five bankers.

About a third were peddlers, vendors, and merchants; nearly a third

were in skilled work such as dressmaking and tailoring, stonework

ing, and shoe cobbling; somewhat more than a third were unskilled

teamsters, janitors, ragmen, and laborers.70

There was one "sweating shop," that is a tailoring shop in which

workers outside the family were employed on finishing and piece work. There were several houses in which ragpicking was done?

twenty-eight men considered this work their sole source of revenue.

Six were hatters (the big Stetson factory was nearby); another seven

were stonecutters and masons; four worked in the stables that stood

in the center of the block.71

How many women were involved in the various businesses Miss

Dinwiddie did not record, but it is known that any Italian business was a family business. Since Italian men did not encourage their

women to go out to work?in Norristown, indeed, they worked in

factories only when chaperoned?it can be surmised that most of the

men had wives and children who labored in the family business as

hard as they did. Among the home tailors, in the three cigar stores, the two candy shops, and the twelve grocery stores, women and

children attendants were doubtless a familiar sight, but it is unlikely that even one woman ever entered the poolroom or the Marionette

Theater. The old country Italian pattern of male dominance con

tinued for at least two generations. It is probable that for many families overcrowded conditions were

but temporary. Italians early overflowed their original Little Italy

Ibid., 19-20. 70

Ibid., Table 24. 71

Ibid., 33.

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1966 ITALIAN IMMIGRATION 463

into land along South Broad, West Philadelphia, the Main Line, adjacent New Jersey, and German town. As early as 1890, Frank di

Bernadino, chief steamship agent for the Italian lines, moved his

family to Over brook. By 1900 the Talone family was in Ardmore as

tailors, and countless Italian gardeners and stonemasons were at

work on Main Line estates. Soon after, there was a growing colony at Manayunk and, across the Schuylkill, a larger cluster in German

town, a smaller one in East Falls. In the rural area east of Philadel

phia, the area now known as Cherry Hill, there was another colony, while up the Delaware at Tacony-Palmyra was still another. In one

sense all these areas were subdistricts of South Philadelphia because

it was there that Italian businesses had their home offices, the great

market, and it was there that many of their leaders and friends lived, but in another sense each move constituted the beginnings of an

independent colony which soon enjoyed its own meat and fruit store, shoe repair shop, pasta makers, and bankers.72

The Chestnut Hill colony, however, grew separately by drawing its newcomers from north Italy, and, indeed, almost totally from one

village there, Poffabria, the home village of the original quarry workers. Between 1890 and 1905 when the stoneworkers made many

trips home, often to get brides, Poffabria's population dropped from

2,200 to 1,000 while the Chestnut Hill group grew correspondingly. In due course, these stoneworkers joined with the Irish bricklayers to

form the nucleus of the building unions, hired and trained help? "bullworkers"?from South Philadelphia, and became responsible for almost all of the Chestnut Hill stone and tile work, as well as

about eighty per cent of the Main Line's.73

By 1920 census reports showed 55,972 Italian adults in Philadel

phia, of whom almost one-third were naturalized. With the legisla tion of 1924, which permitted only citizens to bring over wives and

children as nonquota immigrants, the number of naturalized leaped. But despite their common background and the poverty and prejudice which drew them together, the Italians were not a united group. In

the nineteen twenties they were divided not only by their old world

village organizations into fragmented groups but politically into

72 Gaetano J. Fonzi, "Philadelphia's Italians: A Bubbly Minestrone," Greater Philadelphia

Magazine (January, 1961), 68. 73

Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 24, 1952.

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464 JOAN YOUNGER DICKINSON October

clericalists and socialists.74 With the rise of Mussolini, the clericalists

tended to become pro-fascist, the socialists, anti-fascist, primarily because the Catholic church, like Mussolini, was unalterably opposed to communism. Most of the Italian newspapers during this period, and Philadelphia had seven, concentrated more on news of Italy than of the local community. The depression of the thirties brought

difficulties and change. Many Italian banks, newspapers, and benev

olent organizations failed. Unemployment was widespread. The com

munity leaders could not provide independent aid and support; the

city did little to assist either their ethnic organizations or a move

ment to bring Italians into the mainstream of Philadelphia life. The

result was a break away from total community commitment, which

politically was Republican, towards American nationalism as it was

represented to them in their living rooms by the radio presence of

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and by the New Deal relief workers

in their neighborhood.75 When America entered World War II, the conflict between its old

Italian ties and its new American ones was extremely disheartening to the older generation, but less so to the newer, which was by then

English speaking and American in habit, although still strongly family oriented. In fact, the Italian community was beginning to

come of age politically and to demand representation in the city's affairs commensurate with its size. As the city's leadership became

Democratic, new divisions turned on American partisan lines.76

With the end of the war, education began to be seen as the area of

achievement in American life and the third generation began moving

upward through the high schools into the colleges. By 1950 more

than two out of ten Philadelphia men of Italian stock were in profes sional or technical work, thirty per cent were craftsmen and foremen, and fifteen per cent clerks and salespeople.77 By the sixties, children

of Italian heritage filled forty per cent of the seats in the growing number of Catholic schools in Philadelphia and the influence of their

heritage was being studied by the Catholic church.78 As more and

74 Sister Gertrude, 259. 75

Maiale, 112-118. 76

Ibid., 147-151. 77

Stanley Lieberson, Ethnic Patterns in American Cities (Glencoe, 111., 1963), 163, 212, 289. 78 Statement of Father Bartholomew Fair, Catholic church historian, St. Charles Borromeo

Seminary, Overbrook, Pa.

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1966 ITALIAN IMMIGRATION 465

more of the second and third generations moved into the mainstream

of Philadelphia's life, however, the basic variety within the American

Italian group became more and more visible. There were still

Waldensian Protestants as well as Catholics among them, still

musicians, artists, and intellectuals, and while the number of profes sional and skilled men and women grew steadily, there were still the

unskilled. Some of the young insisted on staying in South Philadel

phia despite the steady pressure of the Negro population, others

moved to the suburbs. Many kept the family business growing; others preferred to enter the larger community as individuals.

These generalities brush only the surface of the present day Italian-Americans. The story of their assimilation, or lack of it, after

the great wave of immigration subsided in the twenties to a mere

ripple of about 4,000 annually, is yet to be written.

University of Pennsylvania Joan Younger Dickinson

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