| Chapter 1: | The Family |
America. In the first fifteen years of the twentieth century approximately 3.5 million Italians came to the United States. The major causes of emigration out of Italy included growth in population, capitalist innovations that disrupted traditional farming and craft production, heavy taxes and military conscription. Sicilians in my neighborhood liked to say “la miseria” forced them out of Italy.
South Italian shoemakers migrated in large numbers in the early twentieth century to France, Switzerland, Algeria, Tunisia, Brazil, Argentina and the United States. They settled in urban areas. Traditional village craftsmen persisted in the Italian South in the first decades of the twentieth century. My grandfather made boots and shoes but in New York he made his living primarily repairing shoes. Rich Jewish customers from Central Park West, however, continued to order his handmade boots.
Alfio settled in Italian East Harlem. The first Italians to arrive in East Harlem were strikebreakers hired by an Irish contractor to build the trolley tracks along First Avenue. They came sometime in the 1870’s. An Italian workers’ shantytown emerged along the East River and One Hundred and Sixth Street in an area called Jones Woods. Soon Italian immigrants from the Mulberry Street area in lower Manhattan flooded the East Harlem area. They came looking for jobs in construction and the rapid transit lines. They found apartments in East Harlem because it was a cleaner and healthier community than the slum of lower Manhattan. From the 1920’s to World War II only the area from One Hundred and Fourth to One Hundred and Nineteenth streets between Third Avenue and the East River was predominantly Italian. Italians moved into tene-