| Chapter 1: | Italian Americana 1920s–1930s |
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Anticipating the influx, Alberto Pecorino, in an article published in 1911, captured the phenomenon, “The Italians are here; they are coming.”8 By the outbreak of the Second World War they had become residents in large enclaves in numerous New England metropolises such as New Haven, and Waterbury, Connecticut, Providence, Rhode Island, and Boston, Massachusetts. Italian Americans were likewise significant blocs in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse. Their preponderance would continue for another generation with over one million (1,070,000) inhabitants of Italian heritage—15.5 % of New York City’s population in 1930, they accounted for one in seven New Yorkers constituting the single largest nationality group.9 To the several New York City Little Italies, including five in Brooklyn that Pecorino identified, more would be added within another generation. He described such neighborhoods as virtual transplants of small villages from which most Italian immigrants came, enabling one to find streets in Little Italy that in effect were replications of their villages. Pecorino also noted high rates of illiteracy in 1911—50% in the New York area thereby rendering them “a mass of faithful and honest workers—… these are the men who excavate the subways, clean the streets, work at cement foundations of the skyscrapers, and build the great subway stations.”10 My generation benefited from their industry and hard labor. It was not, however, a totally dismal picture for the first generation; thousands were not manual laborers, but worked instead in countless skilled fields: expert tailors, adroit seamstresses, skilled barbers, accomplished chefs, excellent electricians, capable carpenters, reliable mechanics and ingenious bricklayers.
Labor Struggles
By the 1920s, New York City’s Italian American population, which consisted primarily of first and second generations, was essentially a proletarian people that sought employment in city manufacturing enterprises such as clothing, shoemaking or printing plants, as well as an assortment of