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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE ITALIANS
IN AMERICA
PHILIP M. ROSE

THE ITALIANS
IN AMERICA

BY
PHILIP M. ROSE 111
SUPERVISOR OF ITALIAN CONGREGATIONAL
WORK IN CONNECTICUT AND PASTOR OF THE
FIRST ITALIAN CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH,
HARTFORD, CONN.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
CHARLES HATCH SEARS

NEW yJWW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Xt \
3^^

:s>^"

THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA. II

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA

INTRODUCTION
The New Americans Series consists of studies of
the following racial groups, together with a study
of the Eastern Orthodox Churches :
Albanian and Bulgarian, Armenian and Assyrian-
Chaldean, Czecho-Slovak, Greek, Italian, Jewish,
Jugo-Slav (Croatian, Servian, Slovenian), Magyar,
Polish, Russian and Ruthenian, or Ukrainian, Span
ish (Spaniards) and Portuguese, Syrian.
These studies, made under the auspices of the In-
terohurch World Movement were undertaken to
show, in brief outline, the social, economic and re
ligious background, European or Asiatic, of each
group and to present the experience — social, eco
nomic and religious — of the particular group in
America, with special reference to the contact of
the given people with religious iustitutions in
America. It was designed that the studies should be sympa
thetic but critical.
It is confidently believed that this series will help
America to appreciate and appropriate the spiritual
wealth represented by the vast body of New Ameri
cans, each group having its -own peculiar heritage
and potentialities ; and will lead Christian America,
so far as she will read them, to become a better lover
of mankind.
The writer, in each case, is a kinsman or has had
direct and intimate relationship with the people, or
group of peoples, presented. First hand knowledge
and the ability to study and write from a deeply
sympathetic and broadly Christian viewpoint were
primary conditions in the selection of the authors.

vi INTRODUCTION
The author of this volume is an American. He has
a cultured Italian- American wife. He is a graduate
(Phi Beta Kappa) of Dartmouth College and has
the B. D. and S. T. M. degrees from Hartford Theo
logical Seminary. He was for two years a fellow of
Hartford Seminary and the Connecticut Congrega
tional Missionary Society in Italy. Between two
pastorates of Italian churches he was for one year
traveling Y. M. C. A. secretary for prisoners of war
in Italy, visiting many sections from which our im
migrants come. He is now pastor of an Italian
church and supervisor of Italian Congregational
work in Connecticut. His training and experience fit
him well for the writing of this book.
These manuscripts were published through the
courtesy of the Interchurch World Movement with
the cooperative aid of various denominational
boards, through the Home Missions Councils of
America, and the Council of Women for Home Mis
sions. At this writing arrangements have been made for
the publication of only six of the Series, namely;
Czecho-Slovak, Greek, Italian, Magyar, Polish and
Russian, but other manuscripts will be published as
soon as funds or advance orders are secured.
A patient review of all manuscripts, together with
a checking up of facts and figures, has been made
by the Associate Editor, Dr. Frederic A. Gould, to
whom we are largely indebted for statistical and
verbal accuracy. The editor is responsible for the
general plan and scope of the studies and for ques
tions of policy in the execution of this work.
Charles Hatch Seaes.

CONTENTS
CHAPTEE PAGE
I THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY ... 13
Part I: History and Racial Relationships 13
Part II: The Recent Political Situation . 16
Part III: Economic Conditions ... 16
Part IV: Social Conditions .... 30
Part V: Religions Conditions ... 41
II THE IMMIGRATION AND ECONOMIC
CONDITIONS OF ITALIAN- AMERICANS 53
Part I: Immigration  53
Part II: Economic Conditions ... 60
III SOCIAL CONDITIONS AND EDUCA
TIONAL FORCES AMON& ITALIAN-
AMERICANS  67
Part I: Social Conditions .... 67
Part II: Educational Forces ... 84
IV RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS AMONG ITAL
IAN-AMERICANS  99
Part I: Old and New Faiths and Churches 99
Par f 77; Methods of Work . . . .112
Part III: Religious Literature . . . 127
V PROBLEMS OF RELIGIOUS LEADER
SHIP  132
VI CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDA
TIONS  139-
VII APPENDICES A Example of a Complete Program for
Italian Missions  143
B Schedule of Judson Neighborhood
House, New York City . . . 146
C Program of Davenport Settlement,
New Haven, Conn  148
BIBLIOGRAPHY  149
INDEX  153
vii

ILLUSTRATIONS

FAQE

Dante Alighieri  16
A Pubhc Laundry Basin  32
Primitive Irrigating Plant  .32
The Cottian Alps  33
Map of the Vaudois Valleys  33
The Wall of Termoli, on the Adriatic .... 80
Carunehio, Typical Hilltop Town  80
San Giovanni in Conca, Milan  112
Orchestra of the Italian Church and School of Dante,
Waterbury, Conn  113

THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA

THE ITALIANS
IN AMERICA Chapter I
THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY
Parti
HISTOEY AND EACIAI, EELATIONSHn'S
One needs but to call attention to the geographical
position and alluring climate of Italy to make it
understood why in all ages Italy has been the
meeting place of many races. Its narrow peninsula,
seductive by nature and enriched by man, stands
athwart the Mediterranean highway at the cross
roads of East and West, North and South. Not only
have modern artists and tourists been drawn thither
and lingered, but whole nations have come, seen,
struggled for a foothold, lived and died there.
Italy meeting ground of races. — This means min
gled blood and mixed psychological heritage amid
changing conditions, and they are everything. The
Romans ruled a polyglot race before the barbarians
swept in from the North, and the Lombards formed
their state in the Po Valley. Sicily is the most
extreme example of all the southern provinces in the
multiplied migrations which have overrun it and
left their racial impress. The original Siculi, the
Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Goths,
the Saracens, the Normans, the Germans, the
13

14 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
French, and the Spaniards make up the long suc
cession of its possessors. When this has been con
sidered and its concomitant, the well-nigh chronic
state of war during many centuries, the observation
of an Italian to his English friend becomes luminous.
"You English," he said, "are always writing books
about Italy and the Italians — ^but it never seems to
strike you that there are many Italics and many
Italians; and you forget that the plebiscites which
gave us political unity and liberty did not at the
same time miraculously create a new race. ' ' ^
Crucible of social experiment. — ^For many cen
turies Italy has been a seething crucible of political
and social experiment, ofttimes splendid, ever novel.
To speak only of older times, the monastic system
molded the society of the Dark Ages and conserved
the values of ancient civilization; the papacy, more
Italian than aught else, was the storm center of Eu
rope for a thousand years ; the Renaissance of learn
ing found its preeminent field in Italy; the succes
sion of city republics, Pisa, Florence, Genoa, Milan,
Venice, left a precious legacy to the world in many
fields of endeavor. Some names of these times, for
example, Dante, Petrarch, St. Francis, Michelangelo]
Raphael, Savonarola, Galileo, Columbus, are suh
preme names on the roll of human achievement an(|
demonstrate the superlativeness of Italian genius, j
In the South. — ^For our purpose, we must recall
the South, or Meridionale as it is called, coupled
with the adjacent island of Sicily. It had its lesse]^
glories also ; but ever a rural land, it is never to bd
forgotten as (before the unification of Italy) the
often devastated and desolate, tyrant-ridden, priest-
dominated South. Reduced by war and misgovern^
ment, through long ages, its people had become iso
lated, provincial, primitive, ignorant and not rarely
^ Bagot, My Italian Year, p. 16.

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 16
barbaric. At no time was this worse than just be
fore the unification of Italy when the Bourbons
ruled the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily through a
government which Gladstone called the "negation
of God."
The success of the American War for Independ
ence, and the overthrow of the monarchy by the
French Revolution encouraged the educated classes
of Italy to hope and action.
Political union of Italy. — The campaigns of Na
poleon broke up the existing order in the land, and
the subsequent carving up of Italy, without regard
to the wishes of its people, strengthened the pur
pose of Italian independence and unity. A remark
able galaxy of great men reduced the dream to a
fact of glorious accomplishment. Most of them were
natives of the northern provinces and their task
resolved itself at first into adding province after
province to the existing kingdom of Sardinia, and
in making its dynasty the dynasty of the new king
dom of Italy. Mazzini was the prophet and pen of
the movement, Cavour was its statesman, and Gari
baldi the knight-errant. Victor Emmanuel II kept
careful, sympathetic watch over all. The establish
ment of the constitution in 1848, the participation
of Italy in the Crimean War, the waging of the wars
with Austria, the Expedition of Garibaldi into
Sicily and the south, the campaigns in papal ter
ritory, and the entrance into Rome through the
breach of the Porta Pia, on the 20th of September,
1870, were all steps through which Italy from the
Alps to Sicily finally became one. In most cases
popular vote confirmed what military or political
action had opened the way for, annexation to Pied
mont, seat of the kingdom of Sardinia and of the
House of Savoy.

16 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
Part II
EECENT POLITICAL SITTTATIOlfr
When the great result for which patriots had
been longing and fighting for nearly a hundred
years had been accomplished, Victor Emmanuel could
say: "My heart thrills as I salute all the representa
tives of our united country for the first time, and
say, Italy is free and united; it remains for us to
make her great, prosperous and happy." ^ His was
a just estimate of the situation, as fifty years of
Italian unity have demonstrated.
The old and the new. — The observer, catching the
spirit of the Italian people up and down the land,*
feels that here is a young people, detached from its
past, with new aspirations, striving within and with
out Italy to take its "place in the sun" in a modem
day. But the student of history knows that civil
progress is achieved only by pain and travaU. The
dead hand of olden days has ever been present to
stay social progress. Italy was an old land, with
a complicated system of hoary usages, not a new
land of infinite resources with institutions and cus
toms still being established, as in America. More-|
over, in the material development of modern life,
everything was to be done, especially in the south,
which was called upon to jump from the Middle
Ages to the Twentieth Century at a bound.
Part III
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
In laying economic foundations and in evolving
new social institutions, what success has Italy had ia
2 Quoted, Our Italian Fellow Citizens, F. E. Clark, p. 31.

DANTE ALIGHIERI
Memorial to the Poet, b3' Abbate, at the Waterbury ItJilian School of Dante, Water
bury Connecticut. Dedicated on the 600th anniversary of his death, October 16th, 1921.

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 17
fifty years ? The following picture largely restricts
itself to those people and provinces contributing to
the immigrant current pouring into the United
States, and treats not so much of contemporary con
ditions, modified by war, as of the generation pre
ceding. Industrial problems and progress. — The growth
of industry and the laying of railways began in a
modest way in the north while the Kingdom of Sar
dinia was composed only of Piedmont and Liguria,
and Lombardy and Venice were still under the
rigorous Austrian. And although coal, ore and
wood are deficient throughout the peninsula, indus
try has made substantial progress as far south as
Tuscany and the Roman provinces, and less notice
ably and much more recently in certain urban dis
tricts of the Meridionale and Sicily. A splendid
system of railways, buUt by or ultimately acquired
by the State, is now fairly complete. Only abundant
and cheap labor, captained by splendid engineering
skill, could have made possible their construction
throughout a mountainous land, but it added a huge
item to the public expense and the public debt which
came over from the wars of Independence. WTiere
capital has made it possible, water-power, of which
there is an abundance, has been harnessed, and fur
thers manufacturing and transportation. Such de
velopment is found chiefly in the north, but Italy
lacks capital and her well-to-do often lack the cour
age to risk their means, as capital is risked in busi
ness in other countries. A great development took
place in industry during the war. But Italian in
dustry has been largely, and is to date, handicraft of
a specialized and artistic nature.
Standard of living of Italian workman.— In pro
portion to the frugal standard of living, the Italian
workman has been well paid except in the Venetian
provinces where he rarely makes more than three

18 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
francs a day. Wages have varied greatly in various
localities, but so has the cost of living. War and
post-war wages have been three and four times the
previous scale, but the cost of life, though scanty
and poor, has risen to a dizzy height. Summing up,
it may be said of town life in Italy, that twenty-five
years ago it was cheap, and from that time to the
chaotic conditions of the war had grown gradually
dearer.^ During her fifty years of national life Italy has
been an agricultural people, and preeminently so in
the south. The condition of the peasant popula
tion has produced in Italy its gravest problems.
The peasants. — By "peasantry" we mean the in
habitants of the rural towns without major indus
tries. They may be tillers of the soil, or of various
trades, but all make a better or worse living as agri
culture thrives in their district, or is adequate to
support the population.
Agriculture in the north. — Both in agriculture
and in industry northern Italy has had superior
advantages over the south. Its peasantry were
never reduced to the poverty and barbarism of the
south, but profited from better markets, growth and
organization. Agriculture is profitable there, and
the people contented. These provinces, even during
the war, were so rich in production that they felt
no pinch of the scarcity of food from which aU the
rest of Italy was suffering. In general the char
acter of the rainfall and other climatic conditions
allow a wide choice of crops, and vigorous growth,
on a soil responsive to fertilizer.* Much land has
been reclaimed or improved through irrigation and
terracing, rural cooperation has made great ad
vance, and rural credits have been established and
* Bagot, Italians of To-day, pp. 52, 62.
* Foerster, Italian Emigration of our Times, p. 107.

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 19
combined with a system of expert agriculture (for
example in the neighborhood of Verona), judged by
many economists to be the best in the world.
Defects. — ^We are here concerned, however, not
with the perfection of agriculture so much as those
defects and inadequacies of it which have provoked
emigration. In the foothUls of the Alps, the cold is
intense and the season of enforced idleness long,
and much of the land through its mountainous na
ture is unproductive. Sometimes the yield is not
worth the labor involved. The summer in certain
sections is so deficient in rainfall that irrigating
works must be maintained. Inheritance customs,
etc., have brought about extreme subdivision of the
land into parcels too small to provide a living income
for a normal family. Absentee landlordism (as, for
iriigl^ia^ce, in lower Lombardy where absentee land
lords hold about 90 per cent of the land) (Foerster,
page 111) has a vicious effect in itself, and through
certain types of rent contracts has kept down the
enterprise and prosperity of the tenant farmer,
while the hired laborer has known years during the
period lately passed when there was sheer insuf
ficiency of food. Especially has this been true of
the Veneto. At times the disease of pellagra has
added to the misery. Taxes, increasing even previ
ous to the war, have been_ heavy, although better
distributed than in the Meridionale.
Agriculture in the south. — Turning to southern
Italy and Sicily, we find that life has been even more
difficult than in the north. Naples, situated in the
district of Campania, Palermo, located in the lovely
Conca d'Oro (Golden Shell)— two of the garden
spots of the world, and producing several crops per
annum — give to the foreign observer a false idea of
the fertility and agricultural success of the south
and Sicily, in general. But nature is by no means
wholly favorable, and where intelligence and capital

20 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
have essayed to supply her deficiencies, they have
often met conditions they were powerless to
remedy.® Defective physical conditions.— The primary im
pediment is the lack of rainfall. The vista of hills,
mountains and plains covered with grain in early
spring, makes the land seem still to be the great
granary that it anciently was, but there is the sum
mer drought which may endure up to seven months,
when the land in large part is valueless except for
the picking of goats, and which, in general, reduces
the variety in crops. At such times the grass of
Sicily is a lifeless brown and it is necessary to go
long distances for drinking water. Such a soil re
duces the value of fertilizer, which in turn if de
pendent on animals is deficient, because great herds
of cattle cannot exist. These conditions have been
aggravated by deforestation which has on the one
hand exposed the denuded mountains to erosion and
consequent landslides, and on the other the fertile
valleys to inundation by the spring torrents, leaving
gravel and debris over the most fertile parts of the
valley bottoms. In 1878 nearly half the area under
water in valleys deficient in drainage was in the
Basilicata, Calabria and Campania.* Great projects
of reforestation and rectification of the streams (de
layed by the war, and requiring millions of capital)
have only been taken in hand in recent years. An
other great discouragement to agriculture has been
the malaria due to the swamps and pools remaining
from the spring floods, and as rampant in the nine
teenth century (until the government of united Italy
was able to take up the problem), as in any age. In
telligent understanding of the menace, and" measures
both for its elimination and treatment of the sick
'Foerster, p. 49.
^Besultati del Vinchiesta sulle eondisioni igieniche, pp. 48,
quoted by Foerster.

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 21
through a government distribution of quinine, have
had very beneficial effects. In 1912 barely 3,100
persons died of the disease, but as late as the year
1887 21,000 succumbed. Though Lombardy has had,
among the northern provinces, a wide prevalence of
the disease, the deaths in the Basilicata in 1901-05
averaged fifty times as many in proportion to its
inhabitants as those of Lombardy. Malaria abounds
in the central and coast region of Basilicata and
Calabria.'' Beyond the impediment to agriculture
of a sick population, the necessity of living upon
the hills and going long distances to cultivate the
fertile lowlands has been a graver obstacle.*
Defective methods. — ^In the Meridionale and
Sicily, the three elements to be noted in the agricul
tural system are the large estates, extensive cultiva
tion, and primitive instruments and practices. Re
forms in land tenure and the abolition of feudalism
before 1870 did not bring land into the hands of
the poor. When the new government sold off the
lands of the ecclesiastical establishments, much of
it went to persons already in easy circumstances,
and much of it later passed to the large proprietors
when the poor were forced to sell to escape interest
charges and taxes. A great opportunity was lost
when, "in a region where agriculture was a para
mount source of wealth, the mere possession of a
large estate continued to supply an all-sufficient in
come to the possessor." °
Landlords and peasants. — ^It has been calculated
on the returns of the census of 1901, that three-
eighths of the landlords of the Basilicata, two-fifths
of those of Calabria and two-thirds of those of
Sicily were absentees, living in Naples, Palermo or
the provincial capitals, and rarely or never visiting
^ Foerster, p. 60.
* Foerster, p. 62.
9 Foerster, pp. 65-68.

22 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
their estates. The agent, or factor, has been all
powerful. Another characteristic figure has been
the great leaseholder, called in Sicily the gabe-
lotto. Often he has been little more than a specu
lator in leases. Land is leased for one or usually
a few years by the peasants, individually or some
times collectively, and although they are good bar
gainers, they have often been forced to accept con
ditions which secured the proprietor in his return
but left the peasant with little return, especially if
the harvest were bad. This has not made for ef
ficient agriculture, either in maintaining the soil in
good condition or in introducing modern machinery.
Often the peasant has considered the use of machin
ery an attempt "to go ahead of the Eternal Father,
who therefor punishes him with bad harvests.""
Myriads of small plots are cultivated not by the
plow, often primitive enough, but by the zappa,
a heavy mattock. Methods of making oil and wine
have frequently been defective. To sum up —
neglect of their interests by proprietors; contracts
which encourage exploitation of the soil; a general
failure to return profits to the land and make better
ments are. the great obstacles to successful agricul
ture in the south and Sicily. They have probably
complicated agriculture and the life of those de
pendent upon it more than intractable natural con
ditions." Standard of living in the south. — ^According to
the census of 1901 "in the Basilicata a quarter of
the agricultural population, in Calabria and Sicily
a sixth, are persons who cultivate lands of their
own, a much lower proportion than in Central and
Northern Italy." ^^ Of these proprietors a great
^° Quoted by Foerster from V. di Somma, Dell'Economia rurale
nel Uezzogiorno, Nuova Antologia, March 16, 1916.
" Foerster, p. 82.
^2 Quoted, Foerster, p. 83.

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 23
majority own small or diminutive plots. Only in an
occasional locality of great fertility has the small
proprietor been conspicuously successful. In Sicily
very few can live by merely working their own
lands. The survivors of the holders of the dis
tributed ecclesiastical lands have had to struggle
with payments on onerous mortgages. The share-
cultivation, mentioned as widely in vogue, has not
been found adapted to southern conditions. The
few big tenant farmers, the Sicilian gahelotti
especially, have been markedly successful. But un
dertenants, the more numerous group, have been an
abject class.^^ Most miserable of all, the residuum of
the population, making up half the cultivators in the
Basilicata and two-thirds of them in Calabria and
Sicily, are the hired laborers. They are especially
miserable when engaged by the day, as three out of
four of them are. At the time of the Parliamentary
investigation, in 1877, their wages (to this day paid
largely in kind) were one to one and a half francs
per working-day, with an extra franc daily in the
harvest period and as little as half a franc per day
in the slack season. In a recent study in 1911, the
usual wage in the upper Basilicata is stated to be
1.50 francs and food, or 2.20 francs without food,
with unemployment general in January and Febru
ary. In interior Sicily, 1.80 francs per day may be
earned for 150 to 200 days, with a better wage on the
coast." On the peninsula the women engage m the
exhaustive toil of the fields. In Sicily they are al
lowed to do this much less, but boys of fourteen go
to work too soon, and in the notorious case of the
sulphur mines have been allowed to be exploited in
a sort of slavery for a sum of 100 to 200 francs, a
slavery which has been often but little better morally
than economically.
13 Foerster, p. 84.
1* Foerster, p. 85.

24 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
The cry of exploitation rising generally from the
agricultural workers was well substantiated by the
famous Baron Sonnino {La Sicilia in 1876, II
253 ff., noted by Foerster) early in the union of
Italy. Up to the exodus of emigration, the tenant
farmer was almost always in the inferior position
for bargaining. The day laborer, unskilled and un
organized, was even worse off, and obliged to ac
cept the wage which he supposed was the highest
he could get. At times rents have not been ad
justed to prices, and always to the tenant cultiva
tor's disadvantage.
Feudalism and taxes. — The former feudal and
communal rights of gathering wood, food, stone,
etc., have continued to disappear. The writer was
in a Sicilian village where occasionally the grand
proprietors allowed the contadini to gather fag
ots on their lands but occasionally had one ar
rested and fined to show their whip hand. The
heavy taxes in Italy have been aggravated in the
south by inequalities in assessments of agricultural
property estimated according to ancient bases, and
tax reforms penetrate there last. Government
monopolies, internal custom duties, put great bur
dens on the people, and we shall see that only a
part of the tax revenue gets back to the people in
easing the burden of communal life.^^ The neces
sarily frugal life of the people, sometimes des
perately so because of their poverty, we shall dis
cover as we note the social conditions.
Emigration in general.— One of the principal eco
nomic and social phenomena of Italy is emigration.
It has been one of the chiefest migrations of mod
em times. Although emigration from the south
was severely prohibited during the first decades of
the nineteenth century, it has freely gone on from
1" Foerster, pp. 88-93.

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 25
the North during the whole period since the strug
gle for united Italy began. It was considerable to
other countries than the United States in the early
decades, and to them the outflow since 1860 has
risen to a great stream. The total number of re
corded emigrants for the thirty-eight years, 1876-
1914, is about fourteen millions, although only
4,000,000 have permanently remained.^' Huge num
bers have gone to Brazil and Argentina. After
1886 the stream overseas to the Americas came to
surpass all other currents. Important to note, and
perhaps surprising to many people, is what a rival
Argentina has been to the United States in Italian
immigration, having received from 1857 to 1914
2,274,379 persons."
To the United States. — Only thirty Italians came
to the United States in 1820. The great migration,
1887 to 1916, brought 3,984,976 (Foerster, p. 17),
while 2,109,974 of these came during the decade
1906-1916, 333,231 northern Italians, the rest from
the south and Sicily. From 1871 on, the date of
the beginning of larger migration from the south,
there has always been a larger or smaller return
movement, and a reemigration on the part of some
to the United States. The largest number of Ital
ians returning from the United States to Italy since
1906 was 167,335 in 1908, the smallest number,
9,176, in 1918." Italian students of the problem in
the United States usually agree that about two-
thirds eventually emigrate to the United States per
manently. Prof. Mangano estimated in 1917 that,
taking into account the necessary vital statistics,
there were in the United States 3,500,000 Itahans
and their children born in the country."
*« Foerster, pp. 8, 42.
1" Foerster, p. 16.
^» Mangano, Religious Work among Italians im. America, p. 5.

26 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
Causes. — The causes as already suggested of this
exodus to the United States are overwhelmingly
economic. This is true in large part as well of the
return and reemigration movements. The ^ well
known observer of Italian life, Luigi Villari, re
ceived from Italian workmen building the Simplon
tunnel, in answer to his question whether they loved
their country, the reply, "Italy is for us whoever
gives us our bread." ^° Italian emigrants love their
native land, but nevertheless it is true that in the
whole migration they have been thrust forth from
her by dire economic necessity. The land is neither
sufficient nor sufficiently well cultivated to support
the large population. In the whole total the adven
turous or persecuted element has been negligible.
The northern Italians, more literate, more self-gov
erning, of a higher standard of life, have felt their
harsh economic condition more keenly, their right
to a better, and have sought to remedy their misery
by going far afield., But all Italy to a lesser degree
has felt this stirring of life, and this economic re
volt. Industrial Europe and the ,new world has
provided them economic slaves, an economic oppor
tunity. Early comers.— In the United States, besides a
small group of cultured, political refugees (witness
the stay here of Giuseppe Garibaldi), the first
comers were the fruit and oil merchants, the sailors
of _ Italian ports, peddlers of statuettes, organ-
grinders, and stone-cutters. In 1880 a maximum
of 20,000 were in New York. Meanwhile the stories
of the "fabulous" opportunities in America had
penetrated the country districts, and many thou
sands were following the earlier comers from their
own villages to work in the construction enterprises
incident to our great industrial expansion which be
came so prodigious in the decade 1900-1910.
20 Foerster, p. 22.

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 27
Tjrpe of immigration to the United States.— The
relatively small proportion of northern Italians to
the sum total emigrating to the United States
(about 1 in 6 in 1910), and the unskilled character
of- the immigration in general is due not alone to
conditions in the old country, but to the unequal
opportunity which America offers to the different
classes of Italian society. America has not wanted,
save in exceptional trades and professions, the
skilled worker or professional man. Handicapped
by ignorance of English, by the lack of a welcome,
by methods of work diverse from his own, the skilled
worker or professional man can only hope to fiind
a meager opportunity in Italian colonies or sink
into unskilled work. For years Italian consuls have
discouraged professional immigration, often being
obliged to repatriate persons of ability, penniless
and disillusioned. The writer, even after consulta
tion with the local consul, was obliged to tell an
expert Italian accountant recently come from Italy
that there was no place to offer him in his line in
an American city of 100,000 full of such business
and with an Italian colony of 14,000. Such persons,
and northern Italians more largely, have preferred
to exploit the new lands of Argentina and Brazil
Vhere the language is cognate and a new Italian
civilization offering opportunity to all professions
has been founded.
Immigrants of the lower trades have been increas
ing where their trades are largely required by their
fellow-countrymen, or they can speedily adapt them
selves to the American requirements. Such are
stone-cutters, mechanics, mariners, masons, barbers,
seamstresses, and shoemakers. Their participation
in American life is well known. But by far the
greater number of Italian immigrants have been
laborers, usually from half to two-thirds of the total.
Entirely sensitive in their swelling or diminishing

28 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
numbers to the need or surfeit of them in American
enterprise, it has been an easy thing for men whose
work has been chiefly done with the mattock to wield
in America the pick and shovel.^^
Permanence. — ^It is this group, in which the great
est proportion are males, which in the last thirty
years have made up four-fifths of Italian emigra
tion to the United States. It is also this group
which makes up the majority of those who return
to Italy within five years of their arrival here. The
practice of coming first to America, then returning
for wife or relatives for permanent settlement, has
been quite widespread, but in recent years the in
creasing temporariness of Italian immigration has
interfered greatly with this cycle. Indeed southern
Italy has been spoken of as the land "where going
to America is a business." ^^
By locality. — ^As influencing the character of im
migration and assimilation of immigration to Amer
ica it is interesting to know its movement by local
ity in Italy. The man from the Abruzzi is a dif
ferent type from the Neapolitan, and he from the
Basilicata is of diverse temperament from the im
migrant of Calabria and Sicily. The mountains of
the Basilicata furnished a permanent emigration to
the United States a half century ago, while in cer?
tain coast areas emigration is still in its first stages.
The hill sections of that province and of Calabria
then became involved, the province of Palermo only
in Sicily, and a section of Italy, beginning in the
Naples plain and extending eastward through Bene-
vento, Avellino and the Molise, was contributing a
considerable immigration before 1900, to be fol
lowed afterwards by the remainder of Sicily and the
Abruzzi.^^
21 Foerster, pp. 330, 343.
22 Warner, Nat'l Geog. Mag., Vol. 20, p
22 Foerster, pp. 102-104.

" Warner, Nat'l Geog. Mag., Vol. 20, p. 1062.
22 Foerster, pp. 102-104.

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 29
Outlook for future emigration to United States. —
What is the outlook for future emigration to the
United States? Emigration during these post-war
years has consisted largely of Italian reservists re
turning to the United States or of members of fami
lies of those already here. Emigration from all
classes is held in check by political travel factors,
and by coming into force of the literacy test and
the three per cent law. The contemporary economic
conditions in Italy are very bad, and the old evil
general conditions remain and can only very gradu
ally be bettered. Population has not decreased in
Italy but increased during the war and in compari
son with other European countries, the man-power
of Italy was very little damaged during the war.
Workers then are the only large asset Italy has to
exchange for the capital absolutely essential to her
recovery and development. Europe close at hand
will make a strong bid for these workers. With her
need for manual laborers every day more apparent,
it would seem that the United States will also make
her bid. And if, despite this, the literacy test be
continued, it is probable that steps will be taken in
Italy to prepare candidates to meet it. As for the
thought of the population in the mind of all classes,
the United States, due to the tangible services of
her government, the Red Cross, and the T. M. C. A.
during the war has become far better known and
popular than ever before. The expression on many
tongues to visitors from the United States is:
"Beati voi che siete in America" — "Lucky people
you are to be in America." Whole sections of the
population would pull up stakes and come here in
a body if they could.

so THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
Part IV
SOCIAIi CONDITIONS
We are now to review the social conditions in
Italy since its union and more particularly of those
which have been the emigration classes.
Social classes. — Socially, as politically, the Ital
ians are a modern people emerging from a back
ward past. Ancient usage and modem science are
seen side by side, depth of ignorance and scholar
ship. The contrasts are great. Recently an Italian
lady of gentle breeding come to America remarked
upon the fact that her host introduced her to his
butcher as one of his familiar friends. Such a thing
could never happen in Italy where classes are fixed.
A man of another class is either a superior or an
inferior. During the Great War the excellent rela
tionship of officers and men in the Italian army was
not the relationship of equals submitting to disci
pline in a common task as in the American Army,
but at its best the paternal relation, of a father who
leads and encourages, of sons who follow and obey.
There is the aristocracy of birth or achievement,
the upper middle class of professionalists, officials,
officers, and students, the lower middle class of
"artisans" who are of the trades and the laborers,
in the country called contadini. In the south there
is no middle class, there are the proprietors, called
signori and the peasants or contadini — ^in the Nea
politan dialect, cafoni.
Influence of great landowners. — The influence of
the aristocracy upon the life of the country districts
through the common absenteeism has been an evil
one. However there have been exceptions where the
great lords have exercised almost the medieval
paternal relation to their contadini as in certain

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 31
parts of Calabria.^* Changes in social conditions
have come rather through the government which is
centralized in a thorough way. Largely initiative
has lain with the central government which then in
spires or operates through the provincial capitals
and so down to the communes. For example the
local sindaco, or mayor, while elected by the people
is removable by the national government for cause.
Suffrage. — ^Not until 1911 did universal manhood
suffrage, previously limited by property or degree of
culture, come into being. In the south it doubled,
tripled and in some places quadrupled the number of
voters.^^ This was possible only through the decline
of illiteracy. The growing literacy of the population
has perhaps been the greatest social factor, causing
healthy discontent, progress and spirit of enterprise,
leading to emigration.
Illiteracy. — In 1911 37.6 per cent of the popula
tion of Italy over 6 years of age were illiterate ; in
the Abruzzi, Sicily, Basilicata and Calabria the per
centages were respectively 58, 58, 65 and 70.^^ In
1901 there were 18,186,353 illiterates according to
census ; in 1917 Prof. Mangano reported an estimate
of 7,000,000." Hence we see why, even to-day, al
though it is a steadily increasing proportion, only 60
per cent of Italian immigrants could be admitted to
the United States under the literacy law.^*
Elementary education. — The reduction of illiter
acy has been substantial. What has been done and
what has not been done is an index of what the
elementary schools, consisting of six grades, have
been and have not been in this emigration period.
United Italy adopted a system of national educa-
2* Bagot, My Italian Year, p. 277.
^^ Annuario Statistico Italiano, 1912, p. 74.
2» Censimento, IU, p. 230, quoted Foerster, p. 515 note.
?^ Sons of Italy, p. 59.
28 Clarke, Our Italian Fellow Citizens, p. 164.

32 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
tion but left it to local provision and control. Aiid
towards it under the feudal ideas and ideals obtain
ing, the rural communes and their administration
were often, in the earlier years, either hostile or in
different. Further legislation has compelled these
to be active, and would enforce attendance at school
and prevent the employment of children under fif
teen in factories. But local sentiment often allows
these provisions to be nullified to a great degree.
Also elementary education, as in some other coun
tries, receives a niggardly proportion of public
finances. Schools are not enough in number or suf
ficiently manned for the huge numbers of young
Italy. The school buildings are often ill-adapted and
ill-equipped dwelling houses or suppressed convents.
"The great majority of the teachers are high-
minded men and women, who, poor, and over
worked, make a noble effort to inform and moralize
their truant scholars. ... If one may judge from
inspectors' reports, arithmetic is the only subject
taught at all well in the average school. A great
deal of time is necessarily occupied in teaching good
Italian to children who only speak their own dialect,
and to whom the literary tongue is almost a foreign
language. The quality of the writing may be judged
from the fact that 'calligraphy' is a separate sub
ject only taught in the upper standards. After the
elementary subjects, and a smattering of natural
science taught incidentally with them, the acquire
ments of the rural scholar stop short."**
Education in morals. — ^Anything of a dogmatic
bias is carefully excluded from the school in theory.
But various authorities testify to the excellence of
the moral teaching. An inspection of reading books
reveals how skillfully this is worked out in reading
material which deals with the pupil's daily life and
29 Clarke, Our Italian Fellow Citizens, p. 162, quotation from
unstated source, careful, but not unprejudiced.

A PUBLIC L-'^INDRY BASIN

PRIMITIVE IRRIt.-\TING PLANT

Le MoBviso e Granero dalle Traversette, metri 38.15

THE COTTIAN ALPS

MAP OF THE VAUDOIS VALLEYS

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 33
surroundings. Evidently educational authorities
are more and more awake to their opportunity, but
greatly hindered by lack of means.
Above the elementary school is the ginnasio
with a five year course corresponding in part to our
high school, and in turn above this is the liceo
with a three year course. At the top of the educa
tional scale are the twenty-one universities of
Italy. Further movements. — A movement of significance
is the addition of agricultural teaching to the course
of the elementary schools along with new specialized
schools, or courses in the higher schools, in the sub
ject. The education of military life. — The compulsory
military service affords for youths of the lower
classes a great deal of instruction. With certain
exceptions all who reach the age of twenty must
serve two years, and formerly three years in the
army or navy, and afterwards fulfill the duties of a
reservist. Offering a pay that is negligible, this
service entails a large sacrifice. In recent years the
physical training, discipline, character of service,
opportunity to see Italy and inducements to study,
result in great benefit to the raw youth from the
country. The system in vogue develops his pa
triotism without at all leading him to be militaristic.
A northern village. — ^Further study of the life of
rural Italy emptying itself in emigration best takes
the form of the description of a composite small
town. A village in the province of Alessandria,
northern Italy, lies alongside of an irrigating canal
and a row of tall poplars, just off the provincial road
that Napoleon caused to be built. It has sent a num
ber of families both to the United States and South
America within a generation. Laborers' houses of
stone and stucco are crowded close together around
the parish church. Many families live on the second

34, THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
floor. Using the first for farm produce, wood, ani
mals, or poultry. In one is the school, in another the
store, which is the local government agency for salt.
There is a cafe, serving coffee and drinks, the resort
of the village. The most pretentious of the houses
is the municipio or city hall, housing the post office,
offices of the government and quarters of the cara-
binieri, or national police.
A small fraction of this population only lives at
the center; the rest live in the cascine or farm
houses half concealed in the hedge-rows, vineyard-
orchards, and fields dotted with mulberry trees
which serve the silkworm industry. These cas
cine consist of a combination stone house, bam
and fodder loft with farmyard, chicken-coop, and
outdoor oven. Traffic converges in the large town
at no great distance, which is at once a trading and
distributing, banking and administrative, and to a
degree industrial and railroad center, plus the insti
tutions which flourish in a larger center of popula
tion. A southern town. — ^In sketching a composite town
in the Meridionale, I have in mind specific towns and
villages in each of the great emigration producing
provinces. In the south there are no farmhouses
nor living upon the farms. All live in towns, a habit
due to Italian gregariousness and the need of pro
tection from tyrant and bandit, existing not so very
long ago. The town is located upon the summit or
spur of the hill, and at a distance the tiers of houses
often give the impression of a settlement of cliff-
dwellers. However it will have thousands of popu
lation where one would guess hundreds. To it,
through fields and terraces sprinkled with olive trees
and vines, many irregular foot paths ascend, and in
this modern day one fine road, which allows automo
bile mail and passenger service from the distant
station. These necessarily serpentine highways

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 35
have been constructed with infinite labor during the
last decades, but have put thousands of isolated
towns with a large total of population into touch
with the outside world. This road becomes the
winding main street of the town from which branch
off many rocky lanes, mostly impassable for car
riages. The piazza. It ends in the piazza or square, a
large space, usually well paved, and clean, with
benches and perhaps a fountain and stubby pepper-
trees for shade. Opening upon it are the institu
tions, like those of the northern Italian village, with
the "opera house" (if there is one), a church and
a primitive hotel. Sometimes the "mother church"
is at the top of the town along with the remains of
the mediaeval castle. Nearby is the school, a maca
roni factory, and most probably a convent. At the
tail of the village is the village fountain, the com
mon source for water, and the washing vats if a
brook is not handy by. In times of epidemic the
government enforces drastic measures upon an igno
rant population with regard to this fountain.
The houses. — The houses are of weather-worn
stone or stucco with few windows. Those of the
poor have one room, paved with dirty flags, the walls
well smoked from the fire-place. There are a few
rude pieces of furniture, mostly chests, besides an
enormous bed, clean, comfortable, embroidered, the
housewife's pride. In these modern days a Singer
sewing machine may be seen. The small folks sleep
in a trundle bed, but the rest of the family sleep in
the loft above. The donkey is stabled in the cellar
below. Families better-to-do have more rooms per
haps opening out on a yard or court. In such a town
a landslip is more to be feared than fire. Drainage
is into the gutter and toilet facilities for the most
part are lacking.
The people. — The streets of the more remote vii-

36 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
lages give one the impression of chicken runs. Life
is at the door, with babies, pigs, chickens and house
hold operations indescribably mingled; life of the
more public sort goes on in the piazza or cafes sur
rounding it. Costumes, except in isolated villages,
or upon special occasions, are a nondescript, modem
home-made. However the kerchief or cut of a wom
an's bodice, the man's shawl or stocking cap will
reveal to the initiated the region and perhaps the
village from which the person comes. In the piazza
of an evening are to be seen the proprietor or his
factor, the parish priest, the mayor, village doctor,
the twin carabinieri in picturesque uniform, repre
sentatives of a service that has done much to unify
and civilize rural Italy, a driver and carriage await
ing custom, a few soldiers stationed in the village
or home on furloughs, knots of contadini or shep
herds, playing children, and here and there a woman,
going swiftly on an errand.
In the busy season the laborers are off long be
fore day to the mountain to gather fuel, to the fields
often at great distance, or with the flocks of sheep
and goats. At the season's height they may not re
turn till Saturday evening, remaining at night in the
stone shed or some grotto.
Public standards. — Such a village will have very
well-defined standards of morality and conduct, and
customs quite different from those of another prov
ince or even from those of its nearest neighbor. Its
inhabitants will distrust strangers, but public opin
ion is ruthless towards its own members who violate
accepted ideals.
Family ties (and sponsors at baptism are consid
ered as of the family) are exceedingly strong. The
husband, and even more the grandfather, is lord in
the family, and jealously guards it from invasion.
Divorce is unknown. Children are welcomed, and
six of them is a moderate family. Infant mortality

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 87
is high. Marriages are arranged. Daughters marry
early, in succession and furnished with a dowry.
If of a peasant family, all but the house mother work
in the fields. Life is frugal and temperate, industry
is great, savings are put by if it be in any way pos
sible. The laziness of the Italian peasant is a myth
due to his evident ability to rest in moments of
leisure. Moral values in north and south.— The southern
Italian suffers in comparison with the northern, be
cause of difference in racial characteristics and de-
velopnient. The northern Italian has more initia
tive, willingness to cooperate, organizing ability. He
has also the vices of greater development, he is
more sordid, more of a scoffer, more intemperate,
and a more expert exploiter than the southerner.
The southerner has the vices and virtues of a primi
tive people, gusty passions both of sex and temper,
but vindictive only in certain provinces. There is no
greater individualist than he, but he is shrewd, gen
erous, hospitable, tractable, temperate, capable of
great devotion, strong of body although often de
formed by his excessive labor.
The Mafia. — ^In America, the Sicilian holds the
most evil reputation of all Italian immigrants, be
cause of the acts of the Black Hand. By nature, the
Sicilian is among the most virile and independent of
them all. But he has been, until late, the most sup
pressed and oppressed of them all, and that often
under the cloak of law. The result is the Mafia,
a society operating in secret, which by a strange,
unwritten code of honor carries out with hot pas
sion and savagery a system of " justice "(?) wholly
outside the law. An expert, Baron Franchetti, says
of it — "The Mafia is a union of persons belonging
to every grade, to every profession, to every cate
gory, who, without possessing any apparent, con
tinuous or regular tie in common, are nevertheless

38 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
always united for the furtherance of their reciprocal
interests. "With every consideration of law, justice, and pub
lic morals set aside, it is the mediaeval sentiment of
the individual who thinks that he himself can pro
vide for the care and for the safety of his own per
son and of his possessions, by reason of his personal
worth and influence, quite apart from any action of
the authorities or of the laws." Such is the danger
ous perversion of a fine racial quality. Quite aside
from their backwardness, one is compelled to admire
the stalwart qualities of the inhabitants of those
provinces of Sicily where the Mafia is less prevalent,
as fine stuff on which to build. Indeed their natural
power has furnished a very large proportion of the
public men who have conducted the affairs of United
Italy. Nationalism. — ^Each town in Italy has one or more
streets named after the great men or events of the
period of the union of Italy, preeminently after
Garibaldi. The spirit of nationalism is fostered by
the public schools, by the youths who return from
military service, or from Aiherica, and by the higher
element of the village; also by the newspapers, in
which, in Italy, the editorial surpasses the news ele
ment. The population which thinks far enough
afield is devoted to Italy, although it may be opposed
to the government in power. Former wars have
done something to consolidate national opinion. If
at first Italy failed to appreciate the abstract, inter
national ideals with which the upper classes thrust
the country into the war, she was later quite able to
appreciate the menace of the hated, invading Aus
trian. "Oampanilism." — Scenes were frequently to be
witnessed at rural stations of peasant soldiers
returning to the front who were obliged to thrust
shrieking, moaning wives or mothers behind them

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 39
as the train moved out. What did these peasant
women know of the great struggle to down German
militarism or even comprehend the desire of Italy to
free the irredente provinces? Their interests were
limited literally by their sky line. So indeed it has
been in this emigration period that the spirit of
campanilismo, the spirit of dwelling under one's
own church tower, has been the typical spirit of the
peasantry and of others. Local interest was apt to
occupy the whole horizon. The man even from the
next town was a foreigner. Of cooperation there
was little, support of the government enterprises
was small. It has been justly said that campanil
ismo pulverizes political competence.
Dialects. — This state of affairs is due in no small
degree to the prevalence of dialects. Some cities and
each great province of Italy has its own dialect, a
refined edition of which is often commonly used by
the upper classes. National Italian is best when it
is in "the Tuscan language in the Eoman mouth,"
for the dialects of Milan, Bologna, Naples, and Sicily
are utterly different from it and each other. Not
only does this provincial diversity hold true but in
very many districts the inhabitants of towns and
villages within sight of one another vary widely in
their language and customs.
Defective public opinion. — If there is individual
ism at the bottom of the social scale, there is also
at the top. The result is the criticism that "an im
portant factor in national life is still comparatively
lacMng in Italy — and this is public opinion . . .
dormant . . . partly for want of definite guidance,
and partly because it possesses no real means of co
hesion and expression. ' ' ^^ There are no great politi
cal parties in Italy in the American sense, but until
recently, merely ever-changing alliances of the most
similar of a thousand shades of opinion. This has
3" Bagot, My Italian Year, pp. 328, 329.

40 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
militated against the building up of many great
newspapers, as organs of the people's thought.
However under the stress of the war, these condi
tions have been rapidly changing and improving.
Socialism. — Many Italians who come to America
are socialists. They come chiefly from among the
northern Italians, but are also to be found more and
more among immigrants from the Meridionale, due
to the great growth of that belief in the south. The
strength of the party is due to dissatisfaction with
the slowness and inefficiency with which "reforms
benefiting the lower classes are carried out, and on
the other hand to the growth of great numbers of
workmen and contadini to that point where social
istic propaganda is understood and read by them.
Following on the after-war reaction from the gov
ernment of the higher ranks during the war, they
came into parliament in great force and were, in
deed, for a term of months in power in the govern
ment. Operation of post-war public opinion. — ^An Ital
ian very significantly has noted the change and
growth in public opinion in an estimate of the so-
called "Fascisti," saying in substance : "The Italian
government is really only an administrative organ
ism to run the departments of public service, and
the public at large looks upon it with suspicion if
not with hostility as representative of the interests
of patronage. The Italian people does not look to
its government for civic leadership : it is frequently
up in arms upon one issue or another while the
government stands by as an idle spectator. Ameri
cans think that a revolution is brewing. Patriots
seize Fiume, workers seize the factories, then sud
denly, in a day or two, a week or two, everything is
over. The revolution has not come off. The fact is
that in every such case a great battle has been fought
in Italian public opinion, and when each side has

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 41
shown its hand, demonstrated its power, the weaker
side submits.
"The surprising weakness of socialist morale in
the face of a determined onslaught from their op
ponents has virtually terminated the arrogance and
insolence with which they had been for three years
trampling the rights of the public under foot.
"Socialism has not been exterminated or even re
duced in economic strength. ... A great battle in
public opinion has been fought outside of the gov
ernment; and the battle has decided that communism
in Italy is too weak in numbers and morale to cause
any serious concern, while socialism to have any
standing at all must continue as a party of progres
sive criticism which its saner elements have all along
constituted." — Giuseppe Prezzolino, The Fascisti,
in the Century Magazine, September, 1921.
Part V
RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS IN HALT
The Reformation in Italy. — More than is gener
ally known the Protestant Eeformation had strong
adherents in Italy. Prof. Giovanni Luzzi said of it :
"It began in literary circles and academies; gripped
the most noted men famous for their doctrine, in
fluence and descent; found its way into the Italian
Courts, and thence descended to the army and among
the people. Not a comer could be found in the pen
insula where the Eeformation had not its prose
lytes.'"^ The circumstantial reasons for its vio
lent death after half a century, were the flame and
sword of popes, the church councils, the Jesuits, and
the Inquisition. In answer to the question, "Why
did such a spontaneous movement not spread, with
fruits and results as in other countries?" the follow-
^^ Luzzi, The Struggle for Christian Truth vn Italy, p. 82.

42 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
ing reasons are offered : ^^ the Eenaissance under
mined religious sentiment by doubt and indifference,
and revived paganism; the institution of the papacy
killed faith, leaving only pompous rite and ceremony;
as the only spiritual and moral unity of the penin
sula, the papacy continued to flatter the racial con
ceit of the people; on a lower level, self-interest
was pleased to continue the inflow to Italy of the
wealth attracted by the papacy; and finally the re
form began in high places, not among the masses,
and did not grip the people.
A heritage of irreligion. — The failure of the Eef
ormation brought about the political and religious
submergence of Italy, and the monstrosity of the
Vatican as it is to-day. It has led to the oft-repeated
charge that the Italians are a people without essen
tial religion. One has put it in the words : "Italy is
divided into unbelievers and lukewarm believers." "'
"The hurricane of the French Eevolution carried
away from the mind of even the best that small
remnant of religion which they no longer possessed
in their hearts." **
During the years that the unity of Italy was com
ing into being, the popes were almost continually
in violent reaction to it. The 20th of September, —
anniversary dearest to Italian hearts, — continually
recalls the entrance of the army of United Italy into
Eome, compelled to fight papal soldiers. The result
is that to the greater portion of the population re
ligion, confounded with ecclesiasticism, is odious. It
accounts also for the fact that a million persons
stated themselves in the census of 1915 as without
religion.^^
32 Ibid., pp. 88-97.
^' Ferdinand Martini, quoted by Sartorio, Beligion of the
Italians, p. 75.
2* Luzzi, p. 190.
^^Annuario Statistico Italiano, 1915.

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 48
Population divided religiously.— However, since
the numerical force of the Protestants and other
bodies is negligible, the forty millions of people in
Italy are to be considered nominally Eoman Catho
lic. Eeligiously the population has been divided into
three classes : 1. The devout Eoman Catholics, the
majority of whom consist of peasants, largely illiter
ate, plus the decreasing "black aristocracy," or
noblemen who give themselves to an ecclesiastical
career, and the clergy. 2. A smaller number of free
thinkers, agnostics, atheists, and materialists, for
the most part workingmen in large cities and pro
fessional men. 3. The millions, apparently indiffer
ent who go through life without religious feeling or
spiritual experience. Such a summary recalls to
mind the description of Mazzini, himself the heart
and conscience of the struggle for Italian unity:
"We have dragged ourselves along in abjectness
and impotence, between the superstition imposed
upon us by habit, or by our governors, and in
credulity." ^*
There is no aspect of Italian life which reveals
more than the religious, that vortex of motive and
counter-motive which renders the Italian character
so difficult of understanding by Anglo-Saxons.
Complexity of Itahan character as seen in re
ligion. — "Eeligion survives in a dilettante way:
first through pride in the accident of Eome 's hegem
ony of a once powerful sect, next through an inno
cent pleasure in glittering altars and pretty proces
sions. But the crowd's attitude is formal or pa
tronizing rather than reverent. All hats are doffed
at the passage of the image, but that does not ex
clude the laughing chatter. The churches are fairly
well filled by a large percentage of women. ... In
the south at least there is a serious, sometimes
3« Quoted, Sartorio, p. 96.

44 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
fanatical attachment to the Eoman creed. . . . The
whole people will always support the state when it
comes in conflict with the church. . . . AU of which
enforce my argument that there is a subtlety in
Italian simplicity, a shrewd side to every Italian
deal. Sharp wits amount to intuitions.""
Attitude of the peasant. — ^Eecently many of the
peasants have become antireligious socialists, and
their last condition is worse than their first, "any
thing but desirable elements of a state." ^^ The atti
tude of the average Italian peasant to the church is
as follows: He is "superstitious up to a certain
point — but only up to the point where superstition
does not clash with his own interests ... an exam
ple of the marvelous power of Latin Catholicism
... in dealing with the complex mental attitude of
the Italian peasant classes . . . the Italian peasant
has a vein of the most profound skepticism running
through his nature. It is not a question of how
much, but how little he believes in anything at all,
except possibly in a Supreme Being." There are
those who point to the enthusiasm of the peasants
for their religious processions, their devout attend
ance at mass, and their determination to uphold cer
tain observances and practices. ... In my own dis
trict, as in countless others in Italy, the peasant will
sometimes pay several francs for the honor of a
prominent place in one of the processions in honor
of the Madonna; and if they cannot pay in money
they will pay in kind, sending to the priest chickens,
grain and wine. . . . The very peasant who is vic
timized does not hesitate to express the most pro
found skepticism and even contempt for miraculous
Madonnas, and all the rest of the priestly myths : oc
casionally, but very rarely, I have met with a simple
faith that was evidently genuine."
^¦^ Herbert Vivian, Fortnightly Review, Vol. 104, p. 556.
38 Bagot, The Italians of To-day, p. 67.

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 45
The church a business. — The peasant is part of a
community which for generations has centered
around the parish church. He knows the advan
tages which must accrue to him by supporting the
local sanctuary and the particular attractions which
that sanctuary may possess. In the first place, it is
largely to his interest to keep in with the parish
priest, who is very often a peasant like himself. As
likely as not he will give vent to language of a wholly
irreligious kind when he is called upon to contribute
of his hard-earned money to the glory of the local
Madonna, and he cherishes no sort of illusion as to
where that money eventually finds its way. But he
would be roused to fury were the local Madonna to
be held up to ignominy as a painted fraud. Such
exposure would be bad for trade. The power which
had attracted the country folk from far and near
to the little village or town would have departed and
with it would disappear the frequent pilgrimages
during which many an opportunity for doing busi
ness had presented itself. ... I doubt not that with
all his skepticism and notwithstanding his more ma
terial object in supporting the superstitions of his
native place, at the back of the peasant's mind there
ever lurks a dim fear lest, after all, things might
turn out to be as the priest pretended ; and that, in
this case, it would be as well to have something to
the credit side in the Almighty's ledger.^*
The upper classes share with the lower this pride
in the church. The influence of a Protestant mission
in a Sicilian provincial capital of the better sort was
completely ruined because its pastor issued a pam
phlet in which he held up the local patron saint to
ridicule, and he was compelled to depart amid the
fury of the population and the pity and contempt
of the society of the town for his tactlessness. Many
3» Bagot, Italians of To-day, pp. 44-46.

'46 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
upper class Italians, even to-day, while they scorn
the Vatican for its anti-nationalism, are yet secretly
proud of the organized Eoman Catholic Church as
the unique product of the Italian genius.
Faith of the rural women.— Every devout family
is anxious to have a son enter the priesthood. It
is also true that simple faith or rather deep super
stition is most regnant in southern Italy. Of church
going there is less among men, but the women are
very close to the church. And although priests and
friars are commonly jeered at, and for cause, an able
priest may clothe himself with very great power.
Not many years ago a fanatic population, under the
direction of priests hostile to the government, set
upon and murdered two engineers who had been sent
to close up the town fountain, source of an epidemic
in the neighborhood. To the average woman the
church is the church of her family for many genera
tions. It is her "club," to which she may retire
from her sordid home and hard labor for space,
quiet, color, amusement of a sort, perhaps the only
sort. Visions, miracles, images of saints, madonnas
and adoration of relics abound. But all this, the
lights of the candles, even the mystery of the unin
telligible mass, fit into her ignorant nature, unspir-
itual, unthinking but feeling the rudely esthetic side
of it all. During the eruption of Vesuvius in 1906,"^
the populace of Naples became so nervous that they
forced the city authorities and clergy to allow them
to carry in procession the relics of their patron saint,
Gennaro. That afternoon the wind veered, carrying
the ash of the volcano away from the city. Within
two hours the newspapers came out in special edi
tion; in great headlines, "San Gennaro, our patron
saint, has saved the city again." The next morning,
at the market, one woman of the lower classes was
overheard to remark to her companion, "Well, our
saint has saved us again." The other shot back,

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 47
"He'd better have. It would have been worse forj
him if he hadn 't. " — I
Italians deficient in religious sentiment. — No one
takes a more somber view of religion and the race
than some Italians themselves. One has recently
written, "Italians, the most gifted with vivacity of
wit and splendid imagination, are the poorest and
weakest of all peoples, religiously. . . . Indeed, the
ideals of religion, of moral character, of duty and
the like are only secondary features in the soul of
the Italian. Conscience has a very limited power
over him. He is almost incapable of voluntary dis
cipline and moral austerity, and takes life at its
easiest, satisfied to enjoy." This writer adduces
many examples of this deficiency in their contempo
rary history, literature, art and thought, and notes
the difficulty of him who would convert such a race
to Protestantism.'"' He brings to our attention the
significance of his contention that it is the race that
have made the Eoman Catholic Church, while noting
that the lack of faith on the part of the Italians evi
dences also the utter spiritual and moral inefficiency
of Eoman Catholicism upon the national life of
Italy." Religious assets: Waldensians. — ^If then we rec
ognize the religious bankmptcy of Italy in these
modern times, what assets are there on which to
build in the future? Besides the tradition of such
superlative religious leaders as Saint Francis,
Savonarola, or men of such religious quality as
Dante and Mazzini, there are currents in this pres
ent generation of religious life in Italy, vigorous and
growing, if yet small. As they have sprung from
Protestant influence, let us consider first the Protes
tant movements. The Waldensian Church, deci-
<" Capozzi, Protestantism and the Latm Soul, pp. 141-167.
« Capozzi, Protestantism and the Latin Soul, p. 162.

48 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
mated by persecution during centuries because of
the unstained purity of its faith, but preserved in
the Cottian Alps of Piedmont, until this modem
day, has become the native Protestant Church of
Italy. Upon the acquisition of civil rights in 1848,
she took upon herself the sacred duty of the evan
gelization of Italy. She now has under her ad
ministration 60 churches, 150 mission stations, 68
ministers, 10 evangelists and 6 colporteurs. There
are a theological seminary with three regular pro
fessors, two high schools and a normal school, with
twenty-one professors, and thirteen elementary
schools with forty teachers.*^ There is an evan
gelistic weekly paper, and a theological review has
been maintained along with other agencies of propa
ganda. Other Protestant bodies. — ^As the fruit of an evan
gelical movement begun in Tuscany during the years
of the Union of Italy, two types of churches other
than the Waldensian remain, the first retaining but
two churches, the second, "the Plymouth Brethren
type," has churches in 20 towns and 68 smaller
places. The Wesleyan Methodist Church has 37
churches and a goodly number of mission stations
maintained by a corps of 40 ministers.*^ The
American Methodist mission in Italy has 76 pastors
and preachers; it also has a press and organs of
propaganda, theological, secondary and industrial
schools, and 6 elementary schools.** Anglo-Italian
Baptists hold 56 churches and stations with 20 min
isters.*^ American-Italian Baptists have 32 or
dained Italian pastors, 46 churches and 70 out-sta
tions, a theological seminary and strong publica
tions. Their religious review, Bilychnis, has had
*" Report of the Moderator, 1920.
*' Luzzi, pp. 221, 222.
** Mangano, Sons of Italy, p. 90.
*" Luzzi, p. 223.

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 49
large success and is very influential in promoting
religious progress in Italy, in the modernist circle.*"
These and other churches are united in a recently
formed federation of evangelical churches. Other
religious organizations are the Salvation Army, the
British and Foreign Bible Society, the National
Bible Society of Scotland, the Eeligious Tract So
ciety for Italy, the Young Men's Christian Associa
tion, the Young Women's Christian Association, the
Italian Sunday School Union, and the branch of the
World's Student Christian Federation.*' There
exists the Savonarola Institute for converted priests
under the direction of an interdenominational board
of managers.
Strength of Protestantism. — Statistics which by
no means represent the actual power nor influence
for good of the Protestant work in Italy give but
small numbers. "There are about 25,000 Protestant
church members, a majority of whom are in the
Waldensian valleys, about 200 church organizations
and many more than that number of mission sta
tions." ** Or, as summed up by the census, there are
more than 175,000 adherents of the evangelical faith
in Italy. About 17,000 Sicilians and 15,000 Apu-
lians call themselves Protestant. In the years 1901-
1911, the number of those of the evangelical faith
increased by one hundred per cent. *^ But Italian
Protestant work has been of incalculable value.
First of all it is significant that, where at one time
there were suspicion and persecution, these have all
but ceased, and evangelicals and their institutions
are well received by the population. Public opinion
has turned in their favor. Their good lives and
character are noted.
*® Mangano, p. 88.
*' Luzzi, pp. 224, 225.
*8 Mangano, p. 94.
*^ Annuario Statistico Italiano, 1915, quoted by Sartorio.

50 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
The Bible and its growing power. — Many Italian
Protestants cannot see any hope of reform in the
Italian Catholic Church, believing that its destruc
tion must precede anything better. But a larger
proportion are watching and many have keen sym
pathy for the reform movement in the church which
is called Modernism. This would seem to be, to a
great if undefined extent, due to evangelical missions
and evangelical propaganda, and outstandingly due
to the work done now for a century in scattering the
Scriptures throughout Italy. The earliest Italian
version of the Bible was Malherbi's, translated from
the Vulgate, in two volumes, Venice, 1471. It was
revised in 1641, 1855, and 1884. Another version
was by Antonio Bruccioli, Venice, 1532. The "au
thorized version" of the Bible, a revision of which,
in the Old Testament as well as the New, is now
approaching completion, was first translated from
the originals in 1607 by Giovanni Diodati, and in a
revised form in 1641. Antonio Martini was the
author of the accepted Catholic version, translated
from the Vulgate, the New Testament in 1769, the
Old in 1776. For a long time the Vatican prohibited
the reading of any version whatever, and Martini's
edition has never been put before the public in at
tractive or convenient form. The issuance in 1902
of a popular finely edited translation of the New
Testament by the Society of St. Jerome, with irenie
spirit toward Protestantism, was at first fathered
by the pope and was receiving large favor through
out the land, when after a few years the Vatican,
alarmed by its liberalizing influence, caused the ef
fort to die a lingering death. However, popular edi
tions of a new translation of the New Testament
from the originals, with simple notes, have been
sponsored and widely disseminated by the Society
Fides et Amor, having on its directorate members
of all creeds. Thousands of copies of this as well

THE BACKGROUND IN ITALY 51
as of the Diodati version which as precious seed
colporteurs have been sowing over Italy for several
generations and of late years in the trenches, are
now in the hands of the public and are bearing fruit.
Modernism. — In a time when socialism of the ma
terialistic and atheistic sort, characteristic of Italy,
is common, and also when the Vatican is in the field
with a political party, what is the religious outlook
for the future? The spectacular party of Modern
ists of the political, philosophical, hypercritical type
is dead. The value of the first phase of the move
ment was that it demonstrated with tremendous
power the need of reform in the Eoman Church.
But the soul of the movement lives and gathers
force. Groups of sincere men continue to think and
plan for the future. Their ideas penetrate the Vati
can which is fighting a losing battle against all lib
eral movements in order to hold its autocratic power.
The young seminarists are in a state of great unrest,
and revolt against the antiquatedness of their teach
ing, for while Eome continues to make them her crea
tures in mind and thought, through a Prussian-like
system, she continues unreformed. And although
the majority of the rank and file of priests are im
moral or ignorant or place-servers, there are worthy
men in the lower places and men of liberal spirit
working almost evangelically in high places.^" _ Two
recent happenings are evidence of the leaven in ac
tion. In the trenches, in contact with rude reality,
many Catholic chaplains made use of Protestant
Testaments and rituals, and as a result not less
than seventy at one time were in correspondence
with Prof. Luzzi concerning vital questions, philo
sophical, higher-critical, or of personal faith and
practice. Since the war. Dr. Henry Pons, while
pastor at Palermo and Waldensian superintendent
so Luzzi, Chapter VII.

52 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
for Southern Italy, has succeeded in organizing a
league of prayer embracing not only the evangelical
clergy, but about a third of the Eoman Catholic
priests of the island. Avoiding all doctrinal differ
ences, this bands together all those who feel the need
of a higher, purer, and more spiritual life. The
league has a monthly bulletin, entitled Fides (Faith)
which is growing to be a blessed factor in the life
of many.^^
Program of Protestantism. — ^In the Protestant
churches there is a vigorous life and fair growth,
although not such as to satisfy the leaders. As
the then superintendent of the Southern District of
the Methodist Episcopal Church said, "Our Italian
Protestant missions are stiU in the seed-sowing pe
riod; the harvest is not yet." Finances in these
times are a difficulty, and the movement in its vari
ous bodies is undergoing reorganization and expan
sion. Many leaders are dissatisfied with old meth
ods, and this is being expressed in new plans looking
to, firstly, a large use of social work, and secondly,
novel and extensive organs of propaganda through
printing. Meanwhile it is to be hoped that several
important tendencies continue ; the tendency to inter
denominational cooperation and unity; the concen
tration of effort in strategic centers through the use
of worthy edifices and efficient staff; the evangeliza
tion of hundreds of rural towns through the return
of evangelized and emancipated emigrants to Amer
ica, who have already planted Protestant families,
missions and churches with their light and life
throughout the emigration-giving provinces in the
last twenty-five years.
s^ Report of Rev. Enrico Sartorio to the Anaerican Waldensian
Aid Society, March, 1920.

Chapter II
THE IMMIGEATION AND ECONOMIC CONDI
TIONS OF ITALIAN-AMEEICANS
Part I
IMMIGRATION
Bearing in mind the causes and character of
Italian immigration to the United States as previ
ously stated, we now seek for the determining fac
tors and character of the distribution of these new
Americans, Factors governing distribution in urban and
metropolitan centers. — The determining factors are
chiefly three : 1. The economic opportunity our conn-;
try offers; 2. The immigrant's trade or training;
3. the location of kinsfolk or former neighbors.
Where are the Italians located who form so great a
proportion as ten per cent of our population of for
eign birth? According to the census of 1920, in the
state of New York there are 862,000 Italians; in
Pennsylvania 351,000; in New Jersey 248,000; in
Massachusetts 174,000; in Hlinois 149,000; in Cali
fornia 139,000; in Connecticut 127,000; in Ohio 96,-
000; Ehode Island 51,000; Michigan 48,000; Louisi
ana 26,000; Missouri 23,000; West Virginia 22,-
000.^ Such a table demonstrates that the Italian
population is found where the great manufacturing
and mining industries are in which they engage, and
hence geographically they are to be found in the
1 Figures include foreign born and those, one or bbth of whose
parents were bom in Italy.

54 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
New England, Middle Atlantic and East North Cen
tral sections. Outside of these, only Louisiana, be
cause of the Italians of New Orleans, and California,
because of the Italians of San Francisco, have large
numbers of the race. Moreover four-fifths of the
total is urban, and in no small degree metropolitan,
when we consider the present Italian population of
our larger American cities (including those, one or
both, of whose parents were born in Italy) : New
York City 615,000, Philadelphia 100,000, Chicago
93,000, Newark 43,000, Boston 60,000, San Francisco
37,000, New Orleans 12,000, Jersey City 23,000,
Pittsburgh 24,000, Providence 30,000, New Haven
23,000, Detroit 25,000, Cleveland 28,803, Baltimore
12,000, Eochester 30,000, Buffalo 27,000.==
Cause of the immigration to be found in economic
expansion. — ^We have seen that it has become char
acteristic of Italian immigration to respond readily
to economic expansion and contraction in the United
States. The great mass of immigrants, for the most
part farmers, used to the mattock, here find work
with pick and shovel on those great construction
enterprises which good times promote, and return to
Italy for the winter, or for a longer period when
work is lacking. "A relative or friend in mine, or
work of factory construction, knows if there is a
shortage of labor or a place for friend or relative
from Europe. . . . The magnitude of the interna
tional and money order business of the United States
together with the fact that the mass of immigrants
go unerringly to the states where wages are highest
and their services are in greatest demand, indicates
the effectiveness of the system."^ Limited by ac
cessibility to the great centers, where the labor
2 The Interracial Council figures of December, 1919.
^ Sheridan, F. J., Italian, Slavic, and Hungarian Unskilled Im
migrant Laborers in the United States, U. S. Bureau of Labor
Bulletin No. 72, p. 408.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 66
gangs are recruited, these laborers are to be found
wherever operations are being conducted. One in
vestigation which Sheridan reports, made in the
early years of the century, revealed the larger part
of 40,737 workers sent out to 14 northern states,
where they were chiefly engaged in railroad build
ing, and the rest to 12 southern states, where they
went as cotton pickers, miners of phosphate rock,
and cotton mill hands. In later years they have
gone to construction work in the most remote sec
tions of the United States and Canada. Sheridan
also reported that of 100 laborers upon discharge,
10 per cent remain in the localities to which they are
sent, 50 per cent go to the nearest large city, 40 per
cent return to native land.
Later invasion of industries. — ^Having obtained a
foothold through these migrations in construction
work, and become oriented to a degree in American
life, as the years have passed and especially as the
war has stopped the "birds of passage," Italian im
migrants have invaded a multitude of industries
with a resulting relative fixity of residence which has
made for the immigration of their families. In
Massachusetts a state inquiry on "Eace in Indus
try" as early as 1904, brought out the facts that of
10,956 Italians then in the state (of whom 92.33 per
cent were males), in 13 classes of production in 58
different manufacturing industries, 34.52 per cent
were in three classes as laborers ; 13.73 per cent were
in five subdivisions of trade ; 7.58 per cent in personal
service; 2.06 per cent in nine subdivisions of pro
fessions ; 1.88 per cent in two branches of personal
service ; 1.83 per cent in three branches of transporta
tion; 1.82 per cent in mining; .34 in government serv
ice; .31 in agriculture; .15 in fishing; 1.01 children
at work.*
* Quoted by Sheridan.

56 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
Italians are found in large numbers in the metal
trades, as for example in foundries, automobile fac
tories, manufactories of cutlery and fixtures. They
work in the lumber mills of the South and California,
paper and wood pulp, rubber, glass, tobacco, oil and
chemical, shoe and textile (except cotton) factories.
They have invaded the clothing industry, rivaling
the Jews since 1890 in New York and Philadelphia,
Italian women being, respectively, two-thirds and
one-half of those employed. They are in the glove,
knit-goods, button, and artificial flower trades; in
candy, paper-box, celluloid, and piano making; in
laundries and canneries ; but in such manufacturing
and allied pursuits "natural aptitudes have counted
but little, trained skill only a little, and physical
strength to but a moderate degree. Not much
knowledge of this country's speech has been neces
sary. New York State, the Connecticut Valley, and
New Jersey, where the Italians are now the second
immigrant group in point of numbers, have been the
preferred regions. Italian women . . . have been
exceptionally eager for employment and yet have
held aloof from domestic service and commercial
pursuits." ^
In mining and building. — In mining they have at
tained a commanding position. In the bituminous
coal industry the Immigration Commission found
members of the race to be one-eighth of the entire
working force. In 1910 there were 28,650 persons,
bom in Italy, in the three primary anthracite coal,
counties of Pennsylvania. They are in the metal
liferous regions of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota
and of the far West ; in the phosphate mines of the
South; and with great success in northern stone
quarries. In building trades they are less numer
ous because of competition, although relatively of
^Foerster, pp. 245-349.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 67
large number, except as stone-cutters, masons, and
ot course as excavators. On public works, street-
cleaning and street-building, and other public build
ing enterprises, of small and of great magnitude,
they are omnipresent and often have a monopoly of
the work.
They have recently displaced other races as long
shoremen ; they have succeeded the Irish as unskilled
labor on the railways, so great a system as the Penn
sylvania reporting 13,500 on its rolls.'
Following the trade of the Fatherland.— A certain
proportion of Italian immigration has not been com
pelled or attracted to work at other than their over
seas trades, but has found its place in American in
dustry at the old time occupations and therefore is
often better distributed. Of such a sort are stone
cutters, mechanics, mariners, masons, barbers, seam
stresses and shoemakers. The Italian barber is
everywhere. In Philadelphia he almost monopolizes
the trade. He is coming to be the leading shoe
maker, and huckster, and is still the bootblack, the
fruit-dealer, the stone-cutter, or musician even in the
small town. Of Italians' service to Italians we shall
speak in another connection.
The Italian in agriculture. — ^Eelatively to the to
tal, the Italians are few in number on the soil. The
reasons universally ascribed for this fact are: the
remembrance of former bitter experience in agricul
ture in Italy; the clinging to urban life as it was
known there, and corresponding distaste for the soli
tude of the American farm; and the quick returns
from industrial work as compared with the hard
labor and slow returns from the farm. Against these
motives the one-time campaign which American and
Italian authorities seemed to have waged about fif
teen years ago, and the plea of the social-worker
« Foerster, pp. 349-359.

58 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
who would solve the problem of Italian distribution
in multiplied agricultural colonies, is of no avail.
Gaining wisdom from experience, one writer on this
phase suggested that "the solution of the problem
of assimilating the Italian immigrant lies in estab
lishing them in country districts where the climate
and products are suited to their constitution and
knowledge of farming, and in providing manufactur
ing plants with simple processes which will require
the labor of their young people." ""
Their initiation. — ^A valuable guide to the Italian
immigrant lists the better known agricultural colo
nies in the United States.* Aside from a few defi
nitely undertaken migrations from Italy for agricul
tural colonization, agricultural settlements have been
founded in the following ways : 1. Members of con
struction gangs have remained in the vicinity where
they were engaged, and have bought and improved
land. 2. Groups migrate temporarily from the city
to pick berries or hops, to cultivate tobacco or sugar
cane, or, in the season, to can vegetables and fruits,
and remain. 3. Market gardeners, usually South
Italians, cultivate a vacant lot or pieces of land they
have acquired in the neighborhood of cities.* North
Italians take a prominent part in these agricultural
settlements especially where they are union enter
prises, as at Vineland, N. J. (the oldest colony), at
Valdese, N. C, Glastonbury, Conn., Tontitown, Ark.,
Asti, Cal. Leadership is always an important factor
in final success.
Canastota, N. Y., Genoa and Cumberland, Wis.,
Hammonton, N. J., Independence, La., are examples
of Italian rural towns initiated by laborers who
^ Emily Fogg Meade, The Italian on the Land, U. S. Bulletin
of Labor, 1907, p. 533.
* John Foster Carr, A Guide to the United States for Italian
Immigrants. » Foerster, p. 365.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 59
stayed, or berry pickers who bought land. Italian
market gardeners are numberless, especially since
the prosperity during the war has allowed play to
the instinct to buy land, and thus for a certain pro
portion of the population to return to the overseas
occupation of farming. Their small farms are seen
in the neighborhood of any city or town which has a
fair-sized Italian colony.
Success and failure as farmers. — The farmers of
these agricultural settlements often make a success
where American farmers faU, but characteristically
do not carry on the diversified farming or produce
staple crops as the American. Deficient in capital
and in the understanding of machines, fertilizer, and
rotation of crops which capital allows, the southern
Italians, especially, begin in a small way by digging
or grubbing out a farm from waste lands. Their
crops are berries, grapes, peaches, vegetables, for
age, cotton. In several colonies, only in recent years,
has wealth been amassed. Over a course of years
they have learned method from the Americans. The
colonies are very interesting as schools of coopera
tion. Some have failed through its lack. Others are
very successful. Sunnyside possesses fruit evapo
rators, canneries, and cider and vinegar factories.
Independence markets its strawberries through a
powerful Association in refrigerator cars. Asti is
'nationally important for its wineries, claiming as
sets of nearly $3,000,000 as long ago as 1910." From
the social and Americanization aspects, there will be
much to say of these agricultural colonies.
What of the return movement to Italy?— The re
turn movement of Italians to Italy since the war has
not been the significant one which it was expected
to be. The great desire to see friends and the native
village, and how things are after the war has
prompted more than one hundred and fifty thousand
10 Foerster, Chapter XIX.

60 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
to return. But the idea is well-nigh universal that
such absence is but for a visit, especially since many
of those who first returned are again in America,
having found that work is a minus quantity in Italy,
and living conditions, to their mind, are intolerable.
The numbers lost have been offset by the return of
200,000 Italian reservists to the United States, and
by the coming of the families of Italians already
here, which are clamoring to be sent for in every in
coming mail.
These years of absence from the Fatherland, en
forced though they were, colipled with rising stand
ards permitted by prosperity, have dug a chasm be
tween his present life in America and the old in
Italy, which renders the Italian immigrant in large
measure not at home any longer in his native land.

Part II
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
Italian colonies formed of clans. — ^Eetuming now
to the third motive leading to distribution of Italian
immigrants, namely the rejoining of relatives or fel-
low-viUagers here in the United States, we should
link it with a more exact scrutiny of economic condL^
tions. Even more than the labor gang, the ItaliaUj^
colony has come to be the typical phenomenon of]
Italian immigration in America. Whether large or/
small, the basic features of such colonies are wonder
fully similar. A self-reliant individual becomes
well-placed with a job, and stays even though iso
lated. He discovers that there is work here for other
men of his village and sends for them, and they join
him. When their means are sufficient, and condi
tions are tolerable, other members of the families
come till all are assembled. For example, the men

ITALIAN-AMERICAN ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 61
of Salle, a village of the Abruzzi, came to Astoria,
Long Island, before scattering to smaller groups in
various parts of America. A Waldensian cook be
came established in Hartford, Conn., and there is
now at that place a circle of related families mainly
engaged in, the same occupation. With a greater
complexity, the same holds true in cities with large
colonies, or even of the huge metropolitan colonies ;
there are, indeed, accretions of solitary individuals
for whom the fact of Italian nationality is sufficient.
They may be former Italian soldiers used to being
with men from all parts of the peninsula; but the
bulk of the population is made up of distinct ele
ments, often living to themselves in specific streets
or localities, and coming from particular towns or
districts in Italy. The original element in a given
American city may be from certain villages of the
Basilicata, and by this time is Americanized suffi
ciently to be diffused through the American popu
lation. The next element is from one or more vil
lages of Avellino, and, still arriving, masses together
in certain blocks and streets; the third and largest
element, dating only ten or fifteen years back to its
earliest comers, is from three villages of Siracusa in
Sicily, this, too, massed together. Smaller groups
may be from Messina, or native to some town of the
Abruzzi, or of some village of the North. It is now
well known that Italian towns are transplanted to
certain streets in New York. The local sentiment,
campanilismo, transferred to America, may be so
tremendously strong as to hold the group together
and faithful even to minute overseas customs as in
case of the "Cinisi," natives of that Sicilian village,
now resident in New York."
Residence and assimilation.— In New York, m
general, the investigators of the Carnegie Corpora
ls Thomas, Treatment of Immigrant Heritages, Carnegie Cor
poration Studies.

62 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
tion assert that the first residence of Italian immi
grants is the Bowery and its neighborhood ; the sec
ond, permitted by greater economic well-being, is in
"Little Italy" and in the Bronx; and the third resi
dence, of the younger generation or those who have
become well Americanized, is in the boroughs and
not primarily among the. Italian population.
Relation of colonies to industry. — ^Italian-Ameri
can colonies may have a three-fold relation to local
industry: (1) they may take complete possession of
it as for example in case of the clothing or artificial
flower trade in New York; or (2) becoming more
static, because more a colony of families, its mem
bers may seek to enter varied occupations. Such
is the case of the large colony at New Haven, Conn.,
where it is difficult to select any one industry as the
reason for the existence of the large group resident
there. (3) It may serve as a home base for the
winter life of construction gangs, formerly an im
portant social phenomenon, but of less consequence
in late years, now that a colony is made up of fami
lies, and many Italians during war activities have
become recruited to skilled labor.
•>; The motive of saving. — The migrations, uniformly
the earlier, and, less exclusively, the later, within
communities, or from one community to another, are
dictated by the economic motive, and, specifically,
the motive of saving. Without a doubt this motive
stands head and shoulders above any other in Ital
ian-American life, a reaction from narrow means
in Italy. There is indeed a certain impressiveness
in the grand total of facts so often pointed to: (1)
Of the Italians in New York City alone, who own
$100,000,000 of real estate;" (2) of great sums in
savings banks, and greater sent to Italy; (3) of the
largest land-owner in the state of Connecticut being
12 Sartorio, p. 20.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 63
an Italian; (4) of a New England theatrical man of
Italian birth recently forming a ten-million-dollar
corporation within his own family ; yet, excluding re
cent prosperity, the average Italian immigrant ex
perience in saving has been a bitter one. Some Ital
ians have had their chance; most have had small
chance in America. The major portion of money
sent to Europe has probably been for the mainten
ance of families, and real savings or no, it has been
individually but a pittance, wrung from hard toil,
and accumulated through stinting.
Standard of living during the last generation. —
Italians, as helpless newcomers, have had to accept
low wages, less than a living wage according to
American standards. In the early period a third of
all Italians in the United States living in New York,
Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore were found by
the Commissioner of Labor to be living in deplor
able poverty and not many had yet been able to move-
into the better districts.^* Things were better after
1900, but chiefly for trades-people, less so for labor
ers, though thrifty.^* Irregularity of employment
was a problem for the masses engaged in construc
tion work, through the cessation of labor during the
winter, or during depression. Italian families aver
age three times as large as American. They are un
adjusted to their small American income, and there
fore, following any irregularity in employment,
many families are in financial straits or on the mar
gin of efficiency. In 1914-15 the Associated Chari
ties of Boston dealt with 40 per cent more new cases
than in the previous year, but in the principal Ital
ian district the increase was 300 per cent. "
Wages. — A fair summary of several types of wages
13 U. S. Commissioner of Labor, Seventh Special Report, The
'Slums of Great Cities, 1894.
1* Industrial Commission, XV, pp. 574 f.
15 Foerster, p. 378.

64 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
is the following : Home workers in the clothing trade
have received about five cents an hour; men work
ers in the same trade perhaps $8 or $9 per week.
Shop operatives in confectionery, artificial flower
making and allied trades have been paid in recent
years $5-$7 per week, in the case of girls or women.
Common labor in the Eastern States, for years be
fore the war, was given $1.50 per ten-hour day, more
or less, sometimes $1.25. In the cities construction
men might secure $2. Unionized hod-carriers have
been paid $3-$4, non-unionized, $2-$3 for a longer
day. Miners' helpers have made $2-$3. Skilled
miners (the minority), $3-$4, and other skilled work
men, the same or more. Though the rates have been
higher in recent years than fifteen or twenty years
ago, they contend with strikingly higher prices of
food and other necessities.^® The northern Italian
earns more, but spends more for a higher standard
of living, and often saves less.
Family in industry. — The single worker without
family has been said to be able to save a maximum
of $40 out of $50. The wives of southern Italians,
except through child bearing periods, contribute to
the income through work, or, in the country, by gath
ering whatever of food or fuel they may. The aver
age child goes to work as soon as the law permits."
A. common phenomenon among Italians is that of
giving all or a large portion of their earning to
their parents well up to the time of their coming of
age. On the other hand the practice of providing a
dowry for the daughter is more common among Ital
ian families than among all save well-to-do American
families. The golden years of saving are those im
mediately following going to work of the youth of
the family. Normally the children educated in
America, or more Americanized, enter more skilled
" Foerster, pp. 378, 379.
" Foerster, p. 480.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 65
or professional work than their elders, and earn
more. Standard of living to-day. — The economic up
heaval of the great war wrought a great change in
the finances of many Italian families. On the one
hand the man with small children found that the
high cost of living left him no better or even worse
off than before in spite of his higher wage. On the
other hand the man without family, or one whose
grown children were an industrial asset, frequently
aided by his membership in a labor union, or if he
participated in the extraordinarily high wages
prevalent in many trades, obtained a modest com
petence. Adaptation to the American standard of living. —
The adaptation of the Italian immigrant to the
American standard of life is proportionate to his
youthfulness at the time of his arrival here. The
older generation changes very slightly except as
economic motive constrains it. This holds true in
town, but also in the country notwithstanding
greater contact with Americans." There are many
men who have never learned, and who are incapable
of learning, English, many women, who, still held in
domestic seclusion, never venture beyond their quar
ter and whom the teacher of English must seek to
teach, not outside of their own block, if she would
teach them at all. The younger generation born in
Italy, still attached to Italian cooking, and to over
seas family customs, nevertheless wants American
things. "The first marked change ... is probably
in clothing. Neatly attired young men and women
come from crowded and dirty homes."" The gen
eration born here is entirely sophisticated in its
American life.

1^ Emily Fogg Meade, The Italian on the Land, pp. 507 ff.
19 Ibid., Meade.

66 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
Unrest. — Certain Italian colonists, addicted to vio
lent speech, have in the past gained notoriety be
cause of their socialism and anarchism. There is a
certain amount of this of the parlor sort, widely
prevalent, provoked by the strength of socialism in
Italy or by the undoubtedly harsh and sometimes un
just economic conditions here. But the Italian-
American shares but little in the current unrest
called bolshevism. He owns too much property, and
has too many savings and Liberty bonds; the eco
nomic motive in him causes him to oppose real dis
order. Any leadership of Italian name in the I.
W. W. or kindred organizations has been recruited
not among immigrants, but imported from Italy for
the purpose.^"
2° Statement of C. M. Panunzio, Immigramt in Industry,
Division Industrial Relations Department, Interchurch World
Movement.

Chapter III
SOCIAL CONDITIONS AND EDUCATIONAL
FOECES AMONG ITALIAN-AMEEICANS
Part I
SOCIAX. CONDITIONS
Eacial heritage, economic status and methods of
distribution produce a complicated aggregate of so
cial conditions among Italian-Americans, which can
only gradually be bettered. American indifference
or willingness to exploit changes these conditions
into community problems, while friendliness and un
derstanding convert them into assets.
Housing and its evils. — The standard of living,
already referred to, is most important in so far as
it directly affects housing and health. The out-of-
doors, semi-rural life of Italy becomes generally the
urban or metropolitan existence of America, usually
in a climate more rigorous than the Italian, com
pelling an indoor existence for many weeks of the
year. Necessity, ignorance of the danger involved,
and the desire to save throw the newly arrived Ital
ian immigrants into the slums or poorest quarters of
great cities and into houses which are run down,
ill adapted to tenement uses, and quite generally
flimsy, in comparison with the substantial structures
of their native town. In the average city, the type
of houses occupied by the Italian immigrant is well-
known. They are the fine old residences, poorly re
modeled and in an inferior state of repair, insuffi
ciently equipped with sanitary conveniences, inter
spersed with cheap new tenements. Owners of both

68 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
types merely pretend to observe the letter of the law,
and under a lax municipal administration do not
even make a pretense. The earliest observers noted
with horror the dirty rookeries in which the organ-
grinders and sellers of statuettes of the first gen
eration of Italian immigrants lived.^ A few years
later the Italian colonies of New York among others
were the victims of political corruption and private
greed, and the beneficiaries in that long war against
bad housing, congestion, lack of parks and poor
school buildings well-known to the public through
the books of Jacob Eiis.^ Conditions are to-day im
mensely better, but the crowding, and sometimes the
dirt, remains. The single blocks in New York which
hold 3,500 people, an average of 1,100 to the acre,
are inhabited by Italians. There is a wide disparity
of cleanliness among Italians; some houses are
hovels, others are as spick and span as the old or
flimsy construction allows. Often the halls are dirty,
for here there is no responsible "concierge" as in
Italy, and the proprietor is apt to be indifferent to
that little detail. The more enterprising families
move into new neighborhoods or better quarters
after a few years and the poor and less efficient
are left with the newer comers. The complications
of the problem are : the double or triple number of
children in an Italian family as compared with an
American family, and the resulting strain on the
mother; the indoor life to which the women and girls
of immigrants from some sections of Italy are con
demned by old country ideas ; the quantity of home
work done by them, often in ill-lighted and ill-venti
lated quarters ; households which occupy but two or
three rooms, often with no heat but that of the
kitchen stove ; the habit of doubling up families or
1 C. L. Brace, The Dangerous Classes of New York, 3rd edi
tion, pp. 194 f .
2 Of. A Ten Years' War; How the Other Half Lives, etc.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 69
of taking in lodgers or boarders which the presence
of many unattached men has produced ; sleeping with
windows unopened ; living with a minimum of bath
ing; such phenomena make for an immense increase
of tuberculosis and contagious disease.* The hous
ing of construction gangs, now improved, but in the
past provided for in any sort of shanty, bunk-house
or discarded freight car was notorious.
Diet.— -A well-rounded diet founded on Italian
cooking is more healthy than that using American
dishes if the prevalence of gastric troubles of the
races be compared; but the actual eating of many
immigrant families has often been poorly adapted
to maintain health, for example, "rickets," a disease
due to a limited starch diet, is prevalent in some Ital
ian communities. Investigation shows that in va-'
riety, quantity and cost, the standard of eating of
Italian laborers is below the standard of other im
migrant nationalities.* Impairment of health and of
physique is noticeable among a large proportion of
the children. Industrial accident and disease add
to the death rate, social problems, and personal trag
edy among these people. That such conditions in the
months of higher war and post-war wages in in
dustry have greatly changed is a pleasure to record.
According to an Italian pastor in one of the larger
cities, all of the families of his parish own or are
paying for their own houses; and although this is
perhaps a unique case, yet home ownership is an
ideal to which many Italian families are attaining.^
The Padrone. — The early fortunes of Italian im-
® Mariano, J. H., The Italian Contribution to American
Democracy, p. 51.
* Sheridan, Italian, Slavic and Hungarian Unskilled Immigrant
Laborers in the United States, U. S. Bureau of Labor Bulletin
No. 72, p. 477. '
5 Mariano, J. H., The Italian Contribution to American Democ
racy, pp. 37 Seq. and 286.

70 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
migrants in America are bound up with that unique
social institution, the padrone system. Somebody
must be the intermediary between the large numbers
of Italian laborers, helpless as to language and
knowledge of labor opportunities, and American em
ployers of labor, who on their side are equally help
less to understand or make the point of contact with
these people. Hence there has risen from the midst
of the immigrants the padrone, or the gang boss,
indispensable but unmistakably powerful. Because
he is indispensable, even just employers are com
pelled to allow him to do more or less as he pleases,
although an aroused public sentiment and regulation
secured by the Society for the Protection of Italian
Immigrants has curtailed his tyranny of the earlier
years. He exacts all kinds of grafts and perquisites
from the men, and profits from their necessities, but
as he knows the labor market, they are compelled
through necessity of employment to keep silent and
return to him year after year.
The banker. — ^His confederate, also a unique fig
ure within the Italian colonies, is the so-called
Italian banker, an earlier comer than most of his
fellow countrymen. Besides being the cicerone and
general helper of his lately arrived feUow-vUlagers,
he becomes the enroUer of their labor, the holder of
their money and its forwarder to Italy, and steam
ship agent. He has plenty of trade, however un
scrupulous he may be, as the recently arrived Italian
has need of him and continues to be long awed by
the magnificence of American institutions, commer
cial and otherwise. These in general have made no
attempt to win his patronage. Of late years the
Italian banker has regular quarters at the heart of
the Italian colony, but previously he may have had
his office anywhere. The series of abscondings and
irregularities of his kind among all immigrant na
tionalities has forced many states to adopt protee-

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 71
tive legislation after the manner of New York and
Massachusetts.^ An Italian-American street. — Along the principal
street of an Italian colony are to be seen, besides
the banks, numerous grocery shops and markets,
great and small, displaying fruits and vegetables,
and wares peculiar to the race, the Italian pharmacy,
undertaking establishment, cobbler shop, barber
shop, macaroni manufactory, an inferior restaurant,
a printer's shop, perhaps the home of a local paper,
the public school, the Italian Eoman Catholic
Church, and frequently the Protestant mission.
There may be a cooperative store, a form of business
which often has had marked success among Italian-
Americans. There has been the saloon, as much a
place of resort as of drinking; there are many bot
tled soda shops and pool-rooms patronized by or
maintained by clubs, sometimes gangs, for amuse
ment, or for political or less legitimate purposes.
The shingle of the doctor and mid-wife are to be
seen, these persons, especially the latter, enjoying
great repute among their people because of the high
standing of their professions in Italy. Actually,
through our loose regulation, they may be ignorant
and inefficient practitioners here. Upstairs along
the street are to be found cheap lodging houses, the
headquarters for Italian bands, and the large num
ber of lodges, both of Italian name and of American
name with Italian constituency. Besides these, the
large colonies will have their own theater and mov
ing picture halls, charities, hospital, consulate,
chamber of commerce, and luxurious club. In and
around these institutions, social and business life
flows. In its more intimate forms it is circumscribed
by jealous loyalty to paesani — that is to members
of the same village in Italy, or the feeling of being
* Abbott, The Immigrant and the Community, Chapter IV.
Foerster, pp. 391, 392.

72 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
a northern or southern Italian; thus "campanilism"
or the regional spirit works out in business, in
church, in lodge. Among those of a given village
there is much cooperation in small ways, and much
helpfulness to one another especially when trouble
in business, in family, or with the law comes.
Affection for Italy. — One of the first effects of
life in America is a broadening of spirit. Many a
provincial Italian, who never knew of or cared aught
for the ideal of native land at home, finds develop
ing early a new affection for Italy and his "Italian-
ita" or racial heritage. The Italian consul is his
protector, the Italian government has a definite pro
gram of subsidy for Italian Chambers of Commerce^
for the Dante Alighieri Society and the schools
where the Italian language is taught, etc. The
strongest lodge with most numerous branches bears
the name "Sons of Italy," and only such in blood
may be members of it. Italian papers publish much
news from Italy, and passionately champion her na
tional aspirations. Collections in aid of the victims
of great disasters in Italy, or of war sufferers, and
subscriptions to war loans are presented to the
Italians in America and meet with great response,
striking the chord where the Italian is most gener
ous, and at the same time arousing racial sentiment.
They who have never returned to Italy often idealize
the fatherland with homesick longing, and hope,
their fortune made, to return there. And finally,
Italy has never renounced the right to call those of
Italian blood to military service, even if American
citizens or bom in America of Italian descent. At
this point it may be said that although the Italian
govemment is not disinterested in this policy, yet it
would seem that a finer Italianism is often the best
road to real Americanism in Italian- Americans.
But the most potent institution among Italian-
Americans is the family. At least it is the typical

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 73
unit in Italian colonies. The older Italian in the
end brings his family to America, the young man im
ports his bride and founds one ; or if he marries here,
he seeks immediately to set up a separate house
hold. _ The family. — ^We have seen how economic neces
sity and the desire to participate in family life have
created the system among Italian- Americans of mul
tiplied lodgers. It is an abnormality which does
not exist in Italy. Without a doubt, besides adding
to the congestion, it has added to promiscuity and
immorality in families. But such is less than might
be expected because the Italian jealously guards his
home. He is head of the family and exacts obedi
ence from wife and children, and according to cus
tom even pretends to have his say in certain affairs
of his grown-up sons and grandchildren. It is a
custom with the force of law among southern Ital
ians, for instance, that the first grandchild should
bear the name of the paternal grandfather or grand
mother. The Italian man sometimes limits the lib
erty of his wife to leave the house. If he is of the
immigrant generation he considers it a duty to ac
cept all the children that Providence may bestow.
But although he or his wife may not always be in
telligent or model parents, they love their children
and live with them. The great virtues are domestic
virtues. The great events are family events. The
birth of a child is hailed with great joy and is a
subject for much congratulation. Its baptism is im
portant not only on account of its religious neces
sity, so considered, but also for the feasting that
occurs. And the godfather or godmother becomes,
ex officio, little less than blood relations. The young
girl devotes much attention to her hope chest.
Daughters are kept close at home especially in the
evening; Italians are unwilling that they should go
out in domestic service because they cannot super-

74 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
vise their daughters in others' homes ; if they go into
the factory, it must be near at hand, and conditions
be known. Marriages and matters of dowry continue
* to be arranged by the parents. Weddings are fes
tive affairs, presents are generous. Grief for the
; dead is violent, but the proper degree of pomp and
. ceremony at the funeral must be observed lest the
f family be criticized.
Recreation. — The simplicity of Italian recreation
is admirable and is more often taken in family
groups than otherwise. They gather together to
sip coffee or Italian wine, to hear a little music, or
to play cards, or stroll out together for an evening,
at the movies and especially at the opera, when it
comes to town, or in these later days, off for a Sun
day afternoon, the whole family piled into the auto.
In such ways Italians take boundless pleasure with
out extremes or excesses.
The annual festival of their lodge provokes a
great display of uniforms and banners accompanied
by music, elaborate discourses, and much eating and
1 drinking. On religious holidays, usually occurring
in midsummer, the greatest and most extravagant
celebrations take place. There is prodigal decora
tion, street illumination, and fireworks for the pro
cessions when the patron saint is honored with fes
tivity. Thousands of persons are often in line, curi
ous and sometimes vulgar expressions of religious
emotion occur, and large offerings are frequently
made to the saints. But with the sloughing off of
superstition, the tendency year by year is to reduce
these celebrations to more limited proportions.
Parents and children. — ^Eeturning to the subject
of the family, it may be said that the most severe
tests and the greatest moral problems .arise in the
adjustment of family life to conditions in the new
country, and on the other hand American institu
tions are tested by their power to conserve Italian

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 75
habits of abiding values. The immigrant does not
ask that his wife be his mental companion, or that
she know much of the outside world. She, and per
haps he, marry young, her family duties are numer
ous, and, not infrequently, she dies, worn-out by
work or child-bearing, just when the older children
need her guidance most. It may not be her fault
that she has been accused of not knowing how to
bring up her children. She certainly is not usually
their intellectual companion and commonly she is il
literate with all that implies of outlook on life. Yet,
despite all, both mother and father are remarkably
ambitious for their children. The tenacity with
which they try to hold their family together, and the
attachment to the best overseas ideals as they know
them, or react to the shocks which American life
brings them in the case of their children, must rouse
admiration. But the circumstances of immigrant
life are such that while the mother remains static
in mental outlook, and the father also to large de
gree, the children rapidly change. Their life is
plastic~and gathers many impressions from an en
vironment to which the home is stranger. Although
parents are vaguely desirous that the children
should learn the overseas tongue, they usually
only learn a garbled form of the family dia
lect, of which they become ashamed, and which they
rapidly replace with English. In other ways they j
speedily become Americanized, act of necessity as |
spokesmen for their parents, and often end by look- '
ing down on their elders and dominating in the
household, — a dangerous state of affairs. Hence
any disparagement of parental customs by teach
ers or social workers is very unwise, while any at
tempt to teach the Italian language to the young
is exceedingly valuable in bringing parents and chil
dren together. When a little Italian girl recently
saw the undisguised admiration of Americans for the

76 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
beautiful handiwork of her mother who had been
persuaded to lend it for an exhibition, her mother
rose greatly in her estimation. Community affairs-
for example under the auspices of the public schools
greatly help. Wise indeed is the increasing effort
to-day to minister to the members of the Italian fam
ily as a unit, on the part of social institutions. The
efforts of the Young Women's Christian Associa
tion, in its thirty-seven International Institutes, to
serve the less accessible mothers of Italian families,
and the fine-spirited and helpful pamphlet publica
tions issued by it for them and other immigrant
women, are eminently valuable.
Intermarriage. — ^What a splendid asset to the
United States is the second generation of Italian
stock. In 1915, roughly, 22 per cent of the children
born in Connecticut, 20 per cent of all born in New
York State and Ehode Island, nearly 12 per cent
of all born in Massachusetts and 9 per cent of all
born in Pennsylvania had an Italian father.'' It is
difficult to follow them as a separate group. • Yet
some things we know of them. It has been observed
of them that many belong to a detached group,
"neither really Italians nor yet Americans." * The
predominating element in the lodges of the Sons of
Italy, which are broadly typical of the Italian popu
lation, is said to be the young man bom in Italy,
but emigrating to the United States while not yet
too old to be greatly Americanized. We have seen
how often the children of Italian parents, — particu
larly the young children of the family, — scorn their
parents, because they have imbibed the scorn for
the "Dago" around them. We know next to noth
ing of the facts concerning intermarriage with other
'' U. S. Bureau of Census, Birth Statistics for the Registration
Area of U. S., 1915, 1st Annual Report, p. 56.
* Remark of Rev. F. G. Urbano, of Grace Chapel, New York,
quoted by Mangano.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 77
races. There seems to be little intermarriage of
Italian girls with other young men, but on the other
hand, due perhaps to the more rigorous conditions
of courtship surrounding Italian girls, Italian
young men frequently marry girls of other nation
alities whom they meet in the freer contacts of
American life. Thus a tendency to marry Jewesses
in New York City has been noted.* Many of our
ablest Italian pastors h.ave American wives. A
school principal highly praised the children of mixed
Italian and Swedish stock to be found in one of our
cities. And the writer was assured that at Ham
monton, New Jersey, where the development of the
Italian families is rapidly making them one with
the rest of the population, mixed marriages were
being celebrated every day. Doubtless this is true
throughout the country of small colonies and scat
tered families, thoroughly Americanized or closely
tied up with the general population.^"
Delinquency and crime. — ^It is the children of Ital
ians, rather than the older immigrant generation,
who show a disproportionate percentage of delin
quency and crime. And of these, it is not the girls
who err — for they have an excellent record — ^but
the boys. Over and above the dissolving of parental
control, the abnormality or subnormality which the
Italian standard of life produces in some, and the
lack of pocket money, the usual training of the
street leads on the Italian boy with his strong racial
, traits into delinquency and crime. The idea of
American life with which the youth is imbued is
superficial and garish if not bad. The worst dis
tricts of American cities where vice, drunkenness,
theft, and disregard for law flourish are usually
alongside of the Italian quarter. Crap-shooting
8 Immigration Journal, Sept., 1916, pp. 88 f .
lo Mariano, The Italian Contribution to American Democracy, a
painstaking and exhaustive study of Americans of Italian descent.

78 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
gives an early introduction to the national Italian
vice of gambling. Fruit-stands invite theft. The
war of the police against games in the street and
[the movies and bill-boards suggest questionable
programs to the boys' gangs, which go from bad to
worse until they become the gangsters of the "East
(Side" of the cities, fit material out of which to make
! thugs, blackmailers and white-slavers. Although
New York State has a huge Italian population, and
perhaps of no extraordinary criminal tendency,
there are from 300 to 450 inmates of Italian stock
among the 1200 total at the state prison at Auburn.
As they are largely young men, the natural deduc
tion is that they must be either young immi
grants from Italy gone wrong from their undisci
plined passions, or native-born delinquent sons of
immigrants. The great mass of the Italian-American popula
tion, unquestionably industrious, sober and trust
worthy, is erroneously judged by the public on ac
count of the spectacular or violent nature of Ital-
lian crime. Only 0.6 of north Italians and only 0.8
of south Italians per 1,000 admitted, a low percen-
iftage in comparison with other immigrant nationali
ties, were deported or debarred from the United
States because of crime." The report of the Chi
cago Council Committee on Crime states that "in
convictions for both felonies and misdemeanors the
various foreigners show almost a smaller percentage
of convictions than their proportion of the popula
tion entitles them to have" and that "the Italians
show an excess of one-tenth of one per cent in con
victions and this is surely so small as to be negligi
ble."^'' Italians are guilty of crimes against the
person rather than against property, and these are
11 Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigra
tion, 1914, pp. 105 and 108.
" Quoted, Abbott, p. 112.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 79
"usually due to drink, cards and women."" They
could be greatly reduced, were justice meted out to
every criminal and were political influence abolished
from the judge's bench.
The Black Hand.— In the jBlack Hand outrages
certain salient features of the Camorra of Naples
and of the Mafia of Sicily have been imported into
America. The occurrence of these has been due,
according to one familiar with the problem, to the
failure of our immigration laws to take advantage
of opportunity Italy gives of keeping out the Ital
ian criminal more than they have hitherto done ; it
has also been due to lack of respect for the adminis
tration of our criminal law. The principals in such
outrages are sometimes criminals from Italy, but
more often are Americans of Italian blood trained
up in the school of the gang. Italian detectives are
of great value in the perfectly feasible proposition
of eradicating this sort of crime, but not while the
Italian criminal finds way of entrance and is "con
vinced that America is not only the country of lib
erty but of license — to commit crime.""
The passion to get ahead. — The Italians come to
America with certain prepossessions and aspira
tions. One of them, a man of some thoughtfulness,
said, "What the Italians want is a chance and a
guide." Their motives are to make a living, to save,
and in a large number of cases to return to Italy.
They are ignorant and finding themselves exploited,
soon become reserved and perhaps suspicious. They
themselves generally, and certainly their children,
soon catch the American spirit of "getting ahead,"
that is, gaining wealth and position. Undeveloped
brains do not signify lack of native intelligence.
Their passions are strong. They are well disposed
1^ Mangano, p. 106.
1* "Train," Courts, Criminals and the Camorra, Chapter IX,
quotation, p. 245.

80 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
to America, and in view of the common bitter ex
perience, it is remarkable how the great majority
retain this spirit. As the Italian is an individualist
by nature and by circumstance, it is necessary to de
velop in him a conception of team work or of com
munity service. He readily responds to sympathy
and to such ideals as are not abstract and do not go
too far afield. He wants to know the American peo
ple, but his reaction to them is primarily on the basis
of feeling, sentiment, emotion, which, after all, is the
common world language.
First ideals in politics. — In his relation then to
the American people, the Italian immigrant comes
not consciously to accept broader ideas and ideals,
but asking of a generous nation an opportunity to
make a living. His development leads him to adapt
himself at first only to the spiritual environment in
so far as it affects his economic condition, but after
wards his active intelligence makes him one of the
best of candidates for Americanization. The clay is
plastic and we make or mar it largely as we will.
Jacob Eiis draws a lively picture of him, in his first
years: "He is clannish, this Italian; he gambles
and uses a knife, though rarely on anybody not of
his own people ; he takes what he can get, wherever
anything is free, as who would not, coming to the
feast like a starved wolf? There is nothing free
where he came from. He buys fraudulent natural
ization papers and uses them. Gambling is his be
setting sin. He is sober, industrious, frugal, endur
ing beyond belief, but he will gamble on Sunday and
quarrel over his cards, and when he sticks his part
ner in the heat of the quarrel, the partner is not
apt to_ tell. _ Yet there is evidence that the old ven
detta is being shelved, and a new idea of law and
justice is breaking through. . . . Our Italian is not
dull. ... A dollar a day for the shovel ; two dollars
for the shovel with the. citizen behind it. And he

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 81
takes the papers and the two dollars. He came
here for a chance to live. Of politics, social ethics,
he knows nothing. . . . Why should he not attach
himself with his whole loyal soul to the plan of gov
emment in his new home that offers to boost him
into the place of his wildest ambition, a 'job on the
streets,' — ^that is, in the Street Cleaning Depart
ment, — and asks no other return than that he shall
vote as directed? . . . Here, ready-made to the hand
of the politician, is such material as he never saw
before. For Pietro 's loyalty is great.""
Later evolution. — These words were penned
twenty years ago and since then New York City has
had a Congressman, a president of the Board of
Aldermen and acting Mayor of Italian blood, and
has now a State Senator, three assemblymen, one
judge of the City Court, one of General Sessions,
one of Special Sessions, and one city magistrate.
The City of Philadelphia has an assistant city at
torney of that race ; Ehode Island a group of state
legislators from Providence; the presidents of the
boards of education of Newark, N. J., and New
Haven, Conn.; the sheriff of New Haven, Conn.; a
police court judge, and the secretary to the mayor
of Hartford, Conn.; the assistant city prosecutor,
and one of the probation officers of Cleveland, Ohio,
are of Italian blood. Such scattered instances could
be multiplied many times wherever Italian stock is
numerous or Americanized. They indicate the in
creasingly commanding place Italians are taking in
American political life. The practice of law is a
field attractive to the immigrant or his son who has
sufficient education to compete in American life;
the American-born of Italian blood is well repre
sented in the law schools. The influence of these
new Americans in politics is becoming more worthy,
i« Riis, A TenJYears' War, pp. 113, 114.

82 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
beginning with the sordid practices of the ward poli
tician, already hinted at, up through the egoism of
the business man or self-made man using public of
fice for his own purposes or ambitions, perhaps the
too common type among them to-day, to a few but
growing number who to-day feel the sense of civio
responsibility and the obligation to serve'.
A type. — In one of our larger cities there is a
man of great cleverness, an outstanding example of
the common type, who has graduated through all
the stages of cicerone, lemon-vendor, undertaker,
coal-dealer, banker, real estate agent and proprietor
of an Italian newspaper, L'Opinione. Among the
Italians he has passed for a Eoman Catholic ; in the
American residential district where he lives, he is
a member of a Protestant church. He has been so
able to capitalize his reputation, without holding
great office, as to be the colonial boss, so that no
Italian considered that he could accomplish any
thing without coming to him or any American get
in touch with the Italian colony without recourse to
his influence. Although evidently his first thought
is for himself, he himself really believes that he is
giving his life for his people. It may be said that
another faction, enthusiastic over Americanism, is
fighting his leadership with the definite slogan, and
perhaps ideal, of disinterested community service.
Attitude toward organized labor. — Another sig
nificant relationship to the American people is in
the field of organized labor. The Italian immigrant,
because of his desire to work anywhere and for any
wage, his individualism, his small understanding of
team work, was at first persona non grata to organ
ized labor, drawing upon himself from labor, and
so from the public, the derisive names of "wop,"*
' ' guinea, ' ' and * ' dago. ' ' While green he had a bitter
experience as a strike-breaker and learned to avoid
such labor. He has little understood labor solidar-

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 83
ity, and has abominated strikes, and hence labor
organizations have sought legislation restricting his
coming. Yet with a few years of residence in Amer
ica this is a form of combination in which he makes
rapid progress, the one-time peasant and southern
Italian attaining the point of view widely held by
the labor classes in Italy, or by the far more ad
vanced northern Italian here. Strikes in which
Italians participated became increasingly numerous
in the pre-war years ; and during the war years with
the tremendous enhancement of the bargaining
power of labor, Italians have taken an aggressive
part in them. Social workers among them say that
they are exploiting this power to a great degree, and
one familiar with conditions in Chicago ventured to
assert that practically all Italian labor there was
unionized. As viewed by employers. — Employers on their
part have generally given praise to the Italian im
migrant, finding him willing, industrious, tractable,
and generally realizing that to him have been due the
prodigies of toil which the expansion of industry
and transportation has asked of the manual laborer.
Where the man has been considered rather than the
hand, they have recognized his great contribution to
the national wealth, have reflected upon the cost
in blood and toil, and have candidly asked themselves
whether these workers have had their fair return
economically and socially for the part which they
have played.
Evolved and Americanized. — There are innu
merable individuals, and there are communities
where Italians have ceased to be regarded as such,
and the distinction of race has ceased to be felt. In
fact, there are many, bom here or of a sufficiently
remote date of coming^ who in their persons demon
strate that, once having learned American habits,
the Italians are quick to amalgamate with the gen-

84 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
eral population. Indeed it is somewhat of a defect
of Americanized Italians to abandon contact with
the majority of their race and to confine business
relationships and seek residence as completely as
possible among Americans. There are churches
among Italians which have dropped the Italian
name, and American congregations of Italian de
scent. Notably in the agricultural colonies sur
rounded by Americans, while the older people con
tinue unabsorbed till the end, the youth are one with
their American comrades. "In Genoa, Wisconsin,
for example, one of the older Italian agricultural
settlements in the United States, the farmers have
quite ceased to be deemed Italians by their neigh
bors. There has been, in all such cases as this, no
catastrophic change . . . but gradually in the clear
est instances such an awakening of personality, such
an unfolding of competence, specialized or general,
as fills observers with wonderment."^*

Part II
EDUCATIONAL FORCES
Malign educational forces. — ^All social conditions
amid which our Italian-Americans live are forces
educating for good or bad. Certain liberal elements
are far more easily reached by evangelical missions
in the days immediately following their arrival in
America than after they acquire that attitude so
common among us that one may do very well with
out any church connection whatever. What is the
educational effect upon the Italian whose experience
has been in the "school of hard knocks" and who
is chiefly familiar with the seamy side of American
18 Foerster, p. 444.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 85
institutions? The doors of American homes have
not always been open even to immigrants of culture
and of character; they have not always been wel
comed by the average American church congrega
tion; if artistic workmen, they have often found
themselves misfits in our machine industry ; and un
til recently little attention has been paid to any
broad or systematic program of practical instruc
tion in American life and aspiration. Eace preju
dice, exclusiveness, scorn for things Italian, patron
age and discourtesy such as would be shown to no
one else save an immigrant, what new-comer from
Italy has not encountered some or all of these
things? The tale of exploitation on every hand we
have partially told. What characters will the im
migrant probably meet, some of whom want to meet
him? The cursing boss or exacting padrone, the
saloon-keeper, the .gambler, the vote-buying poli
tician, the shyster lawyer, the quack doctor, the
panderer, the dealer in worthless investments, the
poorest types of American womanhood, the hostile
workman, the recruiter for the I. W. W., and the
host of those who jeer the "wop" or the "dago."
Can he be blamed if in his ignorance of America he
fails to distinguish between such "exploiters" and
the real American people? The welcome America
has usually given to the new-comer is thorny.
Eeticence, suspicion, sophistication, sordid _ aims,
egoism, scorn for America, an exploiting spirit in
his turn, are habits of mind to which the immigrant
very naturally becomes heir. If in spite of all this
the average Italian immigrant becomes attached to
America, what reserves of loyalty and moral power
might he not have developed over and above what
he has, had he been met by the square deal and a
forceful but sympathetic training, such as we hope
that further generations of Italian immigrants may
enjoy.

86 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
The public school. — ^Let us turn then to a review
of those positive educational forces the exceeding
value of which the words _just written are not in
tended to minimize. The children of Italian fami^
lies are numerous and therefore the influence of
that justly vaunted American institution, the public
school, can hardly be overestimated. A fine thing
is the affection in which the Italian-American par
ents hold the school and its teachers. They are
eager that their children should have the best that
it offers. The children are quick and apt pupils,
and frequently lead their classes. The schools and
their teachers, often more than the home itself, are
in a position to mold the ideals and characters of
these children. How important it is, then, that both
should be of such quality as to furnish both the
moral and intellectual background needed, and the
wisdom to take advantage of special racial traits.
Although some schools fail in this aim, there 'are
fortunately many schools that meet this standard.
A common defect has been to make a gap between
parents and children through ill-concealed dislike
for Italian customs, and failure to appreciate Ital
ian history. Some teachers have demonstrated a
special skill with the classes of new-comers. In
many schools there is coming to be a percentage of
teachers of Italian blood, teaching being a profes
sion which appeals to many Italian girls, and at
least one Italian public school principal has risen
to a degree of fame through his organization of the
school. Parochial schools. — There seems to be a wide dif
ference, according to locality, in the attendance of
Italian children at parochial schools. In many
places they are few, in an occasional locality they
are numerous. The general attitude of the Italian
immigrant, who has been used to secular education
as a function of the state in Italy, is against send-

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 87
ing his children to the parochial schools, but there
may be local factors which change his attitude and
practice. According to the Immigration Commis
sion, in 24 cities, 10,640 South Italian children were
only 0.8 per cent of all pupils in^'parochial schools,
the Irish having 26.2 per cent. " But the order of
St. Francis is establishing and conducting such
schools among Italians all over the country, the aim
being to inculcate the Catholic faith, and to preserve
"L'ltalianita." The teaching is partly in Italian,
by Italian monks or sisters. The result is to retard
assimilation and to perpetuate foreign colonies in
our cities, as alien in habits of thought as newly
arrived immigrants, although these children were
born in America. ^* ^
Italian children in advanced schools. — The de-\
plorable custom of Italian- American parents of!
withdrawing their children from school at the mini
mum legal age in order to send them to work, — a
custom only partly justifiable upon the plea of eco- ,
nomic necessity, — has resulted in a small attendance;'
of their children in high schools and other institu-.
tions of higher learning. There are 9,000 Italian-
American children out of 28,000 registered pupils in
the elementary schools of New Haven, Conn. There
are five times as many Italian children' as Eussian
(including Jewish) in these schools, but in the high
school five times as many Eussians as Italians.
However, this situation improves slowly with the
general uplift of Italian colonies, while many Ital
ian children are perseveringly attending evening
schools of various sorts. It has also been claimed
that Italian children, notable for their brightness in
elementary schools, stop short in mental ability with
higher studies demanding greater application. The
truth is probably that they have small encourage-
1'^ Foerster, p. 395, note.
18 Mangano, p. 139.

88 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
ment and no place to study in quiet in their crowded
homes. In 1920, out of 10,000 pupils taking college
entrance examinations sent out by the National
Board, the student to win first place was an Italian-
American of Hartford, Conn., a youth prominent in
many high school intellectual activities.
Literature. — The rank and file of Italian-Ameri
cans is not a reading public, on account of their un
lettered origin. They read newspapers more than
books. The book store is the least of their institu-
^¦-^ tions, being usually a neglected department of a
^ jewelry store or a job printing establishment. It
may have a few copies of Manzoni or De Amicis,
useful to keep up the Italian of an occasional child ; ^
for the rest its stock consists of opera scores, and
novels of the sensational and dime novel sort. Nat- •
urally the children who read prefer American books.
Libraries. — Some of our public libraries have be
gun to make modest collections of Italian books,'
especially those where the sympathy for American
ization is keenest." For some years the New York
City public library has had a good Italian depart
ment and has especially featured Italian books at
its branches near Italian colonies. A movement is
on foot to establish an Italian library of the first
order at Columbia University, for the housing of
which appropriate space has been promised by the
university authorities.
Italian newspapers. — The first daily Italian news
paper was founded in 1882. " The demand for pa
pers has resulted in attempts to establish them in
many places, usually on a weekly basis, most of
which have failed. There are 26 Italian newspapers
printed in New York City, 9 ip Philadelphia, 9 in ,
San Francisco, 8 in Chicago and 4 in Pittsburgh, 182
secular and 9 religious weeklies and dailies through-
19 Foerster, p. 331.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 89
out the country.^" Editorially the secular papers
are of no great value. Much space is given to ad
vertisements of quack doctors and fake medicines,
and in the past they have devoted too much atten
tion to reporting crime. " They make much of poli
tics, soinetimes with no consistent attachment to
one party. In short, there has hitherto been held
no high ideal of their mission. Their sentiments
have often been un-American, and their best devo
tion has been given to Italy, and affairs which would
glorify her whether here or abroad.
However, the fact chiefly evident is the absolute
necessity of these papers to their people, and the
consequent unlimited opportunity which they afford
for sympathetic presentation of the meaning and
ideals of America. Some of the Italian papers are
rapidly catching this tone. There is a worthy fu
ture in this line for suGhj^dely^ circulated papers
w«#(9 01 New York, with

as II Progresso Italo-
50,000 circulation, or for La Voce del Popolo
Italiano of Cleveland, with 30,000 circulation
throughout the Middle States, while the project of
publishing a bilingual paper after the best ideals of
American journals such as is on foot in Philadel
phia should be encouraged. Besides newspapers,
the^e are several weeklies and monthlies of an ethi
cal and patriotic type, devoting themselves to scien
tific, economic and literary subjects, and in some
instances aiming at the reform of the press and the
elevation of Italian-American life. Also a consid
erable number of American newspapers, the country
over, recognizing their large and increasing Italian-
American clientele, publish columns or a page in
Italian. Leaders. — It is difficult to estimate the extent of
"" Coulter, The Italians of Cleveland, pamphlet of American
ization Committee, p. 40.
^1 Shriver, Immigrant Forces, p. 227.

90 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
real leadership among Italian-Americans. A very
genuine development along political lines we have
already noted. The rising caliber of the Protestant
ministry among them will be considered in its
proper place. Undoubtedly a great and widespread
educational force which is producing its own lead
ers (not merely importing them from Europe) is
the musical field. Italians organize and man hun
dreds of bands throughout the country. They are
managing and financing great operatic ventures,
and likewise theatrical and moving-picture projects.
Some of the stars of the Metropolitan Grand Opera
were daughters of Italian immigrant families.
Ma:ny of the highest class sculptors, artists, photog
raphers, and architects are coming to be of Ital
ian immigrant blood, as the race asserts its artistic
heritage. An estimate of leadership. — But of the leadership
of Italian-Americans in organizing and uplifting
their own people, less can be said. In part at least
this is due to racial origin and the degree of develop
ment. Less than a decade ago a rather pessimistic
picture was drawn of the leadership prevalent
among them. With the southern Italian immigrants
in mind, it was said of them that while of all races
the most jealous of their leaders they were the most
leaderless. As conspicuous individualists, as soon
as a man demonstrated a degree of ability, they dis
trusted and deposed him. Among them there were
no leaders or large organizations. At that time the
group of lodges of the Sons of Italy was criticized as
a society for talk and a joke, having no outstanding
leaders. Business and professional leaders were
slowly coming to the front but were apt to drift out
of vital touch with their people. Neither press nor
church was leading the people. "Leaderless in any
large way, yet deluged with petty leaders of or
ganizations . . . with a love of democracy and free-

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 9t
dom growing within them, they are at present in a
plastic state that demands a wise and firm touch to
mold them into ways of constructive growth." ^^
The above estimate seems to have been severe but
true. Italian-Americans delight to organize, but in
matters of administration, the fifty-seven varieties
of opinion, all of which insist upon being heard,
cause the organization to languish and fade away.
The lack of success of pastors with men's clubs in
Italian missions confirms this idea and the experi-j
ence of an able consular officer who said that he!
with other racial leaders had tried repeatedly to*
form charitable and welfare agencies in his colony,
and had uniformly failed because of divisions and
jealousies, is typical. Out of the pressure of the
war, however, has come a degree of education in
leadership, or perhaps, even more, on the part of
the population, an acceptance of the necessity of
leadership and cooperation.
Growth of leadership. — In stimulating this spirit,
wise Americanization leaders are finding one of
their chief functions, while the existence of myriads
of clubs, under direction and parliamentary usage
in settlements and community centers, is distinctly
valuable. The developing growth and efficiency of
the "Figli d 'Italia" — Sons of Italy — now numbering
125,000 members and 1,000 lodges responsible to the
grand lodge and committed to a progressive pro
gram of Americanization, is a favorable index of
growth in leadership.
Among Italian-Americans who are occupying
prominent positions of leadership in the United
States, a notable group have been at one time
students of the International College, formerly the
French-American College of Springfield, Mass.
This school has done a great service for them
22 Archibald McClure, Leadership in the New America, Chap
ter XII.

92 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
among other nationalities in encouraging them to go
on to further study and preparation elsewhere, and
has succeeded in inspiring a goodly number with
genuine ideals of racial service and leadership. Of
those already in their work, 3 are doctors, 8 are law
yers, of whom two or three occupy influential public
positions, 4 are professors in higher institutions, one
is a rising sculptor, 9 are ministers and 3 are spe
cifically engaged in Americanization work, one as a
Y. M. C. A. secretary, one as secretary of the North-
American League for Immigrants, and one as head
of the Pennsylvania Eailroad School of Instruction,
teaching English and citizenship to 4,307 Italian
employees. Forces of assimilation. — ^We reach, at this point,\
the consideration of those forces at work in assimila-i
tion of the Italian immigrant, which the broad pro-i
gram of Americanization of to-day takes into ac-i
count. Both on account of the social qualities of the!
race and on account of their leadership needs juslj
emphasized, no immigrant people have been so sus-j
oeptible to American efforts to lead them. Nond
have been so sensitive to mistakes of attitude and
practice, and none have been so appreciative whei^
the right chord has been struck. To none has thd
Statue of Liberty, itself a product of an Italia^
mind, raised higher hopes; in none has the treat[
ment received at Ellis Island produced stronger rei
action, agreeable or disagreeable.
The point of view. — They have strongly resented
the methods of force, and of patronage. They have
been indifferent to plans imposed from without, en
thusiastic over those which they themselves have
worked out with the aid of helpful suggestion and/
tactful guidance. Americanization preeminently^
among Italian-Americans is not solely the presenta
tion of ideas, which are likely to fail of attention,
but the creation of a medium of sympathetic con-

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 93
tact and sentiment through whieh ideas and ideals
take hold. The old formal night school without a
social spirit, without a teacher completely devoted,
without a teaching method which distinguished be
tween illiterate and literate pupils in their own
language, may have often started with full classes
of Italians eager to learn practical English, but as I
often failed before the end of the season.
Institutions. — Now ample facilities such as publib
school buildings, and the Y. M. C. A., the enlistment^
of racial leaders in recruiting classes, the formation
particularly of classes in factories with inducements
by employers ; the internal organization and officer- i
ing of classes, intelligent grading and instruction
and convenient hours are attracting thousands off
Italians into schools for learning English. Flexible i
conditions and friendly interchange of ideas are.
penetrating the isolation of Italian women and en-|
rolling them in classes in the home or wherever they ;
congregate. And thus these women are coming into
contact with American women of the Y. W. C. A.,;
of the churches, of the schools, or of the thousand
and one Women's Clubs and Americanization com
mittees. For many years unnumbered Italian chil
dren have been members of social settlements which,
when intelligently understood, have meant much to
all members of the Italian families, especially the
youth but also their elders. Certain college settle
ments have seen within their walls members of the
third generation and have never failed to serve ap
propriately. Boys' clubs and camps, great and
small, have coped successfully with the misdirected
energy of youthful gangs. One group of boys organ
ized as a Castle of the Knights of King Arthur
under the direction of a man of radiant personality
later had an enviable record of service and sacrifice
in the Great War.
The community idea. — Italian-Americans, as

94 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
might be expected from their temperament, hav^
taken enthusiastically to the community idea, and
greatly profited by it; pageants, such as the Yale
Pageant held in the Yale Bowl; community evenings,
and exhibitions given by their children, for example'
at the Howard St. School of Springfield, Mass.;
parades as in Chicago with dozens of races taking
part in characteristic costumes, but with only one
flag; Italian night, and the interracial concert, rep
resenting the entire city, under the auspices of the
Y. M. C. A. of Philadelphia; community dances, as
conducted in the school auditoriums of New
Haven; receptions to returned soldiers as in Cleve
land; the organization of the whole community so
cially as at Cincinnati, Ohio. Thus in group wayd|
they have felt their solidarity with the American!
population. And where community affairs have hadi
a community center, such as many public schools
have come to be, Italian- Americans have been inter-j
ested attendants at street or park concerts, moving/
pictures, community "sings," lectures by members
of flying squadrons aiming in other years to sell Lib
erty Bonds, or promote the war and in these days
to combat bolshevism and strengthen prohibition.
The moving picture houses liberally patronized by"^
Italian- Americans have become with them an Ameri-,
canizer of great power for good and for ill. /
Protective agencies. — Other agencies, state or]
private, combatting the exploiters of Italians, havej
done much to attach these immigrants to our gov-j
emment, offsetting the bitterness engendered from
the frauds and privations they have had to endure.i
Such are the Legal Aid bureaus, public employment/^
bureaus and information bureaus, the various guides
and bulletins in English and Italian freely dis
tributed, American banks catering to their patron
age, housing associations such as the Octavia Hill
Association in Philadelphia, dispensaries and visit-

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 95
ing nurse associations. Wherever through organ
izations or through plain human intercourse, sym
pathetic notice, fairness, courtesy, kindness, service,
have been shown, Italian-America has responded,
and greedily absorbed ideas and ideals destined to
make her one in spirit with the best people of the
land. Naturalization. — One agency of assimilation reA -TT '
mains to be spoken of — the exaltation of naturaliza-J >-^
tion and citizenship. The absolute ignorance of the'
average immigrant of this last generation of the
meaning of vote has been suggested, his innocent
connivance in prostituting his citizenship with the
politician who bought his vote is well known. Along
with it have gone a grinding out of naturalization
papers and the completion of the necessary formali
ties with as little dignity as at the taking out of a
dog license. Indeed the Italian, used to dignity in\
public acts, has often come to the hour of his en-|-yj ,
f ranchisement with heart swelling with pride and|.ijj_
new-found patriotism, only to face a court con
temptuous, indifferent and frankly derisive of his/
act. For many this farce is the only Americaniza-[
tion they have known, a process carried out at thel
insistence of a certain public opinion which has
thought to rush naturalization and thereafter has
considered assimilation accomplished. Many voices \ _
have recently been raised against this hasty andj j| f
thoughtless method, rightly insisting that assimila-;
tion may be a matter of years, and is not primarily
a question of language, but of a growing allegiance
of the heart. Such have recommended that the
franchise be given as a reward of merit and accom
plishment and after a long period of time if neces
sary. ^^ For the Italian immigrant fully as much as jyi i
for any other, Americanization cannot be hurried, h
23 Gino Speranza, Does Americanization Americanize? At
lantic Monthly, February, 1920.

96 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
i Americans can only guide it by the various agencies
jabove suggested and strengthen it by_ sympathy,
{democracy and justice. Dr. E. A. Steiner makes
the theme of one of his chapters the reflected dis
gust for America and things American of an Ital
ian couple in Eome whose only son Eocco had been
here for some years. Suddenly as if by magic
this attitude changed. Their son, a candidate for
naturalization, had been one at a banquet given to
New Americans, attended by the best citizens and
the authorities of his American city, where apprecia
tive words were said of the newcomers and the
American ideals were made luminous, and he, their
boy, had been called upon to give his word as spokes
man for the Italian group. With pride, he whose
faith in America had been strained to the breaking
point, wrote, "I am an American."^*
It was in Cleveland, Ohio, where the Italians ap
proximate 23,000 people, ^° that the first American
ization Day was inaugurated, to be followed by
other cities. To the candidate for naturalization
from no other race is so vivid an appeal made to
the imagination as to the Italian when the Fourth
of July becomes the natal day of his citizenship as
well as of America. He feels himself baptized into
allegiance to a new Fatherland.
Racial allegiance. — If he comes to use English,
which he realizes is necessary in order that through
print and speech he may come nearer the heart of
America, he finds it entirely possible to own two
allegiances — to Italy, country of his origin, and to
America, country of his adoption, as if they were
respectively mother and wife. His broadened out
look in America has perhaps made him appreciate
Italy more, and that in turn has evolved into love
for America, land of his success, land of his chil-
2* Steiner, The Broken Wall, Chapter XIII, p. 205.
2^ Coulter, The Italians of Cleveland, p. 8.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN SOCIAL CONDITIONS 97
dren, land of his heart to which, although he may
return to visit native land and the ' ' hole from which
he was digged," to adapt a Steiner phrase, he feels
impelled to return to the country into which he has
built his Ufe. He has learned the American mind,
he has felt the call of America, which has in it
money, wages, a chance, but more than all these, a
new standard, a new routine, an enlarging sense of
self,^° and if we have taken pains to offer it to him,
an enlarging sense of the ideal.
The war an agency in Americanization. — During
the war Italian reservists and volunteers returned
to Italy to fight, before America came into the strug
gle. Later in the American Army, perhaps 300,000
men of Italian stock, or very conservatively, 245,000,
more than of any other immigrant nationality, were
enrolled. Twenty thousand of them gave their lives.
And while not one was sentenced for military crime,
they were excellent fighters and soldiers, and gar
nered honor and distinction galore. Their relatives'
at home in the United States gave largely, and ji
poured out their means in Liberty Loans which ap
pealed absolutely both to their sense of duty and of
profit. They were an indispensable element in war
industries. Each Italian colony had its diversified
record of service and sacrifice. All this did more\-:i
to assimilate and Americanize than many years of/- ' "^^^
peace. An Italian speaking of the attitude of
Italian- American reservists has said, "To most of
the returned immigrants the distinction between
Italian and American citizenship has seemed and is
vague and unreal ... a legalistic distinction.
What counts with them is what they feel." . . .
Then after giving instances of the common affec
tion for America, he concludes: "This is America's
reward for having offered every humble yet adven
turous soul the longed-for opportunity, for having
''•' The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow, Chapter XII.

98 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
tendered a home and a refuge to the disinherited of
every land. For only through such largess could
the spiritual revolution have been accomplished by
which the age-old idea of loyalty to a racial group
is converted into an allegiance of racially divided
and even opposite elements to a Patria representing
essentially human as distinguished from political
ideals." "
27 Speranza, Outlook, Vol. 119, p. 105, "Hearts' Allegiance."

Chapter IV
EELIGIOUS CONDITIONS AMONG ITALIAN-
AMEEICANS
Part I
OLD AND NEW FAITHS AND CHTJECHES
Transplanted Italian Roman CathoUcism. — In the
first chapter of this study the peasant or emigrating
class of Italy was found to be nominally Eoman
Catholic, hence ninety-five per cent of Italian immi
grants landing at Ellis Island have called them
selves Eoman Catholics. But they have inherited all
the varieties of defective faith and practice which
they have at home, such as irregular church at
tendance, anti-clerical hostility, and antipathy to re
ligion on the one hand, while bigotry, superstition,
and attachment to religious conventions if not reli
gious realities persist upon the other. In America
newcomers encounter two currents, one tending to
fix them in their Eoman Catholicism, one tending to
detach them from it.
Slow Roman Catholic beginnings. — ^Eoman Ca
tholicism was slow in providing for the religious
needs of the first comers among them. One reason
given for this neglect has been the hostility of the
dominant Irish to the Italians. The chief difficulty
has undoubtedly been Italian prejudice against
priests, and unfamiliarity with direct contributions
for church support. The less religious element, re
acting to the liberal atmosphere of America, has
made haste to abandon that irksome relationship to
the church to which they were constrained in Italy.

100 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
Accustomed to a church supported by the state or
from its properties, they have not wished to under
stand or respond to the necessity for direct giving
for church maintenance required in America. {The
Catholic Encyclopedia, Article Italians, p. 205.)
Hence the Italian colony in any American city grows
to some size before a self-supporting church can
be organized. In fact the initiative in organizing
churches among Italian Americans has largely had
to be taken by the American Catholic authorities,
who furnish a large part of the support which Ital
ians are unable or unwilling to give. "Many an
Italian has had his religion in his wife's name, and
the majority of Italians in America have no wives."
. . . "Ideals of political liberty have collided here
in America with the established order and temporali
ties of the church." . . . "The Italian takes his re
ligion lightly ... he comes to us in a state of men
tal and moral reaction ... he belongs quite as
much to the army of the unchurched as to the ranks
of Catholicism. . . . Among eighty Italian newspa
pers in the United States no one is religious or
Catholic. "_ {The Literary Digest of October 11,
1913, quoting the Catholic Citizen of Milwaukee.)
To-day (1921) there are 190 ipapers (weekly or
oftener), only six of which are Eoman Catholic.
Causes and character of Roman CathoUc effort. —
The first Italian Eoman Catholic Church, St. An
thony's, was founded in New York City in 1866.
The most active body among Italian immigrants has
been the Franciscan fathers who followed them from
Italy. (Ibid., The Catholic Encyclopedia.) The ex
pansion of Protestant work among Italian-Ameri
cans has roused the fears of Catholics and stirred
them to action. In 1913 the calculation was made
that one million Italian immigrants had been lost
to the church, thousands having been attracted to
Protestantism and tens of thousands remaining un-

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 101
churched. It was further stated that according to
the Catholic Directory for 1911, while there were
250 Protestant Italian churches and missions in the
United States, there were not more than 150 Eoman
Catholic. (Ibid., the Literary Digest.) So it came
about that with the increase in number of the immi
grants after 1900 and again from 1910 onward,
greater Catholic activity among them began to be
noted. The Protestant Italian churches now (1921)
number 304.
Toward the Protestant work this activity took the
form of intense opposition, which has at times
broken out in violence and lawlessness. Catholics
have rarely been willing to tolerate Protestant work
for Italians even where Catholic work does not exist.
Many Protestant edifices which had become sur
rounded by the Italian population have been sold
to the Catholics. Others were built, uniformly fine
and appropriate structures. The earlier Italian
priests, assigned to American service, were of in
ferior quality, undesired in Italy, and consequently
unable to hold their people here. But later, abler
men were sent. American dioceses were admon
ished in a special papal encyclical to give attention
to the Italian-American field. Young American
Seminarians, chiefly of Irish descent, were sent to
Eome expressly to learn the Italian language and
character. These have often met with marked suc
cess, from the Catholic point of view. Their atti
tude to Protestant workers has been even more
rabidly intolerant than that of their Italian col
leagues. Italian priests, especially, have worked under
great handicaps, on account of their mistaken notion
that a priest may properly act as a priest even
though his private character be questionable. Be
cause their training has been away from the life of
the people, their methods have often been the antith-

102 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
esis of American democracy and their education
has produced reluctance and helplessness in under
taking social work. Success has occurred where the
priest has been a real man, of large personality
and broad views and devoted to his people.
Expansion of Cathohc social service. — Of late
years the Church has imitated Protestant social ac
tivities and service by conducting sewing schools,
music classes, gymnasiums, athletic activities, Eng
lish classes, day schools, kindergartens, and Boy
Scout troops. Other institutions for children care
for foundlings, orphans and the wayward. There is
an increasing number of Catholic social settlements.
The society of San Eaffaele and the society,
"Italica Gens," protect and serve Italian immi
grants. The impression in the past has been that
such social efforts have aimed to foster "l'ltali
anita," — overseas characteristics — rather than to
Americanize; or, indeed, were less for the sake of
the service rendered than to maintain the authority
of the church.
Taking precedent from the war experience of the
Knights of Columbus, the Eoman Catholic church
has entered upon an ambitious reconstruction pro
gram of social effort, centralized in the National
Catholic Welfare Council. Already under its direc
tion a new and completely organized community
center in the heart of the Italian colony of Utica,
N. Y., has been opened (National Catholic Welfare
Bulletin, November, 1920). Doubtless the adequate
social service training for personnel will in time
react upon Italian parishes. It is to be hoped that
the Americanization plans going forward shall be
made to apply to these parishes where the Catholic
Church through its parochial schools, various so
cieties and general influence is able to be a tremen
dous force for assimilation, but has hitherto been an
inert if not a retarding one. It is desirable also that

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 103
her influence continue to be set against those forces
seeking to destroy the family and to disrupt the
state. Italian-American Catholicism may now utter its
voice through the press, and indeed possesses six
organs of its own, chiefly weeklies, in several cities.
The 1916 Census of Eeligious Bodies states the num
ber of its churches, using Italian and English, to be
476 with 1,515,818 adherents, of which 149 using
Italian only reported 420,511 adherents. Here it
must be remembered that this number is not made
up of adult members but includes also all children
who have been baptized in the Eoman Catholic
churches. Roman Catholic summary. — The foregoing then
is an estimate of the attempt of the Eoman Catholic
Church to fix a transplanted people in their ancestral
belief. According to their standards a more efficient
clergy leadership both of Italian and non-Italian
personnel has been built up, but is not yet adequate.
Parishes with ample plant and multiplied organiza
tions have been or are ijeing-formedrinr-celoiiies of
sufficient size. Advantage is being taken of the com
ing of a larger proportiSSToTltalian women to draw
the more wayward -menxneffibers'of their families
into line. The Italian husband commands in his
family more than among Anglo-Saxon races, and
hence frequently determines th© religious attitude of
his wife. Nevertheless, like her sisters, everywhere,
the Italian woman is conservative and the conser
vator in matters of religion, and in general exerts a
decided influence over her husband towards retain
ing attachment to the ancient church. Appeal is
skillfully made to the idea that the Eoman Catholic
faith is an essential part of the racial heritage. We
have seen that the first stimulating effect of America
upon many immigrants is to raise in their esteem the
racial heritage. Through this motive and the appeal

104 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
to social ambition, it has come about that the well-
to-do, the professional leaders, and other prominent
members of colonies, and their wives are attracted
to be trustees or other directors in churches and
their auxiliary organizations. This occurs, what
ever may be their personal views or character. And
finally, finding it impossible to retain large numbers
of adult immigrants, the church is seeking a grip
upon the younger generation by establishing paro
chial schools and social activities and as far as may
be constraining its attendance thereon.
Overseas Protestant faith retained. — ^A few con
gregations of Waldensians retain in America their
overseas organization. There is a large Walden
sian congregation in New York City with a Walden
sian pastor, Eev. Bartolomeo Tron. They are found
in isolated groups scattered over the country, in
Massachusetts, at Valdese, N. C, and Monett, Mo.,
near Texarkana, Brownsville and Gainesville, Tex.,
Provo, Utah, and Santa Ana, Cal., and in New
York, Chicago, Cleveland and other cities. Numeri
cally greater are groups and scattered individuals of
Waldensian and other missionary churches in Italy,
who have become members here of Protestant
churches, both Italian and American, and whose na
tive Protestantism is a stabilizing and constructive
force. The single church of Grotte, located among the
sulphur mines of southern Sicily, has the proud
record of having assisted in the organization of no
less than eight missions in America through the
agency of emigrants gone forth from it. It is sig
nificant, too, that such a church in Italy may have
been founded originally by evangelized immigrants
returned from the United States, or may have been
the fruit of the work of some American denomina
tional board laboring in Italy.
Comparing the figures of the Eeligious Census

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 105
of 1916 for Italian- Americans affiliated with any re
ligious organization, and the total number of them
resident in the United States, we discover that hun
dreds of thousands of them are not even nominally
churched. If we omit those who are evangelicals, the
religious division postulated for Italy holds good
also for America. The division will be remembered
as between the indifferent, the faithful Eoman
Catholics and the atheistic (Chap. I, Part V). A
leading Italian priest in New York admitted that at
least fifty per cent of the Italians were without the
church except for baptism, marriage and burial
(McClure, Leadership in the New America, p. 161).
A religious leader of Philadelphia estimated that
ninety to ninety-five per cent of the Italians of that
city do not go to church. One writer holds the gen
eral percentage of Italian unchurched to average
sixty per cent and states that a leading Italian Eo
man Catholic prelate put the figure even higher
(Sartorio, p. 104). A questionnaire sent out to
Italian pastors of various denominations promi
nently engaged in Italian evangelization evoked the
surprisingly unanimous reply, "About one-third."^
Religious indifference analyzed. — This indiffer
ence is often dislike of the priest, of perfunctory ec
clesiastical service, of the compulsion to support,
by presence and money, functions and ritual whose
value, in the atmosphere of America, is more than
ever discounted as trifling. It is insurgency against
outworn superstition, and ignorance, often studi
ously perpetuated. There are many ex-students for
the priesthood in America who began their studies
and discouraged by the deadness of the study and
the life to whieh it was leading them abandoned it.
Fundamental faith has been bred out of the people,
and the great verities taught but sparingly. The
1 Mangano, Religious Work among Italians in America, p. 8.

106 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
sheep may not know their hunger, but if they do
look up, they are not fed. They are the product of
a hollow religious system which, even here, in its
essentials, has been but slightly improved.
And yet in the minds of the larger number of
these indifferent ones there is no renunciation of
their Catholic faith. They do not know themselves
as indifferent. Their mentality, as molded, is a
Catholic mentality, and if they think at all they be
lieve in the ideal of their church. They are not as
yet atheists, they are simply poverty-stricken in es
sential religion. But simply because they are indif
ferent, they are not thereby Protestants, nor do
they always give greater welcome to Protestant
propaganda or absorb its teachings more sincerely.
They are a legitimate field for whosoever is able to
inspire them with vital religion. Yet since they
claim no distinction from other "good" Italian
Catholics, it is impossible to segregate them as ob
jects of Protestant effort. Often it is true that Ital
ians who have continued to believe in and observe the
old faith, make the best evangelical Christians when
convinced that the new is superior to the old. For
mer bigots are the best members of our Italian mis
sions. They have capacity and zeal.
Indifferent Italian Catholics often retain the con
ventionalities and superstitions in which their re
ligious heritage has abounded and to which igno
rance has enslaved them. They would be distressed
for the future state of their families were their
members not baptized or buried or even married, in
the bosom of the Church. They are apt to confound
their esthetic feelings before the pageantry of altars
with real religion. They continue to support fan
tastic street processions. Eeverence for their pa
tron saint, homage to his day and his altar continue
to be scrupulously observed, when other religious
practice is neglected. Fear of the evil eye, the con-

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 107
sequent wearing of charms, even respect for witch
ery and wizardry persist. Since these lines were
first written, the writer has been informed of a
young Italian girl in the first stages of tuberculosis,
who believes herself bewitched. She sedulously goes
for treatment to a so-called Italian doctor who has
told her that her rejected lover in revenge for her
refusal of him is taking her blood, hence her de
pleted physical condition.
The drift to socialism and atheism. — ^A lesser
number of Italian-Americans are constantly pass
ing through indifference to skepticism, and from
skepticism to atheism. At some point of the way
they break absolutely with the Eoman Catholic
Church. Their skepticism at the start is usually in
duced by overseas socialistic propaganda which ex
ploits the abuses of the church. But the mistake is
made of confounding all religion with ecclesiasti
cism. Christian faith of every name is rejected as
an outworn superstition imposed upon the ignorant
to keep them in social and economic subjection. A
great throng of young Italians take this position.
Many are members of organized clubs and engage in
active propaganda by voice and pen. The writer
was for some months in contact with such a club
bearing the ambitious name of "Circle for Social
Studies," the young men of which represented a
number of brands of socialism, anarchism, and athe
ism. The noticeable thing about them was the de
fectiveness of their logic, the violence of their preju
dice, and the onesidedness of their reading.
Undesirable moral results. — The most undesirable
result of these defective religious attitudes is the
materialism and immorality which they unleash.
These are the natural result of that which is prac
tically paganism. Along with the unsettlement of
life in a new country, there is lacking the power of
real religion to restrain passionate tempers and

108 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
strong sexual natures. And the normal Italian mo
tive of saving, coupled with the adoption of the
American ideal of "getting ahead," becomes swollen
into materialistic and unscrupulous ambition, not
seldom selfish and cruel. Hence arise those sordid
extremes of Italian- American life to which we have
alluded in a previous chapter.
The challenge to evangelical effort. — ^It should
not be deduced from the foregoing survey of the
seriousness of religious conditions among Italian-
Americans that they are not open to religious ap
proach. They can be reached. In fact the serious
ness of the lack of real religion among them is in it
self sufficient incentive to work among them. That
the charge of proselyting should not distract, and
that the motive of Protestant self-interest should re-
enforce the motive of altruistic service. Prof. Steiner
adduces where he writes : ' * There is no institution in
the United States which will be so profoundly af
fected by the immigrant as the Protestant church.
Without him she will languish and die ; with him she
has a future. The Protestant church is called upon
to lift the immigrant into a better conception of
human relations for her own sake and for the sake
of the communities which she wishes to serve. . . .
This she must do even if it brings her under sus
picion of proselyting. Indeed one of the growing
weaknesses is the loss of those deep convictions
which make proselyting easy." ^
Itahans and the Y. M. 0. A. and Y. W. C. A.—
Two organizations which while repudiating all pur
pose or practice of proselyting, yet definitely seek
to foster Christian character and friendliness
through wholesome activity and contact with Chris
tian personality, are the Young Men's Christian
Association and the Young Women's Christian As-
2 Steiner, The Immigrant Tide : Its Ebb and Flow, p. 326.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 109
sociation. It is difficult to dissociate the work of
the former from its general immigrant work. Aside
from the association in Montreal, Canada, the writer
knows of no association on this continent calling it
self Italian, the few such efforts once initiated, hav
ing been abandoned. However, the sum total of
service to those of Italian blood is large either
through the normal activities of Y. M. C. A. build
ings or through the port or community service of
Americanization secretaries. The usual activities in
the buildings are too expensive, of too high a grade,
of too different a social sphere for the average Ital
ian immigrant to share. In recent years the more
Americanized youths have come to be no inconsider
able element, especially in departments located near
Italian colonies. Contact is had more freely through
employment bureaus and in English and naturaliza
tion classes, particularly where encouraged by em
ployers in factories. Italian boys are being touched
increasingly by athletic activities and summer camps
of city associations and by the smaller groups of
county and rural Y. M. C. A's. Boys and men have
been interested in "thrift" and "safety-first"
movements and in "block" organizations. Except
during the war a large service of information, as
sistance and protection has been rendered to Italian
immigrants at ports of departure, on shipboard, at
arrival at large city railway stations. A great re
cent development has been the organization of out
door community "sings" and concerts for the public
of which Italians form a part, and the organization
of racial concerts in which Italian groups, true to
their native genius, have been prominent.
The Young Women's Christian Association has a
distinct ministry to Italian women in its Interna
tional Institute service for racial groups. It has a
corps of Italian secretaries and work for Italian
women and girls in thirty-four cities. It has re-

no THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
cently begun to touch isolated mral groups also.
Activities promoted are study of English, educa
tional, vocational, recreative. These are carried on
through clubs, classes and lectures held wherever op
portunity offers, and, not the least important,
through home visitation. A valuable series of ex
ceedingly attractive pamphlets has been issued un
der such titles as Naturalization for Women, The
Kindergarten, The Baby, The Problems of the
Mother in a New Land, What America has for You,
etc. This has an Italian edition. For those at work
for Italians, the Italian information in the regular
bulletin, entitled, Foreign-Born, is very useful. The
needs and problems of Italian women have been
gone into elsewhere in this study. It is obvious that
the intelligent, sympathetic service rendered to them
by the Young Women's Christian Association is
vital and merits extension.
Beginning of Italian Mission Churches. — The first
Italian Protestant Church was founded in New York
City in 1880 by the Eev. Antonio Arrighi, who, aged
in service and pastor emeritus, still lives till this
day the revered and beloved dean of Italian min
isters. It is a pleasure also to record that his
work remains to this moment a powerful and pro
gressive nursery of Christian workers and energy.
The first religious work among Italian immigrants
was begun by active, conscientious members of neigh
boring churches aroused by the inadequacy of Italian
conventional religion, the inactivity of the Eoman
Catholic Church and the apparent religious and
moral abandonment of the Protestant denomina
tions. Many churches have never awakened to their
duty to their Italian neighbors and others have been
unwilling to make the necessary effort and sacrifice.
Later, when local means were insufficient, state or na
tional church boards have taken charge of personnel

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 111
salaries and direction of the work. Both Presby
terians and Methodists recruited workers from over
seas, the former chiefly from the Waldensians, the
latter from their own stations in Italy. The Episco
palian workers have been, from the first, consecrated
American men and women, who through friendliness
and character won their way, often in spite of im
perfect knowledge of the language.
The pioneers, Arrighi and Nardi.— Italian immi
gration has furnished some rarely intelligent and
devoted religious leaders. One of these, Eev. An
tonio Arrighi, an itinerant seller of busts, was con
verted by his host in an Iowa town. Trained in a
Methodist Academy, college and theological school,
he became the founder of the first Italian mission in
the U. S. His large experience and educated judg
ment made him an invaluable guide. ^
Eev. Michele Nardi, (the D. jL. Moody of Italian
Missions), was a business man of growing wealth
and Italian Consul, well bred and educated and of
winning personality. Converted through the read
ing of the Bible, he became an evangelist, traveling
with his wife from Maine to California. He re
turned to Italy where he died from overwork in
1914. Making the Bible central in his preaching,
without anti-clerical bitterness, cooperating freely
with different denominations, a leader in tent and
social work among Italians, a winner of young men,
he became the spiritual father of scores of Italian
preachers. * A Waldensian leader of exceptional in
fluence among all denominations was Eev. Prof.
Alberto Clot, at the time of his death, director of
the bureau of immigration of the Waldensian Aid
Society. He was a man of rare character, an accom
plished speaker, whose death was lamented and
^ Antonio, the Galley Slave.
* Michele Nardi, His Life and Work, by A. B. Simpson.

112 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
whose memory is revered by all who knew him.
Mention should be made of Eev. Antonio Mangano,
dean of the Italian Department of Colgate Theo
logical Seminary, East Orange, N. J. Through the
interest of a Long Island Baptist pastor and peo
ple, he was led to Christ. He graduated with
honors from Brown University in 1899. He spent
a year in Italy studying the language. He grad
uated from Union Theological Seminary in 1903, re
ceiving the Master's degree from Columbia Univer
sity the same year. After a second year in Italy,
studying Italian immigration, he took up the same
work here. After three years as pastor of the First
Italian Baptist Church, he was elected to his pres
ent work. He is the author of Sons of Italy, a hand
book on "religious work for Italians in America,"
and numerous articles in magazines. A missionary
leader of his denomination says: "Dr. Mangano
through the considerable number of Italian ministers
whose training he has supervised has entirely
changed the outlook of our Baptist work for Ital-

Part II
METHODS OP WOBK
New methods and activities are being constantly
tried out, and accepted or rejected in the field of
Italian evangelization. Nevertheless after all these
years, many activities have become standardized and
integral in the program of every Italian mission. At
least an approach to a standard program can be out
lined (see Appendix "A"). Modifications of such a
program of standard activities are being put into
operation in three types of institutions: the social
settlement, the institutional church, and the average
church or mission. The impulse of the social gospel

SAN GIOVANNI IN CONCA, MILAN,
The oldest Waldensian Church in Italy.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 113
and the adaptability of the settlement program to
minister to all sorts of needs among Italians, has
promoted a number of religious social settlements
among them. Opinions differ as to whether the two
plants should be separated or closely joined. Ee
ligious instruction may be attempted in the settle
ment itself. It may act as a feeder for the affiliated
church and Sunday school. Sometimes the plant is
at a distance from the church with no obvious con
nection between the two.
The American Parish in New York City encour
ages clubs and classes in the Italian churches and
also conducts separate settlements. One denomina
tion is planning to build 50 settlements or commun
ity houses for immigrant people. Many of these will
have no direct connection with an individual church.
For a list of the activities of Davenport Settlement,
New Haven, Conn., in which church life is carried
on in the plant (see Appendix "C"). For a schedule
of the activities of the Judson Neighborhood House,
New York City (Baptist), (see Appendix; "B").
The institutional church. — ^A common form of
service to Italians is the institutional church, which
includes churches with a round of week day activi
ties often carried on in ill-fitted basements, and
plants rendering myriad forms of service of which
the Chapel group of Grace Church Parish, N. Y., is
an illustration. The list includes the chapel, hospi
tal, parish house, clergy house, club house, mission
houses and vicarage.
Friendly service the avenue to rehgious ministry.
— In carrying out these lines of social endeavor, the
motive in the mind of the worker is complex. He
is working contrary to the Eoman Catholic idea of
religious activities solely in churchly buildings, ad
hering only to the fundamental idea that the church
auditorium should be reserved for sacred functions.
He is inspired by the humane service of Jesus. But

114 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
above all he realizes that the religious approach to
Italians must be in large measure indirect, or must
be made attractive and concrete through vivid ac
tivity and multiplied personal contact. The worker
must be first and continuously friend if he would be
spiritual minister. Hence a progressive Italian min
ister in an Italian colony, with some sort of plant at
his disposal, sets in motion certain typical activi
ties, not strictly religious, which ramify in unlimited
variety as opportunity and staff of workers permit.
(I) His first point of contact is with the Italia^
man as an immigrant. He builds up a class in Eng
lish and later in citizenship. Then a men's club, a
mutual aid or death benefit society, or in rare in
stances establishes a cooperative store — activities,
which because of the individualistic nature of the
Italian, are most difficult of success and not seldom
provocative of discord in the church.
(II) In the second place he will seek to serve the
children in order to found a Sunday school. To this
end he will organize the boys for games or athletics,
and later a troop of Boy Scouts or a castle of the
Knights of King Arthur. To reach the girls he will
ask for an Italian woman missionary, or failing in
that, an American woman worker, to establish a sew
ing class and perhaps a domestic science class.
(Ill) A signal means of gaining the people's good
will is a day nursery and kindergarten, and in sum
mer a Daily Vacation Bible School. A choir is of
unrivaled attractiveness and usefulness, and, when
expanded into a chorus and strengthened by an or
chestra, is a tremendous asset to any Italian- Ameri
can church. A veteran Congregational pastor has
made a unique success by dividing his attention be
tween music, English and citizenship, and church
functions. Indeed there is no one combination more
valuable than that of pastor and music master.
(IV) Because of the strategic place of the Italian

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 116
mother and the inability of the pastor freely to enter
the Italian home, the woman missionary is essential
to women's participation in church life and activi
ties. (V) An avenue of approach to the young people
is their artistic and dramatic interest. Lectures, ex
hibitions, celebrations, concerts, pictures and social
evenings call in the public and all members of the
family. The program should be flexible, new activi
ties taken up and old discontinued as their advantage
or disadvantage is revealed. There are two major
problems. The immigrant must first be persuaded
to cross the threshold of a church building, so great
is his fear of excommunication, and prejudice en
tertained against Protestants. The second is to win
his heart. Activities must be used to disarm his
prejudices, assist in winning his friendship, his af
fection for the church, and his allegiance to Christ
and his ideals.
The Sunday school central. — The success or fail
ure of the Sunday school is of the utmost im
portance. Had all the one-time Italian pupils in
Sunday schools become church members, the task of
Italian evangelization would be much nearer to com
pletion than it is. Through the Sunday school many
Italian parents have become interested in evangeli
cal churches. It is likewise true that because parents
were Protestants, the children have continued in
Sunday school. That we need the parents, espe
cially the mother, Italian pastors feel keenly. They
generally agree that most Sunday schools in Italian
missions should be conducted in English and that
the teachers and lesson helps be American. But the
use of English undoubtedly lessens the indifferent
or nominal Catholic's interest in the school. Many
Italian workers feel that there is lacking the proper
shaping of courses and the note of Protestant
apologetics in the teaching which should put con-

116 THI ITALIANS IN AMERICA
viction regarding Protestant ideals and attachment
to the evangelical church into the heart of the
Italian child during the impressionable years. Va
rious Italian pastors, unable to cope easily with this
burdensome problem in the Sunday school, are em
phasizing their catechism classes. Also, discon
tented with the shortness of the Sunday school
hour, they are calling together the scholars during
the week, and making use of special courses. Many
churches hold Bible Study for children on a week
night, following it with stereopticon pictures and
songs. The ministry of evangelization. — Since immigra
tion has been largely of young men, Italian pastors
have found their predominant work to be a min
istry calculated to win them. All other types of
service have been necessarily subservient to evan
gelization: a giving of the living gospel to those
who were without the gospel. Aside from the natu
ral resentment of pastors who have emerged from
the hoUowness and uselessness of their native
church, or the dislike of the immigrant for priest
craft and papal opposition to Italian national aspi
rations, the force of the preaching of the New Testa
ment has been toward making a complete break with
the Eoman Catholic Church. This rupture has
cleared away the ground completely and left to the
Italian pastor the power and the responsibility for
building entirely new church ideals and institutions.
The actual result has been the adoption by the larger
number of an ideal of the church which is radically
Puritan, and unfortunately in many cases rabidly
denominational. Variant ideals of the church held by Itahan
Protestants. — In contrast to the above is the ideal
of Protestant work for Italians of the Anglican or
High Episcopal Church. This ideal commends itself
to many Americans who know the Italian's natural

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 117
delight in color and ceremony, or who are familiar
with the Modernist in Italy who is Catholic but not
papal. High church Italian rectors would slough off
papal superstition, while retaining many features of
Catholic ritual. They make much of the ideal of
"Catholic" in the broad sense, asserting not only
the authority of the New Testament but of the early
Church Fathers. Eecently the great future for
Anglicanism in work for Italians has been vigorously
championed. ^ However churches of this type hav^e
not yet developed any extraordinary growth or stay
ing power, and what success has been attained seems
due to the personality of the rector rather than his
method of approach. Indeed the strongest Episcopal
churches seem to be those of the more liberal and
socially-minded type. The "Catholic, but not Eo
man" type occasionally incurs the derision of the
Italian population through their use of certain Ital
ian Eoman Catholic ceremonies which are held in
tolerant contempt by the more enlightened class of
Italian colonists.
By far the larger number of Protestant Italian
churches and missions in the United States have
been the fruit of a vigorous evangelistic preaching
of the gospel.
Usefulness of street preaching and tent work. —
To many immigrants the evangelistic message has
come as something entirely new. Scenes of conver
sion have occurred which recall the early church.
Thousands hold the Gospel as a watchword, a token
of emancipation from ignorance, superstition and
profitless ceremony. It has been equally effectual
with those who were formerly churchmen, those who
have been sincere and fanatical Catholics, and those
who have abandoned all religious practices. This
evangelism has made a large use of street and tent
" Capozzi, Protestantism and the Latin Soul.

118 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
preaching. Through it Italian pastors have gone
out to people who would not come to them, that hav
ing gained their confidence, they might attract them
to the church. Such work requires courage and abil
ity. The preacher has often been the target of the
derision and rowdy violence of the bigoted. The Ital
ian church of the Ascension in New York was built
up by open air and tent preaching. Preaching on
church steps and lawns is also common. These
methods are exceptionally useful in dispelling preju
dice and disarming malicious gossip concerning
Protestants. Such services are only aids to all-the-
year-around preaching of the gospel indoors.
Pastoral friendship vital. — ^Above every other
factor, with the average Italian Protestant, the pas
tor and his staff make the church. The number who
can be attracted within the walls will vary with the
number of contacts which can be made with the col
ony through the sympathetic personality and sincere
friendship of the workers, shown through calls made
and service rendered to individuals and families, not
the buying of the interest but the winning of their
love and good will. Members are not members who
are had "for a shovelful of coal." But the patient
explanation necessary to drive home unfamiliar gos
pel truth, and the friendliness which is vital in mak
ing it convincing, is possble only by home calling and
multiplied errands of mercy. The custom of the
people which restricts the calling of the minister
upon the women of the family during the absence of
the men greatly limits his acquaintance with them
and makes imperative either the missionary service
of the pastor's wife or the employment of a woman
missionary, of sterling qualities, for, as has been
previously stated, no family is securely evangelized
until the mother is won.
The matter of church edifice. — ^Able leadership
succeeded in founding many of the missions still

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 119
flourishing, in stores and mean, little halls. Endur
ing Italian congregations must be housed in church
edifices which approach in a modest way at least
the ecclesiastical dignity of architecture of Eoman
Catholic churches. Either a new structure, or an
old American church made over to them, or the
privilege of the use of the edifice of some American
church, must provide (whatever its antecedents) an
edifice decent and churchly. If the church edifice is
not central in the Italian colony, the growth of the
work will suffer. Of course it should be pleasing,
y?-ell-yentilated, well-heated and well-lighted. The
interior finish, windows, organ and pulpit furnish
ings should be as beautiful as may be.
It is Italian usage that the church auditorium or
the room which serves for the solemn religious serv
ices be reserved for those, or for dignified and seri
ous functions. Hence that church incurs severe
criticism from the population which employs its
church auditorium for popular exhibitions, socials
and entertainments. The writer was once repri
manded by a church deacon because in a beautiful
allegorical Easter exercise, the stereopticon was
used to light up the platform and the usage re
minded the worthy official of a spot-light. A hall,
such as the Sunday school room ordinarily is, is a
very desirable and useful part of any Italian church
plant, and if it has a separate entrance there will
be no objection to its use for all sorts of social func
tions. Appropriate ritual, — Mention has already been
made of the ideal of picturesque ritual held by some.
The better way would seem to be to foster the ideal
of "beauty in simplicity" rather than imitate in
any sense "the decadent showiness of the modern
Italian Eoman Catholic altar and rite," which Ital
ians, who have become Protestants, in most cases,
resent. The service should be rich in music and

120 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
Scripture, and solemn in prayer, adapted to the men
tality of its hearers who should participate as far
as they are able. The minister ought to be appro
priately dressed and his choir may be vested.
Such is the dislike of the word, "Protestant," with
which Italian-Americans have been imbued, it is
better policy, when making contact with them for the
first time, to emphasize our name of "evangelical
churches," which is accepted with approbation.
The effective message. — The Italian needs a gos
pel of high personal character and brotherhood, il
lustrated by altruism, cooperation and service, but
this obtains no grip on the ordinary, uninformed, un
disciplined, and almost uncivilized peasant who
comes to America. The Sicilian, intense in his loves
and hates, is not transformed by strivings after high
ideals, intellectually admired. Italians both on the
mainland and in Sicily need a supreme, personal
loyalty to some one whose love and service is the
all-embracing motive of his life. They have found
a crude substitute in the often vulgarly elaborated
and picturesque worship of the Virgin Mary and
the saints. The gospel which he needs is the an
cient message of the apostolic church — the Biblical
gospel of Jesus Christ — that he is a living Christ,
whose presence and help may be had by all, through
whom alone prayer may be made. Only a vital,
vivid, entirely-believed-in Christ can take the place
of his old faith. Such a love for Christ implanted
in the Italian mind and heart becomes an extraordi
nary power — "The expulsive power of a new affec
tion." Meeting the forces of error. — ^He will not be won
by intense anti-clerical attacks upon the Pope, priests
and church. Such negative preaching gains few per
manent hearers, does not breed respect for the
preacher and does not build up a congregation in
faith and character. The Italian preacher who has

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 121
much anti-clericalism is likely to have too little gos
pel. The Italian's intellectual level must be raised
by simply contrasting Eoman Catholic error and
evangelical truth, not forgetting the great verities
and glories that are common alike to the Catholic
and Evangelical faiths. But only the preaching of
unadulterated, evangelical truth is constructive, dis
arming prejudice and winning men.
Instances of conversion among Itahans. — ^Italian-
Americans remain unmoved by the phenomenon of a
great revival. They have no knowledge of the Bible
or of evangelical beliefs hidden away as a vital spark
in their souls such as the American population has.
But when by one means or another the good news of
the gospel becomes familiar, as remarkable cases of
conversion occur as among any other race. An
Italian, confined for many months in jail, awaiting
trial on charge of murder, read and reread the
Italian Bible brought to him by his evangelical god
father, and was completely convinced. Upon release
he promptly ordered his family to have nothing fur
ther to do with the priest, and sought out the Italian
minister to whom, until then, he was unknown. A
young Italian immigrant, after a year or two of high
school training, became the only successful Italian-
American jockey, a youth of large earnings and
reckless spending. One night in the far west he
followed a street meeting within doors. He was
moved to the depths by the illustration used by the
speaker of a brokendown racehorse, and was con
verted. He immediately abandoned his career. Ee-
turning to his old home in an eastern state, inexperi
enced and opposed, out of his scanty means as a fac
tory operative, he set up an Italian mission. Later
while making an enviable record in France during
the war, he kept count of over four hundred pals
whom he had sought to evangelize in the trenches.
Since his discharge from service he has been in

122 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
preparation for the ministry in the Biblical Semi
nary in New York City. Unwilling to be idle in do
ing practical work, he has preached in the open air,
and won a gang of forty young men of previous un
savory reputation to church attendance and nine of
them to church membership.
Aside from the Sunday school, many pastors are
constrained to hold their young people despite the
regrets of the parents, by a service for them in Eng
lish, and have even organized for them separate
English congregations. Thus Broome St. Taber
nacle in New York has seen the disappearance of the
old American congregation, the coming in of the
Italian-speaking church, and now again the use of
English through the organization of a congregation
of Americans exclusively of Italian blood.
Unstable membership and finances. — ^As in other
phases of Americanization, the Italian-American
church is a school in cooperation, for a people in
large part primitive and undeveloped in the art of
organization. Even the most tactful and sincere
pastors here travel a rocky road. In the first place
their constituency is very mobile. Besides the defec
tions of adherents who have no root in themselves,
in meeting the unpopularity which the evangelical
profession incurs in the average Italian colony, there
is the constant shifting of a population unstable in
dustrially. Hence many of our missions have wit
nessed, in their few short years of life, a complete
turnover, once, or maybe several times, of their
membership. This means that pastors have done, as
they were compelled to do, an admirable work of
constant and active recruiting. It also means that
they are ever at the beginnings in preaching the
fundamentals, in the problems of pastoral care, in
the development of church loyalty and of the habit of
giving and self-support. The difficulty of our pas
tors in securing substantial and especially regular

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 123
contributions from a people which in their original
church never gave, but always paid for supposedly
value received, and in which the primary motive is
saving even to the point of avarice, is now pretty
thoroughly understood. The successes which have
been achieved in congregational giving, apparently
so modest, deserve greater recognition than they
have received. They have been possible only in
churches of exceptional size, stability and degree of
Americanization, exceptionally led. It is improbable
that any church composed chiefly of the usual peas
ant type of immigrants will ever come to self-sup
port, providing for the salary of its staff. However,
due to skillful and persistent effort, large sums are
being contributed in a few churches to church ex
penses and even towards the pastor's salary, and a
degree of sympathetic giving is being attained. En
tering upon regular, charitable, monetary obliga
tions is the last idea which certain primitive Italian
minds will entertain, although they will give gener
ously, on occasion, to single causes for which their
sympathy is enlisted.
Along with this trait there goes a deficient sense
of organization. It is exceedingly difficult to exclude
personal ambition, partisan jealousies, too tender
sensibilities, and to secure the acceptance of the will
of the majority by the minority as a necessary pro
cedure. Leadership must be firm, the pastor avoid-
' ing the disaster of weakly yielding on the one hand,
and imposing his will on the other. Many a man
would have been in despair over the checkered ca
reer of affairs in his church had he not realized that
good and ill were all a part of unfolding Chris-
tianization and Americanization.
The right relationship of Italians and Americans
in the work of Italian evangelization is of first im
portance. Evangelical work among them has often
been made or marred by the attitude of the Ameri-

124 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
cans doing it. Awed by American hurry and ef
ficiency, the Italian peasant immigrant may be out
wardly undemonstrative in the presence of Ameri
cans, but inwardly he is proud and shrewd. He is
quick to detect insincerity and to resent indifference,
superiority or imposition. If, at the worst, he seems
grasping in taking what America offers, at his best,
he is humble, eager to learn and deeply grateful for
the kindness shown him.
Types of church organization. — Out of these cir
cumstances there have arisen three forms of or
ganization in Italian- American evangelization: the
mission, the independent church and the branch
church. In the mission type the adherents become
members of the American church with which at
times they join in worship as in the celebration of
the Lord's Supper. In some part of its plant they
hold regular services in Italian. Frequently the
children join in the American Sunday school and
the Italian pastor is a part of the staff of the Ameri
can church. The type of the independent church is
not noticeably different from its American sister of
the same denomination. The branch church is a
combination of both types. It probably has its own
edifice. Mainly it has its own organization and serv
ices. It is closely linked to the American church,
the counsel and aid of which it enjoys. Many con
sider this the preferable form as it permits the free
dom of organization useful for development among
Italians, while affording a stimulating and re
straining relationship with Americans.
Relationships of Americans and Italians engaged
in evangelization. — The work was initiated, in most
instances, by American churches, and has been main
tained by them, or by national, state, or city mis
sionary societies of various denominations. There
has always and quite properly been American super
vision. Such supervision should be close and sympa-

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 125
thetic. _ Americans have too often judged the work
according to American standards of church success,
and have demanded too quick results both numerical
and financial. The Italians have not always grasped
the ideals which actuated American workers or
superintendents, and Americans have not always
taken account of the primitive nature of the Italians
and the necessity of presenting a gospel adapted to
them. But it is also true that the success of some
of our missions is directly traceable to big-hearted
American men and women, generous with means and
sympathy, and immensely patient and painstaking.
They have understood the Italians or have blotted
out all mistakes of method by the heartiness of their
love for this people. That work is likely to fail in
which in the absence of pronounced statistics of
progress, American friends or directors cannot pre
serve their faith in Italians and consider that the
work, large or small, must be done if needy souls
should have at least the opportunity to hear the in
vitation of the Kingdom of God.
Advances in supervision. — Some steps have been
taken to link up American churches and missionary
societies and directorates with Italian missions and
churches depending upon them. This has been ac
complished through the employment of American
supervisors proficient in the Italian language and
sociology, and of Italian pastors-at-large who have
the ear of Italian churches and happy connections
with American authorities as well. It has also been
fostered by special church committees for Italian
work composed of persons of infinite tact and inter
est. It is essential that Italian pastors should un
derstand the American point of view and know how
to cooperate with Americans. It is also exceedingly
important that American pastors in touch with
Italian communities should study them and their
characteristics. For much of the second generation

126 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
which is evangelical is going to come into the mem
bership of the American churches. The wisest Ital
ian pastors are already recommending to the care of
affiliated American churches certain of their youth
ful elements of such a cast of Americanization that
they are no longer at home in the Italian missions.
However they are persistently encouraging such per
sons to return to their native churches as helpers in
the Sunday school, etc. The American pastor must
know how to assure them a rightful, comfortable,
active part in American church life if he would not
lose them to his church and probably to aU church
connection. Italian-Americans in American churches. — ^Al
though statistics are lacking to demonstrate the fact,
the number of Italian- Americans being admitted to
American churches directly from those smaller Ital
ian colonies where there are no missions is con
stantly increasing. Such instances, often of very
happy import, are due to the cordiality of the
American brethren and the constant friendliness of
the American minister. To give but one example, —
there are valued Italian-American members in sev
eral American churches of the industrial towns of
the Naugatuck valley in Connecticut. Eecently in
one of these churches the mother of an Italian fam
ily invited the American minister to make a special
call upon them. In the course of it she said to him:
"We, as a family, are now earning $2,000 a year.
We think a great deal of the church. We are able
and we ought to do something for it. Here are $50
for the church and $50 for the 'World Movement.' "
Growth in eflSciency of Itahan pastors. — ^Due to
larger discrimination in employing Italian mission
aries in these later years, and to the weeding out of
inefficients, Italian pastors have risen greatly in the
estimation of their American brethren, and are com
manding greater respect as experts in their chosen

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 127
field. Such esteem is being reflected in the raising
of salaries and the assignment of larger responsi
bilities. This increase of fellowship has remedied an
unfortunate condition of isolation which many pas
tors have felt in the past. Esprit de corps is also be
ing cultivated by occasional and regular joint con
ferences of Italian pastors, American directors and
others interested, Among the Presbyterians, who
are well advanced in Italian work, a system of bi
ennial conferences with well defined organization has
been established. And the difference between the
first conference held so recently as 1916 and that of
1920 was remarkable. The growth in the spirit of
harmony and cooperation, in the ability to speak
English, and in the general tone of morale and effi
ciency on the part of the individual workers was
marked. It seems to the writer from his personal
acquaintance with a number of pastors of several de
nominations that this improvement in spirit and
status is true throughout the Italian field.

Part III
EELIGIOUS LITEEATUEB
The subject of religious literature for circulation
among Italian-Americans grows in importance as
their degree of literacy advances. The increasing
power of the secular Italian- American press, what it
is and what it might be, has been noted. On occa
sions it reflects the common and recurrent hostility
to Protestant work for Italians especially where -any
scandal has been uncovered in evangelical circles.
The editors are generally willing to accept evangeli
cal news and notices, and ha^'e been known to seek
the aid of Protestant pastors in enlarging their sub
scription list. Doubtless their publicity could bei

128 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
used more largely to good advantage by our
churches, but very few would dare to lend them
selves for any length of time to systematic Protes
tant propaganda however irenie.
Itahan-American rehgious papers. — The writer
has information of four Eoman Catholic papers in
Italian in America. There is at least one publish
ing agency of that faith for that language. Six de
nominational Protestant bodies have publishing
houses dealing in material for Italian work. There
are besides these the tract societies and the Ameri
can Bible Society. The latter, aside from the matter
of the Scriptures in the tongue, has rendered valu
able aid to missions through the evangelizing ability
of its colporteurs. Seven religious papers are pub
lished, five of which are weeklies. Four of these re
port a circulation of from 1,500 to 2,750 copies. Four
have been established longer than the others,
namely L'Era Nuova, Presbyterian; La Fiaccola,
Methodist; L' Aurora, Baptist; L'Ape Evangelica,
United Presbyterian. The others are: La Verita
in Carita, Episcopalian ; I Segni dei Tempi, Seventh
Day Adventist; II Vessillo, also United Presby
terian. ^
These papers have gone through various changes
in seeking to serve their constituencies, and, wmle
realizing the unlimited value they might be, they are
still not very satisfactory to their publishers nor to
the rank and file of pastors and members. They
have reflected the experimental nature of Italian
evangelization. In one or more of them there has
been noted a tendency of catering too exclusively to
the pastors, while the general consensus of opinion
is that their primary purpose is to evangelize and
educate the rank and file. Hence some pastors have
preferred the small sheets published in Italy as more
* New American Studies, Interchurch World Movement lAterO'
ture. Miss Amy Blanche Greene.

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 129
adapted to humbler readers. To this end of general
evangelization, improvements in matter and tech
nique would be valuable. These papers print the
larger part of Sunday school helps which are ex
tant, and have been active in temperance work.
They are adapting themselves to the character of
their readers in becoming bilingual. And with re
gard to them, the unfortunate presence of denomina-
tionalism among Italians becomes acute. The ideal
of a strong interdenominational religious paper is
being constantly agitated, as contrasted with these
various poorly supported papers of lesser value.
But their value to their respective denominations
as denominational organs has also been felt, and
only as this study goes to press is a paper uniting
several of these sheets being planned for.
Tract hterature. — The usefulness of tracts is un
questioned in the Italian field. The habit of the class
of Italian immigrants here in America of reading,
not books, but small articles, hand-bills, and diminu
tive newspapers, shows the attention which small
tracts of a single or few pages obtain, and were they
well and adaptably written, the great power they
would have. At this later day of Italian evangeli
zation, their further value, if they are bilingual, is
obvious. This is a need which has never been well
met. American societies have put forth a modest
number of tracts in Italian, and a larger number
have been imported from Italy, some of which
were considered worthless even there. Few pas
tors, while recognizing the need, have felt them
selves able to produce such tracts, while some of
those who have were actuated chiefly by anti-clerical
or controversial motives. The defects of the exist
ing tracts are defects of language, and probably
even more of psychology. They were unadapted
to the Italian people, either translations of Anglo-
Saxon tracts, or filled with terms which Italians do

130 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
not understand and an over abundance of Scripture,
the point of which is lost because many Italians
would not recognize it as such. They frequently
have treated of persons, not Italian, and therefore
who do not command the interest of Italians, A
few tracts of genuine excellence have been issued,
forged out of the experience of pastors to meet an
absolute need. When catechisms, or serving a cate
chetical purpose in the instruction of new converts,
they have been especially good.
The cost and difficulty of printing has retarded the
attacking of this problem. Certain energies have
gone into producing technical Americanization
rather than religious material. There is need that
some interdenominational agency, completely and
economically supply all churches working for, Ital
ians with tract material, simple, fundamental, avoid
ing polemics. It should be evangelistic and apolo
getic and sound the notes of personal righteousness,
social service and Christian Americanization. There
are indications that in the near future such material
will be in some measure forthcoming, for the work
is greatly handicapped without it.
Italian hymnology. — A need second only to the
above is the improvement and enrichment of Italian
evangelical hymnology. Outside of hymns the race
has practically no Protestant anthems or oratorios.
Many of the hymns are translations, in many cases
happy, in other cases not. Often they have been
wrought out by necessity, and hastily and illy
adapted to the music. The work which has been done
has indeed been well worth while and a great service
rendered, but the extant hymnals are lacking in
technique, in selection of tunes, in adaptability to
average congregations, and are limited in range of
subjects, treating chiefly of personal evangelism and
little of character, contact and service. One is some
times tempted to think that the poetical and musical

ITALIAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 181
quality of certain hymnals produced in Italy make
them superior to any produced in America, until he
realizes that they are even more deficient than ours
in the directions just stated. The forthcoming in
terdenominational hymnal there is eagerly antici
pated. For religious books, technical and popular, and
for religious magazines, we are obliged to look to
Italy, where such a religious review as Bilychnis,
published under Baptist auspices, commands the at
tention of a wide circle, and is being found increas
ingly serviceable by American-Italian pastors.

Chapter V
PEOBLEMS OF EELIGIOUS LEADEESHIP
Above everything else the success or failure of
Italian-American churches has rested with their
leadership. The truthfulness of this statement was
never more evident than at this late stage of Italian
evangelization. And the whole question properly
bids fair to be treated more adequately and intelli
gently in the near future than it ever has been be
fore. Early denominational leaders were confronted
with two alternatives in providing leadership for the
Italian missions which they sought to establish: (1)
the importation of Italian ministers from Italy, or
(2) the use of such Protestant Italians as were at
hand. We have seen that Waldensian pastors were
called to the Presbyterian missions which Eev.
Michele Nardi left in his wake, and that Italian
Methodists trained in Italy were summoned to the
opening work of their denomination in the United
States. These, when well qualified and well fur
nished with American support, did valuable work in
so far as they adapted themselves to special Ameri
can conditions. From time to time others have come,
and have given of their strength and thorough train
ing to our work. A slight tendency has existed on
the part of some Waldensian pastors here to devote
themselves too exclusively to Waldensian families
rather than reach out broadly in Italian evangeliza
tion. But this personnel derived from overseas never
has been sufficient for American needs. And rarely
have candidates for the Italian ministry been found
132

PROBLEMS OF RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP 133
such as Eev. Antonio Arrighi, both of large ability
and patience to complete a thorough training. In
lieu of other leaders many Italian immigrants were
called to direct Italian missions whose only qualifica
tion was a fair degree of intelligence and consecra
tion plus a modicum of intellectual training. Natu
rally in the school of experience many were failures.
But a few, tried as if by fire, came forth successes.
There is hardly an Italian colony of some years'
standing which has not had its experience of inferior
men, deficient in mental quality, morality or tact.
And to this day it is next to impossible to work in
certain fields owing to the remembrance of previous
disasters due to such causes. Many leaders of ex
perience have come, too, to question the wisdom of
employing ex-priests. There have been too many
disastrous results. Even the ex-priests, who have
become efficient Protestant ministers, have found it
difficult to gain the confidence of the Italian people,
because they are considered as having betrayed their
one-time vows, however sincerely the step of aban
doning Eomanism was taken.
Perhaps the majority do not succeed in making
their message positively evangelical, but are too
largely absorbed in anti-clerical propaganda and
preaching. Some Protestant authorities have lately
begun to follow the Waldensian practice, which
rarely ordains an ex-priest to the evangelical min
istry, and then only after years of Protestant study
and training in association with colleagues bom
Protestants. A second step in providing leadership for Italian-
American missions was the establishment of schools,
denominational and undenominational, or depart
ments of theological seminaries for their training
sometimes in conjunction with candidates of other
immigrant nationalities, sometimes by themselves.
Such provision was made by the Presbyterians at

T34; THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
Bloomfield, New Jersey, where a combination of
academic and theological subjects is taught and
where among others there is an Italian professor.
A similar Presbyterian institution with less Italian
clientele is located at Dubuque, Iowa. In 1907 the
Italian Department of Colgate Theological Seminary
was opened in Brooklyn, but is now a part of the
International Seminary at East Orange, N. J. Most
of the yoimger men at work for the Baptist denomi
nation have been trained in this institution. Some
of them have taken advanced courses in other insti
tutions. Men for these, and other denominations
without theological schools for Italians, have been
trained in considerable numbers in the Italian de
partment of the Biblical Seminary in New York, for
merly the Bible Teachers' Training School, and a
few at Moody Institute in Chicago.
A wide difference of opinion exists as to the
amount of preparation necessary for admission to
theological training and to the work of the ministry
and missions, and this is especially true in training
for work among our immigrant peoples. Well-known
seminaries offer courses leading to diplomas (but
not degrees) to students with but partial or no col
lege training. Hebrew and Greek are elective.
Training schools for workers in city missions and
among our foreign peoples often accept students of
insufficient preparation who must devote much of
their time to subjects not usually in a theological
curriculum. We believe that the training acquired
is not a sufficient basis for a successful ministerial
career. The larger portion of Italian ministers suc
cessful during long years of service have passed
through an American college or have taken a fuU
course in a theological seminary.
This then is the situation: Some Italian missions
carried on without serious and far-reaching plans by
Hi-trained men without much personality have com-

PROBLEMS OF RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP 135
manded scant consideration by the American author
ity and have, in some cases, entirely failed. Other
missions are growing in efficiency and their leaders,
possessed of staying power because of adequate
training, are drawing increasing attention and re
spect from the American churches.
It has been proved fatal to do work for the Italians
in a mean way or with inferior men. The Italian
missionary needs to be more and better trained even
than his American colleague. He is a specialist with
two races and a combination of them. He must have
at his command both Italian and American culture.
He must make himself most truly Italian and most
truly American.
This proposition is being recognized by all the
major denominational leaders engaged in Italian
work. They are dissatisfied with the character and
quantity of the training of the men going out from
their specialized schools, and are urging the best of
them to pursue further study. There is variety in
the suggestions offered for improvement of these
schools, but there is unanimity in the belief that the
training is not enough in quantity, and should be
supplemented in some cases with further acquaint
ance with Italian language and sociology and in
other cases with study of American theology and
practice. Further study in American seminaries is
considered desirable, as is also a year or more of
study in Italy. A sign of the unrest and groping
for something better in this line is the proposal that
some one denomination take over at a regular theo
logical seminary all the specialized training in
church leadership for one race, and another denomi
nation assume that for another race. Another sign
is the recent formation of the Association of Institu
tions engaged in Missionary Training, a committee
of which has been instructed to bring in a report on
Training for Work among Foreigners.

136 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
Specifically from the administration side the ques
tions involved are :
(1) Is there not indefensible waste in maintaining
several denominational elementary schools of the
ology for immigrants, schools which foster an ex
cessive attachment to denominationalism?
(2) What shall be the division of labor among de
nominations at this point?
(3) Is the association of immature students of
several races in a polyglot school advantageous 1
(4) How can immigrant students be associated
more with American students of both sexes, and with
American church life for their better American
ization? It seems necessary to secure our young, illy-
trained immigrant or American youth of Italian par
ents, who' may have no means, no parental support,
little comprehension of long-time, thorough training,
but who has been inspired by his minister with the
ideal of entering Christian service. Let it be em
phasized that he must be caught young and perhaps
with very elementary education. He must be put
where he may get vision and preparatory training,
and so inspired and molded in his ideas that he will
insist on further training. On the one hand he must
not be tempted to go into active work too soon; and
on the other he must be financially supported until
he shall have complete training even to a year's
study in Italy. The game is worth the candle; it
has already been proven so in specific instances.
One interesting variation in Italian leadership has
been the emplojrment in Italian missions of Ameri
cans speaking Italian. Apparently it is the Epis
copalian denomination which has profited especially
from the labors of workers, men and women, who
have made use of an unofficial acquaintance with
Italians and things Italian, to build up Italian Epis
copalian missions. But workers of more than one

PROBLEMS OF RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP 137
denomination have spent time in Italy with this ob
ject in view, and churches of several faiths have
provided fellowships for American students that
they might during a longer or shorter time prepare
themselves for leadership in Italian work. One
American at least has attained a degree of efficiency
in the language which enables him to carry on all
the functions of an Italian church as active pastor.
It would not be advisable, even if it were possible
as in the above case, to have many American pastors
in the pulpit of Italian churches. Many Italians
cherish a racial pride which makes them unwilling
to accept such a relationship. But such men have a
distinct value as supervisors or executive pastors
over several churches, or as liaison officers between
the Italian parishes and American missionary au
thority. The Italian pastors feel that here is one
American pastor who fully understands them and
their problems, and the American pastor in contact
with Italian colonies has one to whom to refer his
puzzling experiences with that portion of the com
munity. Women missionaries. — ^We have already stated
the need, little short of an absolute want, of a woman
missionary in every Italian mission if a proper work
be carried on among the women and children. There
are some highly efficient Italian missionaries scat
tered through the churches, and they are appro
priately valued and esteemed. Their scarcity is per
haps the most pressing problem of the moment.
They command salaries the equal of those of many
pastors. The hardships and labors of their life have
become well known. And it is only occasionally that
an Italian girl is willing or able to take all the steps
to prepare herself for this service. Hence many
American women missionaries are called upon to
choose this especial task and do their best, serving
the children and, with greater handicap, the Italian

138 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
women. Friendliness and good-will have done much
even under language difficulties.
It is of course true that a good preparatory train
ing is of great advantage before specialized training
as deaconess or missionary is taken. Several de
nominations offer this specialized training in excel
lent schools. The pressing demand for their grad
uates is increased by the employment of so many
women by the Young Women's Christian Associa
tion in its International Institutes. Italian women
students are received at the Biblical Seminary ia
New York, formerly the Bible Teachers' Training
School. Many valued missionaries are graduates of
the training school of the New York City Missionary
Society at Gramercy Park or of the Schauffler Mis
sionary Training School at Cleveland, Ohio. The
International College of Springfield, Mass., has sent
forth women workers from its social service course.

Chapter VI
CONCLUSIONS AND EECOMMENDATIONS
What is to be the future of the Italian- American
churches? Will they continue to exist as a special
group ? The conviction is that they will continue to
exist and to call for American sympathy and support
as long as this generation of immigrants of the peas
ant degree of culture is alive, and is recruited by
fresh immigration. The present outlook is that
Italian immigration will continue a mighty stream
indefinitely. Hence Italian-American pastors and
churches will have a place and work for a time in
definitely long.
As an intermediate stage in the process of Amer
icanization of their sons and daughters, American
churches of Italian blood will spring up here and
there, and continue as such for a limited time. But
more and more American youth of Italian blood of
a certain stage of Americanization will be drawn to
the American churches, and there find their proper
place. More and more American pastors will study
Italian colonies and learn how to win Italian- Ameri
can families to membership and fellowship in Ameri
can-speaking churches.
Italian- American missions have been one of the
longest established and best forces for Americaniza
tion. In their probable future as outlined above, it
would seem that like the school they will become a
substantial force in racial assimilation. The
churches will become a most wholesome meeting
ground for Italian youth and young people of other
races with resulting intermarriage. And further
since the best patriotism is religious, and intelligent
religion is patriotic in America, the church imbuing

140 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
such youth with broad ideals cannot be other than a
powerful force for national unification.
Inasmuch as this bright and beckoning hope for
the future depends for its accomplishment upon
Italian-American churches, and their American
friends, the following recommendations are offered :
(I) That Italian pastors strive unceasingly to in
spire choice young men and women to prepare them
selves for a life-work of Christian service among
their fellow countrymen and countrywomen.
(II) That a high standard of character and train
ing be insisted upon in candidates for the pastorate
of Italian missions. That veteran and successful
Italian pastors and missionaries be considered as ex
perts in their field and be so rated financially and
socially. (HI) That more American theological students
and pastors study sociology and the Italian language
and seek directly and definitely to make the Ameri
can churches minister to Italians living within the
bounds of their parishes.
(IV) That American church members seek to know
such Italians, in no patronizing sense, but upon the
basis of frankness, sympathy and democracy.
(V) That the value of the service to be rendered
by the Italian mission be constantly emphasized in
the American church having such a mission under its
care; and that the most sympathetic and devoted
laymen be appointed to committees to guide and
serve such affiliated missions.
(VE) That directorates of missionary societies
provide for a closer and more intelligent supervision
of Italian missions, their policy always taking into
account both American church ideals and methods,
and Italian psychology.
(VII) That denominationalism be minimized and
its jealousies rigorously eliminated, for efficiency in
the central task of evangelization in Italian parishes

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 141
and colonies, for accord in the proper solution of the
problem of theological preparation, and for coopera-
tian and economy in religious publicity and litera
ture. (VIII) That Italian pastors train themselves more
consciously in the art of meeting Americans and co
operating with them ; that they inform themselves of
all proper agencies dealing with Americanization
and Christianization and cooperate with them, in so
far as circumstances permit.
(IX) That Italian pastors avoid attacks upon the
Eoman Ca_tholic_ Church and upon socialism; but,
rather cultivate in themselves and in their members
the art of sympathetic approach to bigoted Eoman-
ists, and socialists bitter towards Christianity.
(X) That Italian pastors teach and exemplify
the ideal of community service, in order that evan
gelical convictions may bear their proper fruit in
serviceful living.
(XI) That the building of attractive and useful
edifices, which enhance the respect of Italian-Ameri
cans for Protestantism, become a definite policy.
(XII) That the service of worship in Italian mis
sions be a subject of constant study, the aim being
to produce through church music, procedure, ves
ture and atmosphere, an adapted and effective Ital
ian-American Protestant ritual.
(XIII) That Italian pastors study to make the
program of social work minister to and win all mem
bers of the Italian family.
(XIV) That Sunday Schools dealing with Italian-
American children be assisted by the best American
teachers obtainable ; that curriculum and methods be
adopted which take into account the peculiar needs
and habits of Italian life and thought ; and that con
stant ende'avor be made to bring the Sunday School
message and friendships back to the parents in the
home.

Appendix A
EXAMPLE OF A COMPLETE PEOGEAM FOE
ITALIAN MISSIONS
A Home Missions Program offered by the Com
mittee on Policy for the Board of Home Missions
and Church Extension of the Methodist Episcopal
Church :
I. Approach to the family as a whole
(a) Home visitor, a woman speaking Italian,
with American training and American
spirit. Such a one, bilingual, could work
with little children in English, and con
duct other classes possibly in Italian. The
future objective to be Italian women thor
oughly trained.
(b) Family gathering for everybody in the
church parlors or house. Music, games,
pictures, etc, Eecognize the family unit,
(c) Meetings in the home. The coining in of
the stranger draws all the neighbors so
that a program may be used. Special at
tention to home meetings for girls.
n. Approach to the family for adult Italian groups
(a) Bilingual staff members : a lawyer, physi
cian, employment agent, and a printer
whose service may be used for help among
the Italians in the community.
(b) Eeligious service of worship in Italian,
(c) Mothers' Club in Italian.
i(d) Men's clubs for learning English and citi
zenship. 143

144 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
(e) Use of Italian literature.
(f ) Eeligious instruction in Itahan.
(g) Illustrated lectures and moving pictures.
(h) Italian festas and patriotic days as point
of contact : celebration of the 20th of Sep
tember for example.
(i) Making use of musical interest.
m. Approach in English to children and young
people,
(a) Attendance upon English church service.
(b) Eeligious instruction in the Sunday
school.
(c) Eelated week-day club activities, emphasis
being on expressional work such as :
Eecreational Club
Gymnasium Club
Choral societies
Dramatic clubs
Boy Scouts
Knights of King Arthur
Campfire Girls
SewingCooking
Painting Drawing Sculpturing
(d) Illustrated lectures and moving pictures.
(e) Daily Vacation Bible School.
(f), Flower Mission,
(g) Fresh Air Work.
(h) Camps.
IV. Training for non-English speaking leaderships.
The manifest needs are :
1, American ministers trained for work
¦among Italians.

APPENDIX A 145
2. Italian men trained for work among Ital
ians in this country,
3. Training for Italian lay workers,
4. Training for Italian women workers.
5. Training for American women for work
among Italians.

Appendix B
SCHEDULE OF JUDSON NEIGHBOEHOOD
HOUSE
{Baptist)
179 Sullivan Street, South of Washington Square,
New York City.
Miss AUene Bryan  Head Worker
Miss Hazel Ilsley  Girls ' Worker
Miss G. Rousseau  Kindergartner
Mrs. Bessie L. Burger  Matron
Miss Flora Osgood  Nurse
Miss E. Frazier  Assistant Nurse
Sunday: 10:00—11:30 A.M. Bible School (Italian Church).
Monday :
7 :30— 6 :00 P.M. Day Nursery.
9:00—12:00 A.M. Kindergarten.
3 :30— 5 :00 P.M. Gymnasium Class.
3 :30— 5 :00 P.M. Nutrition Class.
3 :30— 5 :00 P.M. Recreation Club.
4:00— 5:30 P.M. Music School.
7:30— 9:00 P.M. Dramatic Club.
7:30— 9:00 P.M. Boys' Club.
7 :30— 9 :00 P.M. Nutrition Class.
Tuesday :
7:30— 6:00 P.M. Day Nursery.
9 :00— 12 :00 A.M. Kindergarten.
2 :30— 5 :30 P.M. Dental Clinic.
3 :30— 5 :00 P.M. Make Good Club.
3 :30— 5 :00 P.M. Hand Craft Club.
7:30— 9:00 P.M. English and Civic School.
7:30— 9:00 P.M. Boys' Club.
7:30— 9:00 P.M. Girl Reserves.
146

APPENDIX B 147
Wednesday :
7 :30— 6 :00 P.M. Day Nursery.
9:00—12:00 A.M. Kindergarten.
3 :30— 5 :00 P.M. Nutrition Class.
3 :30— 5 :00 P.M. Junior S. S. Group, 3 Clubs.
7:00— 9:30 P.M. Dental Clinic.
7:30— 9:00 P.M. Bible Classes and Italian Prayer
Service.
7:30— 9:00 P.M. Boys' Club.
Thursday: 7:30— 6:00 P.M. Day Nursery.
9:00—12:00 A.M. Kindergarten.
2:00— 4:00 P.M. Dental Clinic.
2:30— 5:00 P.M. Boys' Club.
3 :30— 5 :00 P.M. Music School.
7:30— 9:00 P.M. Scouts.
7:30— 9:00 P.M. Older Boys' Clubs, 3 Clubs.
7:30— 9:00 P.M. English and Civic School.

7 :30— 6 :00 P.M. Day Nursery.
9:00—12:00 A.M. Kindergarten.
3:30— 5:00 P.M. Nutrition Class.
7 :30— 9 :00 P.M. Senior S. S. Group.
Saturday: 7 :30— 12 :00 A.M. Day Nursery.
10:00—12:00 A.M. Industrial School.
5:00— 6:00 P.M. Music School.
7:30—10:00 P,M. Family Night.

Appendix C
PEOGEAM OF DAVENPOET SETTLEMENT,
NEW HAVEN, CONN.

Social Clubs
Little Playmates
Work-and-Play
Defenders Young Americans
Red Rose
Kolawita
Arrows Beacons Hustlers
Greene Rivals
AcademicsBlmwoods
Religious Work
Italian Sunday School
Italian Sunday School
Teachers' Meeting
Midweek Prayer Meet
ing
Midweek Bible Study-
Juniors
Midweek Bible Study-
Primary
Italian Sunday Preach
ing
Hungarian Preaching
Hungarian Class
Italian Mothers' Class
Bambini Special Service — ^Hun
garian New Year's
Sunday afternoon Open
House

Community Welfare
LibraryReading Room
Play Ground
Junior Boys
Gym
Basketball
Junior Girls
Folk Games
Story Hours
Senior Boys
Pool Gym
Basketball Games Room
Baths
Social Events
Sale Visiting Day
S. S. Teachers' Supper
Social Workers' Con
ference
Games
Educational and Industrial
Music Lessons
Sewing Classes
Dressmaking Classes
Basketry Class
Handicraft Class
Study Room
Chorus

148

BIBLIOGEAPHY
The following works or articles are referred to in
the foregoing study. Those starred are considered
by the writer as furnishing the most and the most
valuable information upon some phase or phases of
the subject as it has been treated. While the list is
brief, the works in total are comprehensive of the
whole subject.
Annuario Statistico Italiano, 1915 (Abstract of the
Census) .
Arrighi, Antonio — The Story of Antonio, the Galley-
Slave.
•Abbott, Grace — The Immigrant and the Community.
*Bagot, Richard — Italians of Today.
Bagot, Richard — My Italian Tear.
Brace, C. L. — The Dangerous Classes of New York.
Capozzi — Protestantism and the Latin Soul.
Carr, John Foster — A Guide to the United States for
Italian Immigrants.
Catholic Encyclopedia, TJie, article Italians.
•Clark, Francis B. — Our Italian Fellow-Citizens.
•Coulter, Charles W.—The Italians of Cleveland (Pam
phlet of the Cleveland Americanization Committee).
•Foerster, J. B..— Italian Emigration of Our Times.
GiAMPiccoLi, Ernesto — Relazione Annuaria del Modera-
tore della Chiesa Valdese, 1920.
Immigration Journal, September, 1916.
Interchurch World Movement— Studies of New Amerir
cans, Religious Education, William B. Sly.
Interchurch World Moyement— Studies of New Ameri
cans, Literature, Amy Blanche Greene.
Literary Digest, October 11, 1913. „, . ,. „,.¦.•
•Luzzi, Giovajstni— rAe Struggle for Christian Truth m
Italy, " 149

150 THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA
*Mangano, Antonio — Religious Work among Italians in
America, pamphlet.
*Mangano, Antonio — Sons of Italy.
*Marlano, John H. — The Italian Contribution to Ameri
can Democracy,
*McClure, Archibald — Leadership in the New America.
Methodist Episcopal Board op Home Missions, Sug
gested Program for Italian Missions.
Odencrantz, I^jOrence — Italian Women in Industry.
Prezzolino, Giuseppe — The Fascisti, article Century
Magazine, September 1921.
Rns, Jacob — A Ten Years' War.
Rns, Jacob — How the Other Half Lives.
*Sartoeio, Enrico C. — The Social and Religious Life of
Italians in America.
Simpson, A. B. — Michele Nardi: His Life and Work.
Speranza, Gino C. — Articles: Atlantic Monthly, Febru
ary 1920 ; Outlook, Vol. 119.
Steiner, Edward A. — A Broken Wall.
Steiner, Edward A. — The Immigrant Tide: its Ebb amd
Flow.
Shriver, William H. — Immigrant Forces.
Thomas — Treatment of Immigrant Heritages, manu
script Carnegie Corporation Studies.
Train, Arthur. — Courts, Criminals amd the Camorra.
U. S. Commissioner of Labor, 7th Special Report, 1894,
The Slums of Great Cities.
U. S. Bulletin of Labor, 1907, Emily Fogg Meade, TU
Italian on the Land.
U. S. Bulletin, Bureau of Labor, No. 72, Sheridan, F. J,
Italian, Slavic and Hungarian Unskilled Immigrant
Laborers in the United States.
U. S. Industrial Commission, Volume 15.
U. S. Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigra
tion, 1914.
U. S. Bureau of Census, Birth Statistics for the Registra
tion Area of U. S., 1915, 1st Annual Report.
Vivian, Herbert — ^Article: Fortnightly Review, Volume
104.
Warner, Arthur H. — Article: National Geographic
Magazine, Vol. 20 : 1062.
Weyl, W. E.— Article: Outlook, Vol. 94.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 151
Year Book of Grace Parish (Protestant Episcopal, New
York), 1915.
Young Women's Christian Association, International In
stitute Pamphlets.

INDEX

Agriculture, 18-24, 57, 58; in
the North, 18; in the South,
19; defective methods, 19, 21.
American churches, Italians in,
126.
¦Americanization, 83.
American living standards, 63.
Appendices (A) Methodist Epis
copal Home Mission Pro
gram, 143; (B) Schedule of
Judson Memorial Neighhor-
hood House, 146; (C) Pro
gram of Davenport Settle
ment, 148.
Arrighi, 111, 133.
Assimilation, forces of, 92;
point of view, 92.
Atheism — Italian drift to, 107.
Banker, 70.
Baptist church in Italy, the, 48.
Bible, The, its growing power,
50; Italian versions of, 50.
Bibliography, 149.
Black Hand, 79.
Camorra, The, 79.
Campanilism, 38, 61, 72.
Cavour, 15.
Church, The, a business, 15;
building, 45; finance, 118;
difficulties of, 122; organiza
tion, types of, 124.
Clot, Kev. Alberto, 111.
Colonies and assimilation, 60;
and clans, 61; and industry,
62.
Community idea. The, 93.
Conversions, examples of, 121.
Davenport Settlement, 147.
Deforestation, EO.
Delinquency and crime, 77.
Dialects, 39.

Economic conditions, 60.
Education in Italy: elementary,
SI; in morals, 32; Educa
tional forces, 84-97; malign,
84, 85.
Education of military lite, 33.
-i^Emigration in general, 24; to
U. S., 25; causes of, 26;
early, 26; industrial char
acter, 27; type of, 27; by lo
cality, 28; permanency, 28;
future outlook, i29; illiteracy,
31.
Employers and Italian labor, 83.
English classes, 93.
Evangelization, 116, 117; co
operation of Americans and
Italians, 124.
Family life in Italy, 33, 35; in
U. S., 73; parents and chil
dren, 74, 75.
Family in industry. The, 64.
Fascisti, 40.
Feudalism, 24.
Gabelotto, 22, 23.
Garibaldi, 15, 26, 38.
Hymnology, Italian, 130.
Home Mission program for an
Italian M. B. church, 142.
Illiteracy in Italy, 31.
— Immigration, causes of, 54 ;
distribution of, 53, 54.
Immigrants: protective agencies,
94; social conditions of, 65;
unrest of, 66.
Industries, 17; Italians in, 55;
in manufactures, 56, 57; min
ing, 56; building trades, 56;
agriculture, 57.
' Institutional work, 93; churches,
113.

153

154

THE ITALIANS IN AMERICA

Intermarriage, 76.
Irreligion, a heritage, 42.
Italian children in advanced
schools, 87.
Italian pastors, growing effi
ciency of, 126.
Italians, deficient in religious
sentiment, 47.
Italy, a crucible of social ex
periment, 14; economic con
ditions, 16; geographical po
sition, 13; immigrant love
for, 72; Italian racial alle
giance, 96; meeting ground of
races, 13; religious condi
tions, 43; social conditions,
30; the South, 14; unity, 15.
Judson Neighborhood House,
145.
Landlords, 21; absentee, 21;
evils of absenteeism, 2i2.
Leadership, 89-92; growth of,
91; problems of, 132-138.
Libraries, 88.
Literature, 88; Italian, 88; re
ligious, 88, 127-131.
Mafia, The, 37, 38.
Magazines, Italian, 131.
Mangano, 112.
Malaria, 20, 21.
Mazzini, 15, 43.
Meridionale, 14, 17, 21, 40.
Methodist Episcopal Church in
Italy, 48, 52, 132.
Military life in Italy, 33.
Mission to Italians, begiiminga
of, 110.
Modernism, 51.
~Moral standards, 36.
-Moral values in north and
south, 37.
Nardi, 111, 132.
Nationalism, 38.
Naturalization, 95.
Newspapers, Italian, 88; re
ligious, 128; secular, 88-89.
Organized labor, attitude to, 82.

Padrone, 69.
Papacy, 14, 42.
Parochial schools, 86.
Pastoral work, vital, 118.
Peasantry, 18; attitude toward
religion, 44.
Politics, flrst ideals in, 80;
Italians in office, 81.
Preaching, effective, 120.
Protestant effort, challenge to,
108; faith retained, 104;
Italian ministers' methods of
work, 114, 115.
Protestantism in Italy, program
of, 52; in Sicily, 49; strength
of, 49; variant ideas of, 117.
—Public opinion, defective, 39.
Public School, The, 86.
Eecommendations, 139-141.
Eecreation, 74.
Eeformation in Italy, The, 41.
Eeturn movement to Italy, 59.
Eiis, Jacob, 68; quoted, 81.
Eitual, 120.
Eoman Catholicism transplanted,
Eoman Catholic Church, break
of Italians from, 100; char
acter of effort, 100; indiffer
ence analyzed, 105; slow be
ginnings here, 99; social
service, 102; (Italian) trans
planted, 99; summary, 103.
Eural life in Italy, A northern
village, 33; A southern town,
34.
Eural women, faith of, 46.
Settlement work, Davenport,
147.
Sicily and Sicilians, 13, 15,
17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 61, 120.
• Social conditions in Italy, 30;
in U. S., 67.
Socialism, in Italy, 40, 41; Ital
ians drift to, 40, 107.
Southern town. A, 34; the
houses, 35; the people, 36;
the piazza, 35.
Standards of living, cleanliness,
68; diet, 69; housing, 67, 68;
of Italian workmen, 17; of

INDEX

155

southern Italy, 23; in U. S., Wages of Italians, 18; in U. S..
63. 63.
Street preaching, 117. - War, The Great, 30; an agency
Success and failure as farmers, ^ in Americanization, 97.

59.
Suffrage in Italy, 31.
Sunday school. The, central, 115.
Taxes in Italy, 24.
Tent work, 117.
Thrift of Italians, 62.
Tract literature, Italian, 129.
Unity of Italy, 15.
Victor Immanuel II, 15, 16.
Village life in Italy, moral, 36.

Waldensians, in Italy, 47, 52;
in U. S., 104, 111, 132.
Wesleyan Methodists in Italy,
48.
Women Missionaries, 137.
Y. M. C. A., 29, 49, 109; and
Italian youth, 108.
Y. W. C. A., 49, 76, 93, 109;
institutes of, 138.

YALE UNIVERSITY

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