American Woman, Italian Style: Italian Americana's Best Writings on Women

Italian Women in America: Sources for Study

Italian Women in America Sources for Study betty boyd caroli 1976 In the period of greatest immigration, from 1830 to 1920, women accounted for approximately one-third of all the Europeans arriving in the United States.1 Because fewer women repatriated, their contribution to permanent immigration is even greater. Yet they are, for the most part, absent from histories of immigrant experiences and from scholarship measuring changes that ethnic groups fostered in their adopted country. As the fields of women’s studies and immigration history grow, this neglect will no doubt find correction, and the records of the largest groups at least will be examined.2 Materials on the immigration experiences of Italian women emerge more readily than those of some other groups. After unification, their country’s central government collected statistics on movements in and out of the various regions, thus providing better information at the departure point than for many others who, because of fluctuating geographical boundaries and multinational backgrounds, had to await classification at debarkation in the United States. Sommario di Statistiche Storiche Italiane3 and Annuario Statistico dell’Emigrazione Italiana4 summarize many of the Italian government reports, although they present some problems. Italians used a calendar rather than fiscal year and adopted first one and then another method of gathering data on departing nationals. Difficulties in using Italy’s statistics are summarized by Anna Maria Ratti5 and Elizabeth Cometti.6 Immigration scholars generally regard the receiving country as a more accurate source of information although American officials, before 1899, classified newcomers according to country of origin, obscuring differences of ethnicity and religion. Nevertheless, the sexual composition of immigrants , by country but not by age, between 1820 and 1899 is available.7 After 337 338 Betty Boyd Caroli 1899 American officials categorized arriving aliens by ‘‘race or people,’’ distinguishing northern Italians—inhabitants of Piedmont, Lombardy, Emilia, and Veneto—from southern Italians.8 In American terminology even Florentines and Genoese are ‘‘southerners.’’ The Annual Report of the Immigration Commissioner breaks down northern and southern Italian women, after 1910, by age and marital status, literacy, financial condition, and travel arrangements.9 American sources remain valuable in spite of limitations and errors as noted by Edward P. Hutchinson,10 Campbell Gibson,11 and others. Writers on both sides of the Atlantic have relied on United States statistics for analyses of Italy’s contribution through emigration.12 Any examination of the roles of immigrant women must define their status in the society which they left. Here Italian materials are superior, especially on occupations cited for immigrant women. United States immigration officials drew a general picture of conditions in Italy,13 but failed to report occupations of national groups by sex. Nor did they break down Italian population shifts further than the inappropriate ‘‘northern Italian’’ and ‘‘southern Italian.’’ For the years after 1915 the Annuario shows types of employment for women immigrants, both by region left and new country entered.14 Several writers have explored intellectual achievements of upper-class women in Italy. Few of the well-educated emigrated, but their stories illustrate the range of possibilities available to some women. Much of the research in this field occurred on both sides of the Atlantic in the early decades of the twentieth century. Emmanuel Pierre Rodocanachil5 and Mary Agnes Cannon16 cite examples of learned women. Nicola Zanichelli’s history of the University of Bologna17 lists women professors. An excellent source on the feminist movement in Italy in the nineteenth century is by a Siena professor, Franca Pieroni Bortolotti.18 The author covers the exchange of ideas between American and Italian feminists, neither of whom paid much attention to immigrant women. Bortolotti followed her earlier book with another on the relationship between feminism and socialism in Italy.19 More relevant to the pre-immigration lives of Italian women are analyses of their work records. Amintore Fanfani discusses the role of women in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when they worked in Florentine textile factories, Lombard mines, and Roman schools.20 On their more recent history , Mary Argyle Taylor writes of crafts associated with various regions of Italy,21 Helen Campbell reports conditions of women working in their Italian Women in America: Sources for Study 339 homes,22 and Mrs. Thomas Okey lists labor laws at the beginning of the twentieth century.23 Louise Tilly’s critique of work in the field provides a useful...