La Merica: Images Of Italian Greenhorn Experience

1. Leaving Italy

ONE Leaving Italy The land that does not have products to export , exports its own sons; the people who do not find in their own country their elevation will search for it across the ocean among other peoples. I Be good boys, young gentlemen: Discard your umbrellas and your gloves; you take our places in the fields, for we are going to America.2 The Decision to Emigrate To understand why emigration from Italy commenced and grew steadily in volume, one must consider more than the broad societal forces that set the flow in motion. Time and again over the years, it was a combination of individual forces that triggered the decision to emigrate . Poverty, or relative deprivation, does not by itself create a sufficient or even necessary "push" to go elsewhere. However, if poverty is combined with personal goals and expectations that are perceived as not realizable at home, and if a place to relocate becomes available where such hopes appear to have a greater chance of realization, the desire to emigrate may become irresistible. Rocco Boffilo, a Calabrian contadino, comparing what he had heard about America with the style of life in his district, found the former promising and the latter wanting: "Things go badly here. Many contadini here do not eat bread. They live on potatoes and beans. The salaries have increased, that is true, but one can only find work three or four months out of the year. Why do so many go to America? Because they are better off there. The work here, in comparison, is too 4 LEAVING ITALY much to bear. Up at sunrise, carrying your tools while walking several kilometers to the fields and then returning during the darkness in the evening, totally exhausted: that is the life we live here. And add to that a long, frigid winter season. When someone returns from America to tell us that the wages are superior and that there are fewer discomforts, many of the men cannot resist the temptation to go and find out for themselves." 3 But even these remarks are too simplistic. Most emigrants did not set a straight-line path that led inexorably to the decision to leave home. Rather, history demonstrates that their lives-like ours-were at once more disorderly and varied and risky and interesting than fiction often dares to imagine. If blatant economic deprivation had been the sole or dominant precipitating factor, workers of the lowest classes-both in the cities and around the countryside-would have departed to the last man, while those who were better off would have stayed home. This was far from the case; many stayed on even though their existence was marginal . Vincenzo Tucci was one of these; as a farm laborer, he had to support a wife and four children on the modest sum of one lira per day. The family, living together in one room, was at the edge of desperation much of the time. But when he was asked why he did not seek to improve his lot by going to America, as others were doing, he replied that what he had in Italy was more important to him than what he might hope to obtain in America.4 For every Tucci who remained, however, there was another Italian in much better circumstances who left, even though-in objective terms-remaining at home would probably have been the wiser choice. Unlike Tucci, such a man was likely to have skills that were more marketable in Italy than abroad. And certainly, staying put would have been less taxing on mind and body than gambling on success in immigrant America. So why did he go? Some Italians felt that they could not live an honest life in their home country. The employment outlook was grim; the depressed wage system prevented many from fulfilling cherished goals, such as marrying when they wished to do so; for many, each day blended into all the others in one unending tedium. As one intending emigrant expressed the limiting features of his life to his priest, Father Giovanni Scalabrini, "I can be a thief or 1 can emigrate." 5 And he chose the latter alternative because it was less morally repugnant to him. Others wanted to LEAVING ITALY 5 improve their living standards, or were disturbed by the mediocrity of their society, or were embarrassed by the meaninglessness of their work. More than a...