La Merica: Images Of Italian Greenhorn Experience

3. Working in America

THREE Working in America The Job Market My job was my via crucia, my misery, my hatred, and yet I lived in continuous fear of losing the bloody thing. THE JOB that damnable affair, THE JOB. Nightmare of the hunted, THE JOB, this misery, this anxiety, this kind of neurasthenia, this ungrateful, this bloodsucking thing. THE JOB, this piecemeal death, this fear that grips you in the stomach, this sovereign lady who leaks terror, who eats the very heart out of man.I "The Americans," wrote Napoleone Colajanni in 1909, "consider the Italians as unclean, small foreigners who play the accordion, operate fruit stands, sweep the streets, work in the mines or tunnels, on the railroad or as bricklayers." 2 Because the Italians were restricted to "immigrant work" and a few other jobs that they came to monopolize, the American community, not surprisingly, did develop a stereotyped portrait ofthe Italian as an individual who could fit into the social structure only at the lower levels and therefore was capable ofcontributing to society in limited ways. This portrait was incorporated into a variety of jokes about Italians. In one of these, circa 1890, an American speaker discussing the immigration problem before an anti-immigration audience , notes matter-of-factly that the Italians are the cleanest people in the country. His listeners utter a collective gasp of disbelief. "But it is a fact," the speaker insists. "I ask you, who cleans the shoes? Who digs the sewer ditches? Who shaves our faces? Who collects the garbage ? Who washes the dishes? They are all Italians. They cannot suffer seeing humanity wallowing.in its own filth." 3 He got his laugh. It was true that the Italians virtually dominated some jobs. By the 62 WORKING IN AMERICA 1880s in New York City, they controlled the macaroni market, sold plaster figurines of famous religious and secular leaders, operated candy stores, and made and sold artificial flowers. The retail fruit trade was in their hands; apparently every village or city on the east coast had an Italian fruit peddler or an Italian fruit stand. In winter the fruit merchants sold roasted chestnuts and peanuts, and in summer dispersed slices of watermelon and soda water to the children. The organ grinders were older men who were physically incapacitated or who could get no other work. They would walk the streets all day until 9:00 P.M. (a curfew set by law).' The shoeshine boys in the large cities were mostly Italian; 80 percent of the emigrants from the village of Laurenzana , Potenza, shined shoes in America. The shoemaking and repairing business in New Haven, Connecticut, was wholly in the hands of the Italians, as was trash and garbage removal in Philadelphia and San Francisco. By 1910, Italians were a significant factor in the New York City barber trade, and much of the import commerce between Italy and the United States was controlled by New York Italians. And the Italians had moved into the factories, including the cotton and woolen mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the silk mills of Paterson , New Jersey.5 There, as a contemporary local poet recognized, hard work may have been the most there was to look forward to in immigrant life: Let us weave the silk and gold: Our lot, our misery, our pain it will lighten: Let us weave, let us weave until death arrives; And on the cold weaving frame we are extended.6 The United States economy at least offered the Italians a greater variety of jobs and greater potential for occupational mobility than had existed for them in Italy. Most were deadend jobs, but even the deadend job could be turned into an opportunity by an enterprising immigrant , an opportunity that would have not been possible had he not emigrated. There were those who opened small retail shops or purchased a piece of income-producing property after years of scrupulous WORKING IN AMERICA 63 saving while digging ditches. A peddler could buy his own business, a laborer could work his way up to foreman, a construction helper could become a skilled bricklayer, and so on. An immigrant with no training could also achieve occupational mobility through the skills brought over by other Italians. Those who emigrated with transferable trades such as tailoring, butchering, or shoemaking, which could be taken directly from the Italian village to the Italian colony in America, opened opportunities for their unskilled compaesani...