LIFE IN A NEW YORK ITALIAN TENEMENT
Our room was about seven feet wide and twelve long. It was half of a
room of ordinary size that had been cut nicely in two by a partition,
and had a sort of small extension at the back that looked out on the
rear of the house. It was barely possible to get by the bed in order to
pass from the door to the rear window. The bed itself, while not being a
geometrical point, had neither length, breadth, nor thickness. In one
corner was a small cook-stove, that should have been under pension.
There was a small table in the tiny extension, covered with a
dark-patterned piece of oilcloth. A careful inspection of it showed me
that dark oilcloth _has_ certain advantages over light. A kerosene lamp
with a discouragingly short wick stood on an imitation marble
mantelpiece that was a relic of the days of the old mansion’s former
glory.
We contrived to get one steamer trunk under the bed, and as soon as we
could sort out articles of essential wear, the others drifted to that
place of uncertainty called “storage.”
Some little time after we had entered the house we were able to get a
room twice the size on the top floor, and we contrived to dispose
ourselves with some degree of comfort. Aside from the size and the
addition of a good bed, the room and furnishings of our second chamber
agreed with the first.
During the time we lived there we dressed in such a manner as not to
attract the attention of the people about us to the fact that we were
not of them, only keeping with us apparel for use when we indulged
ourselves in an evening’s relaxation from the hard life and stole away
up-town for a bite of something good to eat and the cheer of the voices
of friends speaking unadulterated English.
The first night we were in the house we were very weary with the
operation of shifting bases and change of station in life, and, finding
it almost impossible to read by the light of the lamp, we sought repose
about ten o’clock; but just about that time from the floor below us,
where we could hear the babel of the voices of men and women, as it were
a family party or something of the sort, there began to come a series of
vocal explosions. It seemed to be two or more men shouting single words
at each other in concert. They enunciated with great energy, at first in
a repressed sort of way, but after ten or fifteen words their voices
rose to an alarming pitch. Then would come a pause filled in with
laughter and chatter, and once more the word-slinging contest would
begin. So fiercely were the words expelled that for a long time we could
not tell what they were. At last we made out “sei” and “otto,” and as it
was impossible to go to sleep with so lively a social function going on
below, I got up, lit the lamp and took up our Italian books. A moment’s
consultation of the books and a little listening showed us that they
were counting, or at least hurling numbers at random at each other. It
was inexplicable to us, but it was our first glance into the inside of
Italian quarter life.
[Illustration: The Tenement in Houston Street in which the Author and
his Wife lived (_The chimney-shadow marks their room_)]
I was heartily glad, however, that the birthday party, christening or
wedding anniversary, whichever it was, must surely be a matter of rare
occasion.
Imagine our feelings when ten o’clock the next night came and the same
rumpus broke forth once more, only with greater vigor. In vain we
conjectured the cause. Perhaps they were in the midst of a week’s
celebration of some church festival. Perhaps there was some sort of a
tournament on.
At last I determined to investigate. Though it was a wet night and
walls, ledges and railings about the rear of the house were dripping and
slimy, I clambered down from the back window to a point where I could
look in below.
There were two basement rooms opening into each other, and there must be
a third that opened onto the street in front of the house. The first
room was a much-cluttered kitchen with broken boxes of several sorts of
macaroni exposed to view, a well-heated range, a cook in white clothes,
innumerable bottles of wine on the shelves and dirty dishes on one side
while the clean ones were in orderly piles on the other.
In the second and inner room there was a thick, blue atmosphere of pipe
and cigar smoke through which the gas jets in the centre of the room
flared sharply. Around the uncovered tables of varying sizes were
Italians to the number of a score or more. More than half of them were
in rough working clothes. Some had beer, some had wine before them and
some were eating the stringing macaroni from large dishes heaped with
it. Three of them were under the gaslight and were leaning forward in
postures of straining excitement, and as each spoke a number he thrust
out one hand or both with fingers held out,—three, four, seven, perhaps
only one. All the numbers spoken were under ten, and the numbers spoken
did not correspond with the numbers indicated by the fingers. After
watching them a minute I saw that each man was trying to guess what
number the other man would indicate on his fingers, and a correct guess
ended each bout; then would come laughter at the expense of the defeated
one, and the game would begin over again for points.
Later inquiry as to the name and popularity of the game brought forth
the information that it is called _mora_ and is very general through
southern Italy, being a favorite diversion among the country people. In
Italy country boys will get together in a corner and play _mora_ till
they are exhausted, and in the place under us I have known the last
hoarsely shouted number to sound after the hour of three.
As I climbed back into my own room I took with me the satisfying
knowledge that we should probably hear _mora_ and sing-songing every
night while we dwelt in the place. It was evidently a restaurant and
used as a sort of club house by a company of the convivial and
congenial. There was not the slightest indication on the street front
that the place was anything but an ordinary tenement basement.
The commissary end of our campaign after information was very weak. Home
cooking is well enough with facilities. It is a destroyer of peace and
well-being, without them. Therefore we began a series of disastrous
experiments in lunching and dining out in first one and then the other
Italian restaurants thereabouts, and after a plucky and determined
resistance to the enemy we succumbed. Our stomachs demanded time to
accustom themselves to the change, and so we took to Italian fare only
in moderation, securing at last an ability to eat and enjoy it.
After I had discovered that there was a restaurant in the basement of
our own house, I made inquiry of the landlord as to its desirability,
and on his recommendation we went in there one day for lunch. We found
that, as I had surmised, there was a third room in the front, and in
this a large table was set. At its head was an important-looking
red-bearded gentleman whom I knew was an _editorre_ of one of the many
small Italian publications put forth in New York. Ranged down each side
were men of several sorts. There was an animated conversation in
progress as we entered, but a sudden silence fell as they saw us. Looks
of suspicion passed, and though they greeted us in a constrained sort of
way as we took places at the foot of the table, I could see that we
represented a note of discord. The proprietor, who was cook as well, and
his wife and sister-in-law were effusive in their welcome, and after we
had tasted the character of the food I felt that we were nearer a
solution of the eating question than at any time before. The men at the
table were visibly relieved when they found that we could not understand
Italian, and ventured remarks now and then to test our knowledge. Some
of these were of a very personal nature concerning us; and, being able
to understand some few of the words and phrases, I knew this but behaved
as if there were no word of all they said that had any meaning to me.
That evening when we came in for dinner we found that a little table for
the two of us had been put in a remote corner of the long room, and
though the places in which we had been at noon were empty, plates and
chairs had been removed, so that we well knew “outsiders,” especially
ladies, were not desired at their board.
Once they were perfectly sure we did not understand anything of which
they spoke, they became just as free of speech as they must have been
before. This was very fine for us. An understanding of the good Italian
they spoke, which was barely sufficient to trace and know the current of
conversation, rapidly broadened into ability to get more of the full
meaning. It was ill for speaking-practice, though, for we used only
English in the place, and I found that if I used the Italian that I
heard them speaking at the table, to any one outside in other parts of
the Italian quarter there was an absolute failure to understand me. At
first I thought this was because of my poor pronunciation and awkward
attempts, but the more I listened the more I learned that we were
absorbing better Italian than was spoken by the mass of Italians in New
York, and when I first mentioned the subject to an Italian friend, newly
made, he laughingly explained that there are about twenty varieties of
Italian speech, and that in the restaurant in the Houston Street
basement I was hearing Milanese while all about outside were Romans,
Neapolitans, Genoese, Turinese, Calabrese, Sicilians, and so on. Greater
knowledge of the language showed me that so wide are the differences
that a man from certain portions of the north of Italy is almost unable
to converse with a man from the south, even if _willing_ to do so. There
is the bitterest sectional feeling, and people of different provinces
are constantly arrayed against each other. I found this feeling very
strong between the Calabrese and the Sicilian.
The men who took lunch at the basement restaurant were of a more
intelligent class than those who came there at night, and so, as we came
to understand more each day, we began to learn more and more of the very
facts of inside life among Italians for which we were seeking.
[Illustration: Mrs. Brandenburg in Her wretched Tenement-room]
I do not know that we got so much well-rounded information from their
chance conversation as tips on the things for which to be on the
lookout. Some little things in particular that had no bearing on
generalities are contained in the following incidents.
Gossip one day told me that a certain editor of an Italian newspaper of
some standing had written a scathing article directed against Mr. Frank
Munsey, at that time the new owner of the _News_, and William Randolph
Hearst of the _American_ and _Journal_. He had said things which he felt
sure would make both of those gentlemen get down their rapiers and do
battle either editorially or in person. He hoped it would be both, as he
felt he had a righteous cause and needed the advertising. The day his
editorial was published he stayed close to the telephone all day in his
office expecting a telephone message from one or the other. When the
papers of both attacked editors appeared next day without even a
one-line hint of the deadly blow which had been dealt them, the Italian
editor very nearly fell to the floor in a frothing rage. For an hour he
raved like a wild man and was only calmed by the assurance from a
cool-headed friend that both were preparing overwhelming answers for
their print next day, so he settled himself to write what he thought
would be an anticipation of their replies. Not a sign did the two
smitten ones give, and it was not long before some one found out through
friends in the offices of both papers that in neither had either the
first or second assaults in the Italian journal even been so much as
heard of.
One of the men at the table had his father in this country with him, and
the father, having been here two years and saved $600 working in a piano
factory for $1.40 per day, wished to return to Italy to spend his last
days and, desiring to save his passage money, had followed the example
of another old man and arranged to get himself deported. I listened
closely and heard the son telling with great amusement how “feeble” the
old man became when he went to make his application for deportation as
an alien who was unable to support himself in America because of age and
ill health.
At another time a newcomer at the table related to an interested
audience what had been told him of the very wild condition of the
country even so far east as Kentucky. He gave some instances of a feud,
that had been generally printed a short time before, as if they were the
actual doings of hordes of savages in the mountains. He may not have
been as far wrong as it seems at first glance, of course, but the
incident aptly illustrated how little conception the mass of otherwise
well-informed aliens have of the great country which is giving them more
of comfort, liberty and opportunity than they have ever had before.
Our landlord and his wife represented a class which is taken all too
slightly into account by those Americans who are interested in the
immigration question; for it has an influence which, while positive in
few things and negative in many, is nevertheless very strong and
powerfully affects the destinies of Italians in America.
The Chevalier Celestin Tonella is a man of striking presence. He is
large and heavy and has the erect bearing of a soldier. He has the
dominant nose and the composed air of one accustomed to command. The
time was when he stood well up in the army. His exact rank I never
learned.
His wife is a small, slender, gray-haired woman with the unmistakable
stamp of the gentlewoman upon her, and she speaks a number of languages
as well as having the deft-finger gift of making, painting, broidering
and sewing, as is the way with Italian women of position.
Of their story I know nothing, except that once she was in the patronage
of a duchess and was at court, and he was also in favor with the high
and mighty; but now they are running Nos. 141, 145 and 147 Houston
Street for a living and are here in America with no plans for going back
to Italy. How or why they came, who knows? So far as the interests of
this work are concerned I do not care, and have introduced them in so
personal a fashion only because they are so typical a family of
better-class Italians emigrated to America. Last year the number of
alien immigrants landed in the United States who were able to come in
the cabin instead of in the steerage was 64,269 and the year previous
82,055. Of this number more than one third were Italians.
In my personal acquaintance among Italians in New York there is a man
who was formerly a priest in Rome and is now a saloon-keeper and banker
on the East Side; another man who has four titles and an unenviable
record in Genoa, Milan, Venice, Paris and Vienna, who owns three
barber-shops up-town and two resorts in Elizabeth Street capitalized
with the patrimony of a young gentlewoman of Udine who followed him to
America when his family had cast him off and it was too hot for him to
remain in Italy, France or Austria; a third man who is a banker not far
from where we lived who is conducting a flourishing “padrone” business
founded on funds which he abstracted while an official in Naples before
that city was bankrupted by its rulers.
There are three. I could give a number more, but those will suffice. The
point in the whole consideration is that _the lower class Italians in
this country continue to pay the respect and homage to those of their
race who have been born to position, without regard to the changed and
democratic conditions under which both gentleman and peasant are now
living_.
An Italian of humble birth who may have prospered in this country and
have risen to a position of commercial and political eminence among New
Yorkers will cringe unhesitatingly to some worthless scamp who chances
to be well born. I have seen this instanced many times and in various
ways. Twenty years of residence and fifteen of citizenship in the United
States will change the average Italian into a very American sort of
person, but I know to a certainty that he will suffer silently at the
hands of a countryman of superior birth what he would not submit to for
one minute from an American no matter what might be the latter’s station
in life. It is certainly a curious fact.
In general it is safe to say that half of the Italians from the better
classes who come to America are far more undesirable than any of the
lower-class immigrants except _that_ certain class of habitual criminals
who are doing so much to get their race despised by honest, clean-handed
Americans.
One of their worst influences is to retard the assimilation of their
people by the great American body politic, by refusing to be themselves
assimilated, even going so far as to send their children to private
schools in order that they may not learn English, and in insisting on
wearing clothes of imported make or pattern. They are by birth,
tradition and intent the leaders of Italian communities in this country,
and their prejudices and examples confuse if not entirely divert the
natural social development of their humbler countrymen all about them.
Many of them are estimable, as are Chevalier Tonella and his clever,
cheery wife, but their influence is negatively wrong.
One evening I was sitting with an Italian carpenter, a friend of the
landlord’s, in a corner of a Thompson Street saloon, and we were
discussing the effect of union-labor regulations on the labor of
immigrants and the way in which skilled masons, carpenters,
cabinet-makers, smiths, etc., are forced to become peddlers, common
laborers, bootblacks, etc., instead of having opportunities to follow
their trades, when we were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a
very excited man. He was a young barber, flushed with wine and good
fortune. He burst into the room with a shout and a rattle of oaths and
slammed down a handful of mixed money on a table.
The people about were saying so much and delivering it in so short a
time that it was a full five minutes before they began conversation
_piano_ enough for me to get the idea. The young barber had won three
hundred dollars at _lotto_ and had just received it.
I knew that in Italy nearly every block in the cities has its _banco di
lotto_ run by the government and supposed that the young chap had been
playing the lottery from this side and had won but I soon learned that
the national love of _lotto_ gambling has been transplanted to America,
and that since the laws here forbid lotteries the Italians of the
country are forced to run them under cover, and do so very successfully.
After that I often heard of plays made by my friends and of winnings now
and then by people I did not know, but never at any time was I able to
fathom the method by which the business was carried on. Instead of being
officially conducted by any society, each lottery is entirely a private
venture, and its patronage is confined to those who are _compare_ as the
dialect has it. It is a word difficult to render into English, but all
those Italians who come from one town or province and have mutual
interests and trust each other are _compare_. Not only does this
freemasonry exist as to _lotto_, but it pervades all their other social
relations. It is a potent force never reckoned with among those who
persist in misunderstanding the “dirty dago.”
Very soon after we had taken up our residence in the quarter I found out
the true reason for the prospect of an enormously increased immigration
for 1903. The ponderous articles and profoundly wise comments on the
question had attributed it to a number of things. Among these were: an
increasing demand for labor that made a market for the immigrants’
muscles, advertising efforts on the part of competing steamship lines,
oppression of the Jews, deflection of German emigration from South
America to North America, increased taxes and failure of crops in
southern Europe. Balderdash and folly! The truth was that every man who
had any relatives to bring over to the United States had read of the new
strictures in immigration laws that impended and was straining every
nerve to bring them and get them passed before the new laws could be
passed and put into effect. Thousands and thousands of people whom the
laws would not have affected in the least came this last year when if
there had been no change of legislation in prospect, they would have
waited a year or two more. I know personally of a score of families
whose plans were affected by this very thing and _by no other
consideration_.
It should be remarked at this stage that one of the first things I
learned among the Italians (and I knew later that it extended to all
races) was that the alien considers the United States code of
immigration laws a very complex, fearsome and inexplicable thing, to be
thoroughly respected but if possible, evaded.
More than once I have been asked the following question which bears its
own token:
“If a man and his family are good enough to live in Italy, why are they
not good enough to live in the United States?”
The records of immigrants who have gone insane either on shipboard or in
Ellis Island, or have broken down as soon as ever they were safely
landed in the United States, are striking proof of how persons entirely
within the bounds of the laws worry over the chance of exclusion.
One day after we had changed into our third-floor room we heard a
frightful row among the neighbors below. A moment’s listening showed
that some woman was berating a little girl, and some man was interposing
in the child’s behalf. I suppose it was a man and his wife and the
eldest of their three girls, who lived on that floor. I cannot give the
entire conversation, but the following extract will tell the story:
Said the mother in very forcible Tuscan:
“You _shall_ speak Italian and nothing else, if I must kill you; for
what will your grandmother say when you go back to the old country, if
you talk this pig’s English?”
“Aw, gwan! Youse tink I’m goin’ to talk dago ‘n’ be called a guinea! Not
on your life. I’m 'n American, I am, ‘n’ you go way back ‘n’ sit down.”
The mother evidently understood the reply well enough, for she poured
forth a torrent of Italian mixed with strange misplaced American oaths,
and then the father ended matters by saying in mixed Italian and
English:
“Shut up, both of you. I wish I spoke English like the children do.”
A very sensible German whom I know, a man of good education and holding
an important position in the Ward line, has often told me that he was
compelled to learn to speak good English in order to keep from being
laughed at by his children, who contrived to escape correction whenever
he used broken English in arraigning them.
One of our methods of investigation was to go from one place of business
to another in the quarter and, if possible, buy some trifle, meanwhile
asking questions. We found that it is usually the children who do the
reading, writing, interpreting and accounting in English for their
parents, and an extremely bright and quick lot of youngsters they seemed
to be. In some places we saw startling contrasts between the two
generations: one rooted in all that is Italian and absolutely unable to
allow themselves to be absorbed and assimilated and the other intensely
and thoroughly American in every idea and mannerism. It would be easy to
understand how this could be so had these same children been well mixed
with native-born children, but in all that community and in the schools
they attended the percentage of Italians was so great that one would
have thought it was the native-born children who would have been
swallowed up in Italianism. It is a remarkable fact that the Italian
children insist on learning and speaking English alone, though it is not
the native tongue of more than one in ten persons about them.
One of the general conditions, to the true significance of which our
attention was called by the conversation of the midday gathering around
the table in the Houston Street basement, is the pernicious system of
Italian “banks.” They are scattered everywhere through the Italian
colonies of New York, Boston, Buffalo, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, etc.,
and, being ultra-parasitical in their nature, their harmful agencies may
be imagined.
In Greater New York, and in its New Jersey purlieus which are so closely
connected that they pulse with the life of the great city, there are 412
Italian banks with charters to do banking business and fully as many
more that operate without charters. Many of these are combination
businesses, money exchanges, steamship-ticket offices and banks,
groceries and banks, saloons and banks, and often only the patrons are
aware that there is a banking business at all.
Furthermore the banking business is conducted on a very different basis
from that usual in American banks of the various grades. Every employer
of Italian labor in New York city knows that if he wishes to get a gang
of men quickly to go to a job of work he need only telephone to an
Italian bank. It will be found to be a very effective employment bureau.
I have known specific instances where two large corporations, one
commercial and the other industrial, being suddenly in need of labor,
sent to Italian banks and got gangs of men. In the one instance the
commercial corporation agreed to pay the bank $7.20 per week per man,
and the men received from the bank $5 per week each. In another the
industrial corporation paid $1.50 per day, and the men got $1.10. Three
banks were concerned in the two cases. I learned of the low wage from
the men, and in answer to my questions they told me that they were under
the control of the bank. So I made inquiry of the two corporations and
ascertained the above facts.
It is unwise and unjust to say that all of the little Italian banks are
conducted on these lines or indulge in the following practices. There
are many which are conducted by honorable, trustworthy men; but the
greater number are the arbiters of the welfare of the Italian laborer in
this country. They “bureauize” him privately, as the Italian government
is endeavoring and failing to do officially. The poverty-pinched Italian
peasant who is minded to come to America, earn a few hundred dollars and
return can go to a money-lender at home and deliver himself into his
hands. His fare will be lent to him, with other necessary money, at a
usurious rate, frequently with no security save that the peasant, often
unable to read or write and densely ignorant of what awaits him, is
consigned to the Italian bank in America of which the money lender is a
correspondent. When he reaches Ellis Island he is met by his “cousin,”
the bank’s representative, and is duly discharged to him in New York or
shipped to him by rail. If he has any money of his own, he deposits it
in the bank; the bank lends him more money if he needs it; the bank
finds his place to sleep and eat; the bank sees that he has a doctor if
he needs one; and in a day or two the ignorant peasant with others of
his kind is despatched to work in the Subway, steve on the docks,
excavate for new buildings, delve in the mines, or whatever the work may
be, fulfilling the agreement which the bank has made to deliver labor.
This is an evasion of the letter of the contract alien labor law and a
flagrant violation of its spirit.
The bank, furthermore, is usually owned entirely or at least controlled
by one man. It is the laborer’s address for his mail from home. It
writes his letters for him if he is unable to write. It forwards his
savings home, minus a percentage. It holds his passport and any other
valuable papers and in every way makes itself so essential to him that
it has him entirely in its control. Often he realizes that it does this
for from five to thirty per cent of his wages; more often he never knows
how much short of his full due he is getting. Worst of all are the
naturalization frauds, the wholesale political mal-franchisements and
increase of temporary immigration. In the last-named matter the banker
rarely fails to urge the immigrant to return to Italy after he has saved
two or three hundred dollars, because he will sell the immigrant his
ticket home, clear the scores, realize his profits and be able to fill
the place of the departing man with one who is “greener” and yet more
ignorant. When the Italian has been here a year or two he begins to be
difficult for the banker to handle, unless he be of that number who are
born to be driven and sold like cattle.
As I have said there are many very worthy men engaged in banking and
agency businesses among Italians, but there is a notable number who are
born thieves and swindlers and have records at home which prevent their
enjoyment of the balmy air of Italy for even one brief day. This matter
is not overlooked at home. A joke in one of the Roman comic papers
printed not long ago attests that.
A cashiered army officer is pictured as meeting a defaulting
office-holder just emerging from a term in prison. This is the dialogue:
_Army Officer._—“What is the game now? An honest life?”
_Late Office-holder._—“No, I think I shall open an emigrant bank in New
York.”
_Army Officer._—“Indeed! I had thought of _that_ myself.”