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ITALIAN WOMAN BUYING FISH AT THE CORNER OF MULBERRY AND HESTER STREETS,

NEW YORK

and Cordova they possess vast estates, from which they export great quantities of grain and over 30,000,000 gallons of wine annually.

Extensive immigration to the United States from Italy is a recent phenomenon. Thus, from 1860 to 1870 but 12,000 of these people arrived here, while the total of those coming since 1890 amounts to over 1,000,000. As this includes those who have returned from the United States to Italy and are now coming hither for a second or third time, it would be more correct to place the number of new arrivals from Italian ports at 750,000, while the total Italian-speaking population of our country, including children born here, cannot be less than 1,200,000.

It is demonstrable, however, that not more than twelve per cent. of this number

now reside within the limits of the Greater New York. Even this, however, gives our city an Italian-speaking population of 160,000-about that of Venice, and more than one-third that of Rome itself.

The story of New York Italian life asks a chapter by itself. The two great sections of Manhattan practically surrendered to these people include some thirty blocks lying between One Hundredth and One Hundred and Fifteenth Streets, and extending from Second Avenue to the river. Downtown they occupy all the district lying between Centre Street and the Bowery, from Pearl to Bleecker, and to the west the whole length of Thompson, McDougall, and Sullivan Streets. The Bleecker and Spring Street Italians are mainly from northern Italy, while the uptown colony is chiefly from Calabria.

Then Brooklyn has no less than nine districts of Italian population, the two largest of which lie at opposite extremes of the borough. One of these, in South Brooklyn, includes Van Brunt and Columbia Streets, with portions of Hicks, Carroll, President, Union, Sackett, and Degraw Streets, while the Williamsburg group embraces nearly half of the Seventeenth Ward. How many Brooklynites realize that their borough has a larger Italian population than Lucca or Pisa, famous for a thousand years in the history of art?

Why do these people group themselves so closely together? One cause of this is the dependent condition of those arriving here with no knowledge of our language. If they are to obtain work, they

must be with friends and relatives who have already acquired a foothold. perhaps a deeper reason is the strong attachment which most of them possess for the ways and customs of their own land. Whatever the reason, one often finds several adjoining houses occupied exclusively by people from the same district. Thus, in Elizabeth Street, Manhattan, once a fashionable section of the city, there is to-day a group of several hundred families from Sciacca, a Sicilian fishing town forty miles east of Girgenti, the famous Acragas of Empedocles, where still stand the ruins of several of the most perfect Greek temples in the world. These people, living closely together, employ the Sciaccan dialect, possess Sciaccan doctors

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TYPES OF ITALIAN LABORERS IN AMERICA

Workers in a Brooklyn macaroni factory.

and a Sciaccan pharmacy, and prepare resplendent festas in honor of "Maria S. S. del Soccorso Protettrice della Citta de Sciacca." Then there are over 130 Italian mutual aid societies in New York City, most of them composed mainly of natives of a single Italian province, the name of which they bear. Thus the Calabrians sustain the "Society of the Tre Calabrie;" and the membership of other bodies is constituted respectively by the "Cittadini Napoletani," "Cittadini Padulesi," "Cittadini Avellinese," etc. However, there are organizations more distinctively American, as the "Columbia Democratic Union," the "Italian Republican Club," or, best of all, the "Society of the Cittadini Americani." As a rule, the Italians of New York value their citizenship and vote on election day.

The sons of Italy, wherever, found, are fond of music and outdoor life; and in New York they enjoy both of these luxuries when the band plays in Mulberry Bend Park. Then they pour forth from a hundred tenements (owned mainly by Italian landlords), and stand listening in rapt delight by the hour to the strains of "Il Trovatore," etc. At least one member of each family has some musical gift; and a violin hung on the kitchen wall may prove the love of melody no less than the grand square in a West Side drawing-room. Italians possess, too, an inherited passion for literature, so that it is not strange, even while we have a large illiterate Italian immigration, to find book-stalls and small libraries on almost every block about the Bend. Of course a good deal of trash is sold. There are comic sheets and Neapolitan dialect love songs by the score, and innumerable tragic or amorous novelettes by Carolina Invernizio and other popular writers. But with these is a solid body of the noblest literature in the world. Alfieri, Manzoni, Giusti, Tasso, Ariosto, Petrarch, and Dante are read by every one who can read at all. As popular as these are Silvia Pellico's

Mie Prigioni," and "Cuore " by De Amicis. Nothing, indeed, is more notable than the fervent interest of young Italians in their great history and the fame and works of their writers. There is a force of enthusiasm, a power of imagination and sentiment, latent in these people that must again in a free land be fruitful of

splendid works. Already ten daily or weekly Italian sheets are published in New York City. The most important of these are the "Il Progresso," "Il Bollettina della Sera," and " L'Avaldo." The "Rassegna is a high-class literary review, and the character of the "Revista Commerciale" is indicated by its name.

While the Italian peasants are great workers, those who come to us from Naples seem peculiarly fond of noisy. diversions. Certainly they exercise their gifts in this direction extensively. Nearly all the Italian societies give festivals annually, generally during the summer, and these have been accompanied of late by such a racket of fireworks and bursting petards as to render them a public nuisance. Frequently great wooden and pasteboard shrines are erected on the sidewalk and the streets are arched with lines of Chinese lanterns. In a recent Elizabeth Street festa great wire brackets arched the street at intervals of one hundred feet for a quarter of a mile, and huge painted candles, eight to ten feet in height, and costing from five to ten dollars apiece, were presented by the wealthier families to the Madonna. Boys dressed in gauze and gilt, and arranged with wings attached to their shoulders to represent angels, were suspended in mid-air over the heads of admiring crowds. An interesting feature of these occasions, especially when held in the parks, is the baptism of the society banner, usually a handsome and costly piece of embroidered silk fringed with gold and richly ornamented.

There are several Italian theaters in Manhattan, where light comedies, heroic tragedies, and dialect plays are presented. Some of these theaters are maintained in the rear of saloons, and in the cheaper ones marionettes take the place of paid actors. In a Broome Street theater fairly good plays are presented, and occasionally the People's Bowery Theater is hired by the week by a first-class troupe.

Apart from their festas, New York Italians seem to take little outdoor diversion. One of their games," Pallone," is played with a large inflated leather ball beaten about very much as in our football games. Boccia is also played in scores of back yards. In this game heavy wooden balls are thrown or rolled on the ground to a given point; a number of men play, taking

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sides, and the object is to knock out as many times as possible the opponent's ball and secure the largest number of points. It is mainly a game of skill. A less rep utable game, in which skill is also essential, is played in many saloons of the baser sort. It is called Morra, and consists in flinging down the hand violently and at the same time extending one or more of the fingers and shouting the number of fingers extended, this constituting a challenge to other members of the group, who duplicate the movement as accurately as possible. If any one fails in accuracy, he loses. The impetuous character of the contestants, however, frequently leads to threat ening altercations and occasional serious results. On this account this game is subject to a general prohibition in Italian cities. Many Italians have an unfortunate passion for games of chance, which has, no doubt, been strengthened by former indulgence in the national Banco Lotto at home. The holding of raffles for bicycles, sewing-machines, gold watches, etc., is common, and the successful numbers in what are practically lottery drawings are published in the Italian dailies.

The Italian churches of New York are mainly attended by women, but few of the men being enthusiastic over the work of the priests. The most important of these churches is that of St. Anthony of Padua on Sullivan Street, ministered to by Anacletus de Angelis, with four assistants. Its parishioners number 8,000, and it holds property valued at $400,000. Near by on Bleecker Street is the Italian church of Our Lady of Pompeii, while that of Our Lady of Loretto, "where many miracles have occurred," numbers more than 12,000 supporters. Our Lady the Queen of the Angels is another church on East One Hundred and Thirteenth Street. The largest Protestant body of Italians in the city is that under the leadership of Dr. A. Arrighi, of the Broome Street Tabernacle, who has labored almost twenty years in this field.

Education is of course necessary before any Italian can thoroughly appreciate the rights and duties of American citizenship, and the educational problem for Italian immigrants is a serious one. Many boys and young men arrive at Ellis Island at an age which enables them to escape army service at home and school attend

ance in this country. Working all day among those using only their own dialect, they often go for years without acquiring more than a few English words. The brightest young men enter the public night-schools as soon as a speaking acquaintance with the language is formed. Indeed, the public night-school already furnishes a few Italian-speaking teachers for the benefit of these people. But there is a large margin of uncovered territory to be occupied by settlement workers. The Children's Aid Society maintains three large and crowded Italian schools in Manhattan, of which that on Leonard Street, with 600 scholars, is the oldest and best equipped. Brooklyn, on the other hand, has but a single Italian settlement house, still inadequately supported, and forced constantly to appeal to the public for aid. It is something that public-spirited men in the Borough of Churches should look to.

The trades and occupations of New York Italians are various, so that there is slight excuse for the query put by a university man who, noting the dark-featured venders patrolling the streets with pushcarts, asked, "Why do all Italians deal in bananas?" In reply it may be said that the push-cart men of lower Broadway and Wall Street are nearly all Greeks, most of the Italian dealers in fruit now having stands or stores of their own. But to-day there are in Manhattan some 2,300 Italians devoted to the trade of St. Crispin ; 1,300 who deal in cheese and groceries; 1,500 tailoring-shops and 3,000 barbershops; a total of 500 butchers and bakers, and as many more who keep saloons; 200 tobacconists; and over 600 who keep fruit

stores.

We have spoken of our metropolitan Italians only, but New York State contains outside of the city nearly half as many as reside within its limits. It may be said, indeed, that there is scarcely a growing town or city from Plattsburg to Chautauqua which lacks a group, and frequently a good-sized group, of these people. Buffalo heads the list with an Italian population of 13,800; and if we include those who live at Geneva, Batavia, North Collins, Fredonia, etc., the total number in that section is about 22,000. Great numbers work on the Lehigh Valley railroad; 400 are engaged in a single

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