Carrie was not a hopeful candidate for work. She was only fifteen, still gaunt from the ravages of typhoid, grotesque in appearance. Her mother had died when she was eleven, and she had been promptly taken from school, which she hated, to do the housework. To appease the truant officer, she was sent to another school for a month. Then quietly she dropped out altogether. An attempt at work in a factory at this age was unsuccessful. “My aunt told the forelady how I was poor and hadn’t any mother. So she took pity on me and let me try.” But she was soon discharged and was kept at home to take care of her younger brother and sister, until all three were sent to an institution. Two months later the father died,—as Carrie declared and certainly believed, “of a broken heart.”
After leaving the institution at fourteen, she had lived with her aunts by spells, quarreling and breaking away from time to time. For a while she had stayed with the mother of a friend who found her sitting on the steps in the rain. She tried places at service, but she was not a trained houseworker and did not stay long at any place. Finally she had got a job in a steam laundry, but while working there she sickened with typhoid and was sent to the hospital. When she came to us she was living with an aunt in a furnished room house, a forlorn, three-story shack on one of the river blocks. The halls reeked with odors from the corner saloon. The aunt, her husband, and two children were occupying a single room when they took the girl in. There was only one bed. “I told Carrie she couldsqueeze in,” she explained. “I couldn’t ask her to sleep on the floor.”
It was slow business finding work for Carrie. She had to have better clothes. She had to be examined by a physician, for there were signs of a venereal disease which would have made her dangerous to fellow-workers in a factory. These things had been arranged for and consented to. But before they could be put into effect and work could be found, Carrie had taken the plunge. She disappeared without leaving a trace, but soon after one of the girls reported seeing her on Eighth Avenue, “in a real wig and a swell new suit.” Immorality was not new to Carrie, but she had found a way to make it pay. She was “on the streets.” There followed an unsuccessful search, inquiries at police headquarters, of prison officials, of probation officers. We enlisted the aid of a strong society, but the agent, though he promised to help, gave us very little encouragement, saying that such a search was pretty hopeless, as there were hundreds of girls in similar circumstances at large in New York.
Carrie slipped out of sight all the more easily because she had no one “who rightly belonged to her.” When a girl disappears from a home presided over by a determined mother, the search which follows is likely to be a desperate one. Mrs. Mullarkey’s search for her Fannie was a mixture of folly, shrewdness, and heroism. Fannie, according to her mother, was “the best girl you ever saw” till she came to live on the “Gopher block.” There she “got in” with an older girl at the factory and began to be tough. She threw up her job, as did her friend, and the two spent theirtime in secret ways. At first the mother knew nothing of Fannie’s being out of work because the girl left home regularly mornings and came home promptly to her dinner. But at last the fraud was discovered; there was a scene, with “hollerin’ and smashin’,” and upon the heels of it Fannie disappeared. Mrs. Mullarkey’s fears pointed to a certain house on Eleventh Avenue where a woman lived who had the reputation of harboring girls. Not daring to go there alone, she enlisted the aid of Father Langan, “a rough hollerin’ sort of a man that the children was all afraid of.” But the woman would not open even to the Father’s authoritative knock. Eventually they returned with an officer who broke down the door. But Fannie was not there after all.
Mrs. Mullarkey’s two aids, the officer and the priest, could give her no further counsel. But she herself knew of another resource in the person of a young man, about twenty-two years old, a gangster and political scullion, whom she had known from early boyhood. To him she made her appeal for old acquaintance’ sake. “For God’s sake, Petey,” she said, “you are the only one that can get Fannie. Find out where she is.” Moved by the appeal and nothing loath to show his power, Petey promised that he would find the girl; only he stipulated that Mrs. Mullarkey must “leave Fannie be” when once she had her. Mrs. Mullarkey agreed and Petey went forth on his quest. In a couple of hours he returned with the culprit and commanded her to tell her mother where she had been. At first she refused; but Petey, once enlisted on the mother’s side, was a stern and unyielding ally. He brought out a knife and threatened her, so that thepoor girl was terrified and stammered forth a confession of how she and her friend had been staying together in a furnished room. Mrs. Mullarkey was so outraged by what she heard that she altogether forgot her promise to Petey. After he had gone she summoned an officer and had the girl taken to court. Fannie was locked up in a cell for twenty-four hours “to cool off.” When she came up before the judge the following day she was “as brazen as could be, not a tear in her eye.” At last, however, she said she wanted to go home, and the judge placed her on probation.
We knew a sorry scrap of a child, five years old, who was already getting her instruction. She was a thin, sharp-featured little creature, uncommunicative, but very watchful out of her clear, bright blue eyes. Her clothing, hands, and face were always unclean. She gave an uncomfortable sense of possessing a great deal of unnatural knowledge for her age. Her home was a kitchen with two windows, and two tiny dark bedrooms, as hopelessly unkempt and dirty as herself. It was the abode of six people and nine cats. Her father was the last of three husbands, all of doubtful legal status. Her mother, who drank heavily on occasion, was unreliable. “Patsy” was the frequent companion of her sister of fifteen. This girl, who had an unusual, vivid, and forceful personality, was alternately sought out by the fellows of the block and censured with their disapproval. She ruled Patsy as an autocrat, petting and punishing her, allowing her to “tag around” and constantly using her as a go-between. There will be no question of a “fall” for Patsy. As she was being taught, so in time she will naturally develop.
With girls from such homes, childhood is the crucialtime. It is not temptation, circumstance, or delusion that gets them into “trouble.” It is the faulty moral and mental training which simply expresses itself later in the almost inevitable, natural fashion. A smattering of conventional morality given by the church or by school is of little practical force against the tenor of their lives. “Reform” for such girls does not mean a return to abandoned ideals and desires. This is hard to achieve, but what is required here is still more difficult. It is the graft of new habits and a new outlook. It is the patient training away from the easy ways into the strict new law. Even fourteen or fifteen may be too late an age at which to begin this.
But actual immorality is not the only fruit of the dingy, sordid happenings which compose so large a part of the life of this community. There are girls who grow up in the midst of vicious surroundings with an inward security against harm. They are as trustworthy as the most carefully trained and guarded child—and hardier. For with them there is truth in the familiar boast, “I’m able to take care of myself.” But they pay a price for this fortitude. They are not taught, cleanly and rightly, straight from the shoulder. The taint and grime around them reach to their thoughts and feeling, and they suffer in their conceptions of life and of human experience.
We hear a great deal of the precocious development of New York children. It is most noticeable in girls from homes like these. In spite of the essential helplessness of their age, they acquire a surface hardihood which marks them out from normal children. They have grown up to have a settled distrust of life. They have a lurking bitterness which may be unavoidablein the adult but which ought never to play a part in childhood.
Yet, granting all the untoward conditions and influences which she must face, the problem of our West Side girl is by no means a hopeless one. Watch her as she swings through the streets, lovely through all her tawdriness, fine through all her vulgarity, gentle through all her “toughness.” Seeing her thus we cannot but see also her hopeful possibilities, in spite of the sordidness and evil which have encompassed her.
To strengthen the best elements of the home—this is the surest and most fundamental way to help this girl. The dangers for her family are the most deeply rooted menace to her. And here they are manifold. We may safeguard her recreation; we may improve her schooling; we may regulate her working conditions. But we must remember that she is seldom to be regarded entirely as an individual; she is one of a family group, a unit of a community. Unless she drifts to the streets she will probably remain so. And whatever can lighten and beautify the grimy life of the district, or relieve the intense pressure on family comfort, will give her a better chance.
By Josephine Roche
Fromout the big candy factories of the Middle West Side throngs of workers, one Saturday night, came hurrying into the December darkness. Eagerly they turned their steps toward their tenement homes. Many of them were Italian girls, and very young.
Across the street from Kohlberger’s candy factory a child waited, peering anxiously at every group of girls that left the building. “Lucy!” she called out suddenly. Three girls stopped and the child ran up to them crying, “Oh, Lucy, your sister Mary’s got twins!” Lucy’s shriek of delight was echoed rapturously by her companions; they caught hold of the child and besieged her with questions. Several friends stopped to hear the glad tidings. Then the little group set out up Ninth Avenue for Lucy Colletti’s home to see Mary and the new arrivals.
The noise of the elevated trains drowned their voices and the crowds held them back, but they talked happily on. After the first excitement of the news had abated a little, they turned to other matters. “Perhaps your friend will be at your house, Lucy,” said one of the girls.
Lucy’s happy look faded.
“No, he won’t.”
“But he’s there at the door every night, and he goes up the stairs with you.”
“My father’s got no use for him, so I told him .... Well, what’s the use, we ain’t allowed to do anything,” she ended sullenly.
“Why don’t you do like Jennie does, and not let them know?” asked the other.
“They’d know. They don’t ever let me out at night, not even to go to the club. It’s just sit around the house all evening. If you’ve got a husband, he’ll take you out somewhere. Mary got married when she was fifteen and after that she went out all the time. I wisht I was married!”
As they turned from Ninth Avenue west into one of the Forties a girl and a young man approached them. “There’s Angelina!” exclaimed Jennie, calling to the girl. Angelina greeted them warmly. She was thin and looked delicate, as though she had just recovered from a severe illness. In answer to the girls’ eager questions she said that she was better; that she and Nick were to be married at Christmas and go to live in the Bronx; that she’d get well fast then. She asked in turn about the girls at the factory and said that she missed them.
Angelina was sixteen. Two years before, she had gone into the candy factory. She started at $3.50 a week and after a year got $4.00, packing chocolates in the basement. It was cold there and damp, and in spite of her heavy sweater and two pairs of stockings she had contracted a severe cold which lingered on her lungs. She failed steadily until one day after a bad fit of “coughing blood” she fainted and had to betaken home. She could not go back, although her mother missed the $4.00 sadly, as her father too was out of work. But when she was able to be up and care for the baby and do her mother’s work as janitress, the latter managed to get cleaning jobs and things were easier. This last week her father had got employment. He was washing dishes in a saloon for $9.00 a week. Now it would be possible for Angelina to marry. Her friends shared in her happiness with quick responsiveness, and continued to talk of her marriage to Nick until the nearness of Lucy’s house brought them back to the first interesting topic of the evening.
“My, I’m glad I don’t have to work tonight!” Lucy exclaimed.
“Yes, but we must work tomorrow!” exclaimed Jennie. “I just hate going on Sunday. Gee! I don’t want no candy for a Christmas present!”
Through cold, ill-smelling hallways, the girls trooped up the four flights of narrow stairs to Lucy’s home. The gas flame which flickered feebly on each landing revealed the dirty, crumbling walls. It was the social hour of the tenements. Fathers were returning from the day’s toil and the children were welcoming them. Mothers were cooking the evening meal, whose various odors mingled in the passage-way with those of bad plumbing, the common toilets, escaping gas, wet plaster, and garbage. Half-dressed babies crept out to the open doors or rolled on the bare, grimy hall floors, peering with curious eyes through the banisters at the new arrivals. The little knots of neighbors gathered about the doorways hailed Lucy with words of rejoicing. A continuous sound of voicesarose, sometimes low and laughing, again, high and excited, but tinged with the varying cadences and the finely shaded meanings with which the Italian language abounds. Accustomed to a life of the greatest intimacy with relatives and neighbors, the Italians will sacrifice any comfort to preserve this condition.
In the Collettis’ flat a stream of smiling friends passed in and out congratulating Mary and touching with warm brown fingers the babies’ cheeks. Each drank two tiny glasses of crème de menthe to the health of mother and children. Four generations lived in that flat—a family of eleven. Mrs. Colletti was seated near her daughter’s bed, nursing her own year-old baby. Mrs. Colletti’s mother, who had been a midwife in Italy, tended her daughter and the newborn babies after the manner in which she had cared years ago for the peasant women of Calabria. The Collettis were prosperous; their fruit stand did a good business. All the family helped. Mrs. Colletti spent every morning at the stand, and the children were there after school and at night. They were able to afford a five-room flat and some pretentious furniture. The front room was particularly splendid with its brilliant green-flowered rug, stiff Nottingham curtains, and equally stiff “parlor set.” Mary’s wedding presents, bright painted vases, imitation cut glass, enormous feather roses, and pink celluloid album, were arranged around the room. Staring likenesses in heavy oil paint of the bride and groom were the crowning glory of the parlor.
Lucy dropped her pay envelope into her mother’s lap. Then she and her friends surrounded the sixteen-year-old mother and told her of the day’s happenings, of meeting Angelina, and how she was soon to be married.Mary was as eager as the others over the idea of a wedding and a dance. Indeed she would be able to go! And she would wear her blue dress, the one she bought when she “stood up” with Flora at her wedding.
Lucy’s friends promised as they said goodnight, to explain to the “boss” why she could not come on Sunday morning for extra work. They ran downstairs out into the street, and as they passed the steam laundry on the block, from which came the dull thump of subsiding machinery, a girl came through the iron gateway. She was a short, stocky peasant type, but her shoulders were stooped, her flesh flabby, and she looked far from strong. She shivered as she came out of the hot, steaming workroom into the chill December air. The girls greeted her.
“You wasn’t at the club last night, Rose, so we came up to see you,” said Jennie.
“No, I never get home till most 9 o’clock on Fridays and on Mondays. It’s awful busy at the laundry these days,” Rose explained. “I wisht I was back at the factory packing peanut brittle. It’s no joke standin’ foldin’ all day long. My side hurts something fierce; it wakes me up at night.” The group walked along arm in arm toward the tenement in which Rose Morelli lived.
“Have you heard from Tony?” Jennie asked as they entered the Morelli flat.
Rose shook her head and glanced at her mother who sat monotonously jigging a dull-looking baby on her lap. At the mention of her son’s name she raised her great, heavy eyes and spoke to Rose in Italian. Then she dropped them again and the tears ran quietly down her face. Tony was the oldest of the family, the onlyboy, and he had run away to Florida six weeks before. He had been led to do so by another boy—a bad boy. The Morellis always explained that it was not Tony’s fault; he was a good boy but he had got tired of working for the butcher. He had written them a postal from Jacksonville saying that he was having a grand time and was stable boy on the race track. But no further word had come. They did not know where he was. But the mother had not given up hope that he would come back, though each day she grew thinner and the heavy marks under her eyes grew darker. She watched on the fire escape each night, peering down the street for Tony’s familiar figure. Now, as she wept for him, she drew the baby to her and kissed it passionately.
The baby was not her own. It was a little Jewish foundling she had taken from the “Home” to nurse when her last baby died seven months ago. Four children had died before that when “so leetle.” Over the mantelpiece hung a large, shiny photograph of the last baby lying in its casket. The, casket had been very expensive, but it had been a great comfort to the mother to put so much money into it, quite unconscious that the living children were paying its heavy price in lowered health and vitality.
The Morellis’ three rooms had none of the air of prosperity that characterized the Colletti home. They were bare, and would have been dingy except for the bright bedspread, the gayly colored wall decorations, and advertising calendars, pictures of the royal family, the pope, the saints, and the Holy Virgin. Under this last a candle burned, an offering for Tony’s return. In the tiny dark box of a room back of the kitchen a cotand two chairs served Rose and the two younger girls as sleeping accommodations. A shakedown in the kitchen had been Tony’s bed. It was still there, unused. No one else would have thought of sleeping in it. It would have been an acknowledgment that he might not need it again.
As Rose went on talking of their “trouble” to her friends, they responded with quick sympathy. They lamented with the Morellis as sincerely as they had rejoiced with the Colletti family. They felt with Rose as keenly and genuinely as with Mary and Lucy. Sympathy is the keynote of the Italian community. It binds together not only members of the same family but relatives of all degrees, friends, fellow-tenants, speakers of the same dialect, those from the same Latin town. It extends to the little foundling, the tiny boarder, whose frequent presence in the home is such sad evidence of the high infant mortality in the Italian families. The $10 which the foster mother receives from the institution as board money does not prevent her from loving her little nursling with the same passionate abandon with which she loves her own.
Whether a girl comes from the higher income group like the Collettis, whose home runs the whole depth of the house and has circulation of fresh air, or from the group that feels the pressure of bare living in three choking, dark rooms as do the Morellis, she is touched by the same deep influence of family bonds and customs. A tying-up of the individual with the group, an identity of interests with those of one’s kin—these are the factors which dominate the lives of the family into which the Italian girl is born and which present a valiant front to the forces of personal independence that meet her inher American life, at school, in industry, and in recreation.
The claims of the school weigh little against the claims of the family. While she is a little girl in the grades, having difficulty perhaps with her lessons, the disadvantage to her of being “kept out” a few days does not weigh an instant against some temporary family need in which she may be of help. Illness, financial loss, trouble of any kind, not merely in her own home but in that of an aunt or uncle, keep many a young girl out of school if only to lament with the afflicted.
Let us glance into the Belsito kitchen on a winter evening after Adelina Belsito has been absent from school for a week. Over at the school the teacher’s register shows that this last week’s defection is only the latest of a long series of absences on the part of “Belsito, Adelina.” On this particular evening a number of friends are collected in the kitchen; their sympathetic and concerned expressions show that they are discussing some grave and anxious matter. Presently there enters upon the scene the school visitor. Will she not be seated and have a glass of wine and Adelina will tell the long story of the family’s misfortunes.
Illness, accident, death, and loss of savings have followed each other in rapid succession, topped now by the burning of a stable and the loss of Mr. Belsito’s two draft horses, the sole capital of the family. Angelina tells the story eagerly in great detail, Mrs. Belsito nodding mournfully at times and adding to her daughter’s account. The father is absent because he is out looking for more horses. He has borrowed money from a friend who is “rich” and the family is anxiously waiting to know his luck. Presently he comes, thechildren running to him and clinging to his legs. No, he has not been able to find horses; all cost too much; there is nothing, nothing to be had. He clasps his head with his hands and sits with it tragically bowed. Fresh commiseration arises from the gathering, and animated suggestions are offered.
Adelina must go to work. That is the consensus of opinion. But upon inquiry, the school visitor learns that Adelina is not yet entitled to working papers, being only in the fourth grade, although nearly fifteen. No, she does not like to go to school; she did like it until a year ago, but lately there has been “so much trouble” that she has been often absent. Of course she has not gone this week! After her father’s horses had burned! Adelina lifts surprised, hurt eyes at the question, though she is not able to explain just what aid she has been able to give by staying at home. And they have been sending her cards from the school, the last one demanding that her father come before the principal and explain her absence. Adelina and her family find this very hard and unjust “when there is so much trouble.” Besides, the father could not go; he had to look for horses. The father lifts his head and speaks to the girl in Italian. Presently she explains, “My father say he have it in his head what he do for you if you speak to the principal for me.”
And through the slight service which the “school lady” later rendered, the Belsitos became her fast friends.
In the Ruletti home down the block there is trouble of another kind. This time it is the mother’s grief which the daughter shares. Mrs. Ruletti is a slender, bent little woman in black. She is not over thirty-three buther deeply lined face looks all of fifty. Just home from work, she snatches up the baby and kisses it passionately, murmuring to it in Italian. She weeps as she talks. Lucrezia Ruletti explains, “They’re going to take it back; they wouldn’t let her keep it any longer and she feels just like she did when our baby died.”
“Take it back?”
“Oh, yes, to the ‘Home.’ Bennie isn’t our real brother; he’s a foundling. You see, when the last baby died in the winter my mother took Bennie from the Home and now we all love him and they want to take him back.”
Mrs. Ruletti breaks in. “They say to me, ‘You have no milk now, bring Bennie back.’ But I feed him bread, meat, oh! he can eat soon. I no want him to go; like loosa my own baby.”
In the Italian household the daughter of fourteen is expected to bear a full share of the mother’s responsibilities. She keeps the house, cooks, washes, dresses and disciplines the children. Laura Tuzzoli, with her old little face and her maternal air, is a not unusual type. Going to call for the first time I paused before the tenement, uncertain as to their floor. A group of dark-eyed children around an ash can nearby watched me curiously. One tiny four-year-old flashed a quick smile of friendliness and a brilliant glance from her black eyes, then edged a little away from her companions. Asked where Laura Tuzzoli lived, she straightened her slight, ragged shoulders and informed me that she was also a “Tuzzoli.” She slipped her mite of a hand into mine and led me up the dirty, unsteady stairs to “our house.”
There the fourteen-year-old sister was presiding in the mother’s absence. She had just begun to bathe theone-year-old baby, having finished cleaning their three rooms. The windows had been washed as had the gilt-framed, cracked mirror which hung proudly in the space between them. On a shelf beneath a picture of the Virgin stood a clean jelly-glass filled with water on which floated a cork bearing a freshly lighted candle.
Presently little Lizzie Tuzzoli came in from school carrying her books and papers for “home work.” Fourteen-year-old Laura put her through a rapid fire of questions about her behavior and whether she had “made up” with a certain Mamie. Lizzie suddenly dived into her bag and produced from it a wonderful pink pencil of the screw variety. Pride of possession shone in her eyes as she displayed it.
“I got it off Lena Perella,” she announced. Laura seized the pencil, touched it carefully, then gave Lizzie a sharp look. “Did shegiveit to you?” she demanded.
Lizzie squirmed a little. “Yes. She—I found it and didn’t know it belonged to her, and Carrie Bussi said Lena didn’t want it anyway, so——”
Laura handed the pencil back with a scorching glance and a dictum whose tone permitted no rejoinder, “You take that back to school tomorrow and give it to Lena,d’ye hear?” Then she became the gracious hostess again.
The bond between Zappira Blondi and her mother was of another sort. When Zappira was twelve years old her father had sailed away to America leaving his family in the little village near Naples to wait until he could earn a home for them in the new country. But work was harder to find than he expected. After a year’s absence he wrote a letter home filled with discouragement and reporting dreary failure. Zappira,who was the oldest of the children, shared in her mother’s keen disappointment. The two put their heads together and laid a plan whereby they could earn their passage. The mother borrowed a sum of money sufficient to stock a small store in their village. This she and Zappira proceeded to conduct so successfully that at the end of the year the small debt had been repaid and the passage money laid aside. Their venture had been kept a secret from the father, and when they were all ready to make the journey they wrote him the good news and named the date when he should meet them at Ellis Island. Great was the joy of the family at being together, but hard work still lay ahead of these brave women. They took two small rooms in Mott Street, and for a year mother and daughter worked in a factory, eking out a bare living. The girl was now sixteen, old enough to be married, and though the family could ill afford to lose her wages her father did not fail in what he considered his duty. He soon found a husband for her. Although so young, Zappira had, through years of close partnership with her mother, already acquired many of the sober qualities of middle age.
The unity of the Italian family has an economic as well as an emotional basis. Father, mother, and children often form a single industrial unit. “I works for me fader,” says the urchin whom you meet on the stairs carrying a pail of coal to a customer. Visit the Sabbio family and you find Mrs. Sabbio presiding at the bar in a small saloon. In response to your question whether her husband owns the saloon, she answers, “Both of us, we work together.”
In the dark, damp little coal and ice cellars, thecluttered tailor and cobbler shops, the grocery and candy stores, at the fruit stands, and in the saloons, all members of the family take a hand and help to bring in the common income. Stroll along Ninth Avenue and you may see sometimes one member of the family “on the job,” sometimes another; at busy times, all are there. The mother is almost always on duty, delegating the housekeeping and tending of babies to the daughter at home. But very often the baby is also in evidence, and is unceremoniously dumped from his mother’s or sister’s arms into a perambulator when attention must be given to a customer.
Similarly, the Italian of this West Side community makes common financial cause with his relatives and friends in business enterprises. He is likely to be in partnership with his father-in-law or one of his numerous brothers or cousins in the ownership of dray-horses, of a candy or notion store, or a stand. Whenever an Italian begins to thrive in any kind of joint business one may at once be assured that his relatives are “in on it.” And one may be equally sure that in times of hard luck or slack work the temporary deficit of the family will be met by relatives and friends. This is taken as a matter of course. “In Italy everybody helps everybody else” is the answer you receive if you express surprise. If the head of the household falls ill, the neighbors drop in daily to see how he is, and rarely does one leave without first slipping into the sick man’s hand a nickel, a dime, or perhaps a quarter. Not the slightest thought of charity is entailed by the act, either in the giver’s mind or the receiver’s. It is understood, however, that the act of kindness will be reciprocated when occasion arises.
When the social worker visits such a home and notes that the signs of real want are lacking, in spite of the fact that the sole income is the $4.00 or $5.00 a week which the daughter earns, the suspicion arises that these people must have profited in business before the father’s illness and put by more than they will admit. Then the next-door neighbor enters, a coin is dropped quite openly on the bedcover, and the social worker departs with a deeper insight into the ways and character of the Italian. Small wonder that charitable societies of this district have comparatively few Italian families in their charge.84So common is the feeling of loyalty and responsibility among them that it is like the old tribal sense of oneness, an entire merging of the personal in the group interest, and the group’s bearing as its own the burden of the individual.
The protection and watchfulness of the family are constantly about the girl. And the family circle from which surveillance proceeds is usually intact unless death has entered it. Only in rare cases is a “broken home” the result of desertion. The Italian does not abandon his wife and family, nor is his relation to his children that of breadwinner only. He shares with the mother the intimate care and close watchfulness over them. It is always “I ask my father” with these young Italian girls, and in spite of the over-strictness which so many of them resent and from which they take refuge in deception, there is between the Italian father and hisdaughter a close degree of companionship seldom found in Americans of their position. Perhaps this is due to the fact that he is more in touch with American life than the shut-in Italian mother, whose life is almost wholly occupied with child-bearing and child-burying.
The eagerness of most Italian parents for the arrival of a daughter’s fourteenth birthday strikes one with no little pathos when one bears in mind how pitifully small is the equipment of the child at that age grown up in so restricted an environment. The girl herself is as eager to go to work as her parents are to have her. She takes it for granted that she should help in the family income. Carlotta gets a job not because she feels the need of self-support as an expression of individuality, of self-dependence, but because she feels so strongly the sense of family obligation. Lucy Colletti turned her weekly wages into the more generous family income as readily and unquestioningly as Rose Morelli gave hers to meet the needs of bare subsistence.
The West Side Carlotta is not a recent immigrant. Her family came through Ellis Island probably as much as ten years ago,85settling first in one of the lower and more congested districts of New York. Later they moved up to this district, attracted by reports of cheaper rents or simply following, as is the Italian way, relatives already there. Her father is probably a naturalized citizen.
Notwithstanding the exotic community in which theItalian lives and his loyalty to Latin traditions, ten years of New York are bound to leave their mark. This is particularly true of the West Side Italians, so many of whom carry on a petty but independent business. Owning a fruit stand, a coal cellar, or a trucking business is in itself evidence of long residence and some Americanization.86“The Italian with the stand—eh, he is well off—long time here,” is a common remark among his compatriots.
Other signs of long residence on the West Side are the changes in names. Not only does “Lucrezia” become “Lucy”; “Dominica,” “Minnie”; “Giovannina,” “Jennie”; “Fortunata,” “Nettie”; “Francesca,” “Fannie” and so on, but even the family names sometimes suffer a change. The “Aquinas” become the “Quinns,” the “D’Adamos” become the “Adamses.” The old names to which still cling some of the grandeur that was Rome are often gladly exchanged for a genuine West Side cognomen.
Perhaps the chief evidence of Americanization, however, appears when the daughter of the family begins wage-earning. For this she goes directly to the factory. She does not join the ranks of the Italian women who form so large a proportion of the out-workers or home workers of New York City. Only those who are familiar with the submissive way in which the Old World Italian women endure industrial exploitation can understand what a stride toward independence the Italiangirl has made by simply working in a factory instead of at home.
A trade-union organizer and a home-work investigator were recently discussing the Italian girl of sixteen. The former had found Italian girls slow to respond to trade organization and was pessimistic about their economic future. “They will not progress, nor can you blame them when you think of the history of their women in Italy.” “You forget how far these Italian girls in the factory have already progressed,” said the home-work investigator. “The Italian women I know best are doing tenement house work and earning pitifully low wages because they will not leave their homes to work in a factory.”
The Italian girl works in the factories nearest home. These on the West Side happen to be principally candy factories and laundries—such as Kohlberger’s, where Lucy Colletti worked, and the laundry where Rose Morelli was employed as a folder. Should the factory move she looks for another nearby. Evil lies in strange parts. If the neighboring candy factory overworks its employes, as it usually does during the weeks before Christmas, requiring night work87and Sunday work, the girls and their families regretfully submit to these weeks of exploitation.
But although economic necessity may force Carlotta into the factory, it does not make her otherwise more independent of her family. Her father and mother cling persistently to the old-country custom of close watchfulness over her. Parental surveillance may be relaxed during her hours of work, but it is promptly revivedwhen the day’s work is over. The streets, the dance hall, even the well chaperoned amusement club are prohibited; nor may she spend her money on dress or choose a “fellow” for herself. Italian girls have acquired to a less degree than American girls the habit of spending.
But of course this system breeds an occasional rebel. There was Filamina Moresco, for instance, whose calm investment of $25 in a pink party dress, a beaver hat, and a willow plume, was reported as little less than the act of a brigand. If she had withheld 20 cents out of her pay envelope from her mother she would probably have been beaten. As it was, she appropriated $25 and her high-handedness was her protection. Jennie Polini’s form of rebellion—choosing a “fellow” for herself and “seeing him on the sly”—was not as successful. The other girls regarded her conduct with doubt and disapproval, though they shared all of Jennie’s bitter resentment against the stern discipline of her parents from whom she was separated by the old abyss between the generations, widened and deepened by the disparities of the old world and the new. The pleasures which the Italian parents permit their daughter are those which she may enjoy in their company. She shares in the celebration of family events which the church recognizes and dignifies with a ritual; such as a birth, a death, or a wedding, the seasons of Christmas and Easter, the saints’ days, and the American holidays. These latter she interprets in her own way. Angelina Costa informed her parents on Lincoln’s birthday that the schools were closed because it was an “American saint’s day.”
The patriarchal festivals of the Italiancontadiniarereproduced, however sordidly, in the christening parties, the wedding dances, and the burial ceremonies of the West Side. To the daughter of fourteen a wedding party is the summit of bliss. She lives from wedding to wedding, treasuring memories of the last one or preparing for the next, until her own turn comes to be the central figure. One cannot fancy her stealing away to a secret marriage as so many of the West Side daughters are inclined to do. That would be to miss the most glorious day of her life.
The “school lady’s” invitation to Angelina Marro’s marriage announced that the wedding dance would begin at 5 in the afternoon, immediately after the marriage ceremony. The “West Side Café” had been engaged for the night’s celebration. Surely a place with so high-sounding a name must lay claim to considerable pretension! It was with some disillusionment that the “school lady” entered a small doorway and groped her way through a narrow, dingy, and perfectly dark passage toward a tiny slit of light which promised another door in the far distance. Repeated knocks on the panels below this ray finally caused a slipping of bolts. A huge black Italian appeared at the opening. Near him stood a countryman. They were both engaged in getting ready the refreshments, but they welcomed the intruder. On a big, round table stood a large tin washtub filled with water for rewashing the beer mugs after use. Large wooden trays were piled high with a quantity of sandwiches that one could not believe any crowd, however large, could consume. An enormous Italian cheese, plates of Italian cakes, and a number of crates of beer completed the preparation for the feast.
The room may have been 30 by 50 feet; the ceiling was low and the only means of ventilation were two small windows at one end which opened on a court. These were tightly closed, with shades and curtains drawn. Around the walls were benches and chairs. At the end opposite the windows were the piano and chairs for the musicians. The walls were decorated with cheap prints, a large color print of George and Martha Washington being most conspicuous among them. Stretching from the four corners of the ceiling to the gas chandelier in the middle of the room were strings of flags, representing all nations, but most of them were American and Italian.
The bride and groom had not yet arrived, but one of the bridesmaids, Lucy Colletti, came forward and greeted the visitor cordially. The bride was having her picture taken, she explained, but would arrive very soon. The room began to fill up with relatives and friends of the married pair. There was no dressing room. All the wraps were piled together on the top of a high narrow wardrobe. One of the men stood on a chair and threw on top of the fast growing pile the additional coats, hats, and furs.
Guests of all ages, from grandparents to toddling children, continued to arrive in parties. Suddenly the outer door opened and the young bride and groom entered. There were cries of welcome, a burst of hand-clapping, and a general rush for the pair. The dark, frail little bride in her elaborate costume looked like a child playing at “dressing up.” The fine net gown and veil, the white slippers and gloves, must have meant months of saving and stern denials of necessities. She was only sixteen, and Nick, who walked beside herbearing his head like a young prince instead of the young butcher’s helper that he was, had barely turned nineteen. One could not but reflect that if he had been living in Gramercy Park instead of on the West Side he might now be receiving his high school diploma instead of assuming the burden and responsibility of a family. And the little bride might be heading the freshman basketball team with years of care-free development ahead of her, instead of facing the imminent trials of child-bearing with the probable addition of factory labor.
The wedded pair made their way down the hall to the chairs placed for them at the end. The fact most striking to the outsider was the total lack of self-consciousness or awkward embarrassment on the part of either, young as they were, at being the center of attention, the object of laughing comments and affectionate raillery from all present.
The bride took her seat behind a table at the end of the room, removed her flowers and put them in a pitcher of water, and having carefully arranged her veil was ready to receive her friends. “Come,” said Lucy Colletti, “we must go up to the bride.” This ceremony over, we stood back and watched the children scramble wildly for the pennies the men tossed up. Although the musicians were nearly an hour late, no one seemed to mind. The children raced and played and rolled on the freshly waxed floor with fearful results to their clothes.
By the time the music began, the room had grown so crowded that the dancers were confined to a small circle in the center. As the evening passed the air became blue with dust and tobacco smoke, and the physicaldiscomforts of the place increased to the point of general exhaustion. Yet one could not but take delight in a scene where enjoyment was so evident and so thoroughly sincere. Every guest participated; no one was neglected. Grandmothers were led out for a gay turn by grandsons who cavaliered their little sisters in the next dance. Fathers and daughters, sons and mothers, made light-hearted couples. It was a sight never to be seen at an American gathering, but common enough wherever Italians are assembled for any kind of celebration or enjoyment. In pleasure, as in work, the family rules.
But weddings and family dances do not come very often, and other evenings must be spent in the tenement home under strict guardianship and oversight. Against this strictness of another land are constantly beating all the new, free customs of America. The conflict begins as soon as Carlotta gets her working papers and takes her place in the factory. Inevitably the influences of the new life in which she spends nine hours of the day begin to tell on her. Each morning and each evening, as she covers her head with an old crocheted shawl and walks to and from her factory, she passes the daughters of her Irish and American neighbors in their smart hats, their cheap waists in the latest and smartest style, their tinsel ornaments, and their gay hair-bows. A part of the contents of their pay envelopes goes into the personal expenses of those girls. Nor do they hurry through the streets to their homes after working hours, but linger with a boy companion making “dates” for a “movie” or an “affair.”
Slowly but surely their example is beginning to have its effect on the docile little Italian whose life has hithertoswung like a pendulum back and forth between her labors at the factory and the duties and restraints of home. She begins to long for the same freedom that the other girls enjoy. But freedom does not mean for her what it means for the American girl, trained in a different school from the beginning. She has not the same hard little powers of resistance, nor can she make the same truculent boast of being able to “take care of herself.” She is not able to present the same rough and ready front to rowdy good times.
Free and easy as are the manners of her American sisters, they usually draw a line, distinct enough from their own point of view, at “tough” and “fresh.” The Italian girl has no idea of where the line is, or whether these bold-appearing girls really have any standards of conduct.Herline, the line her people have drawn for her, is placed well in front of the commonest enjoyments of the West Side girl. Once it is broken over by a “lark” with a crowd of boys and girls, then she is, by her own and her people’s standards, condemned. Very often, however, she fails to feel the weight of her old friends’ disapprobation as heavily as might be expected because she is still accepted by the standards of the new country,hercountry. As long as she does not overstep its particular line, she is safe. But to her the American line of conduct is blurred and indistinct. It is determined by conditions which she does not recognize or understand. The little tragedies and conflicts of this semi-Americanization are familiar enough to those who know the Italian girl of some years’ residence.
It is useless to expect that her young, wholesome craving for amusement will continue to be satisfied in theways approved by her people. The irresistible lure of America which has already drawn her parents from the ancestral plains of Italy continues still to draw her. She must enter upon her kingdom. But unaccustomed as she is to the newer ways, the Italian daughter must be taught intelligently to meet American conditions and trained in the forms of self-protection which they necessitate. Her parents cannot do this. They have themselves still too much to learn. But the community to which she has come, bringing her all—her health, her strength, her industry, and her children—owes it at least to her to safeguard the innocent joys of her youth.
Our65 girls came from 55 different families. Forty-one of these families had at some period in their lives been aided, or investigated, or disciplined by some sort of private philanthropic or protective agency. Of these, all but one had records with some relief agency. In a very few cases the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor and the Charity Organization Society records show that the family received no relief, but only visitation and advice. Usually, however, actual relief was given. Thirty-nine had records in the registration bureau of the Charity Organization Society. Eleven had Charity Organization Society records only; 15 had records with the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor only; one had been helped only by the church. Thirteen had records of relief from or intervention by more than one society; as, the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor and the St. Vincent de Paul Society, or the Charity Organization Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, or again and again both the Charity Organization Society and the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. One had been under the care of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Board of Health.
Often, of course, families such as these must turn to an agency for help only in time of crisis; and when the crisis is past and the aid they have received has put them on their feet again, they no longer need support. Such, at least, is the ideal of “family rehabilitation.” Of a different sort are the cases of chronic, wasting poverty and misfortune, which no charitable aid can ever render self-supporting. These are the poor who are always with us; and it was to this group, we found, that most of our families belonged. In analyzing the relief cases, it seemed to us that where a family had been under the care of an agency for less than two years it could be put in the former group, where relief was given because of emergencies. Of the 40 cases, 10 were in this class. The other 30 had records for two years or more; and of these 30 cases, 17 had records for two years and less than six years, and 13 for six years or more. The average period of intermittent care for the 30 families whose relief records extended over more than two years was nine and a half years. The average is startling enough, but a few cases stand out as more startling than the rest. One family had applied for aid in 1899 and the case had been “closed” and re-opened88at intervals ever since. One record extended from 1892 to 1908, one from 1895 to 1911. One case had been opened and closed eight separate times since 1899.
It must be borne in mind that no figures can be given to show the help these families had received from private sources; clothing from women for whom the mothershad done day’s work or washing, money for rent or doctor’s bills from relatives, food from neighbors,—all these things help stave off the dreaded appeal to “charity.”
We have tried to analyze the immediate causes of need at the time the family was first referred to the relief society. The first application is the most significant, for after help has been obtained once, it is likely to be sought again. Of our 40 relief cases, one family had been deserted by the chief wage-earner, in five he was dead, and in 34 the wage-earner was living. Very few of the first applications, therefore, were due to the death of the father.
The number of children born to the family, whether living or dead, often determines the extent of its poverty,89and contributes to the necessity for relief. We have estimated, roughly, that three or four living children was the average for these 40 families at the time of the first application. In some cases there was only one child, but in many cases there were six or seven. The records do not tell us how many had been born, nor how many had died, thus adding their quota to the family’s share of illness, expense, and sorrow.90In the cases that were opened and closed again and again we find that child after child was born after the family was far below the line of self-support,—six or eight or 10 children born into homes that could support in decency only one or two at most. But “too many children” never appears as the cause of an application for relief in the records of a charitable society.
It is true that need is rarely due to any one circumstance. Usually where one kind of misery exists, other kinds are found also.91The most common causes that the records for this group of 40 show were lack of work, casual work, illness, or drink; and these were combined and coupled together in story after story. Taking in each case what seems to have been the chief immediate cause, though we cannot claim that our division is strictly accurate, we found that in five cases the need was due primarily to illness; in three primarily to drink; in 10 the causes were scattering or could not be ascertained; in 22 the distress was due most of all to lack of work. Time and again the entry appears: “The father has been out of work for ten weeks”; or “It is the slack season in the man’s trade and he has been unable to get a steady job for three months”; or “The mother has recently been confined and the father has been out of a job for several weeks and there is no food in the house.” It is repeated over and over—out of work, out of work, out of work—till we can only wonder that drink and despair do not more inevitably accompany the loss of a job. These were the conditions that brought 40 of our families to the point of seeking relief at various times in their lives.
It would not be fair to judge the usual standing of our group entirely by these records of the families which had sought relief. We have therefore taken a kind of cross section of all the families of our 65 girls to show their earning capacity and general economic status at the date when our acquaintance with them began. Ofthese 55 families, only 21 were normal groups. By this we mean that the father and mother were both living, that they were together, and that the father was physically able to be the wage-earner and the mother the housewife. The other 34 were “broken” families. In 15 the father was dead, in six the mother was dead, and in three both father and mother were dead. In one the father had deserted, and in one the mother was in prison. In four of them there was a stepmother or stepfather. In eight families the father was incapacitated, either by old age or illness, so that he was not able to be the chief wage-earner.
In 29 of our 55 families, the mothers were wage-earners.92In nine of these, the father was dead; in six, he was incapacitated; in 14, the mother worked because the father’s income was not enough to support the family without her aid. Where the father was dead or disabled the mother’s work was more constant and regular than where she worked to supplement the husband’s earnings. Of these 29 mothers, 10 went out for “day’s work” sometimes only one or two days a week. Ten worked more regularly, washing or scrubbing several days a week, sewing at home, and so on. Thirteen were janitresses of the tenements in which they lived. Payment for this service varies from $3.00 off on a month’s rent to the whole rent and $1.00 besides, depending on the size of the house or houses cared for. Four of the janitresses also took in washing or did other work.
It must be remembered that the very presence of these women on our list means that they were mothers of adolescent girls and of families of children averagingabout five in number. Considering this we realize more clearly the truth of their saying, “It’s hard bringin’ children up in New York.” More than half the mothers of our girls were forced to do other work than that of caring for a good-sized family.
The explanation of this situation is found in the low-paid unskilled work done by the girls’ fathers. Of the 40 living fathers and stepfathers, we can give the occupations of 34.
Very few of these occupations are what can properly be called skilled work, many of them are extremely irregular and casual, and many of them pay less than a living wage.
The housing of these families is such as would be anticipated by those who know them and the facilities the district offers. There are very few new-law tenements in this part of New York, and little good can be said of the best of the old-law houses. Really good housing is practically unknown. For example, but two of our 55 families had bathrooms in their apartments. Many apartments contained small toilet rooms, and other families used toilets in the hall on the same floor.Some still had only an old-fashioned yard toilet. One house furnished for its tenants a cellar toilet used also by the men who patronized the ground floor saloon adjoining it, and this horrible situation made the children of the house afraid to go to the cellar alone or after dark.
We have housing records for 53 of our 55 families. Thirty of these lived in apartments containing one or more dark rooms, with no windows to the outer air, or to anything more than a tiny air-shaft. Of these 30 families, 10 had one dark room, 18 had two dark rooms, one had three dark rooms, and one had four dark rooms. The number of persons in household and the number of rooms occupied were as shown in the following table: