Photograph by Hine
Group of Italian Immigrants Lunching in Old Railroad Waiting-Room, Ellis Island
ASSIMILATION WITH AMERICANS
Not being transients, the North Italians do not resist Americanizing influences. The Genoese, for example, come not to earn wages, but to engage in business. They shun the Italian "quarter," mix with Americans, and Anglicize their names. Mariani becomes Merriam; Abata turns to Abbey; Garberino softens to Gilbert; while Campana suffers a "sea change" into Bell. In the produce-markets they deal with Americans, and as high-class saloon-keepers they are forging past Michael and Gustaf.
But the South Italians remain nearly as aloof as did the Cantonese who built the Central Pacific Railway. Navvies who leave for Naples when the ground freezes, and return in April, who huddle in a "camp" or a box-car, or herd on some "Dago Flat," are not really in America. In a memorial to the acting mayor of New York, the Italian-American Civic League speaks of the "great civically inert mass" of their countrymen in New York, and declares, "By far the largest part of the Italians of this city have lived a life of their own, almost entirely apart from the American environment." "In one street," writes Signor Pecorini, "will be found peasants from one Italian village; in the next street the place of origin is different, and distinct are manners, customs, and sympathies. Entire villages have been transplanted from Italy to one New York street, and with the others have come the doctor, the grocer, the priest, and the annual celebration of the local patron saint."
Among the foreign-born, the Italians rank lowest in adhesion to trade-unions, lowest in ability to speak English, lowest in proportion naturalized after ten years' residence, lowest in proportion of children in school, and highest in proportion of children at work. Taking into account the innumerable "birds of passage" without family or future in this country, it would be safe to say that half, perhaps two-thirds, of our Italian immigrants are under America, not of it. Far from being borne along with our onward life, they drift round and round in a "Little Italy" eddy, or lie motionless in some industrial pocket or crevice at the bottom of the national current.