It is scarcely an exaggeration today to speak of all New York as one huge "Little Italy."
But the old world colony is still centered around Mulberry Street, running north from Canal and west from the Bowery. Here is the acrid odor of Naples—garlic and garbage, dirty restaurants, plump, dark-eyed hookers, evil billiard halls and saloons where a pint of red ink still sells for two bits and you don't have to park your stiletto at the door.
Another fragrant little Italy skirts the borders of Greenwich Village.
But in ex-Congressman Marcantonio's East Harlem the poorest and most crime-ridden Little Italy in all the world begrimes New York.
Though Greece was a land of noble statesmen and warriors, most of her sons who settled in New York are engaged in the less exalted though more necessary work of filling hungry American bellies.
A large proportion of the fruit and vegetable business, wholesale and retail, is controlled by Greeks; lunch rooms and cheaper restaurants are almost Greek monopolies.
However, oddly enough, many Hellenes make their living in the huge needle-trades industry. A majority of fur workers are Greek, though most of the plants are owned by Jews.
There are self-made Greek millionaires, too; but they live on estates in Westchester when they are not on their ranches in California.