Italian-American Workers and the Shortcomings of Transculturalism before World War II
Résumés
Il est généralement admis que la solidarité des travailleurs, au-delà des différentes origines nationales, est un élément déterminant de la lutte des classes. Toutefois, la main d’œuvre italo-américaine aux États-Unis resta culturellement très attachée à l’Italie, ce qui l’empêcha de créer des coalitions stables avec les autres minorités. Ceci favorisa également l’éclosion en son sein d’un sentiment profasciste et contribua à la diffusion de l’antisémitisme après la promulgation des lois raciales de Mussolini.
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- 1 Nancy Foner, From Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration, New Haven: Yale U (...)
1In the last few years transnationalism has developed into the leading scholarly paradigm to conceptualize worldwide migrations in general and the Italian experience in particular. This notion implies that the newcomers to a foreign country live in two different societies at the same time, the native one and its adoptive counterpart. Such an interpretation also stresses that migrants retain ties to their native land while residing abroad and, possibly, pursuing accommodation within the nation of their destination.1
- 2 John S. MacDonald and Leatrice D. MacDonald, «Migration, Ethnic Neighborhood Formation, and Social (...)
- 3 See, e.g., Donna R. Gabaccia and Fraser M. Ottanelli, «Diaspora or International Proletariat? Itali (...)
2In the case of the Italian migrants at the time of the mass exodus from the peninsula between the late 1870s and the mid 1920s, the latter component of this theory has seemed relevant because the fluxes from Italy were usually based on chain migration and networks based on die-hard village connections.2 Yet it has also led to an interpretative paradox. In order to argue for the viability of transnationalism, scholarship has drawn primarily upon the experience of Italians’ political radicalism, pointing to the existence of a worldwide network of subversive militants, organizations, and ideas that the migration of left-leaning activists from Italy nurtured and contributed to further spreading. As a result, in the eyes of a few historians, individuals who were supposed to cherish internationalism (namely, allegiance to their class across national boundaries regardless of ethnic and racial differences) became the case study to demonstrate that Italian workers, by far the largest cohort of the roughly twenty-nine million people who left their native country between 1860 and 1985, failed to give up their attachment to and identification with their native land.3
- 4 Statement by an anonymous anarchist at a 1894 trial in London, as quoted in Emilio Franzina, «“Varc (...)
3In fact, notwithstanding the renowned claim of Italian anarchists according to which «for us, there are no frontiers», the first generation of Italian laborers abroad did experience such barriers undermining class consciousness within the industrial proletariat and was usually unable to overcome them.4 The sense of belonging of Italian workers in the United States before World War II shows that internationalism and transnationalism were hardly compatible as for the newcomers’ identity construction. Many Italian-American laborers did preserve connections to the land of their birth. But the existence of transnational ties between their native and adoptive countries interfered with the elaboration of solidarity with fellow workers beyond national divisions and did not necessarily mean that the immigrants achieved full-fledged integration within the multiethnic U.S. labor movement. Instead of encouraging the renegotiation of ethnic identity, the interaction with other minorities often caused many Italian-American workers to keep or even consolidate their national self-perception.
Italian Immigrants Between Class Consciousness and Ethnic Identity
- 5 Augusta Molinari, «Luigi Galleani: Un anarchico italiano negli Stati Uniti», Miscellanea Storica Li (...)
- 6 Paul Buhle, «Italian-American Radicals and Labor in Rhode Island, 1905‑1930», Radical History Revie (...)
- 7 Bruno Cartosio, «Gli emigranti italiani e l’Industrial Workers of the World», in Fondazione Brodoli (...)
4Italian immigrants such as Luigi Galleani, Arturo Giovannitti, Girolamo Valenti, and Louis C. Fraina were at the forefront of much larger anarchist, socialist, and communist networks that operated in the United States and included members of various ethnic minorities.5 Many of these figures were also effective labor organizers that led numerous multiethnic strikes among which the 1912 walkout in Lawrence was the best known and most outstanding.6 Italian Americans were especially active among the Industrial Workers of the World, an anarchist organization that was established in 1905 in response to the opposition toward industrial unionism on the part of the American Federation of Labor and welcomed all laborers regardless of their national origin.7
- 8 Paul Buhle, A Dreamer’s Paradise Lost: Louis C. Fraina/Lewis Corey (1892‑1953) and the Decline of R (...)
5These figures with a proletarian and internationalist identity, however, were the exception rather than the norm in the «Little Italies».8 Indeed, there is an alternative story that highlights both the frontiers Italian Americans did face in the United States and the immigrants’ difficulties in overcoming nationalistic feelings and divisions along lines of ethnic origin.
- 9 Carlo Tresca, The Autobiography of Carlo Tresca, Nunzio Pernicone (ed.), New York: John D. Calandra (...)
- 10 Dorothy Gallagher, All the Right Enemies: The Life and Murder of Carlo Tresca, New Brunswick, NJ: R (...)
- 11 Carlo Tresca, op. cit., p. 114.
6Anarchist Carlo Tresca acknowledged that, at the beginning of his stay in the United States in the early twentieth century, his concept of class struggle had not crossed the boundaries of his own ethnic community. As he put it, «For years I remained indifferent to the efforts made by the American comrades to bring nearer to its realization the millennium for which I myself was fighting. I was still living in Italy, both with my heart and mind. Though living in America, my thought, my talks, my habits of life, my friends and my enemies were all Italian».9 Yet labor militancy back to back with activists of other-than-Italian origins in the United States subsequently enabled Tresca to drop his Italian worldview and develop a proletarian identity across ethnic division, as his role among the leaders of the Lawrence strike showed.10 On this occasion, as he recalled, «Italians, Poles, Irish, Belgians, Armenians, Turks, Bulgars [sic], Austrians, Slavonians, workers of all religions, of all creeds, speaking so many different languages, divided by so many contrasting customs, found themselves bound together by the same force of despair and misery. The common cause: to fight or starve, imposed upon them by the mill barons – forced them to strike».11
- 12 Luigi Antonini, «Il nostro avvenire è in America», Giustizia February 1936, 19, nº 2, p. 9.
7However, Tresca’s initial attitude was widespread and long survived among Italian-American workers. Actually, as late as 1936, namely thirty-two years after Tresca had landed in the United States, labor leader Luigi Antonini, the first vice president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and the secretary general of its Local 89, complained that «all we Italians are with our body in America and with our mind in Italy. This is a bad thing».12
8The retention of a strong Italian consciousness revealed significant drawbacks for the reshaping of Italian-American workers’ ethnic identity into class consciousness. In particular, it prevented the spread of labor solidarity across lines of national origins and, in the interwar years, even let fascism exploit nationalistic feelings to make significant inroads into the «Little Italies».
- 13 Carlo Tresca, op. cit., p. 75‑76.
- 14 Vincent J. Tirelli, «The Italian-American Labor Council: Origins, Conflicts, and Contributions», in (...)
- 15 Elisabetta Vezzosi, Il socialismo indifferente: Immigrati italiani e Socialist Party negli Stati Un (...)
9Tresca argued that it was his own «absolutely no knowledge of the English language» which had initially made him «unable to line up with the American Comrades in the fight» for social justice and against capitalism.13 To help Italian Americans overcome the language barrier and to facilitate their militancy in labor organizations, several unions created Italian-language locals such as Locals 48 (Italian Cloakmakers) and 89 (Italian Dress and Waist Makers) for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union or Locals 63 (Italian Coatmakers) and 122 for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Most of them were established at the turn of the twentieth century, when the great bulk of Italian-American workers were still of Italian birth.14 In 1911, the Socialist Party of America, too, encouraged the establishment of an Italian Socialist Federation to organize its Italian-speaking members.15
- 16 Robert Asher, «Union Nativism and Immigrant Response», Labor History Summer 1982, 23, nº 3, p. 325‑ (...)
- 17 Luciano J. Iorizzo and Salvatore Mondello, The Italian Americans, New York: Twayne, 1971, p. 79; Ed (...)
10One could reasonably argue that the resort to the Italian language was not only a necessity but also a choice for Italian-American workers. Actually, the foundation of locals of their own also resulted from Italian Americans’ condition of marginality within the U.S. labor movement. For instance, the American Federation of Labor long considered Italians as a potential threat to the accomplishments of U.S. workers as for salary levels and labor rights and advocated the restriction of immigration.16 Discriminated against by union members from other ethnic backgrounds either for their radicalism or on the grounds that they tended to be strike-breakers and to work for substandard wages, Italian Americans sought to devise their own dimension for labor militancy both to assert their rights as an immigrant group and to face competition from other minorities for power within their unions. In particular, they resented the initial control of Yiddish-speaking officials in multiethnic locals as well as Jews’ efforts to prevent Italian Americans from rising to high-ranking positions in the labor hierarchy as happened, for example, in the case of the Journeymen Tailors’ Union in early twentieth-century Chicago.17
- 18 «Trombetta, Domenico» file, in Records of the Ministry of the Interior, Casellario Politico Central (...)
- 19 Philip V. Cannistraro, Blackshirts in Little Italy: Italian Americans and Fascism, 1921‑1929, West (...)
- 20 «Ultimi movimenti nei due campi politici», L’Opinione, 17 October 1934, p. 2; «Bocchini, Filippo» f (...)
- 21 «Caminita, Michele» file, in Records of the Ministry of the Interior, Casellario Politico Centrale, (...)
- 22 «Rossoni, Edmondo» file, in Records of the Ministry of the Interior, Casellario Politico Centrale, (...)
11The response to fascism on the part of laborers from Italian background offers an illuminating example of the inconsistencies of the Italian-American labor movement in the interwar years. Particularly striking is the fact that Mussolini’s followers of Italian descent included many former labor activists. For instance, Domenico Trombetta, the editor of the fascist weekly Il Grido della Stirpe, had been a tailor with a long militancy in the anarchist movement before the outbreak of World War I.18 Anarcho-syndicalists were also Giuseppe Mizii, an industrial worker, and Umberto Menicucci, a tailor, who were members of the directorate of the first fascist club in the United States, which had been set up in New York City in May 1921, namely almost eighteen months before Benito Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy.19 Another journalist as well as former anarchist and textile worker, Filippo Bocchini, established the Fascist Party of Pennsylvania in 1934.20 After contributing to such anarchist mouthpieces as La Questione Sociale, L’Era Nuova, and La Jacquerie on labor and union issues in the 1910s, Michele – alias Ludovico – Caminita, too, became an admirer of Mussolini.21 Even more emblematic was the case of Edmondo Rossoni, the editor of the radical newspaper Il Proletario before World War I, who subsequently headed the fascist trade union confederation and became Mussolini’s minister of Agriculture after returning to Italy.22
- 23 Umberto Postiglione, «A Little Falls», Cronaca Sovversiva, 28 December 1912, 3‑4; Umberto Ramengo, (...)
- 24 Edmondo Rossoni, «Per una Camera del Lavoro», Il Proletario, 28 September 1912, p. 3; Elisabetta Ve (...)
12Besides their shift from radicalism to fascism, all these individuals shared strong Italy-centered nationalistic sentiments that they developed at the time of World War I, when they embraced the cause of their ancestral country enthusiastically. Such feelings resulted primarily from Italian Americans’ experience of the lack of trans-ethnic working-class solidarity within the U.S. labor movement. For instance, Bocchini – who had been arrested for his involvement in a 1912 textile strike in Little Fall, New York State – deeply resented that Polish and Slovak laborers went back to work while he and other Italian-American agitators were in prison.23 Similarly, in the same year of the walkout in Little Fall, Rossoni became so aware of the discrimination and prejudice facing workers of Italian extraction in U.S. unions that he even came out for the establishment of a Chamber of Labor that should take care of Italian Americans only. This project was Rossoni’s solution to the marginalization of the members of his ethnic minority within the labor movement because, as he put it in Il Proletario, when an Italian-American worker joined an American union «he was more tolerated than anything else and in every class considered as the last spoke in the wheel». This sort of «class nationalism» also caused Rossoni’s opposition to the affiliation of the Italian Socialist Federation in North America with the Industrial Workers of the World. That attitude, therefore, also interfered with the attempts at promoting the integration of the Italian-American component within the broader American labor movement.24
- 25 Enzo Giustiniani, «Sindacalismo nazionale», Il Grido della Stirpe, 8 December 1923, p. 3; Baldo Aqu (...)
13Trombetta’s Il Grido della Stirpe, too, took issue with the ethnic intolerance of the other-than-Italian members of the U.S. working class. In its first issue, while extolling the fascist corporations as opposed to American unions, this weekly argued that «all Italian locals in America are […] controlled by other peoples’ labor organizations that […] reveal anti-Italian attitudes». It subsequently reprimanded the American Federation of Labor for supporting the restrictive 1924 Quota Act – which limited Italian immigration to the United States to as few as 5,802 individuals per year on the grounds that the Italians were inassimilable within American society – and charged Jewish union leaders with discriminating against rank-and-file workers from Italian background.25
- 26 Ludovico Caminita, Free Country! (s.l., s.d. [but Paterson, NJ, 1908]).
14Disillusion affected Caminita as well. He not only realized that the United States was not the country of liberty that he longed for before settling there. He also realized that laborers, instead of joining forces across ethnic lines against capitalism, allowed entrepreneurs to split their own ranks according to the workers’ diverse national extractions.26
- 27 Domenico Saudino, «La muta fascista e la Locale 89», La Parola del Popolo December 1958 – January 1 (...)
- 28 President of the Dante Alighieri Society to the Ministry of Press and Propaganda, Rome, 25 November (...)
15As nationalism was a sort of half-way-house on their road to fascism for radicals such as Bocchini, Rossoni, Trombetta, and Caminita who had become disenchanted with working-class empathy beyond ethnic barriers, so was it for a number of Italian-American laborers. Fascist attempts at infiltrating Italian-language locals and taking them over were few and generally unsuccessful.27 Nonetheless, although Italian-American workers did not adhere to fascist ideology, before the outbreak of World War II they did show authentic and unrestrained enthusiasm for Mussolini’s alleged accomplishments because they basked in the glory of the supposed achievements of their native country under the Duce. Such attainments offered a sort of ethnic compensation for Italian Americans’ alienation and sense of powerlessness in the adoptive society as well as for the anti-Italian intolerance that affected even fellow workers from other national backgrounds. Against the backdrop of discrimination and prejudices by co-laborers from other ethnic extractions, as a worker from Cleveland pointed out, «the Duce makes us proud to be Italian».28
The Italo-Ethiopian War and Anti-Semitism as Cases in Point
- 29 For an analysis of Italian-American workers’ Fascist allegiance as nostalgia, see also Stanislao Pu (...)
- 30 Fiorello B. Ventresco, «Italian Americans and the Ethiopian Crisis», Italian Americana Autumn-Winte (...)
- 31 Matteo Pretelli, Il fascismo e gli italiani all’estero, Bologna: Clueb, 2010, p. 69; Minutes of the (...)
16The immigrants’ nostalgic kind of nationalism fostered the ethnocentrism of many Italian-American laborers especially at the time of the Italo-Ethiopian War between October 1935 and May 1936.29 Unions and Italian-American labor leaders unanimously condemned the fascist invasion of Ethiopia. In particular, they opposed the surreptitious tactics by which Mussolini’s agents tried to raise money among Italian Americans to fund Rome’s colonial venture under a humanitarian cover-up through the request of financial contributions to support the Italian Red Cross.30 Yet the large amount of money collected for the Italian Red Cross is sufficient per se to demonstrate that these anti-fascist appeals generally fell on deaf ears among Italian-American workers. The funds exceeded a total of $900,000 as a whole in the major «Little Italies» of the east coast and San Francisco. In Norristown, Pennsylvania, the S.S. Salvatore Society, a mutual-aid association for Italian-American workers, donated the Italian Red Cross $336. For the fascist regime this latter amount of money was obviously a drop in the ocean. But it was more than a fourth of the funds that this organization had saved to assist its own members.31
17A letter to the Socialist-oriented newspaper La Stampa Libera revealed the nostalgic patriotism of many Italian-American laborers. The writer contended that «celebrating the victory of our soldiers» against Ethiopia was «our duty as real Italians» and added that «wishing Italy’s defeat to displease Mussolini was ridiculous». Few months earlier, although the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union had harshly stigmatized the fascist invasion of Ethiopia and had urged his Italian-American members to boycott it, one of the latter proudly argued that
- 32 Santo Farina, letter to the editor, La Stampa Libera, 19 May 1936, p. 6; John Milazzo, «La locale 8 (...)
I collected money for the Italian Red Cross twice in the factory where I work and shall initiate additional fund-raisings until our beloved Duce orders our brothers who are bravely fighting in Africa to lay their arms. [...]. I am not and shall never be a fascist, but I am Italian, an unrepentant Italian.32
- 33 «La maledizione del patriottismo», L’Adunata dei Refrattari, 16 November 1935, p. 1.
- 34 «Intervista con Antonini», Giustizia November 1935, 18, nº 11, p. 18.
18Italian-American workers had still their minds in Italy and, therefore, jingoistic and chauvinistic arguments and appeals struck a sensitive chord in many of them. The anarchist weekly L’Adunata dei Refrattari complained that being at the same time an anti-fascist and a patriot had nearly become impossible in the wake of the Italian colonial venture in Ethiopia.33 The reason, as Antonini suggested, was that many Italian-American laborers were unable to make a distinction between Italy and her government. As a result, by cherishing their motherland they also ended up embracing the policy of the fascist regime.34
- 35 A. Silvestri, «Corrispondenze», L’Adunata dei Refrattari, 21 December 1935, p. 7; Un senigalliese, (...)
- 36 «Un operaio antifascista aggredito dagli “amici” di Salv. Bartone», La Stampa Libera, 19 June 1936, (...)
- 37 «Auguri di buon viaggio al Sig. Salvatore Bartone», Il Progresso Italo-Americano, 6 July 1936, p. 5 (...)
- 38 Minutes of the Executive Board, Italian Cloak, Suit and Skirt Makers’ Union, Local 48, 19 March 193 (...)
- 39 Uno dei presenti, «Corrispondenze», L’Adunata dei Refrattari, 9 November 1935, p. 8.
- 40 Gerald Meyer, Vito Marcantonio: Radical Politician, 1902‑1954, Albany, NY: State University of New (...)
- 41 Umberto Ferrari, «Un richiamo agli amministratori della Casa del Popolo di Phila, Pa.», La Stampa L (...)
19The Italo-Ethiopian war drew support not only from rank-and-file Italian-American workers but also from mid-ranking union officials and labor activists. Fund-raisers for the Italian Red Cross included Giuseppe Salerni, an organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in Boston, Attilio Pierfederici, a Socialist militant from New London, Connecticut, Joe De Capua, a subscription collector for Tresca’s Il Martello in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, and Salvatore Bartone, the business agent of Local 63 of the Amalgamated Clohing Workers of America in New York City.35 Bartone’s solicitation of funds for the Italian Red Cross caused the protest of anti-fascists.36 Yet, instead of reprimanding Bartone or even expelling him from the union as Mussolini’s opponents had called for, the Italian-American officials of Local 63 gathered at New York City’s harbor in July 1937 to wish him a pleasant journey to Italy as he embarked for a brief vacation in his motherland.37 Similarly, the Executive Board of Local 48 of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union did not refrain from expressing its sympathies in mourning the deaths of its own members’ relatives who had been killed while fighting with the Italian army in Ethiopia.38 L’Adunata dei Refrattari also complained that several union organizers refused to come out against the fascist attack on Ethiopia because they did not want to risk alienating Italian-American workers.39 Indeed, even such a radical politician as American Labor Party Congressman Vito Marcantonio did not dare attend a rally against the fascist invasion of Ethiopia for fear of losing the votes of his large Italian-American working-class district in East Harlem.40 As Italian-American laborers’ hangouts like the People’s House in Philadelphia resounded with the notes of the fascist song Faccetta Nera to celebrate Italy’s occupation of Addis Ababa, it was easy to identify which side most workers from Italian background were on.41
- 42 Noi, «Corrispondenze», L’Adunata dei Refrattari, 4 April 1936, p. 7‑8.
- 43 «Contro l’odio di razza! Pace e tolleranza!», Giustizia October 1938, 21, nº 10, p. 1‑2. For Italy’ (...)
- 44 «Movimento nella Cloakmakers’ Union di N.Y.», Giustizia November 1938, 21, nº 11, p. 2.
- 45 Agnes Maybeth McRoberts, «Attitudes and Family Situations of Thirty Works Progress Administration E (...)
- 46 Libro ricordo del XXV anniversario della unione dei cloakmakers italiani, New York: International N (...)
20The racialized language by which fascist propaganda was channeled on the occasion of both the Italo-Ethiopian War and the 1938 anti-Semitic legislation that Mussolini’s regime enacted in Italy also contributed to setting Italian-American laborers aside from other ethnic components of the U.S. working-class. For example, a report from Tampa denounced the employers’ resort to black scabs during a 1936 local walkout in such racist overtones that the editorial staff of L’Adunata dei Refrattari felt compelled to point out that there was nothing wrong in hiring African-American workers providing that they were not strikebreakers.42 By the same token, that the Italian-American leader of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, Antonini, hurried to emphatically distance his union from «racial hate» in the aftermath of the passing of the fascist 1938 anti-Semitic measures pointed to the fact that its Italian-American members were likely to be prone to anti-Jewish sentiments.43 Indeed, while stigmatizing the discrimination of Jews under Mussolini’s regime, Local 48 of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union acknowledged that anti-Semitism «threatens to poison the minds of a great number of Italian immigrants».44 Such ill feelings were hardly surprising after the Depression of the 1930s had exacerbated Italian-Jewish rivalries, as members of these two ethnic minorities competed with one another for a shrinking number of jobs in the same sectors as well as for access to relief programs and cheap housing in adjoining or overlapping neighborhoods.45 As late as 1941, as an example of the persistence of anti-Semitic prejudice among Italian-American union members, a commemorative publication of Local 48 contended that, in contrast to Italian-American laborers, Jewish workers got a better deal from their employers because most of the latter were Jews, too, and share an attitude of stinginess with their employees.46
- 47 Bruno Ramirez, «Immigration, Ethnicity, and Political Militance: Patterns of Radicalism in the Ital (...)
21Scholarship has repeatedly emphasized the troubled relationship between proletarian consciousness and national identity among immigrants in the United States. In particular, historian Bruno Ramirez has aptly suggested that class solidarity and ethnic solidarity could both «reinforce each other» and «compete against each other».47
- 48 John P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University (...)
22The multifaceted nature of the Italian-American labor movement hardly makes generalizations possible. Actually some components of the Italian-American working-class did develop a proletarian world-view out of contacts with fellow workers belonging to other ethnic minority and, consequently, rejected a nationalistic self-perception. These cohorts did not yield to fascist propaganda, antagonized Mussolini, and consistently stuck to their radical orientation even while the Duce was quite popular with the U.S. government and the broader American society itself.48
23Such uncompromising stands, however, characterized less rank-and-file Italian-American workers than labor leaders and union newspapers. Conversely, the survival of ties to the fatherland caused a number of pitfalls that let patriotic sentiments, profascist feelings, and ethnocentric attitudes interfere with Italian-American workers’ elaboration of a proletarian consciousness as well as with the ensuing display of class solidarity. In these cases, therefore, transnationalism had the upper hand over internationalism and interaction with members of other immigrant groups as well as with the larger U.S. society caused Italian Americans to strengthen their national identity instead of reshaping it into their self-perception as part of the worldwide proletariat.
Notes
1 Nancy Foner, From Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000, p. 169‑88. The manifesto of the transnational approach is Toward a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered, ed. Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton, New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1992. For a review of the relevant literature, see Peter Kivisto, «Theorizing Transnational Immigration: A Critical Review of Current Efforts», Ethnic and Racial Studies July 2001, 24, nº 4, p. 549‑77; Matthew Frye Jacobson, «More “Trans-” Less “National”, Journal of American Ethnic History Summer 2006, 25, nº 4, p. 74‑84. For the case of Italian migrants, see Danilo Romeo, «L’evoluzione del dibattito storiografico in tema di immigrazione: Verso un paradigma transnazionale», Altreitalie July-December 2001, 13, nº 23, p. 62‑72; Donna R. Gabaccia, «Juggling Jargons: “Italians Everywhere”, Diaspora or Transnationalism?», Traverse, 2005, 12, nº 1, p. 49‑64; João Fábio Bertonha, «Transnazionalismo e diaspora come concetti per capire l’emigrazione italiana: Un riesame», Archivio Storico dell’emigrazione Italiana 2010, 6, no. 1, p. 133‑41.
2 John S. MacDonald and Leatrice D. MacDonald, «Migration, Ethnic Neighborhood Formation, and Social Networks», Millbank Memorial Fund Quarterly January 1964, 42, nº 1, p. 82‑97; Donna R. Gabaccia, From Sicily to Elizabeth Street: Housing and Social Change Among Italian Immigrants, 1880‑1930, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984; Samuel L. Baily, Immigrants in the Lands of Promise: Italians in Buenos Aires and New York, 1870 to 1914, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
3 See, e.g., Donna R. Gabaccia and Fraser M. Ottanelli, «Diaspora or International Proletariat? Italian Labor, Labor Migration, and the Making of Multiethnic States, 1815‑1939», Diaspora Spring 1997, 6, nº 1, p. 61‑84; Michael Miller Topp, Those without a Country: The Political Culture of Italian American Syndicalists, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001; Donna R. Gabaccia and Fraser M. Ottanelli (ed.), Italian Workers of the World: Labor Migration and the Formation of Multiethnic States, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001; Davide Turcato, «Italian Anarchism as a Transnational Movement, 1885‑1915», International Review of Social History December 2007, 53, nº 3, p. 407‑44; Travis Tomchuk, «Transnational Radicals: Italian Anarchist Networks in Southern Ontario and the Northeastern United States, 1915‑1940» (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Queen’s University, 2010).
4 Statement by an anonymous anarchist at a 1894 trial in London, as quoted in Emilio Franzina, «“Varcare i confini”: Viaggi e passaggi degli emigranti: Il caso italiano e le teorie transnazionali», in Silvia Salvatici (ed.), Confini: Costruzioni, attraversamenti, rappresentazioni, Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2005, p. 132.
5 Augusta Molinari, «Luigi Galleani: Un anarchico italiano negli Stati Uniti», Miscellanea Storica Ligure 1981, 4 nº 1‑2, p. 117‑30; Robert D’Attilio, «Arturo Giovannitti», in Mary Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Harey J. Kaye (ed.), The American Radical, New York: Routledge, 1994, p. 135‑42; Norberto Lombardi (ed.), Il bardo della libertà: Arturo Giovannitti, 1884‑1959, Isernia: Cosmo Iannone, 2011; Elisabetta Vezzosi, «Radical Ethnic Brokers: Immigrant Socialist Leaders in the United States between Ethnic Community and the Larger Society», in Italian Workers of the World, p. 128‑29; Serena Tait, «Alle origini del movimento comunista americano: Louis Fraina teorico della azione di massa», Primo Maggio June-September 1973, 1, nº 3, p. 17‑41.
6 Paul Buhle, «Italian-American Radicals and Labor in Rhode Island, 1905‑1930», Radical History Review Spring 1978, 6, nº 17, p. 121‑51; Rudolph J. Vecoli, «The Italian Immigrants in the United States Labor Movement from 1880 to 1929», in Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini, Bruno Bezza (ed.), Gli italiani fuori d’Italia: Gli emigranti italiani nei movimenti operai dei paesi d’adozione (1880‑1940), Milan: Angeli, 1983, p. 257‑306; Peppino Ortoleva, «Una voce dal coro: Angelo Rocco e lo sciopero di Lawrence del 1912», Movimento operaio e socialista January-June 1981, 4, nº 1‑2, p. 5‑32; Bruce Watson, Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream, New York: Viking, 2005.
7 Bruno Cartosio, «Gli emigranti italiani e l’Industrial Workers of the World», in Fondazione Brodolini, op. cit, p. 359‑95.
8 Paul Buhle, A Dreamer’s Paradise Lost: Louis C. Fraina/Lewis Corey (1892‑1953) and the Decline of Radicalism in the United States, Atlantic Highland, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995.
9 Carlo Tresca, The Autobiography of Carlo Tresca, Nunzio Pernicone (ed.), New York: John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, 2003, p. 75.
10 Dorothy Gallagher, All the Right Enemies: The Life and Murder of Carlo Tresca, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988; Nunzio Pernicone, Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel, Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010.
11 Carlo Tresca, op. cit., p. 114.
12 Luigi Antonini, «Il nostro avvenire è in America», Giustizia February 1936, 19, nº 2, p. 9.
13 Carlo Tresca, op. cit., p. 75‑76.
14 Vincent J. Tirelli, «The Italian-American Labor Council: Origins, Conflicts, and Contributions», in Italian-American Labor Council, 50 Years of Progress: Golden Anniversary, New York: Italian-American Labor Council, 1991, p. 1‑3; Charles A. Zappia, «Labor», in Salvatore J. LaGumina, Frank J. Cavatoli, Salvatore Primeggia, and Joseph A. Varacalli (ed.), The Italian American Experience: An Encyclopedia, New York: Garland, 2000, p. 327.
15 Elisabetta Vezzosi, Il socialismo indifferente: Immigrati italiani e Socialist Party negli Stati Uniti del primo Novecento, Rome: Edizioni Lavoro, 1991.
16 Robert Asher, «Union Nativism and Immigrant Response», Labor History Summer 1982, 23, nº 3, p. 325‑48.
17 Luciano J. Iorizzo and Salvatore Mondello, The Italian Americans, New York: Twayne, 1971, p. 79; Edwin Fenton, Immigrants and Unions, a Case Study: Italians and American Labor, 1870‑1920, New York: Arno Press, 1975, p. 503‑7 and p. 539‑43; Charles A. Zappia, «Unionism and the Italian-American Workers: The Politics of Anti-Communism in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union in New York City, 1900‑1925», in Rocco Caporale (ed), The Italian Americans through the Generations, Staten Island, NY: American Italian Historical Association, 1986, p. 78‑79.
18 «Trombetta, Domenico» file, in Records of the Ministry of the Interior, Casellario Politico Centrale, box 5225, folder 65589, Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Italy.
19 Philip V. Cannistraro, Blackshirts in Little Italy: Italian Americans and Fascism, 1921‑1929, West Lafayette, IN: Bordighera, 1999, p. 15‑16.
20 «Ultimi movimenti nei due campi politici», L’Opinione, 17 October 1934, p. 2; «Bocchini, Filippo» file, in Records of the Ministry of the Interior, Casellario Politico Centrale, box 685, folder 78963; Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, File 62-HQ-32701 «Filippo Bocchini», FBI Archives, Washington, DC.
21 «Caminita, Michele» file, in Records of the Ministry of the Interior, Casellario Politico Centrale, box 973, folder 44558; Martino Marazzi, A occhi aperti: Letteratura dell’emigrazione e mito americano, Milan: Angeli, 2011, p. 178‑93.
22 «Rossoni, Edmondo» file, in Records of the Ministry of the Interior, Casellario Politico Centrale, box 4466, folder 45710; Ferdinando Cordova, «Edmondo Rossoni», in Ferdinando Cordova (ed.), Uomini e volti del fascismo, Rome: Bulzoni, 1980, p. 337‑403; John J. Tinghino, Edmondo Rossoni: From Revolutionary Syndicalism to Fascism, New York: Lang, 1991. For Il Proletario, see Elisabetta Vezzosi, «Class, Ethnicity, and Acculturation in Il Proletario: The World War One Years», in Christiane Harzig and Dirk Hoerder (ed.), The Press of the Labor Migrants in Europe and North America, Bremen, Germany: Publications of the Labor Newspaper Preservation Project, 1985, p. 443‑55.
23 Umberto Postiglione, «A Little Falls», Cronaca Sovversiva, 28 December 1912, 3‑4; Umberto Ramengo, «Il caso Bocchini», ibid., 8 February 1913, 1. For the strike in Little Falls, see Robert E. Snyder, «Women, Wobblies, and Workers’ Rights: The 1912 Textile Strike in Little Falls, New York», New York History January 1979, 60, nº 1, p. 29‑57.
24 Edmondo Rossoni, «Per una Camera del Lavoro», Il Proletario, 28 September 1912, p. 3; Elisabetta Vezzosi, «La Federazione Socialista Italiana del Nord America tra autonomia e scioglimento nel sindacato industriale, 1911‑1921», Studi Emigrazione March 1984, 21, nº 73, p. 92‑93; Tinghino, op. cit., p. 48‑51.
25 Enzo Giustiniani, «Sindacalismo nazionale», Il Grido della Stirpe, 8 December 1923, p. 3; Baldo Aquilano, «La canaglia sovversiva trasforma le unioni in covi anti-Italiani», ibid., 17 May 1924, p. 1. For the quota, see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966, 92.
26 Ludovico Caminita, Free Country! (s.l., s.d. [but Paterson, NJ, 1908]).
27 Domenico Saudino, «La muta fascista e la Locale 89», La Parola del Popolo December 1958 – January 1959, 50, nº 37, p. 215‑17.
28 President of the Dante Alighieri Society to the Ministry of Press and Propaganda, Rome, 25 November 1935, in Records of the Ministry of Popular Culture, box 447, folder «Dante Alighieri negli Stati Uniti», Archivio Centrale dello Stato.
29 For an analysis of Italian-American workers’ Fascist allegiance as nostalgia, see also Stanislao Pugliese, «The Culture of Nostalgia: Fascism in the Memory of Italian Americans», Italian American Review Autumn-Winter 1996‑1997, 5, nº 2, p. 6‑26.
30 Fiorello B. Ventresco, «Italian Americans and the Ethiopian Crisis», Italian Americana Autumn-Winter 1980, 6, nº 1, p. 11‑12 and p. 18‑19.
31 Matteo Pretelli, Il fascismo e gli italiani all’estero, Bologna: Clueb, 2010, p. 69; Minutes of the meetings of the S.S. Salvatore Society, p. 175 (20 October 1935), p. 186 (16 February 1936), Claudio Sica Papers, box 1, folder 4, Balch Institute Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
32 Santo Farina, letter to the editor, La Stampa Libera, 19 May 1936, p. 6; John Milazzo, «La locale 89», Il Progresso Italo-Americano, 25 November 1935, p. 6.
33 «La maledizione del patriottismo», L’Adunata dei Refrattari, 16 November 1935, p. 1.
34 «Intervista con Antonini», Giustizia November 1935, 18, nº 11, p. 18.
35 A. Silvestri, «Corrispondenze», L’Adunata dei Refrattari, 21 December 1935, p. 7; Un senigalliese, «Corrispondenze», ibid., 22 February 1936, p. 7; «Gli italiani degeneri di Old Forge, Pa. celebrano la vittoria fascista in Etiopia», La Stampa Libera, 11 June 1936, p. 6; Donato Carrello, «Bartone minaccia», ibid., 3 July 1936, p. 6.
36 «Un operaio antifascista aggredito dagli “amici” di Salv. Bartone», La Stampa Libera, 19 June 1936, p. 2.
37 «Auguri di buon viaggio al Sig. Salvatore Bartone», Il Progresso Italo-Americano, 6 July 1936, p. 5; «Gli ufficiali della Locale 63, A.C.W. augurano “buon viaggio” al fascista Bartone», La Stampa Libera, 7 July 1936, p. 2.
38 Minutes of the Executive Board, Italian Cloak, Suit and Skirt Makers’ Union, Local 48, 19 March 1936, in Records of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, microfilm edition, reel 2, University of Florence, Biblioteca di Storia e Letteratura Nordamericana, Florence, Italy.
39 Uno dei presenti, «Corrispondenze», L’Adunata dei Refrattari, 9 November 1935, p. 8.
40 Gerald Meyer, Vito Marcantonio: Radical Politician, 1902‑1954, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989, p. 119, 246.
41 Umberto Ferrari, «Un richiamo agli amministratori della Casa del Popolo di Phila, Pa.», La Stampa Libera, 19 May 1936, p. 6.
42 Noi, «Corrispondenze», L’Adunata dei Refrattari, 4 April 1936, p. 7‑8.
43 «Contro l’odio di razza! Pace e tolleranza!», Giustizia October 1938, 21, nº 10, p. 1‑2. For Italy’s 1938 anti-Semitic legislation, see Michele Sarfatti, Mussolini contro gli ebrei: Cronaca dell’elaborazione delle leggi del 1938, Turin: Zamorani, 1994.
44 «Movimento nella Cloakmakers’ Union di N.Y.», Giustizia November 1938, 21, nº 11, p. 2.
45 Agnes Maybeth McRoberts, «Attitudes and Family Situations of Thirty Works Progress Administration Employees, 1938» (M.A. thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 1938), p. 31‑34; Charles H. Trout, Boston, the Great Depression, and the New Deal, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 191; Richard N. Juliani, The Social Organization of Immigration: The Italians in Philadelphia, New York: Arno Press, 1980, p. 185‑87.
46 Libro ricordo del XXV anniversario della unione dei cloakmakers italiani, New York: International Newspaper Printing Co., 1941, p. 74‑76 and 79.
47 Bruno Ramirez, «Immigration, Ethnicity, and Political Militance: Patterns of Radicalism in the Italian-American Left, 1880‑1930», in Valeria Gennaro Lerda (ed.) From «Melting-Pot» to Multiculturalism: The Evolution of Ethnic Relations in the United States and Canada, Rome: Bulzoni, 1990, p. 125.
48 John P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972; Fraser M. Ottanelli, «“If Fascism Comes to America We Will Push It Back into the Ocean”: Italian American Antifascism in the 1920s and 1930s», in Donna R. Gabaccia and Fraser M. Ottanelli (ed.), op. cit., p. 178‑95; Pellegrino Nazzaro, Fascist and Anti-Fascist Propaganda in America: The Dispatches of Italian Ambassador Gelasio Caetani, Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008, esp. p. 103‑21; Jennifer Guglielmo, Living the Revolution. Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880‑1945, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010; Marcella Bencivenni, Italian Immigrant Radical Cuture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, New York: New York University Press, 2011.
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Stefano Luconi, « Italian-American Workers and the Shortcomings of Transculturalism before World War II », Diasporas [En ligne], 19 | 2011, mis en ligne le 01 janvier 2019, consulté le 14 avril 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/diasporas/1798 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/diasporas.1798
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