Immigrant Women in Tampa: The Italian

Immigrant Women in Tampa: The Italian Experience, 1890-1930
Author(s): Gary R. Mormino and George E. Pozzetta
Source: Magazine of History, Vol. 4, No. 4, Immigration (Spring, 1990), pp. 19-28
Published by: Organization of American Historians
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25162692
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Magazine of History.
http://www.jstor.org
in
Women
Immigrant
The
Italian
Tampa:
Experience,
1890-1930
Gary R. Mormino
E. Pozzetta
George
historical
study of women,
women
immigrant
particularly
The
has advanced dramatically over the past
decade. Recent
scholarship has rescued
from neglect a great deal of historical
and has placed in clearer per
spective the important roles played by
women inAmerican
society. Ultimately
women's history will be fully integrated
material
into the pageantry of the American
expe
rience. Sufficient specialized
studies to
this goal, however, do
accomplish
not yet exist. More
regional and
local investigations
the
detailing
histories of women
inmany differ
ent locations, time periods, and life
situations are required.
as striking cigar makers marched
to the
Internationale. In 1931, the year of Tampa's
last great cigar strike, a German visitor
at the city's "Spanish
marveled
India
.. .What a colorful, scream
[YborCity]
ing, shrill and turbulent world! Spanish
women
and Cuban
and cats-both
... a
beautiful,
equally
equally exotic
veritable
smells."(l)
radicalism
Work
the period 1890-1930
During
no
the state of Florida possessed
more cosmopolitan mix of popula
tion and culture than that which
existed in Tampa. Residing
there,
and working primarily in Tampa's
cigar industry, were thousands of
resulted
ethnic
in the creation
of a
called Ybor
life existing
in this enclave.
quality
the
tumultuous
strike of 1910,
During
one reporter took note of "bevies of
gayly dressed Spanish, Cuban, and Ital
ian women," waving their red bandannas
Spring 1990
ghetto, rich with life's
hints of romance and
that such
choices.
land but in "agro-cities,"
and because of
their rural-urban mixture, a crude middle
class of artisans and shopkeepers
had
images
put
evolved
(3).
"If you want a large family," a Sicil
ian proverb instructed, "begin with
a girl, but she may not live beyond
the first year."(4) The bittersweet
forth
this folk wisdom imparted
message
is evocative of the vital role played
in the Sicilian agri-ur
by women
. . took
[Ital
out of homes,
ban system. Pleasant
[sic] women
derived of their esteem from their
domestic
and economic
prowess
In general, Sicilian
contributions.
men
not
that women
preferred
work outside the home, since the
than
them
women's
unique
community
added their
City.
Immigrant women
own
distinctive
to the
contributions
of
The
ian women]
gave them higher wages
theirmenfolk, and placed
in militant unions.
and
immigrant Spanish, Cuban,
Italian men and women. The necessities
of coming to a new land, coping with a
to new
strange culture, and adapting
demands
narrow
landowners who controlled
the area's
From
wheat, olives, vines and sheep.
these urban-villages
or
6,000
numbering
more inhabitants, peasants walked sev
eral miles each day to tend their plots of
earth. In Sicily, peasants lived not on the
belie
by
the more
fundamental
roles played
women.
The
Italian women who came to
Florida traced their roots back to a clus
ter of small villages in the western part of
Sicily; it was here that the outlooks and
values of the immigrants took shape (2).
remote, hill-top settlements had a
history that was tinctured with fatalism
and gloom. For them, the unification of
Italy in 1870 had only changed rulers not
from wealthy
masters; power emanated
These
status
as
a wage
earner
jeopardized family honor and male
In 1907 only fifteen per cent of
prestige.
all Sicilian women
labored outside
the
home in non-agrarian
occupations
(5).
A1909
in
government
survey conducted
found
similar
in
force:
Tampa
patterns
10.5 per cent of the city's Italian women
had worked outside the home for wages
before coming to America,
and another
18.4 per cent had
The work
(6).
women,
therefore,
the context of the
toiled as farm laborers
for these
experience
resided principally
in
family.
19
University of South FloridaTampa Campus Library
The
Cuesta
Tampa,
Rey
Florida
200
nearly
1930s
The key point basic to understanding
the Sicilian family is its function as a
collective producer, a common pool of
familial resources.
The family was the
listed 5,464
Santo Stefano
number climbing to 6,315
Sicilians' state. The Church had joined
the galantuomini
forces with
(upper
had betrayed
the
government
classes),
the people, justice was corrupt, only the
in
heavy rates of emigration
beginning
that decade. Birth records reinforce this
In 1867, 232 births were re
picture.
corded at the parish church, La Madre
della Chiesa.
In 1887 a near record 292
family could be trusted. Sicilians deni
for the
grated and denied individualism
Parents
greater family good.
regarded
their children as economic assets whose
stave off disaster and
incomes helped
added to the family fortunes.
An overabundance
of children, how
ever, exacerbated the island's many prob
stood
lems. In 1800, Sicily's population
at 1,000,000;by 1900 the island groaned
to support
3,500,000
functioned
inhabitants
(7).
as an endemic
Emigration
deci
rather than epidemicphenomenon,
some
while
leaving oth
mating
villages
ers untouched
One of
its
pressures.
by
Tampa's points of origin, the village of
a
Santo Stefano Quisquina,
provides
textbook case of the dynamics of demog
raphy. Local birth and census records,
preserved in the parish church and town
in 1861
hall, reveal the classic pattern:
the
citizens,
in 1881, but
falling to 6,087 in 1901, and 5,897 in 1931
(8). The decline after 1881 points to
babies were born; but in 1907-at the very
160
climax of Italian emigration-only
were
children
the
fewest
registered,
births in three generation
(9). Santo
Stefano confirmed historian Frank This
tlethwaite's
thesis that "there is a direct
correlation between the rates of emigra
tion
and
the natural
increase
twenty
years previously."(10)
the
Emigration
severely dislocated
of
life
in
the
old
country.
rhythms
village
In the process women accepted new chal
lenges and assumed new responsibilities.
true in light of the
This was particularly
in the early
heavy male predominance
the
of
immigration
phases
experience.
The masculine
imbalance wrought
by
altered sexual roles in the vil
migration
the men left, women often
lages. When
became
managers
for the estates,
han
d?ng business
factories
needs
in
women
employing
the production
Factory
is one
in
of
the
in
of cigars.
and working
in the
fields (11). Oftentimes with husbands
away inTampa, women held together the
unbroken international circle, underscor
ing the peasant proverb, "If the father
should die, the family would suffer; if the
mother
should die, the family ceases to
exist."(12) Other women chose to chart
for themselves.
entirely new directions
The case of Salvatore
and Agatina
Cannella
illustrates the immigrant expe
rience and its effects upon the partici
pants. Salvatore Cannella operated a dry
goods store in Santo Stefano, a business
which
he resumed in New Orleans after
Like many of the early
emigration.
the
returned to
Cannellas
immigrants,
after
several
thousand
dol
Sicily
earning
lars. Unfortunately,
Salvatore died shortly
after
Cannella,
Agatina
repatriating.
a life of
shrouded in black, contemplated
as
custom
but
she
dictated,
mourning
to
break
convention.
from
away
opted
Rosalia Cannella Ferlita, her daughter,
an al
decision,
explained her mother's
to an earlier
ternative
inconceivable
generation:
"My mother was used to the
. .Well in
business.
Italy she had to stay
in the house.
There was nothing to do
20Magazine
of History
.. .There was no communication.
Sit and
sit. Finally she decided to come back to
America.
But she didn't want to go back
to New Orleans~too
many memories
so she came to
Tampa."(13)
InTampa, Sicilians joined Spaniards
and Cubans to develop Ybor City. The
creation of Vicente Martinez Ybor, this
enclave was carved out of palmetto scru
in 1886 to become
the capital of
hand-rolled
the United
in
cigarmaking
States. Incorporated into Tampa in 1887,
this ethnic settlement by 1905 was com
of about
6,000
posed
foreign-born
bland
"Latins."
In order of numerical
impor
tance,
Italians,
they included Cubans,
and Spaniards
(14). Ybor City evolved
a company
into a unique experiment:
town financed
by foreign capital; and
industrial
amidst a rural
community
a
and
Latin
in a state
workforce
South;
dominated byWASPs.
Such was the en
vironment
which greeted the Sicilian im
who
arrived between
the late
migrants
1880s and the 1920s.
Evidently, and the records are sparse,
the period of predominantly
ment
was
short-lived.
male
Several
early
settle
rec
ords document
the female presence
in
In
the
Italian
consul
May 1892,
Tampa.
of New Orleans
reported nearly 300 Si
cilians in Tampa, approximately one-third
of whom were women
(15). The 1900
manuscript
census
provides
a more
in
Italian
depth portrait of an emerging
The
fraction
of
females
in
community.
1900 remained at one-third, but the over
all colony numbers had increased to over
1,300. The typical Sicilian female was
sixteen, reflecting the youthful character
of the colony. A scant two per cent of the
Italian women were listed age fifty and
older. Most
Italians, men and women,
were illiterate. Husbands
on the average
were five years older than wives
(16). The
1905 Florida State Census
listed 2,574
Italians inTampa-1,370
males and 1,204
one
By 1909,
report indicated
that ninety-nine
cent
of the Italian
per
husbands in its survey had been reunited
with their wives (17).
females.
Curiously
Spring 1990
missing
from
the
1900
census, as it related to Italians, were two
standard
the
institutions,
immigrant
and
house
the
extended
boarding
family
living under one roof. Several explana
tions may clarify this absence. The year
1900 may have been too early to capture
the extended
family, since the Italian
was
in the process of estab
community
census did reveal a
itself.
The
lishing
on
of
the part of Italian
pattern
boarding
men, but not in homes managed by Ital
ian women. This again is undoubtedly
a
function of the early stage of family
then in place for Italians
immigration
must be made also for the
Provision
(18).
of
presence
boarding houses that went
unrecorded
because
of bureaucratic
omission or group commission.
Census
takers have always had difficulty
in re
newest
the
Given
cording
immigrants.
the abominable
spelling of Italian names
by census takers, there would be diffi
reliable
culty in obtaining
completely
information from the mobile residents of
a boarding house, particularly
if a group
felt a sense of alienation
(19).
Nearly sixteen per cent of Tampa's
Italian households maintained
boarders
in 1909, as documented by a United States
Senate Immigration Commission
survey.
In these arrangements, women played a
central role. The owner's wife, often
times with the support of female chil
dren,
tended
to the boarders'
many
needs,
including washing, cooking, mending, and
various other household
tasks. These
were
of
course, to the duties
added,
jobs
in
for
the woman's own
required
caring
Italian
households
family. Among
sup
in
the
boarders
survey year, an
porting
of seven boarders were found
average
(20). While at home, Ital
somehow
found
time to
continue
the handicraft arts of sewing,
crocheting, and embroidering.
Italians were counted most heavily
per residence
ian women
where
their presence was courted-at
the
Ybor City
city's burgeoning workplace.
boasted
in the early twentieth century
nearly 200 cigar factories which, by 1911,
were producing
in excess of 1,000,000
hand-rolled
cigars daily. Each week the
more
than 10,000 workers earned $250,000
dollars [sic] inwages (21). Women played
a significant role in
making Tampa syn
onymous with quality cigars, a function
thatwent beyond just posing for the comely
cigar labels that advertised Tampa Girl
and Farnesia to the world.
Latin patrones
such as V. Martinez
Ybor and Ignacio Haya welcomed women
on a number of levels. Their presence
stabilized what once appeared as a wild,
male
community; more impor
demonstrated
their exper
tise in the cigar factories.
Unlike
the
and
Italians
with
Cubans,
Spanish
brought
them no previous experience
in the to
frontier
tantly, women
bacco industry save a sheer doggedness
to work hard and long. Their tenacious
to work, combined with
commitment
values such as frugality, dependability,
and abstention from hard liquor, made
Italians ideal workers.
Women
shared
this acceptance of the work ethic. "Work
hard, work always, and you will never
know hunger," a proverb promised
(22).
As early as June 1900, nearly seventy per
cent of all gainfully employed
Italians
in Ybor City were engaged in the cigar
industry. By 1909 Italians accounted for
almost twenty per cent of the total cigar
workforce
(23). If one added the num
bers
involved
workshops),
even
in chinchales
the
figures
(storefront
would
be
greater.
The 1900 census revealed patterns
characteristic of Italian immigrants. Ital
in New York, San Fran
ians, whether
sico, or Tampa, almost always started at
the bottom
and faced a
most female
as unskilled
of the occupational
ladder
long upward climb. In 1900
Italian cigar workers labored
tobacco strippers, widely re
in
garded as the least desirable position
the industry (24). Tobacco
stripping
involved removal of the hard stems from
the tobacco leaves, a job that many ob
servers felt was particularly suited to the
nimble fingers of women. Because of the
poor pay, unhealthy working conditions,
and lowly status, the position of
stripper
often fell to those women who could find
no other employment.
One Tampa labor
21
University of South FloridaTampa Campus Library
stantially more Ybor City Italian women
were employed
in cigar factories
than
their male counterparts.
Fully sixty per
cent of the foreign-born women employed
in the cigar industry were Italian (30). In
Tampa, Italian wives were twice as likely
to hold jobs as Cubans, three times more
likely that Spanish se?oras', seven times
as likely as such women
in Pittsburgh,
and twelve times more likely to work as
Italianwives inBuffalo (31). Why?
to understand why women
Clearly,
one
must first understand
not
worked,
the
of
but
also
its
work,
only
meaning
the
in
structural
and
local,
significance
ethnic group context. In her study, Fam
Yans
ily and Community,
Virginia
At
the Hav-A-Tampa
in the 1930s, Italian and Spanish
factory, West Tampa,
immigrant women
involved in all areas of cigar production,
often making more
inwages
than their male counterparts.
in 1917 that strip
newspaper observed
ping attracted, "Orphan girls, maids who
have no male helper, widows with young
children, the victims of divorce, the daugh
ters of large families, the victims of vi
cious men or of sick and disabled men."(25)
Italian women, however, used the strip
ping tables in the early years as spring
to launch themselves upward into
the ranks of cigarmakers.
So successful
were they that by the second decade of
the new century they posed a serious
threat to displace male cigarmakers.
To become a skilled cigar worker,
boards
Italians underwent a long appren
ticeship lasting at a minimum eight months
to well over a
but sometimes
extending
many
year. An Italian consul once suggested
that this requirement
reduced the num
ber of prospective
Italian cigarmakers
candidates
because, while apprenticed,
received no assistance
Having
(26).
endured
the training period, however,
Italians could expect handsome wages.
"Italian women have become very adept
at this craft," noted the same consul in
1909, with some earning $25.00 a week.
"On average, the workers
average six
teen to eighteen dollars aweek."(27) Those
cigarworkers who received pay on a piece
work basis earned
substantial
wages
compared to other skilled workers dur
become
The curious fact that
ing this period.
apparently Tampa's Italian women earned
more than men (certainly a rarity in in
dustrial history) was buttressed by a 1913
indi
report inBolletino dell'Emigrazione
men
that
Italian
averaged $15.00
cating
to $18.00 a week while women
earned
$15.00 to $20.00 aweek, but some "even
to twenty-three
dollars a week." Chil
dren earned between
$6.00 and $12.00
a
week (28).
Ifwomen were limited in their work
roles-no women was ever elected to the
post of lector (reader) and
prestigious
few have been discovered
in the leader
re
the
of
local
movement-a
labor
ship
number of Italian women did
In 1909, sixteen per cent of the
were
women
in America
foreign-born
markable
work.
for wages; in Tampa, just un
employed
one
der
quarter of the Italian-born women
were so occupied
(29). The latter figure
was almost certainly undercounted.
The
1900 census, for instance, revealed many
examples of Italian girls, aged ten to six
teen, whose occupation
(one could gen
erally expect "at school") was left blank.
One surmises that these girls worked but,
because of the minimum
age work laws,
the figure went unreported.
Govern
ment
the
reports further substantiated
Italian proclivity
for work.
In 1900 sub
concluded
that
Italian
Buffalo preferred
seasonal
such as canning, fruit pick
occupations,
and
homework
rather than more lu
ing,
crative and steady industrial employment
"Italian
wrote
Yans
immigrants,"
McLaughlin
wo-menin
"transformed
the canning
McLaughlin,
factories
into communities
where Old
World social attitudes and behavior could
continue, maintained by kinship ties."(32)
Tampa's Italians similarly accommodated
to the new industrial order.
themselves
Tampa's cigar industries beat to a differ
ent rhythm compared
to the northeast
em mills and foundries. The galeria (work
that the
floor) loomed less threatening
Bessemer blast furnace. The cigar indus
try offered a congenial atmosphere punc
tuated by frequent doses of cafe con leche,
dramatic readings from popular nouvelle,
the companionship
of paesani,
and the
heady solidarity of strong unions
(33).
there existed in Tampa no
Furthermore,
established native or immigrant class, such
as the Irish or Germans,
to supervise or
intimidate Latin women-at
least inYbor
in this setting traditional
Thus,
City.
Italian values could survive, albeit in
somewhat altered form, and rapid eco
nomic development
could occur within
the context of social conservatism.
Even the city's turbulent, fractious
labor history failed to dislodge
Italian
women from the cigar factories. Strikes
became benchmarks of time inYbor City.
22Magazine
of History
Aseries
of violent and protracted strikes
led by fiercely militant unions enveloped
Ybor City between 1899 and 1931 (34).
Conflicts
generally revolved around chal
to
lenges
fringe benefits
pre-industrial
and sovereignty of the workplace.
The
workers' embrace of popular leftist causes,
such as socialism and anarchism, intensi
fied the struggle.
Italian men and women clearly sup
the general
ported the cause. During
strike occurring in 1900, the Tampa Trib
une observed
scene: "The
the following
hall was literally packed with women who
work daily in the branch of the cigarmak
There were Americans,
ing industry.
and Italians in the
Cubans, Spaniards
mass of feminine toilers..
.1248 women
... It was the
members
largest body of
women ever assembled
in Tampa.
Itwas
a sight worth seeing."(35)
as
the Tribune described
women
nine
Italian
who
"ludicrous,"
picketed the factory of Arguelles,
Lopez
and Brothers. "The misguided ones, armed
with clubs," an observer wrote, "paraded
In 1910
the streets about the factory. Their
weap
ons
and their tongues
they brandished
vent
to threats that
did
wag, giving
they
to
would
beat
all
death
who would
they
author
Jose
work."(36)
Tampa-born
in
this
reminiscences
with
Studs
Yglesias,
the pattern:
Terkel, confirmed
"People
date their lives from various strikes in
they refer to a scab, they
Tampa. When
no
Tt's
say,
surprise he's going to bread
the strike since his mother did it in 1921.'
Inmy hometown
strikes were passionate
. . .Women
affairs
beat up women
scabs."(37)
Italian women earned their place in
the rank and file. And yet in historical
their essential group experi
perspective,
ence embodied
a conservative
lifestyle.
How does one explain the relationship of
labor radicalism and domestic conserva
tism? The work choices made by Italian
women which took them out of homes,
gave them higher wages than their men
folk, and placed them in militant unions
must be understood
in the context of
their family obligations.
The individual's
assumed
identity
importance only as it
contributed
to the group
well
being.
University of South FloridaTampa Campus Library
^R??k,.,.
Sicilian women-and
girls-worked
to enhance their self-identification,
to achieve a share of American
not
nor
inde
to
but
maintain
and
sustain
pendence,
the family unit (38). The general pattern
was to utilize cigar factory jobs as ameans
to an end rather than as permanent
em
women
selections.
While
la
ployment
bored for wages in the factories, often for
extended periods of time, men began to
move
in different directions.
Typically
men labored for a few years to build a
small amount of investment capital, usu
ally put toward some form of property.
"The Italian cigar makers are not content
until they own their own homes," wrote
an official in 1909 (39). Soon men began
to purchase dairies, truck farms, and cattle
herds on the fringes of Ybor City. Others
invested in the first small beginnings
of
trade or business-a
fruit stand, fish store,
grocery, confectionery,
bakery, or import
house. Women
and children often pro
vided steady wages until these ventures
matured. The elderly and very young also
contributed.
Old women cared for chil
dren during the work day, and youngsters
of six, seven, or eight years acquired rudi
mentary cigarmaking skills at home (40).
The strategy reaped dividends.
Italians achieved extraordinary prog
ress in the street trades compared to their
Latin counterparts
inYbor City. In 1909
Italians
boasted
fruit and
forty-seven
seven
fish
vendors,
markets,
vegetable
and fourteen ice and ice cream dealers as
to a total of only three such
compared
City during the 1930s, women worked
loudspeaker on the column at the right replaced
were never elected
they rolled cigars. Women
In Ybor
Spring 1990 23
in the rolling halls of the cigar factory. The
alongside men
etLector (reader) who traditionally
read to the workers while
to the prestigious
position o? lector.
Cuban and Spanish enterprises (41). Many
of these business ventures were launched
on precisely
the basis described above.
The case of Alex and Josephine Scaglione
The couple met
typified this paradigm.
while rolling cigars in Ybor City. Soon
Alex left the factories and opened a gro
to roll
continued
cery store. Josephine
cigars until the business stabilized. Their
son became high school
principal and
characteristic
of the
college president,
after 1930, once Italians had
generation
struggled to carve themselves a niche in
the bourgeois world (42).
to the
extended
Family obligations
University of South FloridaTampa Campus Library
Female
recruited
for
the
Tabaco
1937,
celebrating
cigar workers
for publicity
La Verbena
celebration,
an
annual
the
are
shots
del
Tampa,
event
city's
cigar
industry.
unit's more
as well. "A
junior members
an old world proverb
family's wealth,"
reminded immigrants, "depended upon
the number of hands it has," and Italians
were not reluctant to enlist all available
support (43). Parents directed the voca
tions of their children, and during the
work began early.
1890-1930,
period
Few Italian children in Tampa-as
else
where-entered
high school before the
"The education of children
Depression.
com
is almost altogether
neglected,"
plained one official (44). Reflecting Old
priorities, girls fared much worse
than their brothers
in educational
op
and
achievement.
"Education
portunity
was out of the question for a single girl,"
World
to
Italiano.
"I went
explained Mary
school as far as the fourth or fifth
The necessity
of going to
grade."(45)
or in
work, either at a factory workbench
the home, came soon to the lives of most
Italian women.
Italians exercised patience
Tampa's
and persistence
in their efforts to achieve
success. W^hen the strikes depressed
the
local economy,
Italians proved particu
larly adept at probing the urban and rural
economies,
finding work mining
phos
or
phate, picking oranges,
gardening,
remembered
peddling. Tina Provenzano
her
in
fleeing
cigar factory
Tampa during
the 1920 strike and living with her fa
for a Clear
ther, who then was working
water
farmer (46). A taste of tenant
farming did not cheapen the family dig
in
nity. "Italians were more interested
building
plained
ex
for ourselves,"
something
one of Tampa's
Nick Nuccio,
MftfePi
most
World
to Spain and Cuba. The Italian people
knew they were going to live [here] for
the rest of their lives, raise a family.
I
lived in the same house for thirty-eight
marriages. While mothers
their daughter's
fu
rarely hand-picked
ture mate, neither did they play an inac
?tive role. The chaperon
entered
the
scene. Courtship
followed a strict code
successful Latin politicians:
"The
come
and
Cuban
they
Spanish
people...
here to make a little money and go back
years."(47)
Just as Italians adjusted to the new
so too did the
demands of the workplace,
of
Italian
domestic
life reflect
patterns
the impact of a new environment.
Old
soon discovered
fathers
their
saw
romance
or
little
daughters
utility in
Sicilian-style
of ethics.
climaxed
Friday and Saturday evenings
around Ybor City's main thor
Seventh Avenue.
Throngs of
oughfare,
Latins converged during the evening hours
for shopping,
in guava tarts
indulging
24
Magazine
of History
with coffee, and dancing at one of the
four mutual aid societies: L'Unione
Itali
Centro Espa?ol
ana, Centro Asturiano,
and C?rculo Cubano (48). Young couples
were allowed to flirt and dance, but al
ways under the watchful eye of mother or
an older sister. InYbor City there were
no privileged sanctuaries. "Mother would
take us walking up and down Seventh
smiled
Avenue,"
Angelina
Spoto
"and all the boys would be
Comescone;
standing on the curb and the mothers
would be like little hens watching
her
chicks. So that nobody would look at us
or touch us ... The boys would go wild
... It was
trying to get a word with us
beautiful.
It was entertainment.
It was
beautiful."(49)
Helen Martinez
Spoto concurred:
"We had to have a chaperone, always...
Itwas nicer then. We were more together
. . . the
family together."
Rosemary
Scaglione Crapraro offered her insights
into the institution:
"Marriage was the
the
only way to get from out,
only way,
from under the skirts of the mother_
We thought that by getting married young
you see we couldn't see a fella, couldn't
sit on the porch with the light on at
the first [male] to come along
night-so
and smile at us, we would marry him. And
there was not divorce."(50)
More structured recreation took place
within the mutual aid society, but women
typically operated at the fringes of this
institution.
in 1894, L'Un
Organized
ione Italiana ministered
to the social and
economic needs of Italian immigrants.
It
to
cradle
from
grave benefits,
dispensed
to burial
unemployment
compensation
a
In
club
1914,
expenses.
magnificent
house was erected, replaced a few years
later, after a fire, by an even more re
splendent four-story structure. The club
served, however, as the principal domain
of men.
Club rules allowed women
to
in
the
1920s
and
in
medi
join
participate
cal benefits, but their role was explicitly
defined by their committee
names:
the
Women's
Committee
and
Auxiliary
Women's Recreational
Committee
(51).
Yet, even before formal entry, women
Spring 1990
fully in the numerous Sun
participated
and outings sponsored by
day picnics
the club. They also labored diligently
in
the many fund raising drives for various
civic and national causes highlighting
the
club's existence.
If Italian women seldom frequented
the cantina of the social club, they were
invisible at the ballot box. No woman
the vote until 1920, of course,
possessed
but even as late as 1930 Tampa's Latins men and women-wielded
little leverage
in the city's ward system. For good rea
In
sons, Italians declined the franchise.
the old country, the peasantry was virtu
until 1892, and a uni
ally disfranchised
versal male franchise was not won until
most of Tampa's Sicil
1912. Moreover,
ians never learned to read or write Eng
lish, a requirement for registering to vote
in Florida. For example, in 1909, only six
Italian
per cent of Tampa's foreign-born
women who were employed could
speak
English, as opposed to twenty per cent of
their Cuban counterparts
Ironi
(52).
cally, this figure belies the very rapid
linguistic adaptation achieved by Italian
women
to the dominant
in adjusting
language of Ybor City.
enclave, the lingua franca
not English, and because
in the cigar
representation
women
ian
may well have
In this ethnic
was Spanish,
of their heavy
factories, Ital
acquired facil
ity in Spanish more quickly than men.
in Spanish,
did not
however,
Fluency
translate into a high rate of voting or
naturalization.
Indeed, by 1930, only
twenty-four per cent of Tampa's foreign
born population was naturalized,
easily
the lowest percentage of any large city in
the United States (53).
In general, women accommodated
to
the social
dictates of this period.
The
Italian family was father-dominated
but
a delicate balance of
mother-centered,
wills (54). Few women challenged
this
arrangement Today elderly Italian women
for the halcyon days
yearn nostalgically
of yesteryear.
"Ybor City was one big
"In
family," sobbed Angelina Comescone.
the evenings our parents would take us
.... Ybor
walking
City was all one big
Itwas
family. We all loved one another.
beautiful. We could go walking, singing
all the way, Italian, Spanish, and Ameri
can songs. Nobody walks anymore.
It
was beautiful
then. Nobody
sings any
....
more
Today, you don't hear
anybody sing anymore."(55)
The alienating and disruptive conse
quences of the immigration
process, as
as Oscar
chronicled
such
historians
by
when
require modification
to the Tampa experience.
The
Odyssey reveals that the
Sicily-Tampa
tenacious
Italian family structure pro
vided a flexible and effective tool in cop
Itworked as a
ing with the New World.
to
cushion
insure
survival in
moderating
a strange new land. Clearly, the rigors of
and ur
industrialization,
immigration,
as
to
banization
it applied
Tampa did not
break the Italian family.
When asked to summarize the role of
women
in Ybor City, seventy-year-old
Nelson Palermo pondered, and then said,
Handlin,
applied
"Cigarmaking, kitchen, raising children.
And respect."(56)
In the broadest terms,
his characterization
speaks accurately.
And yet, Italian women
in Ybor City
played a myriad of roles, many of them
and unrecorded.
One is re
of an observation
inAnn Cornel
isen's classic work on Italian life,Women
in the Shadows.
"As for the women,"
the
undefined
minded
"Put any label you
speaker explained,
want on it. It amounts to the same
thing;
... Men work and talk about
politics. We
do the rest....
We decide, but we don't
have to talk about it in the Piazza."(57)
Italian women were thus significant
forces
in determining
the nature of
to life in Tampa.
immigrant adjustments
Their tenacious
efforts helped
to pre
serve a culture, with its
on
hard
emphasis
work, frugality, and strong family bonds.
Yet, at the same time, they often played a
leading role in flexibly adapting Old World
ways to cope with the new conditions
encountered
in Florida.
In the end, both
the immigrant group itself and the urban
environment
in which
it existed were
a
as
result
of
this
delicate bal
reshaped
ance between the old and new.
25
Any complete
study of immigrant
includes many other questions
Tampa
that remain unan
surrounding women
swered. Why, for example, did Italians
after the Depression
suddenly embrace
the educational
system and pursue pro
fessional degrees with the same success
they had earlier brought to fruit peddling
re
and cigarmaking?
How did women
late to this phenomenon?
What was the
nature of the interrelationships
existing
as
between immigrant men and women
the second, third, and fourth generations
class
interacted? How did the working
culture of cities such a Tampa change
over time and where did women
fit into
this evolution? Much of the information
needed to address these issues will un
doubtedly have to be ferreted from oral
to these
interviews. And, as responses
surely new
queries emerge,
perplexing
questions will surface and heretofore
unrecognized women will appear as agents
of social change.
Endnotes
1. Tampa Morning
Tribune, August
12,
Florida,
1910; Anne France-Harrar,
trans, by
Das Land des ?berflusses,
H.
Kleine
Georg
(Berlin-Sch?neberg,
in "The Suncoast
1931), quoted
Viewed
Eyes,"
through German
Tampa Bay History, III (Fall/Winter,
1981), 80.
2. In order of their importance to Tampa,
these villages were Santo Stefano
della Rocca,
Quisquina, Alessandria
Bivona, Cianciana, and Contessa En
tellina. The authors spent academic
year 1980-1981 in Italy, including time
in these villages and archive centers
in Rome and Florence.
3. Sidney Sonnino, / contadini in Sicilia,
and
Franchetti
Vol. 2 of Leopoldo
1876
La
Sicilia
net
Sidney Sonnino,
(Florence, 1877), 171-72; Denis Mack
Smith, A History of Sicily (London,
1968); Jane and Peter Schneider,
in
Culture and Ploitical
Economy
Western Sicily
(New York, 1976);
Guiseppe Giarrizzo, Gastone Masa
corda, et al., I fasci Siciliani
(Bari,
S. Stefano
1976); Calogero Messina,
Studio Critico (Palermo,
Quisquina:
1976); Salvatore Salomone-Marino,
Customs and Habits of the Sicilian
translated from Costumi e
Peasants,
usanze dei contadini di Sicilia by
Norris
Rosalie
N.J.,
(Rutherford,
1981).
4. Charlotte G. Chapman, Milocca:
A
Sicilian V?lage
York,
(New
1971),
30.
5. Annuario Statistico, 1905-1907 (Rome,
1907), III, 40; Anton Blok, The Ma
fia of a Sicilian Village, 1869-1960: A
Study of Violent Peasant Entrepre
neurs (New York, 1974), 49-50.
6. U.S., Congress,
Senate, Reports of the
Commission,
Immigration
Immigrants
in Industries, pt. 14, "Cigar and To
bacco Manufacturing"
(Washington,
1911), Table 132,199. The table re
females who
ferred to foreign-born
were sixteen years of age or over at
the time of immigration.
7. Schneider, Culture and Political
omy, 115.
Econ
8. Istituto Centrale di Statistica, Comuni
e low popolazione
ai censimenti dal
1861 al 1951, "Provincia di Agrigento"
some
With
(Roma,
1960), 266.
temporary rises and falls, the statistics
for other villages confirm this pattern.
Sancti Stephni Ad
9. Liber Baptizatorum
La
della Chiesa,
Madre
Quisquinam,
Santo Stefano; Archivo Comunale,
Santo Stefano, Agrigento.
10. Frank Thistlethwaite,
"Migration from
Overseas
in
the Nineteenth
Europe
and Twentieth
in Her
Centuries,"
bert Moller,
ed., Population Move
ments
inModern European History
(New York, 1964), 90.
11.Anna Maria Ratti, "Italian Migration
from 1876-1921," Wal
Movements
terWilcox,
ed., International Migra
tions (New York, 1969), 451-52; Emili
ana P. Noether,
"The Silent Half:
Le Contadine del Sud Before the First
World War," inBetty Caroli, Robert
and Lydio Tomasi, eds.,
F. Harney,
in
The Italian
Immigrant Woman
3
North America
(Toronto,
1978),
14;Robert F. Harney, "Men without
Women:
Italian Migrants
in Can
in Caroli, Harney
ada, 1885-1930,"
and Tomasi, eds., The Italian Immi
grant Woman, 79-103.
12. Quoted
in Leonard Moss and Walter
"The South Italian Fam
Thomson,
Literature
and Observation,"
ily:
Human Organization, XVIII (Spring
Italian
1959), 38; Robert Foerster,
Emigration
of Our Time (Cambr
449.
idge, 1917),
13. Interview with Rosalia Cannella Fer
of
number
lita, May 18,1980. A
come
earliest
had
immigrants
Tampa's
to the city indirectly after initial stays
inNew Orleans and St Cloud, a sugar
to the east of Tampa.
plantation
14. L. Glenn Westfall,
"Don Vicente
Martinez
Ybor, The Man and his
of the Clear
Empire: Development
Havana
in
Cuba
and Flor
Industry
ida in the Nineteenth Century" (Ph.D.
of Florida,
dissertation,
University
Third
Census
55-75;
1977),
of the
State of Florida, 1905 (Tallahassee,
1906), Table 17, "Foreign Popula
to County," 112,120,
tion According
124. Many Latins also settled in
West Tampa, forming an ethnic com
munity very similar to Ybor City.
The figure cited represents an esti
mate arrived at by deducting
resi
in West Tampa and various
county and city locations not
included inYbor City.
15. Ricardo
"Nuova Orleans,
Motta,
del
R.
Consolare,"
May 14,
Rapporti
e colonie, rapporti
1892, Emigrazione
dents
other
di agenti
diplomatici
1893), 464.
e consolari
(Roma,
16. U.S., Census Office,
of the United States:
Twelfth Census
1900 (Washing
ton, 1902), Population,
II, Florida,
Table 27, 214; also see Twelfth Cen
sus, Florida, Hillsborough
County,
Census Schedules, mi
Manuscript
crofilm reel 170, P.K. Yonge Library
of Florida History,
of
University
Gainesville.
Florida,
17. Immigrants
in Industries, Table 105,
Third
Census
432;
of State of Florida,
1905,112,120,124.
26Magazine
of History
University of South FloridaTampa Campus Library
the city's
cigar
industry at the 1937 Verbena
dancers
del Tabaco,
Spanish
de
from the Centro Asturiano
Celebrating
Tampa
perform
Fair Grounds.
at the Tampa
??
18.Helen
in
"Immigrant Women
City, 1900" (seminar paper,
of Florida,
University
1982). Also
this factor may be the
influencing
fact that housing
in Tampa was re
markably
inexpensive, both in terms
Smith,
Ybor
of rentals and overall purchase price.
The 1930 census listed Tampa at the
very bottom of a list of 100 cities in
terms of median value of non-farm
homes
U.S., Census Of
($2,882).
fice, Fifteenth Census of the United
States: 1930, (Washington,
1933).
Population, VI, Florida Table 67,60.
see Immigrants
Also
in Industries,
Table 159, 232, for information on
rentals.
19. City officials in Tampa, then as now
sensitive to the barometer of popu
lation count, complained in 1900 that
"practically no count was made of
the Spanish and Italian residents."
Spring 1990
27
Tampa Morning Tribune, November
8,1900.
20. Immigrants
in Industries, Table
162
and 163,234.
Tribune, December
ll.Tampa Morning
in Industries,
18, 1911; Immigrants
187.
22 Salomone-Marino,
Customs and Hab
its, 48; Foerster,
Italian Immigration,
342;Richard Gambino, Blood ofMy
Blood (New York, 1974), 84, 273,
319,339.
23. Earl R. Hendry,
of the Italian
"A Revisionist
View
Immigrants of Ybor
in
1900"
City
(seminar paper, Uni
of
Florida,
versity
1982), 10; Immi
in
Table
Industries,
128,195.
grants
24. Hendry,
"A Revisionist
View," 7-8,
and
10; Helen L. Sumner, Women
Child Earners in the United States, 19
in
IX; "History of Women
in
the
United
61st
States,"
Industry
vols.,
Cong.,
2nd
Sess.,
Sen.
Doc.
645
(Washington, 1910), 196-97;Twelfth
Census
1900, Manuscript
microfilm
170P.K. Yon
ge Library of Florida History.
25. Tampa El Internacional,
March 2,
1917.
26. Cav. G. Fara-Forni
and Luigi Villar,
Census,
Schedules,
"Gli Italiani nel distretto consolare
e
di Nuova Orleans," Emigrazione
III (Roma, 1909), 217-18.
Colonie,
The same report indicated that work
ers often
three years to
required
become fully skilled in the craft.
27. Ibid. Also see, E. Mayor des Planches,
AttraversogliStatiUnituPerVemigra'
zione italiana (Torino, 1913), 117.
28. G. Moroni,
italiana
"L'Emigrazione
in Florida," BolletinodelVEmigrazU
one, I (1913), 40. Other sources have
indicated
that Italian men earned
generally higher wages than women.
See Immigrants in Industries, Tables
139 and 140,209-10.
29. Corrine Azen Krause, "Urbanization
without Breakdown," Journal of Urban
History, IV (May 1978), 291-305;
in Industries,
Immigrants
219.
Table
30. Hendry,
In both 1920 and 1930 Tampa ranked
first nationally among cities of 100,000
or more
in terms of the
residents
women gain
of
married
percentage
The year 1930, for
fully employed.
saw
33.4
percent of such
example,
women
at work. Fifteenth Census,
1930, IV, Table 30,81.
31. Italian women employed inYbor City
cigar factories actually went against
the wider
Society
Florida, May
8,1982.
32. Virginia Yans-McLaughlin
Family and
in
Italian
Community:
Immigrants
1880-1930
Buffalo,
(Ithaca, 1977),
217.
33. Louis A Perez, "Reminiscences
of a
in
Cuban Cigar Workers
Florida
Historical
Quarterly,
Tampa,"
Realism
in Industrial America,"
Journal of Social History, XII (1980),
45-65, for a discussion of these trends.
William
study, The
Leuchtenberg's
Perils of Prosperity, 1914-32 (Chicago,
1958), 160, was surely not describing
Italian women when
it concluded,
than ten million
"By 1930 more
women held jobs. Nothing did more
to emancipate
them."
39. Immigrants
40. Ibid.
Miss
Factory Reader,"
Tampa Daily Times, April 23,1946.
34. Durward
La Resistencia:
Long,
Cigarmakers
Tampa's Immigrant Labor Union,"
Labor History, VI (Fall 1965), 193
214; Durward Long, "Labor Rela
tions in the Tampa Cigar Industry,
1885-1911," Labor History, XI (Fall
Pozzetta,
1971), 551-59; George
Strike of
"Italians and the General
in
1910,"
George Pozzetta, ed., Pane
e Lavoro:
The Italian American
in Industries,
264.
41. Ibid., Table
137,207; Italian Business
1911-1912
Directory,
(New York,
1912), 399-400. A complete set Tampa
city business directories from 1899
in the Tampa Public
1930 contained
also
the pace of Ital
confirm
Library
ian business development.
Lector:
LIII (April 1975), 443-50; "Older
April 30,1979, Tampa; Interview with
Rosemary
Scaglione Crapraro, July
29,1979, Tampa.
51. Interview with Paul Longo, June 1,
1979, Tampa. Longo served as presi
nacional, February 24,1911.
36. Ibid., November
15,1910.
37. Quoted
in Studs T?rkei, Hard Times
(New York, 1970), 134.
38. See John Bodnar, "Immigration, Kin
ship and the Rise of Working-Class
trend
at the Florida Historical
Fort Lauderdale,
meeting,
baqueros! Tampa's
Striking Cigar
worker," Tampa Bay History, III (Fall/
Winter
R.
19-30; Gary
1981),
35. Tampa Morning Tribune, November
18,1900. Women were also active in
the formation of Women's
Union
Label Leagues.
See Tampa El Inter
then operating
in
saw
which
Tampa's cigar industry,
the percentage of women versus men
obtaining employment go downward
by 1900. Among Italians, more women
than men inYbor City worked in the
factories.
For the larger patterns
see, Durward Long, "Women Work
ers in the Cigar Industry," paper
delivered
Comescone,
July 29,1979, Tampa.
50. Interview with Helen Martinez Spoto,
Mormino,
"Tampa and the New Ur
ban South: The Weight
Strike of
1899," Florida Historical
Quarterly,
LX (January 1982), 337-56.
150,
"A Revisionist
View," 7-10;
Louise C. Odencrantz,/ta?fltt
Women
in Industry (New York, 1919), 48-49.
Working Class (Toronto,
1980). 29
Ta
47; George
Pozzetta, Alerta
42.
Interview with
and Alex
Josephine
Scaglione, April 2,1980, Tampa.
43. Quoted
inYans-McLaughlin,iVzm//v
and Community,
180.
44. Interview with Mary Italiano, April
46.
20.1978, Tampa.
Interview with Tina Asunta
Proven
zano, March 13,1982, Tampa.
47. Interview with Nick C. Nuccio, June
10.1979, Tampa.
48. Salatha Bagley, "The Latin Clubs of
thesis,
(master's
Tampa, Florida,"
Duke University,
1948),passim.
with Angelina
49. Interview
Spoto
dent of L'Unione
Italiana and dur
the
1920s
the
ing
helped organize
women's
groups.
52. Immigrants
in Industries, Table 188,
259. Tampa again contrasted with
found elsewhere
in the
patterns
nation, this time in terms of the abil
among Italian
ity to speak English
women.
The trends in other loca
tions saw unemployed
females lag
behind employed
females
in
to
reverse
The
ability
speak English.
was true in Tampa
(41.3 percent)
ging
versus
a situation di
6.0 percent),
to
attributable
the fact that
rectly
was
in the cigar
Spanish
spoken
factories. See Table 187,259 for this
contrast.
53. Fifteenth Census of U.S.: 1930, Popu
of For
lation, Florida, "Citizenship
Table
21,463.
eign-Born,"
54. Constance
Cronin, Sicilians in Sicily
and Australia
(Chicago,
1970), 72;
Anne M. Pescatello, Power and Pawn:
The Female
in Iberian Societies and
Culture (Westport, CT, 1976), esp.
160-204.
55. Interview
with Angelina
Spoto
Comescone,
July 29,1979, Tampa.
56. Interview with Nelson Palermo, March
11,1982, Tampa.
57. Anne Cornelisen, Women of the Shad
ows (New York, 1977) 227-28.
Gary Mormino
is assistant
professor
of
history, University of South Florida. George
Pozzetta
is associate professor of history,
University of Florida. Professor Mormino
read an earlier version of this paper at the
annual meeting of The Florida Historical
Society, Fort Lauderdale, May 1982. The
authors wish to express their appreciation
toHelen Smith, University of Florida, for
her help inpreparing this article.
28 Magazine
of History