The Bozeman weekly chronicle. (Bozeman, Mont.) 1883-1889, 1886-05-19
OUR NEW YORK ITALY.
SOMETHING ABOUT THE ITALIANS
ANON US.
How the Forty Thousand italian Citi-
zens of New York Live-Bankers, Art
lists. Actors, Street Musicians and Rag
Pickers-The Restaurants and schools.

zens of New York Live-Bankers, Art
Pickers-The Restaurants and schools.
ispec'al Correspondence,
New YoRK, May 10-Salvini and Rossi
may play an Elletp in their native tongue
in New YorS city, and to IN exc.us audi
ence of tllcir osY cou. .tryrnea, il 20 desired:
while the drama of spectacle is historically
woven in our minds as well with Sangalh
Morlacchi and Venturoh, whose graceful
pirouettes belonged to feet and figures.
grace and talent of Italian nationality
Centre street, Bleecker. Spring, Rose, Mul-
berry, Eighth and Seventh avenues are
largely occupied by Italian tradesmen, while
Crosby street is almost entirely so From
Contarf & Co, bankers on Wall street, to
the junk shops on Hudson street, nearly
every business and occupation known to gen
eral life is carried on by the Italians
among us, who number, according 20 the
estimate of the Italian consul about 10000
in this city and 400 900 in the United States
This brings Italy pretty close to our gates
maccaroni, organ, monkey and all When
Consul Baffo was asked if there were any
real, Simon pure Italian aristocracy in this
city of the American nobility, he answered,
with jolly laugh:
"Oh, dear, no! They are quite able to re-
main at home"
So we thought Hurrah for a country
where all creation who were too poor to stay
at home could come and ride Scot-free over
our heads if they have mind, into wealth,
office and honor. What a big bird. this
eagle of ours! What breadth of wing; what
sheltering powerI
Three Italian newspapers make good liv-
ing in New York city, and with wine dealers,
confection and maccaroni manufacturers,
live splendidly. There are several almost
exclusive localities where hardly any other
tongue is spoken than the velvet toned
Italian The Hotel D'Italia on Green street
is large lodging house filed to the chimneys
with laboring class. where beds can be OBJ
tanned for twenty-five cents per night, and
they are always full The Pellegrini house,
with restaurant on Irving place, opposite
the Academy of Music, is dfectly the op-
posite in caste as it is in location.
Down on notorious Thompson street is
the Hotel Ticino, where the native
sons of Italy congregate on first arriving,
much as sailors hover around sailors board
ing house. On odoriferous Rose street, under
the shadow of the largest publishing house
in the United States, is quite a
famous Italian center, known as ''Moz-
zarellos," or Hotel Italiano" This
place does large business. 1t is a sort of
exchange Tickets for all parts of the world
can be bought, information given to all. and
about everything, and kind of general in
telligence headquarters besides. Some things
have happened in that vicinity with stilleto
and dirk that color up the dark side of life
in New York with bright carmine. There
are some quarters, better known to the police
as "holes," where the monkey owners and
the beggars hive together, ami where expa-
riences occur that would make piety turn
gray in a night Children, ill-fad and in
rags, listening to foul oaths and vulgaritips;
women who long since parted with all that
was ''womanly;" men so stepped in low life
that the monkey is gentleman beside them.
These "holes' are found in various parts of
the city; some between Pearl and East river
on various streets; again in the vicinity of
Five Points, in the woolly alleys off old
Thompson, and even in the alleys out of
Wooster street
Turning to the better classes, the CONNER
cial and educated element, and Italy is better
represented There are twelve Italian banks
in New York, Cantoni & Co, Banca Gallo
and Banca LombarCa being the Target
in seven native physicians The legal fra
ternity feIlowships with two distinguished
Italian advocates, as they are
properly termed in their own language.
Among the sculpto-s and artists is Giovanni
IaiffsnFtd Iafe a d7sr fs Che world %oro OF arihadi won him
Terenzini is a student from the Academy
of Arts at Carrara; he occupies place in the
front rank of the worlds artists Nestore
Corradi is another eminent sculptor, whose
home is in New York. There is not room in
a limited newspaper article to properly set
forth the works of these great artists Alone
it would fill an interesting magazine sketch.
Professors of music are numerous, of course.
importers in various wares and manufactures
are important members of the commercial
circles of New York.
The restaurant business is line in which
our Italian brothers flourish, and regularly
throw the American in the shade. twenty
seven Italian restaurants of note are here,
some of them known all over the country,
and there are some nobody would admit
knowing
The Italian population are mainly Cath
olics, and have no separate national homes
or asylums but there are several benevolent
institutions and societies that do general
charity work wholly among their own
people apars from all religious orders. They
help the poor to work and feed the hungry,
and save the already over-full refugees of the
city from an otherwise large increase Of
patients and inmates
These societies are not strictly charitable
institutions, but to a degree social and pleas
ure seeking, but have a care over certain
classes and portions of their people, particu-
larly their membership In the eighteen SD
cieties there is a membership of 2 104 with
fund.- net, of S134, 100 The Italian Rifle
Guard is most creditable military organ-
cation
The common Italian laborers are engaged
on nearly all public works and form a large
part of the muscle and sinew of railroad
work, sewer building, etc. There are some
skilled workmen among the Italians, too If
any one will take the trouble to study up
the different classes of this foreign citizen
ship they viii find a portion of the very
poor, whose ma ural abilities are good, but
SO obscured by ignorance that the little
space between human and brute is hard to /
define. These people are mostly ragpickers, /
men and women, who ransack ash barrels, |
and actually subsist from the garbage they
rake over in the street; also, the organ
grinders and some few fruit and peanut
rounded by sad-eyed little children.
These poor people are not mentally vigor- !
Gus enough to be vicious or evil They live
as best they can, with no hope of anything
beyond supplying the physical needs, mostly
food and covering, and like the animals 40
not cavil at the quality or kind. Too man7 |
Of them are driven to this life by those who
profit by their labor and gatherings While
Tho noIice and hurnanifarians are doing al.
in their power to stop this peculiar traffic,
It is carried on all the same and manages te
aIude detection most of the time
Attendance at school is fair, but the aver
age Italian children are poor, and are not
properly clothed for the public schools. The
missions do something for them. In Leonard
street there is a very respectable AMI -four
ishing Italian school It was established by
the merchants, and has been benefited by /
the Children's Aid society.
There is large population of Italians in /
Harlem, numbering nearly 1000, and an
italian church Catholic with a large pa
rochial residence, school and mission, on
Pleasant avenue. This IS destined to be
great Italian center; rents are low, room in (
abundance, excellent sanitary location, and 4
we have no other foreign class OF citizens SO
much in need Of the virtue that IS ranked I
next to Godliness BY nature the native .
italian is not sloven-but poverty and /
cramped facilities seem to drag them down I
to filthy habits, or careless abandonment of /
cleanly customs, with amazing surety and /
swiftuess The women are naturally idle; /
they have little to do, except carry a baby /
or attend husbands fruit stand; there is no /
domestic frugality among them. They live !