Tenement house, ca. 1890.

In a room not thirteen feet either way slept twelve men and women, two or three in bunks set in a sort of alcove, the rest on the floor. A kerosene lamp burned dimly in the fearful atmosphere, probably to guide other and later arrivals to their beds, for it was only just past midnight. A baby’s fretful wail came from an adjoining hall-room, where, in the semi-darkness, three recumbent figures could be made out. The apartment was one of three in two adjoining buildings we had found, within half an hour, similarly crowded. Most of the men were lodgers, who slept there for five cents a spot.
--Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1889.

For a closer look at Jacob Riis’ photographs of tenement housing, visit the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog and search for “Jacob Riis photographer”.

Italian immigrants doing piecework in their home. New York City, 1912.

For Italians, this way of living came as an enormous shock. In Italy, many rural families had slept in small, cramped houses; however, they spent most of their waking hours out of the house, working, socializing, and taking their meals in the outdoors. In New York, they found themselves confined to a claustrophobic indoor existence, using the same small room for eating, sleeping, and even working. A substantial percentage of immigrant families worked at home performing piecework—that is, doing work that paid them by the piece, such as stitching together garments or hand-assembling machinery. In a situation like this, an immigrant woman or child might go days without seeing sunlight.

New York City subway, 1905.

Immigrants’ work places could be as unhealthy as their homes. A substantial number of southern Italian immigrants had only worked as farmers, and were thus qualified only for unskilled, and more dangerous, urban labor. Many Italians went to work on the growing city’s municipal works projects, digging canals, laying paving and gas lines, building bridges, and tunneling out the New York subway system. In 1890, nearly 90 percent of the laborers in New York’s Department of Public Works were Italian immigrants.

Il Progresso Italo-Americano reports the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, 1911.

By no means was all Italian immigrants’ work grim and hazardous. Italians found work throughout the city, in many of the improvised trades that have long been a haven for immigrants, such as shoemaking, masonry, bartending, and barbering. For a time, some observers felt that Italians operated every fruit-vendor’s cart in the city. For many immigrants, though, and especially women and children, work could only be found in sweatshops, the dark, unsafe factories that sprang up around New York. When a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in 1911, killing 146 workers, nearly half of the victims were young Italian women.

Vegetable stand, ca. 1890.

To soften the blows of urban life, Italian immigrants formed societies for mutual aid. In keeping with the spirit of campanilismo, many of these societies were founded by immigrants from the same village and often named after a patron saint. Though many of these societies were short-lived, eventually more than 2000 appeared in New York City alone. In 1905, the Order of the Sons of Italy was founded to provide financial aid, education, and shelter to new Italian immigrants, as well as to serve as an umbrella organization that would advance the cause of the Italian community in the U.S. By 1922, the Order had over 1300 lodges nationwide, and it remains a prominent organization today.