Bread and Roses: Italian Immigrant Women and the New York City Garment Industry

Unions were a force in the assimilation of Italian women to American society. Evidence shows that Italian women engaged in labor struggles through most of the 20th Century. 'Italian-ness' and 'rebel-ness' were not necessarily dichotomous qualities, but often appeared side by side in women unionists. They represented the emotional tug-of-war which existed within the second generation Italo-Americans and were evident in the lives of such activists as Margaret de Maggio, Angela Bambace, Grace de Luise, Tina Catania, and others. These, as well as countless unknown women played an enormous role in keeping the labor movement alive in the garment industry particularly in the 1920's and 30's. Their efforts made future gains possible for both men and women in the industry.
Four important questions in American immigration and labor history are answered in this book. First, what was the impact of immigration on Italian women? Second, what were the factors which determined whether or not Italian women joined and remained members of the garment unions at various time periods? Third, how did the union affect Italian immigrant women? Fourth, what contributions did these women, in turn, make to the American labor movement?
Immigration was the answer to the economic necessities of the Italian peasants. While immigrant women experienced social and economic problems in their efforts to adapt to their new environment, the longest, and often most wrenching adjustments had to be made in cultural transplantation and amalgamation, therein the crisis of immigration was truly evident. In Southern Italian society, socio-cultural forces and the personalities of the individual members in that societyinteracted with each other. Each made demands of the individual. The behavior of Italian women was, in many ways, an expression of the sanctions which operated within that culture. Pre-industrial or peasant values persisted when the family unit emigrated to an industrial society.
Factors which allowed the survival of the family often operated at a great cost for the individual. This was particularly true of Italian women. While the employment of women was crucial in the survival of the family, women's work was often devaluated. This distortion was necessary to curb the individuality and independence of women in the patriarchal culture transplanted to the United States. This same perception created barriers to unionization among Italian women in the garment industry to which they flocked. Values of the dominant American culture entered into the social consciousness of these women, though at a slower rate than for the men. Thus, factors which determined whether or not Italian women joined and remained union members varied according to time periods.
In the initial experience with unions, women showed themselves incapable of forming ties of loyalty outside the family. This was particularly true in the 1909 Shirtwaist Strike. Just as familial loyalties had, at first, prevented Italian women from joining in labor activities, the need to preserve and defend the family, eventually led these same women to seek unionization. What would change in the course of time was not the value of the family, but rather women's perception of their role within that family. Italian women were part of a stream of events, and as each struggle bore fruit, they began to change their views until they took the lead in initiating militant trade union activities.