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It is not surprising, therefore, to find, even in an Italian group where early marriages are the custom, that a great majority, 957, or 87.4 per cent, were single. Of the remaining 138, 90 were married,37 were widowed, and 11 were deserted or separated from their husbands. Only 150 were living outside a family group or boarding, and of these, three lived as domestic servants with their employers. By far the larger number, 945, lived with their families, distributed among 582 households. Information concerning the membership, sources of income, and mode of living was secured for 544 of these. The families had a total membership of 3,358 persons, ranging from a blind grandfather to a week-old baby. The average membership per family was 6.2 persons, and the number in any one household varied from two in 23 families, to 10 or more in 50. One family even boasted 14 members. Those from southern Italy and Sicily were especially large, with an average of 6.4 persons as compared with 5.7 persons in the families from northern Italy.

To maintain families of such size required in most cases the earnings of more than one member. Even including the aged and the infants, we find that 62 per cent of all the persons in these families, or nearly two out of every three, were contributing
in some way to the gross family income, a much larger per cent than was found at work in the population as a whole in New York City in 1910. The income of these families was the sum total of the earnings of fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, and other relatives, and of receipts from lodgers, boarders, and home work.

The Immigrant Woman

The problem of readjustment for the adult immigrant is quite different from the problem of the child immigrant. The latter has an opportunity to learn the language, to attend an American school, and to gain some knowledge of American ideas, customs, and standards before she enters the industrial field. As one girl remarked, "You might almost say I was born here." The woman who comes when fourteen years or older is plunged at once into the midst of industrial conditions entirely different from any to which she has been accustomed in Italy.

Most of them, however, had had to go to work as soon as they landed. The friendliness and help that new immigrants meet with at the hands of their countrymen is a matter for comment. Any person from the same village, man or woman, is looked upon by the immigrant as a trustworthy friend in America, though an entire stranger in Italy. In some cases this ready acceptance of the services of fellow-countrymen has been turned to evil account. For most immigrants, however, the help so sorely needed at this time becomes almost their salvation. Families, already crowded into two or three rooms, willingly make space for a friend or cousin, and if they can possibly manage it, no matter how poor, they will keep her as a guest until she finds a job. They will pass the word among their neighbors that she is out of work, and sometimes they try to make her clothes more presentable according to American standards, so that she will look less like a new arrival.

The reasons for immigrating to the United States given by these women who came after they were fourteen, reflected the general motive of their countrymen. About two-fifths, while expressing their purpose in various ways, came "to get a job." A large number, said definitely that they came for that purpose. Sixteen wanted to send money to their old parents or sick relatives in Italy. Others wanted to earn a dowry so that they might return later to Italy with brighter prospects of finding a husband. Many others had come over with their parents, or husbands and children, or with brothers and sisters.

Even when they gave as their reason for coming, "to live with their relatives here," "to see America," "to get married," or more specifically "to find a husband," they had gone to work as a matter of course. The wife who in revenge was seeking a delinquent husband, was found at the time of the investigation finishing cloaks, while the young woman of twenty-four who had always been "crazy" to see this country was pressing underwear at $6.00 a week in a factory a few blocks away from her home on Thompson Street. Rosa,; who had come here seven months previously "to make a dowry" although she was still only seventeen, was earning $4.50 a week making coconut balls in a candy factory. Two sisters, one eighteen and the other twenty, who had been here five
months, had, like Rosa, come "to make a dowry." They were found sorting dusty waste papers and rags in a gloomy basement on the east side for the sum of $5.00 a week each. Mrs. Cinque, when she was left a widow eleven years before, had immigrated to New York "to forget her sorrows." Ever since she had been working continuously as a stripper in a tobacco factory. Another family came because it "got wrong" in Italy. It managed to scrape together enough money for passage to America, and mother, brother, and daughters settled in New York so that the latter could go out to work. As one of the daughters explained, " In Italy, in my country, women don't go out to work, but only work at home."