From Steerage to Suburb: Long Island Italians by Salvatore J.

LaGumina
Review by: Luciano J. Iorizzo
New York History, Vol. 71, No. 4 (OCTOBER 1990), pp. 461-464
Published by: New York State Historical Association
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 Book Reviews

represents one manifestation of the conflict, or "contradiction," between

production and consumption under capitalism.

In order to deal with this "contradiction," our "liberal planning reform

movement," claims Heiman, attempts to appease consumption interests

while simultaneously acting to facilitate continued capitalist expansion.

But this balancing act, he contends, can never resolve the "contradic

tion" because it is inherent in the structure of the capitalism system. Our

only recourse, Heiman tells us, is to change the system.
The Quiet Evolution deserves the attention of geographers and histori

ans interested in land use control and city and regional planning. Even
if one finds difficulty accepting its modified Marxist interpretation, the
book remains useful for the information it contains about the recent past,

especially with regard to the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association

and the preservation of the Adirondacks. As for the deficiencies of the

book, it seems rather incredible that the activities of the City Planning
Commission of New York City received so little attention. If we believe
Heiman, the City Planning Commission merely did the bidding of the
Regional Plan Association of New York, a private planning organization
dominated by business interests.This assessment helps support his claims
concerning the overarching and pernicious influence of business interests
in city and regional planning. But the merit of those claims remain suspect
without a systematic analysis of the role of the official planning commis
sion of the city.

From Steerage to Suburb: Long Island Italians. By Salvatore J. LaGumina.

(Staten Island, N.Y.: Center for Migration Studies of New York, Inc.,
1988. Pp. χ, 285. $17.50 cloth; $12.95 paperback.)

Reviewed by Luciano J. Iorizzo, Professor of History, State University of New

York College at Oswego.

This is a survey of people who chose to settle in suburbia as an easier

means of owning their own homes in a residential environment which

enabled them to get close to the soil. Much of it is familiar to those who
have concerned themselves with Italian immigration. As such, it helps
build a corpus of knowledge which will make the national histories more
accurate reflectionsof Italian American life. But, there are also differences
in the suburban experience which are worth examining. To one familiar
with Harney's and Scarpaci's (eds.) precious volume, Little Italies in North
America, (1981) suburban immigrant life closely resembles that in small
town America, or vice-versa.

Mirroring the ambience of old Italy, the suburbs more easily enabled

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 NEW YORK HISTORY

the immigrants to become self-sufficientand comfortable. Suburbia also

offeredItalian Americans the opportunityto enter more quickly the main
stream of American life. Communities such as Inwood, Glen Cove, Pbrt

Washington, Westbury, Pätchogue, Bellport, and Copiague were more

accepting of immigrants than were big cities. Italians could retain their
ethnicityor shuck it and still be acceptable to the host society. They were
little touched by "amoral familism," were not averse to "cooperative ethnic

activity," were disposed to join both ethnic and non-ethnic organizations,

demonstrated a strong ethnic staying power, and were a peaceful law

abiding people for whom organized crime was insignificant.

In essence, the lure of the suburbs was in the opportunity to achieve

quicker upward mobility. There was less competition, less hostility, and
faster recognition of the compatibility of Italian Americans in American
society. Italian Americans emerged as major and indispensable par
ticipants in Long Island's social, cultural, religious and economic life
by excelling in the hard work ethic, by attending to homes and gardens,
by their industriousness, their social organization, their reliability in
business and "their value in social community organizations." By the
post World War II period, after proving their loyalty in two wars, they
became the largest of all ethnic groups in Nassau and Suffolk counties.
In the 1980s, their rise to the positions of County Executives there show
ed that they went beyond their ethnic communities and began to attain

acceptance in the wider American political scene. The period of overt

discrimination behind them, Italian Americans are closing in on fulfill
ing "the heady dream of American success" on all fronts.

The book details, with knitty-grittyresearch in short pithy chapters

the immigrants' struggles and disappointments and their acceptance and
successes. Based on solid research drawn largely from New York State
census manuscripts, newspapers, unpublished works, and interviews, this

study provides a wealth of material that opens up a host of areas that

scholars will want to pursue. The appendix includes a chart listing the
largest concentrations of Italian Americans in Nassau and Suffolk
Counties.
Inclusion of a photo essay, which complements the text, is a another plus.

Mostly reflecting Long Island Italian immigrant life from 1890 through
the 1930s, it briefly and vividly details the immigrants' social/
economic/religious activities, their "Americanization," and their upward
mobility.
LaGumina is at his best when he gets behind the news stories and
headlines. For example (p. 97), he points out that an ostensibly bipar
tisan club was in reality "Republican oriented and was designed to carve
out a place for the Italian element in local politics." This was indicative

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 Book Reviews

of other Italian American political organizations that masked themselves

behind social or non-partisan titles. He also shines when he presents
evidence contrary to familiar negative stereotypes on Italian American
individualism and family orientation. He views Italian Americans as
joiners destined to play integral roles in the wider sphere of Long Island's
community life. LaGumina does not ignore the negative effectsof dissen
sion and discord within the Italian American community, a theme all too
familiar with anyone conversant with Italian American history. But, typical
of his Long Island Italian Americans of yesteryear was "hope, ambition,

sacrifice, hard-work, religious devotion, aesthetic sense and steadfast

ness."
There are distractions, mostly minor. Syntax problems are annoying
and take away from the book's effectiveness. There is too much of

misspelled words, awkward phrases, ideas running together, questionable

word usage, and so forth. Communities studied and included in the maps'

legends can not be found on the maps. The maps contain portions of nor
thern Italy and of the easternmost reaches of Suffolk County when, more

appropriately, they should reveal areas in southern Italy and the western

part of Suffolk County and all of Nassau County. Virtually all of these

deficiencies could have been avoided with sharper editing.

In another vein, Professor LaGumina's expertise and familiarity with
Italian American literature generally comes through in the text and in
the bibliography. It is puzzling, therefore, that he should call for a revi
sionist reading of the role of Italian Americans in the labor movement
when that has already been done by scholars; most notably, Edwin Fen
ton. Still, LaGumina's findings are a welcome reinforcement to Fenton
and other revisionists. LaGumina is less inclined to call for revisionism
in the matterof the education of the Italian American females where Italian
custom, it is charged, dictated they defer to the males and forego their
education. More intensive research might reveal, as it has in Oswego,
for example, that "American" teachers, who discouraged Italian American

girls from advancing beyond "commercial" and vocational subjects, block

ed the educational advancement of ambitious young Italian American
women. This is the kind of difficult-to-documentmaterial that the author
alludes to when writing about the "inhibiting atmosphere" which
prevented Italian Americans from joining school faculties in pre-World
War II Patchogue. Persuading Italian Americans that they were not meant
to become teachers and discouraging them from joining faculties when
they became teachers were part of the same problem. Additionally, the
material on padrones is ambiguous. The author denies their existence,
but describes liberally theiractivities throughoutthe book. Finally, readers
may disagree with the author on the essence of the suburban experience.

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 NEW YORK HISTORY

Did the suburbs spring from the cities? Did they come into being simul
taneously with the cities? Are the suburbs a little bit of both?
On balance, the positive features of LaGumina's work make it a must

for anyone concerned with local or regional history, with New York State

history, with history from the bottom up, and, of course, ethnic history.

Surveying, as he does, a broad spectrum of immigrant life over a hun

dred year period, LaGumina has opened up many areas which scholars
will have to explore in depth if we are ever to obtain the definitive na
tional studies of immigrant groups.

The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788-1790.

Volume 4. Edited by Gordon DenBoer. (Madison, WI: The University
of Wisconsin Press, 1989. Pp. xx, 505. $50.00.)

Reviewed by James M. Banner, Jr., Washington, D.C.

This volume completes one of the most distinguished documentary series

of recent years. An edited compilation of published and unpublished texts
surrounding the first elections under the new Constitution, the four

volumes in the set are models of comprehensiveness and clear editing.

They are truly indispensable.
No scholar examining the transition from Confederation to Constitu
tional government, whether in individual states or in the nation as a whole,
can now do without them. For the matters they cover cannot be surpass
ed in significance among issues in the science of politics: the peaceful
passage from one constitutional regime to another—and that by free elec

tions. We have customarily attributed the success of that passage to the

exigencies of the time and to the determination and political skills of the
champions of the new order. These volumes suggest that it was due also

to the cultural "fit" between the challenge of the great issue at stake—
whether there was to be a new and effective constitutional system—and
the electoral means adopted to test it.

The volume embraces three sets of documents: those relating to the

contests for president and vice president and those concerning the selec
tion of members of the Senate and House from North Carolina and Rhode
Island. By bringing into immediate proximity all known documents con
cerning each, the work greatly strengthens long held impressions about
the nature and significance of these elections.
For example, as is once again made clear here, consideration of who
would become the two executive officers of the new government emerg
ed directly from the Philadelphia convention and was in full public swing

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