After they had been done with inspections, I spent hours looking for my family. We had come to New York, and this was our home now. There was a large Italian community there already, and this made us want to stay in the city, vice venturing out into the unknown lands. We had common reasons for being in New York, this included, our status as new immigrants, lack of money and education, and reasons for leaving Europe. (Schultz, 2012, p.305).
Finding work was difficult, I was called a "greenhorn" and "America itself provided a tight labor market. Many immigrants came with a limited knowledge of English, limited education, and limited work skills" (Schultz, 2012, p.306). Natural born Americans saw us as a threat to them in the workplace, and they were very racist to all those that did not have the same heritage. The Protestant individualism of natural born Americans contributed to the negative attitude aimed at our Roman Catholic Italian family. We were told; it was all part of "survival of the fittest". Social Darwinism also had a racialist tinge, providing intellectual justification for laws and social practices that kept African Americans, Indians, certain categories of immigrants, and women second-class citizens who were often denied the vote and basic right to property ownership. .
(Schultz, 2012, p. 307).
As with all poor immigrants, we lived "crowded tenements that often lacked windows, heat, and indoor plumbing. Not surprisingly, poverty and overcrowding precipitated murder and other violent crimes, as well as theft. Some immigrant girls, driven by poverty and desperation, turned to prostitution" (Schultz, 2012, p.306). Work was hard to find, and it was a dangerous place to spend my days. "Beyond the hardships and hazards of tenement life, immigrants often faced much more serious threats in the workplace. Jobs in factories locked this working class into a rigid, exhausting schedule.