American History
Two volatile issues in American History at the turn of the 20th-century which directly affected Donatus Buongiorno's life were immigration and taxation.
To feed its need for labor, the U.S. imported (i.e., allowed to immigrate) millions of people from 1890 to 1924. As so frequently happens, the already settled, so-called "Americans," conveniently forgot how recently their own families had arrived and resented newcomers. Then, as now, the need for labor conflicted with social behaviors and attitudes, and the conflicts played out in politics and personal relationships.
Despite being an educated man with a professional skill, as a "southern Italian" (U.S. immigration authorities differentiated between "Italy" and "Southern Italy" in "nationality/country of which citizen or subject" on manifests), Buongiorno suffered the prejudices and biases directed against all Italian immigrants.
During this same period, the U.S. switched from a tariff-based revenue system (taxes on imports) to taxes on personal income. As an importer of art, Buongiorno actively protested against tariffs on art.
Discrimination Against Italians
Newspaper stories about Donatus Buongiorno's activities in New York reveal that he was subject to the casual racism against Italians which was pervasive at the turn of the twentieth century. Printed descriptions of his "wild" hair and broken English are typical denigrations that he and millions of other Italian-speaking immigrants suffered.
Anarchists and Red Scares
Donatus Buongiorno was foreign-born, educated, self-employed, politically active and spoke with an accent—a recipe for being suspected of subversive activities in the anarchist- (we'd call them terrorists today) and Bolshevik-suspicious 1910s. Was he watched? Was he harassed? Was he sick of it? Is that why he left the U.S. in 1919 as soon as commercial travel resumed following WWI?
Reverse Migrations
Some Italian-American immigrants were seasonal workers ("birds of passage") who travelled from Italy yearly for farm labor and other outdoor jobs. Many who came to North America returned to Italy for the winter, and took their capital with them. Also, some immigrants sent money "home” during the work year and took their savings back to Italy to buy houses and farms when they retired.
Although he held a professional job, Donatus Buongiorno was in this category. He always worked in both countries and never lost touch with his Italian family and Italian business connections. From his first trip to New York in 1892, he returned to Italy every three years or so. In 1919, when commercial travel resumed after WWI, he returned to Italy to live full time and travelled back to the U.S. every few years until 1931.
John Valentine, a former Vice Consul of the American Consulate in Naples, wrote an article in the New York Times in 1920 analyzing the effects of American immigration policies—the first attempt at restricting entries being institution of a literacy requirement—on labor shortages in the U.S. that had already become apparent when immigration slowed during WWI. He also bemoaned that the policies were causing an exodus of the most successful immigrants—the most desirable workers—back to Italy. He tried to warn American readers that their prejudices were based on inaccurate myths about immigrants' behaviors and that the "baby was being thrown out with the bath water." His descripton of returners in this article describes Donatus Buongiorno of 1919 precisely. See detail below.
As Italy's fortunes improved during the non-fascist Mussolini years of the 1920s, and as successful Italians continued to be harassed in the U.S. by the Red Scare xenophobic hysteria which culminated in the Sacco & Vanzetti trials and executions, the U.S. may have started seeming less attractive to foreign-born citizens who had the option and means to go back to Italy. I suspect this is what drove Buongiorno out.
Buongiorno had been politically active protesting tariffs on art and signed a petition to congress on the subject in 1908. This is his statement:
Buongiorno's passports also tell a story. Issued on a per-trip basis, travellers applied for passports after buying a steamship ticket, generally two weeks before a trip. I have six passports for Donato Buongiorno, issued between 1903 and 1922. Most are the standard two pages of the time which confirm his identity and why he was travelling.
His 1919 passport is different. It is suspiciously defensive. It includes testimonial letters from a family member and from a business colleague, plus two (somewhat frantic) letters Buongiorno wrote to the U.S. State Department inquiring why they were slow in delivering the passport. (His 18-year-old, New York City-born son's passport for the same trip was delivered promptly.) Though I haven't figured out how to prove it, I suspect Buongiorno was under suspicion or was being harassed.
Tariffs
The switch of the U.S.'s primary revenue from tariffs on imports to a personal tax on income was a process that crossed several generations and several presidential administrations from the 1880s to the 1920s.
Cheaters were legion; some were famous. Art dealer Joseph Duveen and collector Isabella Stewart Gardner flouted the laws routinely and were slapped on the wrists. Banker and collector Andrew W. Mellon's reputation and federal service career as Secretary of the Treasury were ruined over his indictment for tax fraud. He still gave his collection to the U.S. government (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC) and was exonerated of the charges after his death.
On a much smaller scale than these players, Donatus Buongiorno imported art from Italy which he resold in the U.S. In his 1970 memoir, my grandfather, Domenic Troisi, remembered that his uncle kept his importing under the legal limit (which was $300 for many years) and "more than" paid for his steamship ticket on the profit he made at this enterprise.
Excerpt by Domenic Troisi
Italian-American Churches
Italians, being nearly 100% Roman Catholic, arrived in the U.S. in the late 1800s to find that American Roman Catholic churches were run by other predominantly Catholic immigrant groups who had preceded them—Irish-Americans in the cities and Irish- and German-Americans in rural areas. Both of those groups practiced Catholicism differently from Italians, and the three did not mix well. Italians were often relegated to the less-desirable spaces in church basements and not permitted to install their saint statues.
Added to this difference was the native-born Americans' usual distrust of the new arrivals, sanctioned overt discrimination and fear that poorer newcomers were going to drag others who had successfully assimilated back "down."
When the Italians got their footing, they built their own churches, and the Vatican sent Italian priests to run them. This created Donatus Buongiorno's largest business opportunity in the U.S. He had decorated churches in Italy, and he knew some Catholic priests through his family. In the 1900s, he started acquiring commissions to decorate Italian Catholic churches in the U.S., work which continued through the 1920s.
Naturalization
Contrary to the myth of immigrants as assimilators eagerly wanting U.S. citizenship, the pattern in my family is that individuals applied for citizenship for a practical reason, not to be able to vote.
The most common motivation was travel. If you were a U.S. citizen, you didn't have to be processed through Ellis Island upon re-entry to the United States. Several members of my family, including Donatus Buongiorno, acquired U.S. citizenship one month before their first trip back to Italy. For some people, the first trip was decades after arrival, and for one man, was after WWI service in the U.S. Army. (Military service did not automatically grant citizenship; one still had to apply.)
Another motivator was marriage. My grandfather Domenic Troisi became a naturalized citizen before his marriage to my grandmother, a third-generation, born-in-the-U.S., German-American, so she “wouldn't have to marry a foreigner”—as if it were a sentimental choice.
There was a lot more than sentiment at stake. Until 1922, when a U.S. citizen woman married a non-citizen (“alien”) man, she lost her U.S. citizenship and “assumed his citizenship”—if her husband's country would take her. Otherwise she became state-less. By naturalizing before the wedding, my grandfather avoided inflicting this consequence on his wife.
