Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-28T19:00:17.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The New Deal Realignment and the Italian-American Community of Philadelphia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Stefano Luconi
Stefano Luconi
Affiliation:
Stefano Luconi is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the Third University of Rome, Department of American Studies, piazza della Repubblica 10, 00185 Rome, Italy.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The formation of the New Deal coalition has been the subject of much scholarly discussion, as have the theories of voting behaviour which have informed that discussion. This essay seeks to investigate both the history and the theory. First, it analyses the timing and mechanics of the participation of Philadelphia's Italian-Americans in the Roosevelt coalition. Italian-Americans were a key component of the Democratic majority nationwide, and as pre-New Deal Republican bailiwicks that began to turn Democratic in the 1930s, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia are ideal settings to study the forging of the Roosevelt coalition not only on the federal but also on the state and local level. Secondly, the essay tests some hypotheses about the New Deal realignment. It suggests that none of the standard hypotheses convincingly explains what was happening in Philadelphia's Italian-American community in the 1930s and 1940s.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , December 1994 , pp. 403 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Philadelphia voting statistics offer no ethnic breakdown. A sample of the Italian-American vote has been made by including the voting divisions where Italian-Americans were at least 80 % of the registered voters and no other ethnic group had more than 10% of the remaining registrants. The ethnic concentration of voting divisions has been identified through a name check conducted on the incomplete collection of the Street Lists of Voters (held by Philadelphia City Archives) and checked against census tract data and school district information for the missing years. The row votes by division have been obtained from the Annual Reports of the Registration Commission for the City of Philadelphia for presidential, gubernatorial and local elections; from The Pennsylvania State Manual (Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1927)Google Scholar for the 1926 senatorial contest; from the Manual of the City Council of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Dunlap, 1935)Google Scholar for the 1934 senatorial race; from The Pennyslvania Manual (Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1931 and 1939)Google Scholar for the 1930 and 1938 senatorial elections; and from the unpublished tabulation sheets of the Philadelphia County Board of Elections (held by Philadelphia City Archives) for the remaining elections and all the primaries. Such row votes have been converted into the percentages which appear in table I. All the other percentages of the Italian-American vote also refer to the above-mentioned sample. For pioneer but outdated research on the voting behaviour of Philadelphia's Italian-Americans, see Maiale, Hugo, “The Italian Vote in Philadelphia between 1928 and 1946” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1950)Google Scholar.

2 See, e.g., Lubell, Samuel, The Future of American Politics (New York: Harper, 1952)Google Scholar; Allswang, John M., A House for all Peoples: Ethnic Politics in Chicago, 1890–1936 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1971)Google Scholar; Jensen, Richard, “The Cities Reelect Roosevelt: Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in 1940,” Ethnicity, 8 (06 1981), 189–95Google Scholar; Gamm, Gerald H., The Making of the New Deal Democrats: Voting Behavior and Realignment in Boston, 1920–1940 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

3 Lubell, 34–35; Key, V. O. Jr, “A Theory of Critical Elections,” Journal of Politics, 17 (1955), 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacRae, Duncan Jr, and Meldrum, James A., “Critical Elections in Illinois: 1888–1958,” American Political Science Review, 54 (1960), 669–83Google Scholar; Burner, David, The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition, 1918–1932 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 58, 70–72, 103–106, 113–14, 137–40Google Scholar; Stave, Bruce M., “The ‘La Follette Revolution’ and the Pittsburgh Vote, 1932,” Mid-America, 49 (1967), 244–51Google Scholar; Shover, John, “Was 1928 a Critical Election in California?,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 58 (1967), 196–204Google Scholar; Clubb, Jerome M. and Allen, Howard W., “The Cities and the Election of 1928: Partisan Realignment?,” American Historical Review, 74 (1969), 1205–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Besides the studies cited later on, see also Burnham, Walter D., Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: Norton, 1970), 1–33Google Scholar; Shively, W. Phillips, “A Reinterpretation of the New Deal Realignment,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 35 (1971), 621–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Sundquist, James L., Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States, (1973; 2nd edn. rev. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1983), 225–26, 240–98Google Scholar.

6 Vare, William S., My Forty Years in Politics (Philadelpia: Swain, 1933)Google Scholar; Kurtzman, David H., Methods of Controlling Votes in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935)Google Scholar; Salter, John T., Boss Rule: Portraits in City Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1935)Google Scholar; Id., The People's Choice: Philadelphia's William Vare (New York: Exposition Press, 1971); Greenberg, Irwin F., “The Philadelphia Democratic Party, 1911–1934” (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1972), 233–80Google Scholar; McCaffery, Peter, “Style, Structures, and Institutionalization of Machine Politics: Philadelphia, 1867–1933,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 22 (1992), 435–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Juliani, Richard N., “The Italian Community of Philadelphia,” in Harney, Robert F. and Scarpaci, J. Vincenza, eds., Little Italies in North America (Toronto: Multicultural Society of Ontario, 1981), 85–104Google Scholar; Varbero, Richard A., “The Politics of Ethnicity: Philadelphia's Italians in the 1920's,” in Cordasco, Francesco, ed., Studies in Italian American Social History: Essays in Honor of Leonard Covello (Totowa N.J.: Rowan and Littlefield, 1975), 164–81Google Scholar.

8 Silva, Ruth C., Rum, Religion, and Votes: 1928 Re-Examined (University Park Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), 41–49Google Scholar.

9 L'Opinione, 29 July 1927 (hereafter OP); La Libera Parola, 15 Sept. 1928 (hereafter LLP).

10 Evening Bulletin, 7 Nov. 1928 (hereafter EB). See also Philadelphia Daily News, 8 Nov. 1928.

11 Higham, John, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism (New Brunswick N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 313–24Google Scholar; LLP, 8 Mar. 1924; OP, 30 Oct., 9 Nov. 1927; EB, 25 Oct. 1928; Philadelphia Record, 8 Nov. 1928 (hereafter PR).

12 Circular letter of Eugene Alessandroni, 30 Oct. 1926, Order Sons of Italy in America: Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, box 1, folder 22, Immigration History Research Center Collection, University of Minnesota, St. Paul; Corriere d'America, 1 Nov. 1927, newspaper clipping, ibid.; Vare, 153–54, 161–65; EB, 17 Oct. 1928.

13 Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 Oct. 1930 (hereafter PI); McGeary, H. Nelson, Gifford Pinchot: Forester Politician (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 352Google Scholar; Astorino, Samuel J., “The Decline of the Republican Dynasty in Pennsylvania, 1929–1934” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1962), 120–26Google Scholar.

14 Sunday Dispatch, 19, 26 Oct., 2 Nov. 1930.

15 See the series of thirty articles Davis wrote for the North American Newspaper Alliance and published in Philadelphia in EB from 19 May to 21 June 1924.

16 OP, 9, 14 June 1929; South Philadelphia, 19 Apr. 1930.

17 OP 13 Dec. 1929.

18 Cannistraro, Philip V. and Rosoli, Gianfausto, “Fascist Emigration Policy in the 1920s: An Interpretative Framework,” International Migration Review, 13 (1979), 683–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Baldwin, Fred D., “Smedley D. Butler and Prohibition Enforcement in Philadelphia, 1924–1925,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 84 (1960), 352–68Google Scholar; OP, 29 Apr., 8 Nov. 1932; Astorino, 159.

20 “Republican Platform,” in Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr and Israel, Fred L., eds., History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968 (New York: Chelsea, 1971), 3, 2759Google Scholar; OP, 17, 19, 20 June 1, 3, 8 July, 1932.

21 Ibid., 3 July 1932; South Philadelphian, 29 Oct. 1932.

22 OP, 20 Oct. 1934; LLP, 27 Oct. 1934.

23 OP, 27 July 1927; LLP, 2; Aug., 13 Oct., 17 Nov. 1928.

24 Varbero, Richard A., “Philadelphia's South Italians and the Irish Church: A History of Cultural Conflict,” in Tomasi, Silvano M., ed., The Religious Experience of Italian Americans (Staten Island N.Y.: American Italian Historical Association, 1975), 31–52Google Scholar.

25 Gamm, , The Making of the New Deal Democrats, 155Google Scholar.

26 OP, 28 Apr. 1934; PR, 5 Sept. 1936; LLP, 12 Sept. 1936.

27 OP, 13 Sept., 3 Oct. 1934; Harris, Chester, Tiger at the Bar: The Life Story of Charles J. Margiotti (New York: Vantage Press, 1956), 320–29Google Scholar.

28 OP, 23 Nov. 1934, 15 Jan. 1935; LLP, 24 Nov. 1934.

29 OP, 17 Jan., 6, 14 Feb., 27 Mar. 1935; name check of the personnel directory in The Pennsylvania Manual (1935–36), 624–25; ibid. (1937), 945–46.

30 Drayer, Robert E., “J. Hampton Moore: An Old Fashioned Republican” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1961), 305, 308–9, 311–26Google Scholar; Henwood, James N. J., “Politics and Unemployment Relief: Pennsylvania, 1931–1939” (PhD. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1975), 2–7Google Scholar; Bauman, John F., “The City, the Depression, and Relief: The Philadelphia Experience, 1929–1939” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1969), 54–55, 217Google Scholar; Vare, , My Forty Years in Politics, 29Google Scholar; Salter, John T., “Tony Nicollo,” Yale Review, 22 (1933), 771–72Google Scholar.

31 Drayer, 309–11; Bauman, 243–49; Greenberg, Irwin F., “Philadelphia Democrats Get a New Deal: The Election of 1933,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 97 (1973), 230–31Google Scholar.

32 EB, 11 Oct. 1935; PI, 30 Jan., 6 Aug. 1936; Department of Public Works Papers, Director's office, Correspondence and Reports: 1926–1936, 1936–1939, 1950, series A-658, folder “WPA Projects: Jan. '36–Dec. '39, ”Philadelphia City Archives (name check of foremen); Maiale, “The Italian Vote in Philadelphia,” 170.

33 Lorena Hickok to Harry Hopkins, 29 Apr. 1936, Lorena Hickok Papers, box 11, folder “Reports to Harry Hopkins 1936,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.; PR, 2 Nov. 1936; EB, 3 Nov. 1936.

34 Clubb, Jerome M., Flanigan, William H. and Zingale, Nancy H., Partisan Realignment: Voters, Parties, and Government in American History (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980)Google Scholar.

35 Nicholas J. A. Tumolo to Harry Hopkins, 11 Oct. 1938, WPA Central Classified Files, Record Group 69, Pennsylvania 610, box 2391, folder “T-Z”, National Archives, Washington D.C.; Ernest Centanni to Harry Hopkins, 23 Oct. 1936, ibid., box 2390, folder “A-G;” Julia Annarelli to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 31 Dec. 1938, ibid., box 2393, folder “AAAA;” William H. Strong to F. H. Dryden, 18 Feb. 1939, ibid.

36 Jones, Gene Delon, “The Local Political Significance of New Deal Relief Legislation in Chicago: 1933–1940” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1970)Google Scholar; Allswang, John M., Bosses, Machines, and Urban Voters: An American Symbiosis (1977; 2nd edn. rev. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 105–60Google Scholar; Stave, Bruce M., The New Deal and the Last Hurrah: Pittsburgh Machine Politics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

37 Gosnell, Harold F. and Colman, William G., “Political Trends in Industrial America: Pennsylvania an Example,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 4 (1940), 485–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Harris, , Tiger at the Bar, 363–82Google Scholar; Il Popolo Italiano, 28 Apr. 1938 (hereafter IPI).

39 PI, 29 Mar. 1938; IPI, 23 Apr. 1940.

40 In 1938 John Alessandroni received 49·31 % of the Italian-American vote, while senatorial candidate James Davis obtained 47·48 %. In 1940 Willkie ran 1·45 % behind Da Grossa.

41 South Philadelphian, 28 June 1940; IPI, 16 Sept., 11, 12, 29, 31 Oct. 1940; PI, 5, 31 Oct. 1940; South Phila American Weekly, 31 Oct. 1940.

42 It has been assumed that each voting division had the same relief rate which is ascribed by the 1940 Census to the tract it belongs to. Table II assembles the voting divisions of the sample under the census tract in which they are included.

43 Tinkcom, Margaret B., “Depression and War, 1929–1946,” in Weigley, Russell F., ed., Philadelphia: A 300-Year History (New York: Norton, 1982) 635–37, 641–42Google Scholar.

44 IPI 9, 12 Dec. 1941, 16 Apr., 27, 30 Sept., 12 Oct. 1942; Ordine Nuovo, 13 Dec. 1941, 3, 17, 24 Jan. 1942 (hereafter ON).

45 Circular letter of Nicholas J. A. Tumolo, 11 Oct. 1943, Nicholas J. A. Tumolo Papers, box 5, Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, Philadelphia.

46 IPI, 8, 19, 22, 23, 27 Oct. 1944; ON, 21 Oct. 1944.

47 IPI, 11, 29 Oct. 1944; PI, 19 Oct. 1944.

48 Angus Campbell, “A Classification of the Presidential Elections,” in Id. et al., Elections and the Political Order (New York: Wiley, 1966), 64–67; Ladd, Everett Carll Jr with Hadley, Charles D., Transformations of the American Party System: Political Coalitions from the New Deal to the 1970s (New York: Norton, 1975), 73–74Google Scholar; Sternsher, Bernard, “The New Deal Party System: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 15, (1984), 73–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 New York Times, 18, 20 Aug. 1948; PI, 18 Aug. 1948; IPI, 2, 9, May, 20 Aug. 1948; Il Progresso Italo-Americano, 17 Sept. 1948.

50 Grove, Stephen B., “The Decline of the Republican Machine in Philadelphia, 1936–52” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1976), 558–59, 561–64, 761–64, 776Google Scholar.

51 Reichley, James, The Art of Government: Reform and Organization Politics in Philadelphia (New York: Fund for the Republic, 1959), 10–13Google Scholar; Fink, Joseph R., “Reform in Philadelphia, 1946–1951” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1971), 141–48Google Scholar.

52 Petshek, Kirk R., The Challenge of Urban Reform: Politics and Progress in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973), 36–38Google Scholar.

53 Manual of the City Council of Philadelphia (1953), 85; EB, 16, 17 Apr. 1951.

54 Fink, 178, 196–99, 205–206.

55 Name check of the personnel directory in Manual of the City Council of Philadelphia (1949), 176–77,. 189–90, 197–98, 201–2; ibid. (1951), 176, 190–96.

56 PI, 3, 7, 8 June, 1, 23 Aug. 1951; IPI, 2, 24 Aug. 1951.

57 “Democratic Platform,” in Schlesinger, Jr and Israel, , eds., History of American Presidential Elections, 4, 3272Google Scholar; IPI, 28 July, 30 Oct., 1952; ON, 30 Aug. 1952.

58 “Politicians Attack Philadelphia Charter,” National Municipal Review 43 (1954), 134–35Google Scholar; Reichley, 15–22; Petshek, 63–67.

59 PI, 16, 18, 19 May 1954. In the 3rd district of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where two seats were at stake, Louis J. Amarando and Vincent F. Scarcelli obtained 47·69% and 35·39% respectively of the Italian-American vote, while Thomas Peta received 16·92%. In the 28th district the community supported George X. Schwartz against Marvin Bazin (87·93% to 12·07%).

60 Allswang, , A House for All Peoples, 42Google Scholar; Martinelli, Phylis C., “Italian-American Experience,” in Roucek, Joseph S. and Eisenberg, Bernard, eds., America's Ethnic Politics (Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), 221Google Scholar; Bayor, Ronald H., Neighbors in Conflict: The Irish, Germans, Jews, and Italians of New York City, 1929–1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 147Google Scholar; Wirt, Frederick M., Power in the City: Decision Making in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 235Google Scholar; Stack, John F. Jr, International Conflict in an American City: Boston's Irish, Italians, and Jews, 1935–1944 (Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979), 34Google Scholar; Lubell, Samuel, “Who really elected Truman?,” Saturday Evening Post, 22 01 1949, 17Google Scholar.

61 Shover, John L., “Ethnicity and Religion in Philadelphia Politics, 1924–40,” American Quarterly, 25 (1973), 505CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Cohen, Lizabeth, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

63 Lichtman, Allan J., “The End of Realignment Theory? Toward a New Research Program for American Political History,” Historical Methods, 15 (1982), 170–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shafer, Byron E., ed., The End of Realignment? Interpreting American Electoral Eras (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Wattenberg, Martin P., The Rise of Candidate-Centered Politics: Presidential Elections of the 1980s (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Lane, Robert, Political Life: Why People Get Involved in Politics (Glencoe Ill.: Free Press, 1959), 239Google Scholar.