EXAMINING PATTERNS OF ITALIAN IMMIGRATION TO ...

As in 1900, there seems to be no relation between region of provenience of the
Italians and jobs because they are more or less equally distributed in the various sectors and
jobs.
3.5 Occupations in 1920
In 1920 the Italian community remains stable in number, 4,379, and the percentage
of employed (37.1%) decreases compared to 1910 (42.1%). Again the reason for that is in
the increasing number of children together with the decreasing number of newcomers.
Mining jobs are still prevalent among Italians, although the percentage drops from
72.9% of 1910 to 66.7%. What increases significantly is the absolute number of miners.
More interestingly, for the first time it tops the number of laborers, timbermen, and
trammers together. These data show that Italians have moved up in the hierarchy of mining
jobs. The reasons may be that many of them have been working in the mines for years by
that time, and have acquired those skills allowing them to get better jobs. Secondly, after the
strike of 1913 many people left the area for other destinations thus opening positions for
others.
The second group is Food and drink selling. What emerges from the data is the fact
that liquor dealers and saloon proprietors are remarkably fewer compared to 1910 -seven in
1920 and 42 in 1910 - and people in the food business, on the contrary, have increased. A
reason may be found in the fact that this is the period of Prohibition 42 and even though they
continued to deal in alcohol, they did not declare it.
The number of Professionals and Skilled Tradesmen increases from fifty-seven to
seventy-one (4.4%), and the group of Unskilled drops a little bit from 91 (4.9%) of 1910 to
66 (4.1%). Again the group of Farming does not include many individuals, but the number
of farmers goes from eleven in 1910 to twenty-nine in 1920 showing that more people are
investing in the land.
Women occupied outside the household in 1920 are, according to the census, 146.
For the most part they are salesladies and/or clerks in stores. Many of them, twenty-eight,
are also working as servants, maids or housekeepers as in 1920. As for office jobs, there are
42 The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified on January 29, 1919; and,
on January 29, 1920, Prohibition became the law of the land.
42