I am a thirty-five-year-old Italian immigrant living in the Italian quarter on the Hill in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1910. I live with my wife and five children in Basin Alley, an area that is heavily concentrated with immigrant Italian laborers. Life in Basin Alley revolves around the steel mills, owned by Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie was also an immigrant from Scotland and now he practically owns the country “Before he was 30 years old he had made shrewd and farsighted investments, which by 1865 were concentrated in iron. With a few years, he had organized or had stock in companies making iron bridges, rails and locomotives. Ten years later, the steel mill he built on the Monongahela River in Pennsylvania was the largest in the country” (An Outline 1). I arrived in America with my wife and two of our five children in 1900. We came to this country because my cousin had come here in 1895 and was doing well for himself as a steel mill worker. The industrial age is coming to full power in America, and its cities continue to grow and become more populated because of it. I make $12.98 a week for working sixty hours (American 1). My eldest son is twelve and he left school two years ago to work in the steel mill with me. My wife does laundry and house cleaning for the rich folks on Residence Street in Pitcairn. She does not speak English much. In this document, I will try to demonstrate the typical lifestyle my family experiences as we work in the steel mills and our life on Basin Alley. In so doing, I hope to show many aspects of American life and society in 1910 that affected the lifestyle of me and many other working-class immigrants.
My son and I fill molds at a Pittsburgh foundry. My son holds the molds and I fill them. Pittsburgh is becoming the center of the steel industry in the U.S. Because of the large number of steel plants that offer work, many immigrants come to Pittsburgh looking for work. Lately, spec...