At
the turn of the twentieth century, when the Tirocchis immigrated,
Providence, Rhode Island was a thriving industrial city with an
economy built around cotton and worsted mills, rubber products,
machine tool fabrication, and jewelry and silver manufacturing.
Founded in 1636 on the principle of religious freedom, Providence
was settled by persecuted followers of unpopular religions. When
the Tirocchis arrived 270 years later, religion was still flourishing
there and the city was still attracting those looking for a new
start. As a result, Providence in the early 1900s was a mix of ethnic
populations, concentrated in neighborhoods that largely segregated
ethnic groups and the newly arrived from the prosperous Yankee scions
of the town.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF PROVIDENCE
When Roger Williams and his followers first settled the Providence
area in the 1630s, their economy was entirely based on farming,
but by the eve of the American Revolution, the town had a busy maritime
trade and a mix of merchants and industries supporting the port.
During this era, Providence had become an important player in the
Triangle Trade: an economy built on trade in slaves, sugar products,
and rum. Providence distilleries turned West Indies sugar and molasses
into rum, which was traded for slaves, who worked the West Indies
sugar plantations and were imported into the Colonies. It was an
ugly business, but it brought great wealth to the New England merchants,
industrialists, and sea captains who engaged in the Triangle. When
England passed the Sugar Act of 1764 to levy an import tax on sugar
products, Providence residents felt their livelihood threatened
and, consequently, were among the first Colonists to agitate against
British rule. The city played an important role in the American
Revolution, providing leadership and fighting strength, quartering
troops, and supplying goods to war-starved residents by circumventing
the blockade of Newport.
Mercantile
firms established before the RevolutionNicholas Brown and
Company, Joseph and William Russell, and Clark and Nightingaleled
the way in post-Revolution prosperity in Providence. Although the
maritime trade still flourished in the capital of Rhode Island,
manufacturing began to overtake it as the primary anchor of the
economy. By 1830, manufacturing centered on cotton and woolen textiles,
jewelry and silverware, and base metals and machinery. For the next
150 years, numerous manufacturing plants in these specialties dominated
the economy, supported by increasingly strong and sophisticated
financial institutions. The population grew commensurately, and
the increasing numbers brought new and different problems to the
city. The City Charter of 1832 converted local government from a
town meeting to a city form of government thought to be more appropriate
for a growing port city, and the city administrators provided new
municipal services to address some of the new grievances.
The railroad came to Providence in 1835, from Boston to the north,
and this gave the city an additional boost. In a short time, it
would be considered a regional hub because of its great transportation
network of railroads, canals, turnpikes, and port. Factories continued
to spring up and grow as a result. There was plenty of work for
skilled and unskilled labor, which attracted foreign immigrants.
The Irish were the first to come, adding a layer of ethnic unrest
within predominantly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Providence. Political
struggles arose over the right to vote. Blacks had already been
disenfranchised and the new white working class was soon unhappy
over state law that only allowed property holders to vote. In the
1830s the Providence Workingmens Association began calling
for voting reform. By 1843, a new state constitution satisfied the
native but not the naturalized citizen: naturalized citizens could
vote only if they owned property; whereas native citizens, if landless,
could perform a days militia service or pay a registry tax
to satisfy their voting requirement. Due to a shrewd political alliance
during the constitutional debates, blacks re-gained the vote with
the new constitution. (Until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s,
African American citizens of Rhode Island were discouraged from
voting in a number of subtle and not-so-subtle ways, but they never
again relinquished the franchise.)
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