This "family" was also to some extent ethnically exclusive. Traverso recalled that they conversed in Italian among themselves, although they all spoke English. Communicating in Italian would have been a way to marginalize the non-Italian short-term workers and to draw the Italian short-term or low-ranking employees into the career workers' circle, as apparently happened with Traverso. The shared ethnicity of the owners, the career workers, and the majority of the short-term workers gave them a bond that went beyond other communal experiences of the shop.

The familial nature of the Tirocchi establishment was reinforced by its small size. At its largest, during the 1920s, the median number of seamstresses in any given week was fourteen, a group large enough to have its cliques and divisions, but also small enough to have a common experience. At a time when more and more wage earners were laboring in large establishments - the sites investigated by the Women's Bureau averaged 404 workers, and even the jewelry factories averaged 100 - these women continued to work in a small shop where they knew one another and their employers well. Ready-made clothing outsold custom-made garments at the Tirocchi establishment from 1924 on, but the shift did not have a dramatic effect on the size of the work force. In 1926, the median weekly roster was still fourteen, and it fell only to twelve in 1928. Even the Depression had a delayed effect on the sewing room at 514 Broadway. The work force remained at around ten until early 1933, and only then did it sharply contract, to a median of five per week after the 1933 summer break and to three per week in 1937-38. The seamstresses' experience went against the historical trend toward larger and larger workplaces, but it was shared with Italian immigrant men, about two in every five of whom worked in a similar setting. Even as late as 1940, over a fifth of self-employed Italian craftsmen had daughters who were also employed in the crafts.(35)

The women sewed at two tables pulled close to the windows. Conversation would have been easy since most of the work was done by hand, although at least by the 1930s there were both sewing and hemstitching machines in the shop. The workers ate together either in a small dining room near their third-floor workroom or, in good weather, out on a porch. Some were provided with lunches by the Tirocchis, and some brought their own food. They took turns making coffee. Occasionally, Martinelli remembered, "the girls used to go out and take a walk." The most vivid description of life in the sewing room came from Mary Riccitelli Basilico's husband. Panfilo recalled that when he came home from his work in an East Side bakery, he passed by 514 Broadway. After he and Mary had begun courting, the sewing women would drop their work and come to the windows to shout greetings to him, using his nickname of "Bombi." Like young women throughout the country, the seamstresses incorporated the talk and rituals of courtship into their work lives.

The workshop was clearly separate from the customers' territory on the second floor of the house, but the needlewomen themselves were not entirely isolated from the clientele. All of those interviewed named some of the customers, were well aware of their social positions, and knew a few details about their families and their personalities. Presumably, the customers were as much the subject of third-floor gossip as the workers' romances. The seamstresses knew enough about the customers' visits to indicate that they were sometimes in the room when clients had fittings or viewed fabrics. Dr. Louis J. Cella, Jr., recalled that "when the little girls were working they would use all the premises during the day." The sewing women also made deliveries. Emily Valcarenghi Martinelli remembered "go[ing] out nights" with Anna del Matto to deliver dresses. Martinelli also recalled that she, Anna and Ida del Matto, and Mary Riccitelli Basilico ("We were the smallest ones") would help dress brides for their weddings.