Archive of material related to the Buffalo section of the Federazione Socialista Italiana in the years 1919-1922.

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Title

Archive of material related to the Buffalo section of the Federazione Socialista Italiana in the years 1919-1922.

Description

This is a collection of approximately 30 letters and other documents (such as agendas for meetings ("Ordine del giorno," photograph here), a membership card, and the like) of the Buffalo section of the Federazione Socialista Italiana in the years 1919-1922. The letters are to or from a variety of parties, including other sections of the FSI, and the New York State Socialist Party (i.e., not the Italian section) to the Buffalo section of the FSI, and from the Italian Workers Club of Buffalo, among others. These documents reflect both the ordinary workings of an Italian socialist cell, and some of the controversies then raging.

The capstone of this collection is a holographic letter signed from Carlo Tresca to Giacomo Battistoni, dated New York from 1919, on letterhead of Il Martello (upper left corner) and the Libreria Rossa (upper right corner)
. See the photograph. (The Libreria Rossa, or Red Bookstore, is also associated with Elvira Catello, who sold Italian radical literature from her First Avenue book shop.)

Battistoni was the leader of the Italian branch of the Socialist Party in Buffalo. Tresca offered to give a talk in Buffalo sometime in December, during one of Tresca’s giri di conferenze (lecture tours).

I note that Buffalo was not some remote outpost of socialism included only incidentally on those tours: only two years before, October 7–9, 1917, that city had in fact been the situs of the first National Congress of the FSI.

Tresca inquires in this letter about what topic Battistoni would like him to speak: “would an anti-religious talk please you? — I have to know right away.” Tresca’s offer was probably irresistible: he was known to be particularly effective in leaving workers in a state of emotional frenzy and with the desire to hear him speak again as soon as possible: in an earlier such tour, in the California wineries in 1915, when company guards tried to expel him, several hundred workers deterred them, demanding to hear him speak.

Another important letter in the collection is that of Pietro Troilo to Nicola Mastrorilli, dated Hoboken, June 30, 1919, on Italian Interstate Federation letterhead.  See the photograph.

Troilo was executive secretary of the Italian Interstate Federation, which is, as the letterhead indicates, the section of the “Socialist Part [sic]” covering New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Its recipient, Nicola Mastrorilli, was president of the Buffalo section of the Federation.

This letter discusses the pending dispute, so important to socialists of both New Jersey and New York, between the Interstate Federation and and the National Federation that Troilo expects to be cleared up at the very important next Congress of the Italian Interstate Federation of the Socialist Party of New York and New Jersey on July 27, 1919.

For any scholar of Italian American socialists in the interwar period, this collection will reward a careful review.

Citation

“Archive of material related to the Buffalo section of the Federazione Socialista Italiana in the years 1919-1922.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed March 29, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/422.

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