140                    THE ITALIAN CONTRIBUTION

CHAPTER  XVIII

TYPES  OF ORGANIZATION

THE SOCIAL CLUB

PARTICULAR GROUP—The most spontaneous and
perhaps the most influential type of grouping that exists
in the more thickly populated Italian colonies is the
"social club." It is inevitable that individuals of the
class composing the "tenement" or "settlement" type
form little groups by themselves. It frequently happens
that in a small area of two square blocks there may be
four nuclei of groups or cliques that meet together and
act for the most part independently of each other.

Each such nucleus, while all the members composing
it are known to each other by sight at least, acts for all
cooperative purposes as a community within a com¬
munity, invariably forming itself into a club for purposes
that at first, at any rate, are largely social and recrea¬
tional. It would be impossible to list or even to designate
the actual number of such existing groups. A good many
of them have a mushroom growth — springing up over
night as it were — only to pass quickly away for some
slight or insignificant reason.

The writer strolled along Mulberry Street, which is
the main artery of the large Italian colony downtown on
the East Side and noticed placards proclaiming the
existence of at least thirty such clubs as fall within this
category, all within the short space of four blocks. The
names of such clubs are extremely varied. Samples
taken at random in the Italian colony include the Sixth
Ward, Rose, Downtown, Emerson, Huskies', Caldwell,
etc. Clubs forming in settlements adopt names of a
softer tone such as the Violets, Mazzini Circle, Ken-
mare, Jupiter, etc.

For our purposes it will be illuminating to go into the
origin of one of these clubs which practically is the
history of a goodly average, and describe in detail its
program and execution.