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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
The formation of the New Deal coalition has been the subject of much scholarly discussion, as have the theories of voting behaviour which have informed that discussion. This essay seeks to investigate both the history and the theory. First, it analyses the timing and mechanics of the participation of Philadelphia's Italian-Americans in the Roosevelt coalition. Italian-Americans were a key component of the Democratic majority nationwide, and as pre-New Deal Republican bailiwicks that began to turn Democratic in the 1930s, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia are ideal settings to study the forging of the Roosevelt coalition not only on the federal but also on the state and local level. Secondly, the essay tests some hypotheses about the New Deal realignment. It suggests that none of the standard hypotheses convincingly explains what was happening in Philadelphia's Italian-American community in the 1930s and 1940s.
1 Philadelphia voting statistics offer no ethnic breakdown. A sample of the Italian-American vote has been made by including the voting divisions where Italian-Americans were at least 80 % of the registered voters and no other ethnic group had more than 10% of the remaining registrants. The ethnic concentration of voting divisions has been identified through a name check conducted on the incomplete collection of the Street Lists of Voters (held by Philadelphia City Archives) and checked against census tract data and school district information for the missing years. The row votes by division have been obtained from the Annual Reports of the Registration Commission for the City of Philadelphia for presidential, gubernatorial and local elections; from The Pennsylvania State Manual (Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1927)Google Scholar for the 1926 senatorial contest; from the Manual of the City Council of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Dunlap, 1935)Google Scholar for the 1934 senatorial race; from The Pennyslvania Manual (Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1931 and 1939)Google Scholar for the 1930 and 1938 senatorial elections; and from the unpublished tabulation sheets of the Philadelphia County Board of Elections (held by Philadelphia City Archives) for the remaining elections and all the primaries. Such row votes have been converted into the percentages which appear in table I. All the other percentages of the Italian-American vote also refer to the above-mentioned sample. For pioneer but outdated research on the voting behaviour of Philadelphia's Italian-Americans, see Maiale, Hugo, “The Italian Vote in Philadelphia between 1928 and 1946” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1950)Google Scholar.
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3 Lubell, 34–35; Key, V. O. Jr, “A Theory of Critical Elections,” Journal of Politics, 17 (1955), 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacRae, Duncan Jr, and Meldrum, James A., “Critical Elections in Illinois: 1888–1958,” American Political Science Review, 54 (1960), 669–83Google Scholar; Burner, David, The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition, 1918–1932 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 58, 70–72, 103–106, 113–14, 137–40Google Scholar; Stave, Bruce M., “The ‘La Follette Revolution’ and the Pittsburgh Vote, 1932,” Mid-America, 49 (1967), 244–51Google Scholar; Shover, John, “Was 1928 a Critical Election in California?,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 58 (1967), 196–204Google Scholar; Clubb, Jerome M. and Allen, Howard W., “The Cities and the Election of 1928: Partisan Realignment?,” American Historical Review, 74 (1969), 1205–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Besides the studies cited later on, see also Burnham, Walter D., Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: Norton, 1970), 1–33Google Scholar; Shively, W. Phillips, “A Reinterpretation of the New Deal Realignment,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 35 (1971), 621–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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9 L'Opinione, 29 July 1927 (hereafter OP); La Libera Parola, 15 Sept. 1928 (hereafter LLP).
10 Evening Bulletin, 7 Nov. 1928 (hereafter EB). See also Philadelphia Daily News, 8 Nov. 1928.
11 Higham, John, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism (New Brunswick N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 313–24Google Scholar; LLP, 8 Mar. 1924; OP, 30 Oct., 9 Nov. 1927; EB, 25 Oct. 1928; Philadelphia Record, 8 Nov. 1928 (hereafter PR).
12 Circular letter of Eugene Alessandroni, 30 Oct. 1926, Order Sons of Italy in America: Giovanni Di Silvestro Papers, box 1, folder 22, Immigration History Research Center Collection, University of Minnesota, St. Paul; Corriere d'America, 1 Nov. 1927, newspaper clipping, ibid.; Vare, 153–54, 161–65; EB, 17 Oct. 1928.
13 Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 Oct. 1930 (hereafter PI); McGeary, H. Nelson, Gifford Pinchot: Forester Politician (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 352Google Scholar; Astorino, Samuel J., “The Decline of the Republican Dynasty in Pennsylvania, 1929–1934” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1962), 120–26Google Scholar.
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15 See the series of thirty articles Davis wrote for the North American Newspaper Alliance and published in Philadelphia in EB from 19 May to 21 June 1924.
16 OP, 9, 14 June 1929; South Philadelphia, 19 Apr. 1930.
17 OP 13 Dec. 1929.
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24 Varbero, Richard A., “Philadelphia's South Italians and the Irish Church: A History of Cultural Conflict,” in Tomasi, Silvano M., ed., The Religious Experience of Italian Americans (Staten Island N.Y.: American Italian Historical Association, 1975), 31–52Google Scholar.
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28 OP, 23 Nov. 1934, 15 Jan. 1935; LLP, 24 Nov. 1934.
29 OP, 17 Jan., 6, 14 Feb., 27 Mar. 1935; name check of the personnel directory in The Pennsylvania Manual (1935–36), 624–25; ibid. (1937), 945–46.
30 Drayer, Robert E., “J. Hampton Moore: An Old Fashioned Republican” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1961), 305, 308–9, 311–26Google Scholar; Henwood, James N. J., “Politics and Unemployment Relief: Pennsylvania, 1931–1939” (PhD. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1975), 2–7Google Scholar; Bauman, John F., “The City, the Depression, and Relief: The Philadelphia Experience, 1929–1939” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1969), 54–55, 217Google Scholar; Vare, , My Forty Years in Politics, 29Google Scholar; Salter, John T., “Tony Nicollo,” Yale Review, 22 (1933), 771–72Google Scholar.
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33 Lorena Hickok to Harry Hopkins, 29 Apr. 1936, Lorena Hickok Papers, box 11, folder “Reports to Harry Hopkins 1936,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.; PR, 2 Nov. 1936; EB, 3 Nov. 1936.
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40 In 1938 John Alessandroni received 49·31 % of the Italian-American vote, while senatorial candidate James Davis obtained 47·48 %. In 1940 Willkie ran 1·45 % behind Da Grossa.
41 South Philadelphian, 28 June 1940; IPI, 16 Sept., 11, 12, 29, 31 Oct. 1940; PI, 5, 31 Oct. 1940; South Phila American Weekly, 31 Oct. 1940.
42 It has been assumed that each voting division had the same relief rate which is ascribed by the 1940 Census to the tract it belongs to. Table II assembles the voting divisions of the sample under the census tract in which they are included.
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45 Circular letter of Nicholas J. A. Tumolo, 11 Oct. 1943, Nicholas J. A. Tumolo Papers, box 5, Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, Philadelphia.
46 IPI, 8, 19, 22, 23, 27 Oct. 1944; ON, 21 Oct. 1944.
47 IPI, 11, 29 Oct. 1944; PI, 19 Oct. 1944.
48 Angus Campbell, “A Classification of the Presidential Elections,” in Id. et al., Elections and the Political Order (New York: Wiley, 1966), 64–67; Ladd, Everett Carll Jr with Hadley, Charles D., Transformations of the American Party System: Political Coalitions from the New Deal to the 1970s (New York: Norton, 1975), 73–74Google Scholar; Sternsher, Bernard, “The New Deal Party System: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 15, (1984), 73–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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