Book Review

Many speak of the virtue of comparative history, but few are brave enough to undertake the challenge. Samuel Baily accepted the challenge and has made an important contribution to this emerging genre. Immigrants in the Lands of Promise demonstrates both the potential and the difficulties of comparative history.	1
Baily seeks to compare the experience of Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City during the period 1870–1914. These cities had the largest concentrations of immigrants from Italy, each having over three hundred thousand on the eve of World War I. In his analysis, Baily explicitly defines the variables that affected the "nature and extent of adjustment" of the immigrants in the two cities. These are divided into three categories: first, what the immigrants brought with them (social and economic skills, expectations, and resources); second, what they found at their destination (economic opportunities, established Italian community, language and religion of the host society, attitudes toward them of the host society); and, third, subsequent developments (pace of migration, time of critical mass, absolute and relative size of the Italian population, and resulting immigrant strategy). Baily seeks to give equal weight to the agency of the immigrants and to the structural realities they encountered. Their relative success in "creatively coping" with those constraining elements determined the quality of their adjustment.	2
Baily comments that writing this volume entailed integrating two monographs. Indeed, one is impressed by the depth of the author's research in a variety of sources and by his resourceful use of statistical data. He refers time and again to the difficulty of locating comparable data for both cities.	3
Baily argues persuasively that certain conditions in Buenos Aires favored a "more rapid, effective, and complete adjustment" on the part of the Italians as compared to those in New York City. In Buenos Aires, entering the city at an early stage of development and constituting the largest immigrant group, Italians found abundant opportunities in the skilled trades, commerce, and industry. Arriving in the mature economy of New York City in which older immigrants were ensconced in the occupational hierarchy, Italians found few jobs above the unskilled level. Consequently, Buenos Aires Italians experienced more rapid occupational and residential mobility than did those in New York City. Acquiring wealth and status, a Buenos Aires elite, nationalist and philanthropic, established institutions and organizations that facilitated the adjustment of the post-1900 mass migration. Contrariwise, in New York City, self-serving prominenti failed to provide tutelage to the newcomers. A further factor was the Latin Catholic culture and relative lack of nativism in Buenos Aires, while in New York City, Anglo Protestants and Irish Catholics, working class and upper class, expressed intense hostility toward the Italians.	. . .