Staff Traning

Today May 15, 1901 is the day I finally got that new job I was praying for over the last few weeks. When I think about it it's kind of funny that just a few months ago I was still in Italy with no money or close family and struggling in poverty wishing I could come to America and start a new life. The ride here on the ship is something I will never forget because of how awful and disgusting it was. The living conditions on the ship to American was relative to those living conditions of a prisoner do to the fact of the population so sleeping was very hard for me. Majority of us slept on the floors amongst the rodents plus the smell was unbearable add rats, lice, and multiple diseases and one would wonder how I manage to make it through the long journey. Not to mention the slop of rice and grits that was fed to us and considered to be food. However these minor issues were the least of my problems.

I would face many unpredictable circumstances once arriving into America. On the long journey to America my heart was racing like a race horse because of the excitement of me starting my new life. I had very high hopes and anticipated great success in my life once I arrived and got settled in the new country. Ellis Island was where I arrived and this place was absolutely horrible the place reminded me of herding cattle for branding. There were lines full of thousands of people for diseases testing, lice checking, legal document processing to obtain citizenship. After this I had a three day wait just to get across the water to Manhattan. I almost gave in and broke down a half dozen times just at the thought of why would they treat human beings this way. After the three days of hell I finally made it to New York and I was in for a rude awakening. If I would have known what was to come I probably would have never gotten off of that ship. There were hundreds if not thousands of people screaming and yelling at me that they were pure Americans and I was not really an American. These people started to throw food, stones and whatever they could get their hands on in my direction this was very unpleasant and scary for me and the police did not do anything about this. Thank god that I eventually ran into some fellow Irish men and women that helped me get away from that unpleasant experience and get me to safety.

Amongst my newly found Irish friends I met a pretty Irish woman who was proud to be an American and she helped me to find an apartment to stay in and also helped me to find a place to work. The apartment was more like a hole in a wall then an actual place to live, but it beat sleeping on the cold streets. The job that I was given was not actually something I would prefer but I needed money so I would have to make things work. My job duties were to wash and mend clothing for this clothing cleaning company called All Clean All the Time. In the beginning it was very hard to adjust to doing hard labor for twenty hour work days and receiving