The Italians of San Francisco (Italian American Experience)

Excerpt from The Italians of San Francisco\nThe importance of knowing in considerable detail the nature of the economic environment from which an immigrant group has come need not, of course, be stressed. 'with the best of'mill not even the most adaptable of individuals can erase the influence of the conditions under which he lived during the first twenty years of his life. Indeed one can even push this age forward and say within the first fifteen.years, at least, for peasants and workers. It is practically impossible to throw off such influences psychologically and, even if it were possible to do so, there are certain inescapable social-economic elements enter ing into the situation in.san Francisco which renders it doubly diffi cult to give them.up.