L'uomo Carlo Dondero

In a recent column, we reprinted an open letter written by Carlo Dondero, which originally appeared in The San Francisco Call in 1903. The letter was written in response to public remarks made by Willis Paine, president of the Consolidated National Bank of New York, which were insulting to Italians. Though he was a simple Italian immigrant who knew nothing of bankers or banks, Dondero wrote eloquently in defense of his community and his connazionali.

 

Since the reprinting of Dondero’s letter in L’Italo-Americano, a number of readers have asked to know more about the man who wrote that letter. Though his story could easily fill volumes, space does not permit anything more than a cursory bio-graphical sketch of this truly remarkable man. Born the middle of five children in the Ligurian village of Cornia on November 19, 1842, Carlo Dondero grew up in an economically comfortable home, but because of a shortage of teachers, he was illiterate, as were most in his village.

 

When his father died, Carlo’s older brother Baccioccio and his new bride inherited everything. Carlo’s mother was left with only a few possessions and come savings, and Carlo couldn’t hope to ever be more than an illiterate goatherd. Wanting more for her family, Carlo’s widowed mother took him and his sisters, and everything they owned to Genoa. From there they set sail to America to make a better life.

 

While on board the four-masted bark La Testa, Carlo met a navigation student named Angelo Dossa. Carlo asked him to teach him the alphabet, but he declined. It wasn’t until Carlo’s mother offered to pay Dossa one Sardinian lira for every letter of the alphabet that he taught Carlo that Dossa acceded to Carlo’s wish.

 

Carlo Dondero arrived in New York harbor on April 10, 1855. Before disembarking, Carlo’s mother told her children that America was the land where they would all have a chance, and that if they worked hard and pursued their dream, it would come true.

 

Carlo’s mother found work in a velvet factory, and his sisters were hired by the Delmonico brothers to work in their restaurant at the corner of Chambers and Broadway. Carlo got a job at a tobacconist, but the owner of the establishment became impatient with Carlo’s inability to understand English, and after giving him a dime, put him out into the cold. Carlo took shelter from the blizzard in an open doorway nearby.

 

A kind gentleman took him by the hand and led him into his business down the street to get warm. The man turned out to be G.F. Secchi di Casalis, founder and editor of L’Eco di Italia, the first Italian newspaper in North America. Carlo was offered a training position where he would earn fifty cents per week and would be taught the typesetting trade. The newspaper was then just four pages and had a circulation of only 200, but for Carlo, it was the beginning of a career that would someday include being editor of his own newspaper.

 

Within a year, Carlo Dondero’s salary was increased three times as he became more proficient at setting type, but was still not making enough to make ends meet. He decided that he had the skills to apply for a better paying job, and went to the Tribune to ask for a job as a typesetter. He was given a page of a manuscript and was asked to set the type. It was impossible for Dondero to read the man’s handwriting.

 

The man whose handwriting was illegible said that he could not hire Dondero. He offered him a bit of advice instead: “Go west, boy. Go west.” This advice from Horace Greeley proved not only to be beneficial for young Carlo Dondero, but providential for the Italian Colony of San Francisco in the years to come. Carlo Dondero, still a young teenager, could not afford to take Greeley’s advice immediately, but it gave him a new goal.

 

To help achieve that goal, he continued to improve himself by first learning both the English and Italian languages better, and then by teaching others to do the same. To earn more money, he took a job as a typesetter with the New York Evening Post, where he not only became an expert in his field, but after two years was also able to save enough to finance his journey to California.