SALVATORE FERRAGAMO: 1927 THE RETURN TO ITALY

摘要

In spring 1915, Salvatore Ferragamo left the port of Naples in a third-class cabin on the Stampalia, joining over 1.5 million Italians who emigrated to the United States in the 1910s to pursue the American dream. Salvatore was 16 and did not speak a word of English. He neither had the guarantor required by American law, nor the legal minimum amount of money (100 liras) to enter the country. Yet with only six liras in his pocket, he arrived in New York without dread. "America was calling me," he writes in his autobiography. "I felt at home before I even set foot on American soil. I was certain that I would thrive in that country." And thrive he did. He started out in Boston, working at the Queen Quality Shoes Company, where he learned the techniques of industrial production. Then he opened a small cobbler's shop with his brothers in Santa Barbara for shoemaking and repairs, where gained understanding of clients' needs.