Salvatore A Cotillo

From Naples to New York

Born in Naples, Italy, he came to the United States in 1895 with his parents at the age of nine. His father Francesco Cotillo, had been a caterer in Naples. The family originally came from Avellino (Montella), in the hinterland of Naples. The family settled in East Harlem in East 113th Street among the increasing numbers of Italian immigrants. His father took up catering again and opened a popular pastry and confectionery shop. He has been credited with introducing the Italian ice cream spumoni into the United States.

The oldest of four children, the young Salvatore did not speak English and went to Public School 83 and later to DeWitt Clinton High School and Manhattan College. During those formative years he worked in the family's pastry shop, where intellectuals of the neighborhood gathered in the evening to discuss social and political issues with his father. Those debates gave birth to Cotillo's early social consciousness that formed the basis of his adult devotion to social reform legislation. The young Cotillo was passionate about baseball and became a New York Giants fan. In return for free tickets he used to clean the stadium seats.

In 1911 he completed a law degree from Fordham University and was admitted to the New York State bar in 1912. As a young attorney Cotillo had to distance himself from the local underworld that incorporated many members of the Camorra from Naples who tried to impose their "services". When the so-called King of Little Italy, the Camorra boss Giosue Gallucci, was arrested for carrying concealed weapons, Cotillo was asked to testify as a character witness on his behalf, but refused. Cotillo felt that Gallucci looked at others as if they "were either hirelings or payers of tribute." According to Cotillo "it was a matter of concern in the neighborhood if you were looked down upon by Gallucci." Despite the temptation of attractive fees, he refused to help men of Gallucci's disposition to secure gun permits.

Early political career

Cotillo's early law practice included a lot of uncompensated charity for the neighborhood. Apart from a genuine social compassion, Cotillo was also building political alliances that would make it possible for him to use the Italian-American voter power as his Irish-American forerunners in New York were using the power of other immigrant groups.

With his father, Cotillo was among the co-founders of a political club called the Tomahawk Democratic Club that took on the Tammany Hall political machine supporting Nicholas J. Hayes, putting forward Henry H. Lazarus as his opponent. The fight was ruthless, with both sides harassing the other's speakers. Lazarus got beaten in the electoral contest, but Cotillo, supported by the Italian-American vote, made a deal with Hayes that gave Little Italy a political foothold in the city. "I want to help my people," he said explaining his switch, "and can do so only with the backing of those in power."

In 1913, at the age of 27, he became the first Italian-born assemblyman. When Cotillo arrived in the New York State Assembly in Albany that year, the powerful ethnic Irish State Senator "Big Tim" Sullivan observed: "Mark my words, it is the beginning of the Italian era in politics. Watch them."

Cottilo would be elected to office from Italian East Harlem between 1912 and 1922. Raised in the ghetto, he was chosen by the largely Italian neighborhood and continued to depend upon their political support throughout his political career. He was a member of the New York State Assembly (New York Co., 28th District) in 1913, 1915 and 1916. He drew support from the Citizens Union and was identified for two notable pieces of legislation; pensions for widows and the Workmen's Compensations Law. He advocated for women's suffrage, gun control, the end of the death penalty and school lunch programs.

New York senator

He was a member of the New York State Senate from 1917 to 1923. He served the 20th District in the 140th and 141st New York State Legislature and represented the 18th District in the 142nd, 143rd, 144th, 145th and 146th New York State Legislatures. In March 1918, Cotillo opposed the proposed prohibition of alcohol in the state. Although he believed in temperance, he doubted if that would be achieved by prohibition; he advocated education and not infringing on civil liberties.

In May 1918, he was sent to Italy by President Woodrow Wilson to make a study of the economic conditions of that country during World War I in order to provide information for economic relief programs and encourage the Italians to continue the war effort after the disastrous defeat at Caporetto. As a representative of the Committee on Public Information, he spent most of the year in Italy and won the praise of President Wilson. He also received the decoration of Grand Officer of the Italian Crown from King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy.

From mid-June to the end of September 1918 Cotillo traveled around Italy, meeting officials and politicians, giving interviews to the press and addressing large crowds. His efforts in Italy were reported by the press and Italian language newspapers at home in the U.S.. When he returned to New York, Cotillo had risen from a largely unknown local politician to achieve public stature and become a leader of the Italian community. Based on this experience he wrote the book “Italy During the World War”, published in 1922.

Social reforms

Back from Italy and in the New York State Senate, he fought hard for the regulation of informal immigrant banks and banking agents that handled money transfers abroad, an issue of significant importance to his Italian constituency who were often swindled from their remittances to their families in Italy. Cotillo’s 1921 banking reform bill, which placed express companies and steamship agencies that transferred money abroad under the supervision of the New York State Banking Department, annoyed powerful interests of such companies as Wells Fargo and the Cunard Lines. He received death threats and offers of bribes to drop the legislation he had introduced in the Senate. During the hearings on Cotillo’s bill in March 1921, a devastating crash of the Tisbo Brothers immigrant bank in lower Manhattan left 2,000 angry depositors with losses of more than three million dollars. As a result, four bills that regulated the sector were signed into law on May 1, 1921.

Cotillo was member of the Joint Legislative Committee on Housing, also known as the Lockwood Committee because it was headed by Charles C. Lockwood. The committee investigated renting and building conditions in the City of New York and ended a spate of rent-raising as a result of the housing shortage after World War I. The group found that the housing conditions at the time constituted a serious menace to public health in New York since some 400,000 persons were directly affected by the scarcity of affordable dwellings and the poor quality of the existing ones. Later he was the chairman of New York state commission to investigate child welfare, and a member of the Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Exploitation of Immigrants (1923–24).

As the foremost force on the Child Welfare Commission, concerned with issues of custody, orphanage, child support, and state wardship and institutions, Cotillo pushed a comprehensive reform through the legislature with the support of the social-welfare advocate Sophie Irene Loeb and the Hearst newspapers. His biographer, Nat Ferber, a former Hearst reporter, considered the reform to be "the outstanding achievement of Cotillo's career".

Troublesome relationship with Italian Fascism

Cotillo was a Grand Master of the Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA) and after World War I actively propagated the nationalist cause of Italian control over Fiume, despite President Wilson's denial of the Italian claims to the Adriatic port. In the 1920s Cotillo tried to ease the rising tension between Italian-American Fascists and anti-Fascists by taking a stance between the two. In 1923, he went to Rome to meet Benito Mussolini. He was impressed and described Mussolini as a "commanding element of the highest order". He vowed to correct the image of Mussolini and Fascism, but also cautioned his Italian-American countrymen saying that the American way was to be preferred above Fascism.

Pro-Fascists opposed the assimilation policies of Cotillo, who had become Grand Venerable of the New York State branch of OSIA in 1921 and had started an ambitious English language program as a means for upward mobility of the Italian-American community. According to Cotillo, Fascism as a movement was "out of place in the United States" although it could serve its purpose in Italy. He said that American citizens of Italian origin that were truly engaged in Americanization should reject Fascism as incompatible and un-American. Eventually, he joined Fiorello La Guardia and Luigi Antonini, of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, in founding an anti-Fascist New York State chapter of OSIA, the Sons of Italy Grand Lodge. Nevertheless, Cotillo was a staunch supporter of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.

In October 1938, Cotillo lobbied Mussolini "for more lenient consideration of the Jewish problem in Italy." In a letter to Il Duce he tried persuade the Italian dictator that Fascist Italy's recent anti-Semitic legislation was unwise, and asked to "postpone execution of such drastic action for a reasonable time until an opportunity has been afforded me to appear before you and present the worthy cause because your edict may result in serious consequences in America." He asked for the repeal of the anti-Jewish laws and warned for a boycott of Italian goods in New York, where, as he wrote, "we live in close interdependent relationship" with Jewish people.

New York Supreme Court justice

After the 1922 elections, Cotillo became the chairman of the influential State Senate Judiciary Committee, a sign of his rising authority. The post helped him to get ready for a next step. In 1924, he was the first Italian-born to become Justice of the New York Supreme Court, First District, where he would he remain until his death. He was elected with the endorsement of the Tammany Hall political machine, many social welfare organizations and organized labor, the Citizen's Union and several bar organizations.

While an immigrant himself and although he had been an ardent defender of the liberal interpretation of the naturalization law for a long time, in 1939 and in the wake of World War II, Cotillo advocated more stringent naturalization methods. Immigrants would be forced to pay the costs of an exhaustive investigation of their qualifications. He argued that there was a "need for more hesitation in the granting of this charter of liberty to each and every applicant without a more thorough search of each and every applicant’s capacity to benefit from such a gift." He also recommended revocation of citizenship when found guilty of fraud or other wrongdoing.

Earlier, Cotillo had opposed the anti-immigration restrictions of the Immigration Act of 1924 that significantly limited immigration from Italy. In 1931, Cotillo protested against unnecessary stringent requirements of a proposed registration law, particularly the requirement of the equivalent of a public school education and the fingerprinting of applicants. A naturalized citizen had the same rights as native-born and fingerprinting would make the foreign applicant feel like a criminal, Cotillo pointed out. He referred to the findings of the Wickersham Commission that the foreign-born committed considerably less crime than native citizens. He also attacked the revocation of citizenship because of evil doing, while a native born was not affected. At the time, Cotillo claimed to have naturalized some 25,000 immigrants in the eight years he had been on the bench.

Death and legacy

On July 27, 1939, he died following an operation for a chest tumor at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Manhattan, New York, at the age of 52. He was survived by his widow, Ida Berthold, and two daughters, Helen Paterno – who had married the son of prominent real estate developer Charles V. Paterno – and Sally Cotillo. More than 3,000 people attended his funeral in Saint Patrick's Cathedral, including New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Lieutenant Governor Charles Poletti, District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey and former New York Governor Alfred E. Smith. He was the subject of a biography by Nat Ferber, A New American, published in 1938.

Throughout his life, both as a legislator and judge, he earned a reputation for compassion with the underprivileged and social activism which put that compassion to work. According to New York Governor Alfred E. Smith in his introduction in Cotillo's biography, Cotillo "introduced a new era in social relations between the immigrant and native or older Americans".

In the obituary of The New York Times, Cotillo was described as "a leader of the Italian Americans in New York". He defended ethnic Italians against the stereotyping by Americans not of Italian descent, but also urged the need for "Americanization" of the Italian community. As such, he stood between the mores of the Italian ethnic ghetto and the judgment and norms of American society.