deportation from Mexico. She, a woman who had been anactress and a model and a muse, an elusive beauty, a successful photographer, willed herself not to think about where she was being taken—to Mussolini (more imprisonment, possible execution)—because she was thought to be behind the assassination attempt on the new Mexican president. And why, with her family having lived in San Francisco for the past twenty-three years, wouldn’t she use her American passport, sidestepping the terrible fate awaiting her in Fascist Italy?
The sentimental problem of Clara Argento began with her father, Gian Antonio Argento, who was, at various times, a mechanical engineer, a machinist, a marble cutter, a photographer, and an inventor.
The photography studio was the first thing Gian Antonio attempted once he settled into San Francisco, and the only thing to fail, which was all for the best since it motivated him to establish his own machinist shop. It was located not too far from the Italian district of North Beach, where he lived with his two eldest daughters. In his shop he invented useful objects to his heart’s content and made enough money to send for Clara, her two younger brothers, and his adored wife—one or two at a time—their eventual arrival making him the happiest man alive.
Not bad for a man who, back home, had been involved with the Socialists, protesting working conditions and eventually joining a radical group encouraging strikes and walkouts, until he was unable to find another factory job and was forced to emigrate to Austria, where he and his family had lived the lives of barely tolerated immigrants. There Clara had learned firsthand what it meant for someone to want your labor yet not want you .
It was also in Austria, while working at the factory, that Gian Antonio Argento invented the bamboo bicycle frame, giving the bike a lightness that helped in hilly terrain. However, when a worker does not own the means of production, then all patents and profits go to the owner of the business and not to the worker. Even when everyone was riding Gian Antonio’s bamboo bicycle and thanking him whenever they saw him on the street.
This state of affairs—a large family with declining fortunes combinedwith having to surrender his dream machine ideas to someone with less imagination but more capital—resulted in a return to Italy, where Gian Antonio rejoined his hometown’s Socialist Circle. Gian Antonio believed in fairness for the worker. He believed in the righteousness of a socialist system. He understood that, without significant political change, his five children would be factory labor before the end of their childhood. Clara Argento remembered being held high on her father’s shoulders as he attended workers’ rallies with their calls to arms and holiday atmosphere.
Not long after returning to Italy, Gian Antonio traveled to San Francisco, settling in North Beach. In 1911 North Beach was a crowded district of Italian bakeries, Italian cafés, Italian theaters, Italian tailors, Italian laundries, Italian markets, Italian coffee roasters, and Italian ice cream parlors, scenting the air with melted sugar, coffee, garlic in oil, cigarettes, engine exhaust, the sea, and the sweat of workers. An impressive Catholic church dominated the central square.
The transatlantic move did nothing to curtail Gian Antonio’s involvement with radical politics. “This is the land of the free,” he told Clara. “Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. What good are these freedoms if they’re only talk?” He would joke and say that he was “doing the country a favor by accepting what they are offering.”
Clara Argento, seventeen and newly arrived in California, enjoyed the political meetings that were held in her father’s house. “Later, the people who came were called “anarcho-syndicalists.” There was always talk about workers and organizing and property.” The meetings reminded her of Italy, with their high
The sentimental problem of Clara Argento began with her father, Gian Antonio Argento, who was, at various times, a mechanical engineer, a machinist, a marble cutter, a photographer, and an inventor.
The photography studio was the first thing Gian Antonio attempted once he settled into San Francisco, and the only thing to fail, which was all for the best since it motivated him to establish his own machinist shop. It was located not too far from the Italian district of North Beach, where he lived with his two eldest daughters. In his shop he invented useful objects to his heart’s content and made enough money to send for Clara, her two younger brothers, and his adored wife—one or two at a time—their eventual arrival making him the happiest man alive.
Not bad for a man who, back home, had been involved with the Socialists, protesting working conditions and eventually joining a radical group encouraging strikes and walkouts, until he was unable to find another factory job and was forced to emigrate to Austria, where he and his family had lived the lives of barely tolerated immigrants. There Clara had learned firsthand what it meant for someone to want your labor yet not want you .
It was also in Austria, while working at the factory, that Gian Antonio Argento invented the bamboo bicycle frame, giving the bike a lightness that helped in hilly terrain. However, when a worker does not own the means of production, then all patents and profits go to the owner of the business and not to the worker. Even when everyone was riding Gian Antonio’s bamboo bicycle and thanking him whenever they saw him on the street.
This state of affairs—a large family with declining fortunes combinedwith having to surrender his dream machine ideas to someone with less imagination but more capital—resulted in a return to Italy, where Gian Antonio rejoined his hometown’s Socialist Circle. Gian Antonio believed in fairness for the worker. He believed in the righteousness of a socialist system. He understood that, without significant political change, his five children would be factory labor before the end of their childhood. Clara Argento remembered being held high on her father’s shoulders as he attended workers’ rallies with their calls to arms and holiday atmosphere.
Not long after returning to Italy, Gian Antonio traveled to San Francisco, settling in North Beach. In 1911 North Beach was a crowded district of Italian bakeries, Italian cafés, Italian theaters, Italian tailors, Italian laundries, Italian markets, Italian coffee roasters, and Italian ice cream parlors, scenting the air with melted sugar, coffee, garlic in oil, cigarettes, engine exhaust, the sea, and the sweat of workers. An impressive Catholic church dominated the central square.
The transatlantic move did nothing to curtail Gian Antonio’s involvement with radical politics. “This is the land of the free,” he told Clara. “Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. What good are these freedoms if they’re only talk?” He would joke and say that he was “doing the country a favor by accepting what they are offering.”
Clara Argento, seventeen and newly arrived in California, enjoyed the political meetings that were held in her father’s house. “Later, the people who came were called “anarcho-syndicalists.” There was always talk about workers and organizing and property.” The meetings reminded her of Italy, with their high
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