ABSTRACT
Early Greek immigrants in America, regardless of employment or location, were almost exclusively male. Prior to World War I about 90 percent of all of them were males. The Greek-American community in its early years was thus mainly a bachelor’s community. The bachelor existence of the large majority of the Greek immigrants gave rise to a uniquely Greek-American institution—the kafenion or coffeehouse. The mass of the Greek immigrants—railroad and mine workers in the West, textile and shoe factory workers in New England, peddlers and bootblacks in the large Northern cities, nascent entrepreneurs everywhere—somehow managed to save money from their meager earnings. The transformation of the Greek immigrant colony in America into a Greek-American community was presaged by the passage of restrictive immigration starting in 1917. The Greek quest for respectability in America was in part indicative of sensitivity to charges that the immigrant enclaves were breeding grounds for crime.
