L'Italo-Americano

www.italoamericano.org 18 L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 2019 LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE D ear Readers,  my fa- ther Vincenzo was a big fan of Amedeo Peter Giannini, founder of the Bank of Italy (1904 in San Francisco, California) who in 1928 bought Bank of America and built it into the largest Bank in the USA by pi- oneering home mortgages and auto loans for the working class cus- tomer. He also developed nation- wide banking by opening Bank of America branches coast to coast. Most of my longtime readers know all about A.P. Giannini and how two years after he founded Bank of Italy, in 1904, there was a great earthquake that devastated the city of San Francisco and Giannini set up a makeshift office to offer extended credit, often on just a hand shake, to hardworking laborers who needed money to rebuild their lives. Recently I have met several people with Italian "roots" who were completely unaware of Bank of America's Italian connection. I am sure that in 1998, when Bank of America was acquired by Nations Bank, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Man- agement wanted to eradicate any of BofA Italian connections and began by dumping the portrait of A.P. Giannini hanging on the wall of the North Beach Branch into the trash, where I was told it was re- trieved by an Italo-American garbageman. To refresh your mem- ory here is a bit of the BofA story... *** A.P. Giannini was born at the Swiss Hotel in San Jose, California on May 6, 1870. He was the oldest son of Luigi and Virginia Giannini who had im- migrated from Liguria, Italy and now were the proprietors of the Swiss Hotel, a two-story boarding house in San Jose. When his brother Attilio was born, two years later, the family moved to Alviso, a hillside village with fruit trees and vineyards along the foothills of Santa Clara Valley. The family lived primarily on profits from the fruits and vegeta- bles Luigi sold to the  commission merchants, fifty miles away on the San Francisco waterfront. When A.P. was six years old, his father was shot and killed by a transient farmhand over an unpaid bill. His mother Virginia remained on the Alviso farm with her three sons, Amadeo, Attilio and the new- born, Giorgio.  A.P.'s mother's struggle to sup- port her family molded his idea of helping other people when they needed it most. He often accompa- nied his mother to San Francisco to sell produce. When Virginia remarried to a local drayman, Lorenzo Scatena, they all moved to San Francisco. A.P.'s stepfather soon found a job as a commission clerk on the wa- terfront, and from the time he was 12 years old, A.P. worked in the firm at night, helping to unload fruits and vegetables and delivering by horse-drawn wagon to retail merchants. By 15, he had left school to work full time in his stepfather's business, and at 17, he was travel- ing alone deep into the countryside north of San Francisco, soliciting contracts from valley farmers. Un- der his direction, his stepfather's commission trade soon became very profitable. At age 22, A.P. married Clorinda Agnes Cuneo, daughter of a successful North Beach grocer. They were married at Old St. Mary's Church on Sept. 12, 1892. The family expanded rapidly - six children in twelve years. But only three - Lawrence, Virgil, and Claire survived to reach adulthood. With A.P.'s help, his stepfather's business, Scatena and Company, had by 1900 become the largest wholesale firm in produce west of Chicago. In 1901, Giannini's father-in- law, Joseph Cuneo, died at age 91, leaving no will, an estate valued at approximately $1 million, a widow and eleven children. Fortunately, since Cuneo's sons were grown and in business for themselves, they de- cided to keep the estate intact and gave A.P. the job of managing the estate in order to increase its value. *** A.P. late father-in-law, Joseph Cuneo had served as a director in a small bank in North Beach founded in 1893, and called Columbus Sav- ings and Loan, which was con- trolled by its founder John F. Fugazi (age 65). Fugazi, an unsuccessful miner, became an agent for White Star Lines in San Francisco, and later opened "Agenzia Fugazi" a travel agency, so successful it expanded operations to other cities across the country. As an accommodation to his customers, he often allowed them to store gold and silver for safekeeping or remittance to Italy in his safe, thus his "banking" ex- perience. When Giannini took Cuneo's seat on the Board of Directors, he noticed that the bank's capital was often used for investments favored by Fugazi's favorite prosperous clients. The credit needs of the larger community were given only perfunctory attention. A.P. Giannini soon began ex- pressing dissatisfaction with Fugazi's Columbus Savings man- agement and by early 1904, A.P. Giannini, James Cavagnaro (an at- torney), and another director re- signed from the Board of Directors after the disagreement had esca- lated. The Italian American was an- other small bank in North Beach. It had been opened in 1899 by Alfred Sbarboro (as in Swill Colony Wines). Sbarboro had emigrated from Genoa in the 1850s, taught el- ementary school and founded Ital- ian-Swiss Colony Wines. He had opened the Italian Amer- ican Bank because he wanted to make small loans to buyers who wanted to buy their own homes. Sbarboro also noticed Fugazi's practice of catering of clients who already had money. Sbarboro's modest success fur- ther convinced Giannini that there was a big segment of working-class citizens who had only the highest- priced corner "loan sharks" to turn to, as the big banks were indifferent to their credit needs. Motivated by memories of his mother's struggle, A.P. wanted to help other people when they needed it most and not just cater to clients who already had money. It was with this thought in mind that A.P. Gi- annini open his first bank, the Bank of Italy in 1904 and then with the same "helping the little guy" phi- losophy go on to acquire Bank America in 1928 and then spread it throughout the USA.

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