from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

Whyte /IN DEFENSE OF STREET CORNER SOCIETY 53

Nutsy and Frank were not members of what I called the

leadership subgroup, which consisted of Doc, Mike, Danny, and
Long John. I cannot fault her for omitting them in her interviews.
When she began her study, Doc and Danny had died. Mike had
moved to Hudson, New York, where he was a union organizer.
I had lost track of Long John. To get a fuller picture of the
reactions of the Nortons, it would be important to hear from
members of the top group.
I will deal later with my relations with Doc. In a letter to me
from Mike (Frank Luongo) in May 1944, he writes, "Bill, read
your book and thought it was swell and will look it over again
and if I have any comments to say you know I will but I think and
know you covered everything O.K." In another Luongo letter
dated March 22, 1944, he writes that Danny, who, according to
Doc, had already read the book, now wanted an autographed
copy-and offered to send me the money for it.
On reactions from another street corner man, on first reading
SCS, Sam Franco (Angelo Ralph Orlandella) wrote me on
March 9, 1944, "BILL, YOUR BOOK IS EXCELLENT!! ... Bill,
your preface is perfect and I want you to know that this book can
only bring a new light upon the people of 'Cornerville'. It can't
harm us, it's the greatest thing that ever happened to us. Why?
Because it's sincere, and you have proved that in my district,
we have human beings." Later, after lending SCS to some of his
friends and neighbors, he wrote me (March 6, 1948) on their
reactions: "Anthony Palladino (used to be my group leader when
I was young) read your book at least 3 times. I discussed it with
him in my house. He thought it was the only true picture of our
district or of any other parallel district, that he ever read." He
then describes the enthusiastic reactions of several others and
closes with this statement: "Yes, Bill, all they say when they
return it to me is wonderful, great, how did he ever do it, I never
read anything like it."
Boelen says she talked with five members of the Italian
Community Club: Chick Morelli, Angelo Cucci, Joe Gennusi,
Tom Scala, and Pat Russo. On pages 350-52, I have reported
my own feedback discussion with Chick. As I had expected, he
54 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY I APRIL 1992

was not happy with my treatment of him and the Club, but he
said, "Bill, everything you described about what we did is true
all right, but you should have pointed out that we were just young
then. That was a stage we were going through. I've changed a
lot since then" (p. 351}. Many years later, I did see him quoted
as attacking the "distortions" in the book.
Boelen talked with two settlement house workers, Clara G.
and Mr. Kendall (Frank Havey). As far as I can judge from her
account, the criticisms they raised involved mainly my failure to
deal with the family and family relations. When I talked with
Frank Havey about the book, I was pleased to find that he did
not challenge my thesis on "The Social Role of the Settlement
House."
I will deal later with Boelen's account of her interviews with
"the restaurant family."
The remaining sources she cites were all people who were
not characters in the book and who did not know me: Doc's sons,
Doc's brother and niece, George Ravello, Jr., Bill Foppiano, and
Dr. Merluzzi. The last two names I cannot place, since I knew
nobody with those names, nor were they pseudonyms I gave
them.
It is significant to note some of the main omissions from
Boelen's list of informants or participants in her feedback. While
she criticizes my treatment of racketeer influence, she did not
consult with any member of the Garnerville Sand A Club, my
most important source for tracking the linkages between corner
boys and racketeers. She interviewed Angelo Ralph Orlandella,
my fellow participant observer, who knew more about me and
my study than anyone except Doc (Ernest "Dean" Pecci). She
did not include him in her feedback list. In a Boelen letter that
Orlandella passed on to me, she wrote, "Attached is the rnfor-
mation I gathered from our talk. If you agree, will you kindly let
me know." She gave him a phone number to call. Orlandella
looked over the brief notes, decided at various points he did not
agree, and therefore did not bother to reply. He reports that
Boelen did call him later but at that time only checked with him
on information regarding his personal career, and Orlandella
 Whyte /IN DEFENSE OF STREET CORNER SOCIETY 55

volunteered nothing regarding his disagreements. He explained

to me that because I had referred her to him and she professed
to be a great admirer of SCS, he assumed she was a friend of
mine and did not wish to offend her! If Boelen had pursued the
feedback with Orland ella more vigorously, looking for disagree-
ments as well as agreements, he would have been able to
correct various factual errors and misrepresentations-but, in
that case, she might no longer have had the basis for an article.

ON THE SLUM ISSUE

The most serious charge is that I falsified my data. Boelen sup-

plies me with a motive for lying: i wanted to describe Garnerville
as a slum and had therefore "fictionalized events and situations
I had experienced or observed."
To support this charge, Boelen notes that at the University of
Chicago, I had "immersed myself in the sociological [slum]
literature" (p. 356). She neglects to report the rest of that
sentence and the one that follows. I went on to state "and I
became convinced that most of it was worthless and misleading.
It seemed to me it would detract from the task at hand if I were
required to clear away the garbage before getting into my story."
I report the problems I had getting SCS accepted as a
doctoral thesis (see pp. 356-57). Louis Wirth led the interroga-
tion, claiming I could not define a slum district without using the
concept of "social disorganization." I argued that overcrowding,
housing conditions, unemployment, and poverty were items that
could be concretely described and measured, whereas social
disorganization struck me as a term applied by middle-class
people to areas not organized in standard middle-class ways.
Far from slanting my treatment of Garnerville to conform to then
current sociological beliefs, I argued that the district was highly
organized in its own pattern. In effect, I was trying to get
sociologists to rethink the nature of life and organization in
low-income, congested urban districts. Some believe that SCS
served that purpose well.
56 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY I APRIL 1992

Boelen reports that Herbert Gans studied a neighboring

district, which he did not consider a slum. Neither did I. Boston's
West End had a higher social reputation than Garnerville (the
North End) and had superior housing conditions, lower unem-
ployment, and more people with middle-class occupations.
On the use of "gangs" for informal corner groups, I was only
using the term commonly used in the district at that time. It had
no implication regarding crime and delinquency. Furthermore,
in the larger society, the term was used in the same way. In the
1920s, Hollywood productions of "Our Gang Comedies" were
very popular, and they dealt with lively and sometimes mischie-
vous boys, without any implications of criminal behavior. There
was also a popular song whose refrain asked, "Whatever hap-
pened to that old gang of mine?"

WAS I AN INSIDER?

Boelen questions whether I was really an "insider" in Garnerville.

She notes that I sometimes had "the feeling that the people I
was interviewing would much rather have me get out of there
altogether" (p. 283). In the first place, on the street corners, I did
not do any formal interviews. I did indeed feel ill at ease during
my abortive study of housing conditions, which I soon aban-
doned. To be sure, I felt ill at ease, as anyone would, when I first
made contact with a new group, but that feeling was short lived.
I found I enjoyed life on the street corners so much that it was
a real emotional wrench to tear myself away from Garnerville.
Boelen also cites the case where I went looking for a corner
acquaintance and traced him to the building where he lived, only
to be told by everybody there (including his sister) that nobody
had ever heard of him. That also is taken out of context. In a
population of over 20,000 people, I could not be expected to be
known and trusted by everybody. I was well known on a number
of street corners, but Chichi lived in an area where I was not
known. I had known him primarily from a rented room where he
was running a crap game. His sisters and friends might well
 Whyte /IN DEFENSE OF STREET CORNER SOCIETY 57

have assumed that I had some connection with the law. When
Chichi heard my voice and stepped forward, that problem was
solved.
Whether I was an insider depends on how one defines the
term. I never tried to "pass" as a local Garnerville man or as an
Italian American-although one corner boy lost a bet on me
when he argued that my family name had originally been
Bianchi. My aim was to become accepted and trusted as some-
one who had a sincere interest in Garnerville and its people.
That I achieved such a level of acceptance and trust is best
demonstrated by the frank and open way in which so many
Garnerville people talked with me and involved me in their
activities. The fact that I could mobilize members of about 10
corner gangs for the protest march on City Hall also provides
evidence that I was trusted.

INFORMING AND FEEDING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY

Boelen makes two charges here: that I never informed com-

munity people that I was making a study and expected to publish
something from that study and that I did not feed back the results
of my study to the community.
In my first encounter with Doc (Ernest "Dean" Pecci), I ex-
plained as well as I then could what I hoped to write about
Garnerville. Pecci then commented, "I think you can change
things that way. Mostly that is the way things are changed, by
writing about them" (p. 293}. He then told me I could count on
him to explain my purposes to the Nortons and to his other local
contacts.
When I went toP. A. Santosuosso, editor of The Italian News,
for advice on my study, he interviewed me at length and then
volunteered to help me find a place to live. He guided me to the
Martinis (the Orlandis), the restaurantfamily, and told them I was
making a study of the district. While I lived there, we frequently
talked about the study. Besides, nearly every morning, they
58 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY I APRIL1992

could hear me in my room whacking out my notes on the

typewriter.
As Boelen notes, the leader of the Italian Community Club,
Chick Morelli, knew that I would be publishing something out of
my project. Could it be that fle was the only one smart enough
to figure that out? I wonder what others who knew me thought
I was doing, attached to Harvard University, and spending 3-1/2
years in Cornerville, just hanging around.
Boelen wrote, "The Nortons mentioned that they had fre-
quently seen Whyte scribbling notes on small pieces of paper,
but whenever they asked why he did so, apparently Whyte had
answered, 'Oh, nothing, just something I want to remember.'
Their recollection was that Whyte was somewhat reticent about
the matter."
That conversation is sheer fantasy. I never took notes in the
field, except when I was serving as secretary of the Italian
Community Club, with the responsibility of keeping the minutes,
and when I stepped into the toilet in the Cornerville S and A to
jot down notes on spatial positions of members. In fact, Chick
Morelli told Boelen that I did not take notes in the field. Further-
more, one of the most obvious lessons a participant observer
learns is not to give evasive answers to questions about what
he is doing, since that would lose him the trust of informants. I did
not tell the other Nortons what I was doing because they never
asked me, and I assumed they had been fully informed by Doc.
Boelen suggests that I "committed an ethical cardinal sin by
not taking the manuscript back to the field and checking the
contents with the subjects." This is an ethical principle invented
by Boelen. I know of nowhere in the literature where such a
principle has been stated, nor can I recall anthropological or
sociological community studies in which such community feed-
back has been attempted.
I suspect I did more feeding back than is usually attempted.
I will deal later with my relations with Ernest Pecci, my initial
guide and collaborator, but here just let me note that beside the
innumerable discussions we had over the years, he read the
first draft of SCS and we went over it together in great detail.
 Whyte /IN DEFENSE OF STREET CORNER SOCIETY 59

I worked closely with a second coparticipant observer, Angelo

Ralph Orlandella, and reviewed my data and conclusions with
him. My interest in feedback did not end when I left Garnerville
in 1940. On March 3, 1941, I sent Pecci an article I was
publishing, writing that it "represents some of the general con-
clusions that I am planning to work into my book. If I have made
mistakes in the article, it is too late to correct them, but at least
I can revise my conclusions for the book, if that is necessary."
Pecci did not respond to that letter. I assumed he was just not
a letter writer, but I did not let it go at that. On questions of
feedback on the book, before or after publication, or on articles
I sent them, I asked Frank Luongo (of the Nortons) to report
Pecci's views. In a letter from Frank (April 22, 1944), he wrote,
"Bill, I was talking to the Dean [Pecci] about your book and he
still feels about the book as he told you when he looked at it with
you up [at] your house" (for Pecci's reaction at that time, see p. 341).
Through visits back to Garnerville and correspondence with
friends there, I continued to ask and receive feedback on topics
concerning the book or information on other topics. For exam-
ple, when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago,
Louis Wirth was studying whether our involvement in World
War II had increased discrimination against Italian Americans.
I asked Frank Luongo for his own views and suggested he
consult Pecci. He did so and wrote me a long letter (February
24, 1942). My files up to 1948 contain 42 letters from Frank
Luongo and 25 from Angelo Ralph Orlandella as well as a
scattering of letters from half a dozen other Garnerville people.

ON MY RELATIONS WITH DOC

On page 341 , I state that Ernest Pecci and I went over the
draft of SCS, consisting then of five manuscripts: studies of the
Nortons, and the Italian Community Club, and "The Racketeer
in the Garnerville S. and A. Club," "The Social Structure of
Racketeering," and "Politics and the Social Structure." The
60 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY I APRIL 1992

manuscript submitted to the publisher contained no major

changes. The rewriting involved primarily condensation.
Boelen quotes Pecci's sons as saying that this feedback
could not possibly have happened. However, the Frank Luongo
letter cited earlier supports my account of the Pecci feedback.
I recognized in the feedback session with Pecci that he had
mixed feelings about the book. As I reported on page 341, "At
times, when I was dealing with him and his gang, he would smile
and say: 'This will embarrass me, but this is the way it was, so
go ahead with it.'"
As I expected, when the book came out, he undertook to
distance himself from it. Because he was known as having
worked closely with me, and I often quoted him making critical
remarks about members ofthe Nortons or the Italian Community
Club, those who read the book could well have been annoyed
with him. Besides, when the street corner beliefs are that
everyone is equal, it is not pleasant to read that you were a
low-ranking member of a group headed by Pecci. Nevertheless,
we remained on friendly terms until at least 1953, 10 years after
publication. At that time Kathleen and I visited him and his family
in Medford. In later years, when I tried to see him, he put me off,
and it was clear that he did not wish to see me.
My interpretation of the change is that when we were working
together and when it came to the attention of the academic
community what a contribution he was making, he enjoyed the
role he was playing. When his role in SCS became known in the
Boston area academic community, he was invited to speak with
classes at Harvard and Wellesley. At first, he enjoyed those
performances, but later he tired of them and wrote to ask that I
not identify him as "Doc." He believed in what we were doing
together and accepted what I wrote because he thought the
accounts of events were accurate. But later, when he was
feeling the embarrassment he had expected, he began to think
that his costs were too high. In my last meeting with Frank
Luongo, at the time of his terminal illness, I asked him to explain
my estrangement from Pecci. He told me that I should not take
it personally; since moving to Medford and establishing himself
 Whyte /IN DEFENSE OF STREET CORNER SOCIETY 61

as a successful executive in an electronics firm, Pecci had lost

contact with his Garnerville friends.
Doc's sons state that I had exploited their father. While I grant
that I got more from the relationship than he did, that was not
my intention. When he was running for political office, I lent him
money to support the campaign-and wrote off the debt when
that effort ended. Through connections I made at Harvard, I got
him a job interview at the telephone company. (Because they
only had linemen's jobs open, his physical handicap disqualified
him.) When Mr. Kendall (Frank Havey) was starting the store-
front recreation center program, I persuaded him to hire Pecci
as director of one of the centers. He did an outstanding job, but
unfortunately, funding for the program ran out after 6 months.
After I had left Cornerville, I learned that Havey had an opening
on his regular staff for a boys' worker. I phoned to urge him to
appoint Pecci. I followed this up with two letters to Havey (May
11, 1941 ), one for him personally and one recommending Pecci
to his board of directors. Apparently the board was not prepared
to appoint a high school dropout, no matter what abilities he had
already demonstrated working with boys. After that, Pecci needed
no help from me or anyone else. In the wartime labor shortage,
he got a job, and his own abilities launched him on a successful
career.

ON MY RELATIONS WITH THE RESTAURANT FAMILY

Boelen claims that I falsified my account of the "Martini"

(Orlandi) family so as to make them appear poorer than they
actually were; that, instead, Papa was a well-to-do man in a
large restaurant "frequented by famous singers and compos-
ers," and their home had two bathrooms, not the one toilet I had
reported. She also reported that they took me in, as a poor
student, without charging me rent.
When I lived with the Orlandis, they rented the second and
third floor of a building on 7 Parmenter Street. The restaurant
62 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY I APRIL 1992

was on the second floor; their living quarters were on the third
floor.
My field notes taken at a time when I was looking for a room
(February 6 and 8, 1937) report these conversations with Averaldo
Orlandi. Avy says, "It's not luxurious, you understand. If we had
anything better, we would give it to you .... There is no bath,
you know." I asked Avy if the toilet next to the restaurant was
just for customers or also for the family. He replied, "That is the
only one." At the time, including me, there were nine people for
that one toilet shared with the restaurant.
On establishing the rent, I offered $15 per month. "He looked
solemn for a moment, and I thought he was going to protest the
smallness of the amount. Then he said, '$15 a month is too
much. $12 is enough.'"
My notes tell me that in Italy, Papa had owned property but
had suffered financial reverses, which led to his emigration. In
Boston, he went into partnership with another Italian American
who spoke English and who took over handling the funds for a
restaurant in a fashionable area of Boston. That was probably
where the Orland is encountered Caruso and other singers and
performers. Then the partner had put the restaurant funds into
stock market speculation; they were subsequently wiped out in
the stock market crash.
When I was with them, they had a small restaurant with about
40 or 50 capacity, and I never saw or heard of any well-known
people eating at their establishment on 7 Parmenter Street.
Later, they did try to expand, taking over a place a block away
that may well have had 160 seats.
Because the Orlandis had a small business that supported
Papa, Mama, and Avy, they were indeed more affluent than the
average in that district. They were hard-working people, who
provided excellent food and service. I was happy to be consid-
ered part of their family, and it pains me to think that I would
misrepresent them for any purposes.
On my relations with the Orland is (as also in Boelen's critique
of my discussion of racketeers and street corner behavior),
Boelen gets mixed up because she fails to recognize the changes
 Whyte I IN DEFENSE OF STREET CORNER SOCIETY 63

that had taken place in Garnerville between the depression

years of the 1930s and the more prosperous times of the 1970s
and 1980s.

THE ROLE OF RACKETEERS

On racketeers, Boelen claims that my interpretations are

based on "rumors and hearsay." She supports this charge by
stating, "I then showed them [the Nortons] the charts on pages
184, 188, and 222 of SCS where it was stated that members of
the racket organization participated or headed Norton group
activities or their clubs. They looked puzzled and denied that
there was ever any contact with the racketeers."
Of course, they looked puzzled. The charts on pages 184 and
188 represent the structure of the Garnerville S and A Club, and
the chart on page 222 depicts the structure of the Ravello political
organization for his congressional campaign! The charts have
nothing to do with the Nortons, and they would not have been
familiar with either the Club or the Ravello campaign organization.
Boelen seems to be saying that because I showed a strong
linkage between one corner boys' club and a racketeer, I was
trying to prove that racketeers dominated street corner life and
local politics. SCS never mentions any contact between the
Nortons and the racket organization. I made no claim that
racketeers were involved with every Garnerville group. There
were many individuals and groups who avoided such ties.
I have acknowledged that I did not penetrate the racket
organization as deeply as I had hoped, but I did know "Tony
Cataldo," a "50% man"-middle management in the racket
organization-and I got to know his brother (who was close to
his business) even better. I heard plenty of "rumors and hearsay"
on the street corners, but I wanted to find concrete ways of
assessing their local influence. I found that opportunity with the
Garnerville S and A Club. That case clearly shows how, at some
critical points, Tony influenced Club decisions, although he had
strong opposition.
64 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY I APRIL 1992

Regarding the influence of racketeers in politics, it was widely

believed at the time that several prominent local politicians were
closely linked to the racket organization. This was not believed
regarding State Senator George Ravello. Nevertheless, during
Ravello's congressional campaign, his wife, Carrie Ravello, said
to me, "Let's not kid ourselves, Bill; when we want to win, we go
to the racketeers-all of us" (p. 205}. Because she was inti-
mately involved in every aspect of the campaign, I did not regard
that statement as "rumor or hearsay." That is one piece of
evidence supporting the Ravello campaign chart on page 222.
It would be quite natural these days for Garnerville people to
play down the influence of racketeers in the 1930s. Apart from
the urge to distance themselves from disreputable activities,
there had been a major change in the social and economic
climate. In the 1930s, the racketeers were almost the only men
highly visible on the street corners who had money as well as
political influence. The numbers racket still goes on, but in the
1970s and 1980s, Garnerville unemployment was far below
1930s levels, and many more people had "good jobs," so the
financial leverage and local influence of the racketeers would
be substantially reduced.

ON ITALIAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Boelen states that Italian was the language used on the street
corner in the late 1930s. In all of my contacts with corner groups,
I never heard any Italian spoken, except for an occasional swear
word.
Boelen faults me for not recognizing that the custom of young
men hanging on street corners was brought over from Italy.
I never did consider that possibility. I knew that before the
Italians moved into Garnerville, Irish young men had been
hanging out on the corners, and in other large cities, Hispanic
and Afro-American young men are hanging out on street cor-
ners. Did those customs come here from Ireland, Puerto Rico,
Mexico, or Africa?
 Whyte /IN DEFENSE OF STREET CORNER SOCIETY 65

She underestimates my ability to speak Italian and my knowl-

edge of and interest in Italian culture. In a letter dated March 13,
1937 to a college friend, I describe learning Italian by the
Linguaphone method. Of the 30 lessons in the course,
I managed to get through the 16th by the time I got here [with
the Orlandis] early in February. When I came here, I found that
I could say simple sentences, read the newspaper, and under-
stand simple sentences addressed at me. I talk a little Italian with
Papa Orlandi just about every evening. We have now reached
the point where we can discuss religion, politics, war, and love
at some length, and I am beginning to follow conversation that
is not addressed at me. They say that my pronunciation is
genuinely Italian.

That letter was written a little over a month after I moved in

with the Orlandis. Shortly thereafter, I finished the Linguaphone
course. Following that letter, I had another 14 months before
getting married. During most of that period, besides the frequent
conversations with Papa, I joined the family for Sunday dinner,
where the conversation was in Italian. My fluency had to improve
with such constant practice.
I continued my reading in Italian, concentrating on the works
of a remarkable Sicilian physician, Giuseppe Pitre. Between
1889 and 1913 (the period within which many Garnerville Sicil-
ians had immigrated), he published 25 volumes on his Biblioteca
delle Tradizioni Populare Siciliano on family life, religious customs,
and folklore in Sicily. Based primarily on reading three of those
volumes, I wrote an article on "Sicilian Peasant Society," which
was published in American Anthropologist (January-March 1944).
To be sure, I did not make much use of Italian in my fieldwork,
but there were occasions when it came in handy. Once when I
was on the corner with the Nortons, someone came by passing
out a handbill in Italian. They could not make it out and asked
me to translate for them. (I assume most of them did talk to the
older generation in the dialect of their area of origin, but some
dialects are rather remote from authentic Italian.) Then, when
we were getting organized for the march on City Hall, we needed
someone to go through some of the streets to announce our
66 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY I APRIL 1992

plans to the older generation. Because none of the corner boys

I was then with had enough confidence in his Italian, I had to
pick up the bullhorn and make the announcement myself.
When I was exploring the light that the saints' day festas might
throw on peasant conceptions on the relationship between the
sacred and the social structure, I interviewed one of the old-
timers involved in planning the ceremony honoring the saint in
his home town. That interview was done in Italian. Readers will
find his interview (see pp. 270-71) rather long and complex.
My Cornerville fieldwork, plus my library research on Italian
culture, led to a Harvard appointment in 1943. Sociologist
Talcott Parsons and anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn offered me
a job teaching in the program for officers in training to take over
military government following the American landing in Italy. The
job was to involve half-time research on Italian culture and so-
ciety. Besides further library research, this would have brought
me back to Cornerville interviewing, but this time concentrating
on the older generation and family life.
That job was aborted when the polio virus I had contracted in
Oklahoma caught up to me in Boston. In fact, I was in my old
room with the Orlandis, planning to use that base as I looked
for housing for my family. Avy Orlandi got the doctor for me, and
he and a friend then got me to the hospital. When I was ready
to go back to work 11 months later, the Harvard job no longer
existed.

ON THE FAMILY AND FAMILY RELATIONS

In SCS, I wrote that "it seemed inconceivable that one could

write a study of Cornerville without discussing the family" (p. 324).
I did indeed have field notes on the family, but I made no
systematic study of family relations. I therefore decided I would
have to confine my book to the areas where I had substantial
and systematic data: corner boys, college boys, the settlement
houses, and racketeers and politicians. SCS can legitimately be
faulted for not being a complete community study-as I have
 Whyte /IN DEFENSE OF STREET CORNER SOCIETY 67

acknowledged. Still, one researcher can hardly cover every

significant aspect of life in a community of over 20,000 in 3-1/2
years of field work. Furthermore, I wonder whether devoting
more attention to the family would have affected the analyses I
made of those organizations I did study.

MISCELLANEOUS ERRORS AND MISINTERPRETATIONS

Beyond the points already noted, I found a number of other

errors and misinterpretations, which although they have no
direct bearing on the main themes of her critique, reflect on the
quality of Boelen's scholarship.
I called Boston "Eastern City." Boelen calls it "Easter City."
The first time I saw that, I assumed it was a typographical error.
On the contrary, it remains "Easter City" all five times it appears
in her manuscript.
She says that for one Sunday dinner with the Orland is, I had
not only brought my wife but my in-laws "who seemed to impress
them most since they did not speak English." Clarence King and
Alice Seabrook King were native speakers of English, descen-
dants of generations of English speakers. It would not have
been difficult for Boelen to correct that obvious error. On page
320, SCS reports my marriage to Kathleen King. That name
could hardly be foreign-unless it were Irish or English.
Boelen claims I reported that "the racketeers paid for the
charter of the club" (p. 160). SCS describes discussions in the
Garnerville S and A club regarding getting a charter, but the idea
was abandoned.
Boelen does not understand the numbers racket. She illus-
trates this in her description by explaining how the payoff on a
5-cent bet would be distributed among the bettor, the bookie,
and the police. She makes no allowance for the profit to the
racket organization. They were hardly running a not-for-profit
business. Above the bookie (who, as I recall, got about 15% of
the profits), was the middleman to whom he turned in his betting
slips. That man got 50% of the profits and turned in his bets to
68 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY I APRIL 1992

"the office"-top management, which collected the remainder

of the profits from innumerable 50% men.
Boelen does not understand what is meant by "repeating" in
elections. She gives the impression that most "cheating" takes
place by "adding names of deceased persons or fictitious names
to the voting list." Who votes for the dead and imaginary people?
Repeaters, of course.

CONCLUSION

How do we evaluate reports of events written up shortly after

the observations versus general statements based on the rec-
ollections of selected informants 30 to 40 years later? Through-
out her critique, Boelen builds her case on generalizations made
by informants who, in some cases, were not even involved in
the events I described. Where she does challenge me on
specific points, I have been able to cite evidence from field notes
or correspondence to reject her claims. What her article does
demonstrate is that in the years since 1940, a good deal of
folklore has grown up in Garnerville regarding Street Corner
Society.
Boelen faults me for leaning on my own value and belief
system and "by not voicing the view of the subject population."
It would be hard to find a book that devoted such a large
proportion of the text to quotations from people in the community
studied.

WILLIAM FOOTE WHYTE has been president of the American Sociological Associa-
tion, the Industrial Relations Research Association, and the Society for Applied Anthro-
pology. Street Corner Society is his best known book. His most recent books are Social
Theory for Action: How Individuals and Organizations Learn to Change and Making
Mondragon: The Growth and Dynamics of the Worker Cooperative Complex (rev. ed.,
coauthored by Kathleen King Whyte). He is now Professor Emeritus and Research
Director of Programs for Employment and Workplace Systems in Cornell University's
School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the
University of Chicago.