It is not easy to reconstruct an exact account of Anna's finances. The shop records indicate that Anna maintained personal funds not included in the shop records, from which she occasionally made loans to the business. She also regularly borrowed sums from her family and two banks to even out the shop's cash flow. Anna's sister Eugenia made several substantial loans, and her brother Frank advanced the business $1,000 [$9,500 in 1999 dollars] on at least one occasion. In addition to family sources, Anna secured her business financing and mortgages from the Columbus Exchange Trust Company and the Union Trust. In 1931, Anna borrowed $3,345 [$32,500] for A. &L. Tirocchi. Two years later she notes further loans amounting to $2,425 [$28,800]. Drafts of income-tax statements in the 1920s, when the shop's gross sales were as high as $18,000 [$174,353] and rents and dividends would add nearly $5,000 [$42,322] more income, indicate that after expenses were subtracted, the bottom line was not large. She had ongoing interest payments on mortgages and business loans, as well as substantial incurred costs for merchandise and materials for the shop. The Broadway, Tobey, and Bainbridge properties were often mortgaged, and there was a heavy loan against the Park Avenue gas station in Cranston. Anna also may have taken out loans against the Narragansett house. Assuming the interest on her loans to have averaged six percent, her reported annual interest payments indicate that she was carrying debts that varied between $22,000 and $34,683 [$213,097 and $369,510]. As the effects of the Depression and the changing nature of the women's clothing industry eroded her business in the 1930s, she tried unsuccessfully to sell her vacation property, although she wrote to her real estate agent that she "never liked a home so well" and regretted that her current poor health prevented her from enjoying the cottage and the Narragansett community.(25)

INSERT TABLE OF Shop Income and Expenses here

The table above summarizes the data Anna used in completing some of her federal income tax returns. Several generalizations may be drawn. She did not keep systematic accounts and financial records that would allow her readily to summarize and monitor the performance of her various business activities. Erratic reporting of certain categories of expenses suggests that she concentrated on the assembly of sufficient "expenses" to eliminate any tax liability, rather than the production of a full accounting of her business and properties.(26) The sporadic notation of rental income probably results from her use of substantial depreciation figures to produce paper losses from her real-estate operations. The figures for the 1920s are those of rents received before any deductions. The absence of rents listed during the 1930s may have resulted from offsetting deductions that also went unreported. In 1943, she tallied $2,997 [$29,786] in rental income. Collections for December of that year produced $487. Annualized, these figures produce the yearly sum of $5,844 [$58,081], a number close to the amount of annual rents appearing on an undated calculation in the records for that time period. Unnoted deductions for depreciation, real estate taxes, and maintenance may account for the lower reported figure.