Emigration from Friuli Venezia Giulia Towards the United States
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
EMIGRATION FROM FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA TOWARDS THE UNITED STATES Javier Grossuti, University of Trieste 1. The “new” migratory flows towards the United States and Italian emigration Before the 1890s, most of the Europeans who reached the United States were British, Irish, German and Scandinavian. Each group had different working skills and came to occupy a different position in the hierarchy of the job market that distinguished the first ethnic groups of emigrants. British and Germans normally were the most qualified workers, and gradually tended towards specialized positions in the industrial sector. On the other hand, Irish and Scandinavians were usually employed as general unskilled labourers. Around the beginning of the 1890s, the areas from which European emigration originated shifted towards the east and south. These new migration flows were mainly composed by Slavs, Jews and Italians. In 1900 emigrants from the United Kingdom only accounted for 2.8% of the entire European flow, while emigrants from Ireland, Germany and Scandinavian countries were 8%, 4.1% and 7% respectively. In the same years, Italians, AustroHungarian and Russian and Polish Jews reached 22.3%, 25.6% and 20.2% respectively. The main features of Italian emigration towards the United States were already clear in the 1880s. Most emigrants reaching the United States were from Southern Italy and arrived in the US through the socalled padrone system. They represented a wide range of professions, mostly unqualified, and usually returned home after one or more seasons in the United States The padroni (owners) imported cheap workforce and took advantage of their knowledge of English and of the local job market conditions, controlling the supply of Italian labour in the construction and railway sectors. In the last quarter of the 19 th century the United States welcomed about 800,000 Italians. In the first fifteen years of the 20 th century Italian emigration towards the US reached impressive numbers: more than three million Italians entered the country. The regions of southern Italy contributed most to this flow, in particular Campania, Calabria, Basilicata, Abruzzo, Molise and Sicily. Certain areas of the Tuscan Apennines and of northern Italy, mostly Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto and especially Friuli, were also affected by the phenomenon. In 1902, the Industrial Commission – a commission of enquiry created by the US Congress in order to “investigate questions pertaining to immigration, to labour, to agriculture, to manufacturing, and to business, and to report to the Congress and to suggest such legislation as it may deem best upon these subjects” – included Udine and Friuli as “collecting points” and “contributing districts” for Italian emigration towards the United States. The route followed by emigrants particularly from Friuli, Veneto, the area around Cadore and Treviso, led them from Udine to New York through the railway stations of Milan, Chiasso, Basel, Paris and the French ports of Le Havre and Cherbourg. In the same years, this route was also followed by Friulians heading for Canada 1. Between the 19 th and 20 th centuries, more than two thirds of Italian immigrants were registered by American authorities as labourers or peons. A minority, less than 20%, which actually amounted to over 300,000 people, worked as craftsmen. Overcoming their employers’ prejudices and sometimes the opposition of the trade unions, this minority of qualified immigrants was able to work their original trades: tailors, barbers, cobblers, stonecutters, stonemasons, plasterers, cement mixers, mosaic and terrazzo workers. However, in 1900 about half of Italian emigrants were still employed as peons, a percentage that remained unchanged until the First World War 2 . As many experts pointed out, Italians were excluded from the best paid jobs not only because of their lack of qualifications or their limited knowledge of English, 1 F. MICELLI, Stagioni, luoghi e parole: le lettere di un emigrante temporaneo (1905-1915), in A. D’AGOSTIN - J. GROSSUTTI (edited by), Ti ho spedito Lire cento. Le stagioni di Luigi Piccoli, emigrante friulano. Lettere famigliari (1905-1915), Pordenone, Municipality of CodroipoERMI, 1997, pages 269-326. 2 R. J. VECOLI, The Italian Immigrants in the United States Labor Movement from 1880 to 1929, in B. Bezza (edited by), Gli italiani fuori d’Italia. Gli emigrati italiani nei movimenti operai dei paesi d’adozione (1880-1940), Milan. Franco Angeli Editore, 1983, pages 257-306. but also because of “the racial prejudice which is intense among the native population”. In fact, the (negative) stereotype of Italian people was so embedded in American society that even the most educated and qualified emigrants were forced to take “the pick and shovel” 3 . This was not the situation of mosaic and terrazzo workers from Friuli: as highly specialized labourers, well paid and with no competition, they represented the upper class of the labour force. The most careful experts of Italian emigration in the United States were well aware of the presence of such a group within the biggest construction industry, as Robert F. Foster pointed out: From Venetia and Tuscany [respectively], for example, workers in mosaics and stucco have brought a special training, a traditional aptitude of which Americans have been glad to avail themselves […] It is common to find them at work on the most exacting tasks, insuring the neatness of appearance, or the beauty, of the most ambitious public and private structures 4. Between the 1880s and the 1890s the number of Italian emigrants working in the construction sector reached very high percentages. In 1883, according to estimates of the American trade unions, 75% of construction workers were Irish, 15% Italian and the remaining 10% was formed by locals or people from other countries. Ten years later, in 1893, these figures had been completely reversed: Italians formed three quarters of the total and, progressively, took on more qualified positions 5. 2. Miners, mosaic and terrazzo workers, stonemasons and stonecutters from Friuli in the United States, between the 19 th and 20 th centuries For people from the valleys and mountains in Friuli, especially from the Western areas, the United States only became a common destination in the last ten years of the 19 th century, and increasingly so in the first decade of the 20 th century 6 Miners 3 3 R. VECOLI, Negli Stati Uniti, in P. BEVILACQUA, A. DE CLEMENTI, E. FRANZINA (edited by), Storia dell’Emigrazione Italiana. Arrivi , Rome, Donzelli Editore, 2002, page 62. 4 R. F. FOERSTER, The Italian Emigration of Our Times, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1924, page 352 ; see also R. J. VECOLI, Chicago’s Italians prior to World War I. A Study of their Social and Economic Adjustment , Ph.D dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1962. 5 E. FENTON, Immigrants and Unions. A case study. Italians and Americans Labor, 18701920, New York, Arno Press, 1957, page 378. 6 J. ZUCCHI, Immigrant Friulians in North America , in Italian Immigrants in Rural and Small Town America , Essays from the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the American Italian Historical Association held at the Landmark Center St. from the Cellina and Corvera valleys worked in Silverton (Colorado), in Pennsylvania, in Illinois, in Ohio, in Michigan ; stonemasons, builders, stonecutters from the Meduna, Tramontina, Cosa, Corvera, Pesarina and Cleulis valleys worked in New York, in Philadelphia, in Detroit ; they were even employed in the reconstruction of San Francisco after the earthquake of 1906 7. For miners, emigration had a goal and a deadline: the money they were able to save with a few years of hard work, however, could never compensate for all the lives lost due to silicosis. Between the end of the 19 th century and the beginning of the 20 th century, Frisanco, Poffabro and Casasola in the Colvera valley, which all together had a population of 2,469 persons in 1901, saw 112 of their residents die in the silver mines of Colorado 8. However, the hardships withstood by Italian miners did not go unnoticed: during the miners’ strike in 1903– 1904, the Friulian Olinto Marcolina denounced the injustices and the arbitrary behaviour of the federal and national police forces against fellow Italian miners. Marcolina, secretary of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) of Williamsburg (Colorado), also fought his battle through the pages of the magazine “Il Lavoratore Italiano” 9. Olinto Marcolina reached the United States in 1896, at the age of 22, travelling with fellow Italians Luigi Marcolina, headed for New York, and Pietro Giacomelli “Stel” and Luigi and Basilio Roman “del Prete”, headed for Silverton. Before he reached Silverton, Olinto Marcolina, registered as a stonemason by the American Immigration Authorities of Ellis Island, spent some time in New York. Other fellow countrymen from Poffabro took instead the opposite route, Paul Minnesota October 30-31 1981, edited by R. J. VECOLI, New York, The American Italian Historical Association, 1987, page 63 ; E. FRANZINA, Il Friuli e l’America. Donne, società, emigrazione fra ‘800 e ‘900, in Tina Modotti. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, edited by the Comitato Tina Modotti, Udine, Arti Grafiche Friulane, 1995, pages 79-95. 7 M. ROMAN ROS – A. PELLEGRINI MAZZOLI – A. COLUSSI, La Valle del Colvera nella storia e nella leggenda, Maniago, Tipografia Mazzoli, 1973, pages 94-95 ; N. CANTARUTTI, Oh, ce gran biela vintura!... Narrativa di tradizione orale tra Meduna e Mujé, Udine, Centre