Italian Voices: Making Minnesota Our Home

Chapter 2. Bread and Work

· 2 · Bread and Work La ricchezza è frutto di lavoro. Riches are the fruit of work. Italian proverb Italians in Minnesota, like migrants throughout history, spent the prime years of their lives engaged in the ongoing struggle for subsistence and identity in a strange new culture. As workers from rural backgrounds, often with little formal education and little or no ability to speak English, Italian migrants were not in the most effective position to bargain with prospective employers. Because they usually entered the workforce as unskilled laborers, immigrants usually had to accept the most dangerous and demeaning jobs. Yet Italian immigrant laborers took great pride in their work, deriving dignity and satisfaction from performing even the dirtiest, most difficult jobs well. Flexibility was essential: immigrant men typically changed jobs at least five times, and professions at least three times, during their working lives. Laborers needed to adjust quickly—if at times reluctantly —to develop the new skills that would enable them to survive in an ever-changing labor market. While railroad jobs or mining work occupied the majority of Minnesota’s Italian men, a number held manual labor jobs in other sectors of the economy. Still others found work in the trades, as barbers, knife grinders, bakers, and accordion players. When it came to locating work opportunities, men often relied on suggestions from relatives or friends. In the case of Enrico 12 Bread and Work 13 DeBernardi, an emigrant from the northern Italian town of Gallarate , a few “choice” words in English went a long way in getting him a job. As his daughter Antoinette Thompson explained, DeBernardi found work in Ely’s Chandler Mine on the Vermilion Range through the help of his brother-in-law, who taught DeBernardi his first “long” English phrase, “How’s a chance for a job?” Thanks to practicing this phrase over and over again, DeBernardi was at the peak of his confidence when he met the foreman. Because he could recite this phrase without stammering, and he did not hesitate when approaching the foreman, he managed to land a job.1 The railroads in St. Paul, Duluth, and Dilworth attracted many workers like Sam Frisco. Railroad workers often worked ten hours a day for as little as fifteen cents an hour; as Frisco commented acerbically , “You never got nothing that time I worked.” Poor wages often meant even poorer living conditions. Boxcars that had been reItalian section gang from St. Paul, 1913 Bread and Work 14 tired from service as unfit to carry freight were considered adequate living quarters for the workers. Their bedding was the straw that covered the filthy boards of the boxcar floors, and they warded off the cold with vermin-infested old coats and horse blankets. For lunch they were served water and bread, for which they paid nine cents whether the bread was too moldy to eat or not. The padrone (bosses) considered the workers appropriate targets of verbal and physical abuse, with or without provocation. The immigrants were willing to do the heaviest, dirtiest, and most poorly paid jobs, yet this earned for them both the resentment of Americans and the disdain of employers . A railroad official blithely summed up the attitude of the Great Northern Railway in 907: “White men coming to Duluth will not work. Dagoes only men who will work. Send more dagoes and shut off white men.”2 The cracks in the rickety boxcars where railroad workers lived at least provided ventilation. The stark holes in the ground where miners worked offered no such advantage. Nonetheless, some Italian migrants found mining work, which paid around three dollars a day in 96, more attractive than railroad jobs. But mining was one of the most hazardous jobs in the world in the early 900s. The stagnant air was full of choking iron dust, and the dangers of death from cave-ins, premature explosions, and railroad accidents were ever-present because mine officials often ignored what minimal safety precautions existed at the time. “My father died in a cave-in because there was a mistake by the engineer,” recalled Sam Aluni. “He run him [assigned him a work area] and there was a drift [mined tunnel] underneath. That’s where the miner can never guard.”3 A severe injury could be a more frightening prospect than death, for an injury could prevent the miner from supporting his family. Since...