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Feature
Article
To
Work and Live:Brickyard
Laborers, Immigration and Assimilation in an Ohio Town, 1890-1925
By:
Martha I. Pallante, Youngstown
State University
Historians generally agree that at
the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth
centuries immigration to the United States, particularly that from
Southern and Eastern Europe, played an important role in reshaping
the fabric of America life. These
waves of humanity flooded American cities joining the laboring
masses, and in the process forever changed the character and the
composition of American cities. For the most part, historians and the others who have studied
this phenomenon have concentrated on the largest masses of that
movement--those who went to large urban areas or to the major
industrial complexes that acted as magnets for the many immigrant
groups.
This
study approaches the problem differently. It
focuses on a relatively small group of Italian immigrants from
the Italian province of Avelino, who arrived in Niles, Ohio
between 1890 and the mid 1920s when changes in immigrations
laws stemmed their flow. Their
origins did little to distinguish them from more mainstream
immigration experiences either to east coast or mid-western
metropolitan areas. These immigrants came from small Italian towns
and villages in the Mezzogiorno plagued by poverty and under
employment. The
village from which most of the earliest ventured was
Bagnoli-Irpino, a mountain hamlet located east of Naples.
Neither the place nor the people were in any way
extraordinary. It
was their experiences in the United States that were exceptional. In many ways, this particular group of Italian immigrants
differed significantly from their counterparts in larger, more
densely developed areas. They
placed a premium on the rapid acquisition of property, education,
and citizenship. Where Italian-Americans in most places found it difficult
to leave behind the traditional values of Southern Italy, this
group made significant changes in a single generation.
This particular
group of immigrants, their interactions in the work place, and
their adaptation and assimilation into their large community
constitutes an interesting case study. The
extraordinarily rich documentary records left behind by the
Niles Fire Brick Company (NFB)
provide a unique window into the work and lives of an Italian-American
community in a small mid-western town. The
experiences of workers at the NFB stand in contrast against those
in larger cities and at larger industrial complexes.1 The
evidence revealed by the records of the NFB strongly suggests that
the generalizations do not hold true for those that found themselves
operating within smaller communities and labored in family-owned,
industrial workplaces. At
least in one place -- Niles, Ohio -- and working for one company
-- The Niles Fire Brick -- Italian-Americans behaved differently
than their counterparts in major metropolitan areas. While
Italian immigrants employed by the NFB do more closely adhere to
models suggested by Daniel Nelson in Farm and Factory: Workers
in the Midwest , Gunther Peck in Reinventing Free Labor, and
Hal Barron in Mixed Harvests: The Second Great Transformation
in the Rural North, some discrepancies exist.2 Italians
in Niles tended to be less manipulated and to have greater free
agency.
The
company, for which these Italian immigrants labored, The Niles
Fire Brick Company, opened for business in 1872 on Langley Street
in Niles, Ohio, and manufactured high quality firebrick for the
steel and iron industries. This
firebrick, also known as refractory brick, lined furnaces used
to smelt iron and steel. John Rhys Thomas, a recent Welsh immigrant,
owned and operated the firm until his death in 1898 when his son,
Thomas E. Thomas replaced him.3 The
Thomases and their manufacturing concern filled an important niche
in the growing industrial community in the Mahoning Valley.
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