RE: Child Slavery in Sicily 1910 : "The Man Farthest Down"

On the H-ITAM {History-Italian American} Bulletin Board of the AIHA (
American Italian Historical Association) - a group of 300+ Academics
interested in Italian American History there appeared a Post by Tom Verso
of the University of Rochester that complained that Italian Americans had
permitted "nostalgia" to "sugar coat" their view of Italy. (see below the
full Post)

My response to Mr Verso was as Follows: Tom,

FIRST, Does ANYONE believe the MASS EMIGRATION from Italy (1880-1922) to
the US, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, etc was because things were
so WONDERFUL in Italy. Every writer that I have read has made it clear,
that even worse than the Inhumane Working Conditions, were the fact that
EVEN these AWFUL jobs were Not even available!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Unification of Italy in 1870 (Otherwise known as the Occupation of
Southern Italy by Northern Italy) appeared to substantially contribute to
the collapse of the South Italy Economy.

SECOND those Sulfur Mines were owned by the Nobility and Gentry in Northern
Italy.
In the US we called them Robber Barons. Today we call them Corporate
Oligarchies, or Plutocracts !

THREE, Child labor was utilized to varying extents through most of history,
but entered public dispute with the beginning of universal schooling, with
changes in working conditions during industrialization, and with the
emergence of the concepts of workers' and children's rights.Child labor is
very common, and can be factory work, mining, or quarrying, agriculture,
helping in the parents' business, having one's own small business (for
example selling food), or doing odd jobs. Some children work as guides for
tourists, sometimes combined with bringing in business for shops and
restaurants (where they may also work as waiters). Other children are
forced to do tedious and repetitive jobs such as assembling boxes,
polishing shoes, stocking a store's products, or cleaning. However, rather
than in factories and sweatshops, most child labor occurs in the informal
sector, "selling on the street, at work in agriculture or hidden away in
houses — far from the reach of official labor inspectors and from media
scrutiny."

According to the International Labour Organization, CURRENTLY there are an
estimated 218 million children aged 5 to 17 in child labor worldwide,
excluding child domestic labor. The most widely rejected forms of child
labor include the military use of children as well as child prostitution.

FOUR: How did these horrific working conditions for Children, differ much
from the Child Coal Miners, or Sweat Shop Factories (Triangle Fire) in the
US at the same time?????

SEE PHOTO: <<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor

FIVE: Isn't Ironic that the ability for the US to produce Sulfur at lower
prices (with Indentured Servants, Slave Labor, and Horrific Factory Towns)
eliminated those Horrific Jobs????

SIX: Specifically, you refer to a search for.... 'Campofranco' brings
forth scores of web sites celebrating the beauty and pageantry of the town.
Most interesting from the "reminiscent nostalgic recall" point of view is
the complete absence of any reference to or signs of the sulphur mining
days.

Tom, these are mainly Sites to encourage Tourism.Please point out to me
the various US Tourist sites that "tout" their broken Indian Treaties,
Indian Masacres,or the Inhumane Working or Living Conditions for
Immigrants, or the Plantations that treated their Black slaves the worst,
or Atrocities committed during the Civil War, etc. Where is your Academic
Impartiality????

SEVEN: Curious, you exerted no effort to determine and share with us what
WONDERFUL Northern Italian Noble Families who owned and PROFITED from those
businesses that Exploited Child Labor.

EIGHT: Are you a Vigorous Advocate against Man's Inhumanity to Man/Greed,
and therefore campaigning vs Republicans????

If you complain about other writers "sugar coating" history, then I ask you
to put yours in "context"

Regards,
Richard Annotico

PS. Was Booker T. an Italian American? The T. in Booker T. Washington was
Taliaferro. At that time Slaves often adopted the name of their Slave
Owner. Taliaferro was the surname of his Mothers Plantation owner. His
Father was a White Plantation Owner, although not specifically Taliaferro.
Booker T. was a "freedman" at the age of less than 9, and he then assummed
the name of his Black Step Father "Washington". Most of the Italian
"Taliaferro"s, anglesized their name to Tolliver.

Subject: Child Slavery in Sicily 1910
From: Tom Verso

CHILD SLAVERY IN SICILY: 1910
----
Abstract: "The cruelties to which the child slaves of Sicily have been
subjected are as bad as anything reported of the cruelties of Negro
slavery." Booker Taliaferro Washington: "The Man Farthest Down"
----
Anthony Tamburri of the Calandra Institute posits: "We need to take
[Italian American] culture more seriously. We simply cannot continue to
engage in a series of reminiscences that lead primarily to nostalgic
recall. Instead, we need to revisit our past, reclaim its pros and cons.we
need to figure out where we came from"

One "series of reminiscences" leading to "nostalgic recall" and needing
disengagement is the pastoral romanticism about the conditions in Italy at
the time of the diaspora. Sadly, in my opinion, some our most outstanding
writers and scholars such as Jerry Mangione, Ben Morreale, Donna Gabaccia,
etc. have been instrumental, by errors of omission, of perpetuating images
of Italy that lend themselves to "nostalgic recall." In an effort to
"revisit our past", "reclaim its pros and cons" and "figure out where we
came from" one can do no better than to read Booker Taliaferro Washington's
book "The Man Farthest Down."

In the year 1910 Booker TaliaferroWashington- former African American
slave and founder of Tuskegee Institute - traveled to Europe to acquaint
himself, in his words: "with the condition of the poorer and working
classes in Europe, particularly in those regions from which an
ever-increasing number of immigrants are coming to our country each year."
In as much as, at that time approximately a hundred thousand Italians were
arriving in New York every year, not surprisingly he traveled extensively
in Italy. He published his observations and conclusions in a book he
called: "The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in
Europe."

Mr. Washington presents an 'oh-so-not' romantic description of the horrific
reality of diasporic Italy, including the de facto enslavement of sulphur
mining children in Sicily... Mr. Washington devotes five and a half
chapters to describing life and labor in Italy and Sicily. In chapter XI,
"Child Labour and the Sulphur Mines", he makes one of his most cogent and
poignant observations: "Certainly there is no other country [i.e. Sicily]
where so much of the labour of all kinds, the skilled labour of the artisan
as well as the rough labour of digging and carrying on the streets and in
the mines, is performed by children, especially boys."

Mr. Washington recorded descriptions of child labor in Catania, Palermo and
Campofanco. In Catania Mr. Washington describes macaroni production, metal
tool making, mandolin fabrication, boat and tile manufacturing. His
description of a "little girl" metal worker and boy tile makers captures
the essence of the others.

He writes: "About nine o'clock Saturday night my attention was attracted to
a man engaged in some delicate sort of metal tool-making. What particularly
attracted my attention was a little girl, certainly not more than seven
years of age, who was busily engaged at this late hour in polishing and
sharpening the stamps the man used. I could but marvel at the patience and
the skill the child showed at her work. It was the first time in my life
that I had seen such a very little child at work, although I saw many
others in the days that followed."

"I came across a tile manufacturing plant where almost all of the actual
work was performed by the children, who ranged, I should say, from eight to
twelve years of age. The work of carrying the heavy clay, and piling it up
in the sun after it had been formed into tiles, was done by the younger
children. I am certain that if I had not seen them with my own eyes I
would never have believed that such very little children could carry such
heavy loads, or that they could work so systematically and steadily as they
were compelled to do in order to keep up the pace. I was so filled with
pity and at the same time with admiration for these boys."

In Palermo, Mr. Washington goes on to describe what reasonable may be
characterized as 'boy-mules' - he writes: "I remember, one day in Palermo,
seeing, for the first time in my life, boys, who were certainly not more
than fourteen years of age, engaged in carrying on their backs earth from a
cellar that was being excavated for a building. Men did the work of
digging, but the mere drudgery of carrying the earth from the bottom of the
excavation to the surface was performed by these boys. It was not simply
the fact that mere children were engaged in this heavy work which impressed
me. It was the slow, dragging steps, the fixed and unalterable expression
of weariness that showed in every line of their bodies."

But all the exploitation of children that Mr. Washington saw in Catania and
Palermo, as shocking as it may have been, was 'a day in the park' when
compared to the "carusi" of the Campfranco sulphur mines. "Carusi is the
name that the Italians give to those boys in the sulphur mines who carry
the crude ore up from the mines to the surface."

He describes the organization of the work in a sulphur mine: "The actual
work of digging the sulphur is performed by the miner, who is paid by the
amount of crude ore he succeeds in getting out. He, in his turn, has a boy,
sometimes two or three of them, to assist him in getting the ore out of the
mine to the smelter, where it is melted and refined. The caruso is
purchased by the miner from the parents."

Then he describes the process of enslavement: "The manner in which the
purchase is made is as follows: In Sicily, where the masses of the people
are so wretchedly poor in everything else, they are nevertheless unusually
rich in children, and, as often happens, the family that has the largest
number of mouths to fill has the least to put in them. It is from these
families that the carusi are recruited. The father who turns his child over
to a miner receives in return a sum of money in the form of a loan. The sum
usually amounts to from eight to thirty dollars, according to the age of
the boy, his strength and general usefulness. With the payment of this sum
the child is turned over absolutely to his master."

Mr. Washington a former slave himself concludes: "From this SLAVERY (emp.+)
there is no hope of freedom, because neither the parents nor the child will
ever have sufficient money to repay the original loan."

READ AND WEEP- Life of the Sicilian boy-slaves:

"Strange and terrible stories are told about the way in which these boy
slaves have been treated by their masters.one sees processions of
half-naked boys, their bodies bowed under the heavy weight of the loads
they carried, groaning and cursing as they made their way up out of the hot
and sulphurous holes in the earth, carrying the ore from the mine to the
smelter.

"The cruelties to which the child slaves have been subjected, as related by
those who have studied them, are as bad as anything that was ever reported
of the cruelties of Negro slavery. These boy slaves were frequently beaten
and pinched, in order to wring from their overburdened bodies the last drop
of strength they had in them. When beatings did not suffice, it was the
custom to singe the calves of their legs with lanterns to put them again on
their feet. If they sought to escape from this slavery in flight, they were
captured and beaten, sometimes even killed.

"As they climbed out of the hot and poisonous atmosphere of the mines their
bodies, naked to the waist and dripping with sweat, were chilled by the
cold draughts in the corridors leading out of the mines, and this sudden
transition was the frequent cause of pneumonia and tuberculosis.

"Children of six and seven years of age were employed at these crushing and
terrible tasks. Under the heavy burdens (averaging about forty pounds) they
were compelled to carry, they often became deformed, and the number of
cases of curvature of the spine and deformations of the bones of the chest
reported was very large. More than that, these children were frequently
made the victims of the lust and unnatural vices of their masters. It is
not surprising, therefore, that they early gained the appearance of gray
old men, and that it has become a common saying that a caruso rarely
reaches the age of twenty five."

"It seemed incredible to me that any one could live and work in such heat.
in a burrow, twisting and winding its way, but going constantly deeper and
deeper into the dark depths of the earth where the miners loosen the ore
from the walls of the seams in which it is found, and then it is carried up
out of these holes in sacks by the carusi."

"All the ore is carried on the backs of boys. In cases where the mine
descended to the depth of two, three, or four hundred feet, the task of
carrying these loads of ore to the surface is simply heartbreaking. I can
well understand that persons who have seen conditions at the worst should
speak of the children who have been condemned to this slavery as the most
unhappy creatures on earth.

Mr. Washington sums up: "I am not prepared just now to say to what extent I
believe in a physical hell in the next world, but a sulphur mine in Sicily
is about the nearest thing to hell that I expect to see in this life."

Today a Google search of 'Campofranco' brings forth scores of web sites
celebrating the beauty and pageantry of the town. Most interesting from
the "reminiscent nostalgic recall" point of view is the complete absence of
any reference to or signs of the sulphur mining days. Campfranco is seen
today in an idyllic setting nestled in a valley between the panoramic
mountains. How different is Mr. Washington's description the Campofranco
countryside:

He writes: "For many miles in every direction the vegetation has been
blasted by the poisonous smoke and vapours from the smelters, and the whole
country has a blotched and scrofulous appearance which is depressing to
look upon, particularly when one considers the amount of misery and the
number of human lives it has cost to create this condition. I have never in
my life seen any place that seemed to come so near meeting the description
of the "abomination of desolation" referred to in the Bible. There is even
a certain grandeur in the desolation of this country which looks as if the
curse of God rested upon it. I am not prepared just now to say to what
extent I believe in a physical hell in the next world, but a sulphur mine
in Sicily is about the nearest thing to hell that I expect to see in this
life."

I am sure that all the professors of Italian American studies nod their
heads in agreement with Prof. Tamburri admonitions to "revisit our past
[and] reclaim its pros and cons." I wonder how many require their students
to read "The Man Farthest Down"?