Oral Histories of 1919

Where was your family when the labor battles of 1919  were played out? Do you have a favorite family story? If you email us with a short, around 200-300 word, story related to the region and the events described here, and we find it fits our objectives, we will post it on this homepage.  Be sure to include all names, country of origin, and rich details. If we select it and you have a picture, we will try to include it too.

  Here are a few to get your started. 


 
The Parigi family goes home
      My grandfather, Nazzareno Parigi (see 1921 passport photo), was one of the "foreigners" who picked up his family and returned to Italy during this turbulent time. He was not an aggressive man, and the violence of the strikes, the threats of communism, and the lack of steady work at Pittsburgh Steel Company in Monessen, where he was employed in the labor gang, were overwhelming events. I am sure that Prohibition also played a major role in his decision to return to Italy for Nonno (meaning grandfather in Italian) made and enjoyed good wine.  The quality of his life was certainly diminished in "the land of the free" when Prohibition became law and sugar (he loved sweets, too) was rationed.  There was another reason: the Pittsburgh Steel Company had given him a gun for protection. My grandfather owed his job to his friend and cousin Menco Bindi. Bindi had come to Monessen first. My grandfather followed, lived in his home, and worked beside him in the mill. Bindi was a company man and when the strike came, Nonno was in a dilemma. Not for long as his loyalty to his friend was stronger than his loyalty to strangers. When Menco crossed the picket line, Nonno followed. The gun was the last straw. Not a stranger to hunting in Italy where his home town was surrounded by marshes filled with game birds in the autumn, he could not bring himself to raise a gun against a man.
  Nonno collected his wife and his daughter, Elizabeth (my mother-- see 1921 passport photo for both), and left America in 1920 to return to Tuscany where his family were overseers on one of the small estates. But there were other things about America that proved too important to leave behind. Among them was my grandmother's lifestyle. In Italy she was dominated by the extended family and was no longer the queen of her own home. She enjoyed her independence in America (eventually she became a suffragette and marched for women's rights).
     In less than two years they applied to return to the United States. But the immigration quotas has changed and they were no longer welcome. Fortunately, my mother had been born in the United States one month after my grandmother, Carolina Paggini Parigi, arrived (that's another story). So, she was an American citizen and Nonno and Nonna were permitted to return as her parents. Unlike their original journey where they traveled separately and in steerage, they traveled back  to the United States on the maiden voyage of the Italian liner Julius Caesar. Nonna was a poor sea traveler and they wanted to get back in a hurry, so they ended up on the first class deck. It was a voyage fit for a king and Nonno talked about it all his life.

Cassandra Vivian
Monessen, Pennsylvania
 
 

A turn around is not fair play
    When Giovanni Mele of Sala Di Serino near Naples in the Campagna arrived at Ellis Island in New York in 1900, he knew he was headed for southwestern Pennsylvania. What he did not know was that he was to spend all of his life working in the Oliver mine in the Oliver coal patch just outside of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Giovanni married Caterina Solopago in Sala Di Serino, left her behind as he headed for America and sent for her in 1902. They had eleven children: Vito, Anna, Frank, Sebato, Maria Carmella, Catherine Mary, Frances, Anthony, John, Pasquale, and Nicholas. This story is about their son Sebato, whom they all called Sam.

    From childhood, Sam was a leader. He organized the children as they played street games. His brother, Vito, went into the mine at the age of 4 where he worked beside his father picking up the loose coal and putting it in the wagon. Miners were paid by the wagon load in those days and the more wagons one carted out of the mine, the more money in the pocket and food on the table. Little hands made a difference. Sam was not far behind him.
 
    By the time Sam reached maturity the mine was sapping his manhood. He became an agitator and then a leader of the men struggling to create a Union in the patches. The Oliver Mines, owned by the Scotch-Irish Ohioian, W. J. Rainey, had been a hot spot of rebellion for a long time. In fact, in 1894, the largest coal strike in America to that point, began in Oliver. Rainey had not paid his workers in eleven weeks. The Oliver men laid down their tools and walked on April 1. By mid-April, 30 mines and 5,000 men were out on strike. The problem was, the English speaking miners did not know or trust the "foreigners." The "foreigners" spoke so many languages they did not understand each other. Nor did they know how to strike. They only knew how to roam the countryside lashing out at everyone. They were poorly organized, perfect victims for greedy industrialists. By May, the  Oliver families were evicted from the company housing, their belongings dumped outside the gate of the patch.

    The Meles were not part of the 1894 strike. In fact, Giovanni may have been one of the workers brought into the Klondike, the region around the Connellsville Coal Seam, to break the strikes. He arrives about the right time. Sam's instigations were probably part of the discontent that lead up to the strike of 1922.  That included the discontent throughout the entire region in 1919 when most of industry including coal, steel, and auto were on strike. Nothing much had changed in the patches since 1894. One day the owners of Oliver mines called Giovanni Mele into the main office. The old man was not happy to go and less happy when he found out the subject was his son, Sam.  Management got right to the point: if Sam continued to agitate for a union, no Mele would ever work in the Oliver mines again, or for that matter in any mines in the Klondike.

    Well, the family was in trouble. Grandpap came home highly agitated. After an agonizing family crisis, Sam was sent to the army. When he got out of the army Sam returned to Oliver, but not as a coal miner. He would never go into the mines again. Sam's stint in the military set him free. He learned skills and with them got a job as a Pennsylvania State Trooper.  When the strikes of the 30s hit the patches, Sam, the former agitator, was now Sam the State Trooper. Instead of being hit over the head with the billy club, he was welding the billy club. It became a family joke.
 
From information by Rita Mele
Granddaughter of Giovanni, daughter of Vito, and niece of Sam. She still lives in Oliver, Pennsylvania, in the family home.