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indietro
Emigration from Friuli Venezia Giulia to United States
Javier Grossutti
"The majority are terrazzo and mosaic workers, then come the builders and labourers; in third place the factory workers and miners, and finally furnace workers and peasants". These are the words used, in 1931, by a priest from Friuli, don Luigi Ridolfi, to describe the presence of the Friulians in the United States.
By that time, terrazzo workers from Friuli had reached every corner of the country, many of them starting their own businesses and realized prestigious works in important public places or in the most renowned private houses. Italian emigration towards the United States already had a fifty year history. In the last twenty years of the 19th century and in the first fifteen of the 20th century, millions of Italians flowed into the new continent, mostly coming from the southern regions, and registered upon arrival as peons or labourers, employed in the most physical and underpaid jobs and subject to social prejudice. Only a minority, less than 20%, were qualified artisans, and among them mosaic and terrazzo workers from Friuli were well known and appreciated, sought after and well paid due to their highly specialized skills. Between the 19th and the 20th centuries, mosaic and terrazzo workers, stone-cutters, stone masons and miners left the mountains and foothills of Friuli, especially western Friuli, and headed for the United States, spreading all over the country and giving birth to a type of emigration that was no longer seasonal, but long term. In 1888 they founded the oldest Italian workers’ union in New York, the Mosaic and Terrazzo Workers. This tradition didn’t cease even at the outbreak of the First World War, but it grew stronger and stronger with time. “Born in Sequals, trained in Spilimbergo, we work around the world”, these are the words Orio Vergani wrote in the Corriere della Sera on 10th June 1930 in an article on mosaicists from Sequals. “It’s a strange thing, in such small villages, to hear people speak of faraway cities with such ease”. Overseas, don Ridolfi, describing the community of Friulians in New York in the same period, echoed: “There is no doubt that the Friulians alone form one great village, like Gemona and Maniago”.
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