Many more foreigners lived in Maine a century ago than today. Fully 15 percent of the population was foreign-born, according to the U. S. Census of 1910 as opposed to under 3 percent today. They included Anglo and French Canadians, Italians, Scandinavians, Germans, Russians, Armenians, Syrians and other groups who came to build paper mills and railroads, chop down trees and cut stone. The occasional friction between the natives and some of these immigrant groups, culminating in the arrival of the Ku Klux Klan some years later, dwarfs the “hate crimes” we hear about today.

Most of the immigrants, from such places as Prince Edward Island or Sweden, fit right into the prevailing Northern European, Protestant culture. One group that inflamed passions, however, was the Italians.

Their appearance and manner, just like the Irish several decades before, stirred up the deep-rooted fears and prejudices of the natives. Trouble, usually involving labor strife, erupted occasionally as their numbers increased beginning in the late 19th century. (See my column on May 9, 2005, about incidents in Bangor.)

A brawl between Italian and Anglo stone workers in 1899 at the Mount Waldo quarry in Frankfort lead to the departure of many of the Italians, who had been brought in to replace striking workers. Italians were back a short time later as a remarkable letter from “One That Fights for the Right and for the Italian Colony at Frankfort Me.” demonstrates. Published anonymously in the Bangor Daily News on Jan. 20, 1906, a century ago this week, it condemned use of the common ethnic slur “Dago” – a form of the name Diego aimed at Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese – and discriminatory enforcement of the state’s liquor law. The writer said he was tired of seeing clippings from the BDN cut out and stuck up in the blacksmith shop over the stone cutters shed every time “there is some wine business in it.”

The letter writer complained, “Every time that I read the word Dago in an American newspaper, it makes my blood run to my head. And some other times it makes me laugh, thinking about the poor people who call such nicknames to the people of a country which raised the discoverer of America and men famous in music, sculptors, sea compasses, wireless telegraph and lots of other beautiful things.”

He went on to accuse the Waldo County sheriff, who was known for his strict enforcement of the state’s liquor law, of ignoring shipments of beer and wine for Italian workers on the Northern Seaport Railroad, while seizing shipments intended for the Italian granite cutters in Frankfort. The railroad, completed in 1905, ran through Frankfort on its way to Searsport.

“Last summer when the new railroad was in course of construction, team loads of beer used to go by the [granite] work[s] here in plain view of everybody,” the letter writer said. “It used to come from Winterport, the landing place of wine and beer. Everybody could see that but the sheriff, and why? Because the law of the State of Maine, if I am right, granted a privilege to the contractors so they could get all the beer they wanted for their working people on the railroad.”

In his response, a BDN editorial writer made an impassioned case against the use of ethnic slurs, providing an encyclopedia of such derogatory labels: “Every nation has been put through the mill of silly abuse. The early settlers of New England were called ‘Yankees.’ Later these same Yankees retaliated by calling residents of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia ‘bluenoses,’ which is now worn as a token of honor. … In the early days, the residents of New England used the word ‘Paddy’ as a scornful name for Irish immigrants, and now when an Irish-American wishes to speak lightly concerning a man of his own blood, he says he is a ‘Mick,’ though members of the Celtic race have long gotten over feeling offended. … The cheaper element in America term the Hebrews ‘Sheenies.’ … The word ‘coon’ as applied to a person of color belongs to the same class as does the term ‘frog-eater’ when given to a Frenchman or a ‘Cannucker’ when given to a French-Canadian.”

The writer concluded, “A people that numbers such men as Julius Caesar and Dante and Michealangelo and Raphael and Gallileo and Columbus among its kindred has no occasion to blush before any Yankee who lives.”

This said, however, he tried to put the defender of the Italian colony in his place: “We are told that when we go to Rome, we should act according to the standard set up by the Romans. When the Italians come to a Maine granite quarry, they should conform to the laws that exist in Frankfort.”

Then the editorial ended in a muddle, tacitly acknowledging the impossibility of refuting the Italian letter writer: “As we are not a sheriff or a deputy sheriff of Waldo County, and as we are not engaged in building railroads, we cannot explain possible discriminations in the enforcement of the Maine liquor law. As a matter of fact, we should hesitate some time before undertaking to explain the enforcement of the Maine liquor law in Bangor.”

Tensions broke out again at the quarry two months later. A union meeting was called at the Knights of Pythias Hall where the Italians lost an important vote over an unpopular foreman. Out in the street afterwards, a brawl broke out. Two Italians “drew six-shooters as defense” before the mob was broken up, reported a BDN story on March 19. “All differences were settled,” the paper declared, but of course this would not be true as long as the two sides saw each other as hostile interlopers.

Sources consulted besides Bangor newspapers included Alfred T. Banfield Jr.’s University of Maine master’s thesis on the history of Italians in Maine and Roger L. Grindle’s book “Tombstones and Paving Blocks: The History of the Maine Granite Industry.” Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.