The Italians Work of immigrant laborers can be seen in Maine’s railroads, mills

Editor’s Note: Waves of European immigrants swept into the United States to escape the poverty and oppression of their homelands around the turn of the 20th century. This six-part series, which began Saturday, focuses on how Bangor, as an example of one Maine community, experienced this rush of humanity. Today’s story looks at some of the Italian families whose descendants still live in the Queen City.

The second of six parts

Thousands of Italian immigrants traveled through Maine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but by 1910, only a few hundred had actually settled here, including about 71 in Bangor. These mostly male sojourners regarded the state primarily as a temporary work site where they could earn enough money to return to Italy someday. In only a few mill towns, such as Millinocket, where Italian workers helped build the Great Northern Paper Co. mills and then remained to work, did Little Italy neighborhoods emerge.

Most of the Italian workers arrived in large groups from New York City or Boston, recruited by labor organizers called “padroni” at the behest of the contractors and capitalists building the state’s railroads, waterworks, factories and other large infrastructure projects.

They made a colorful impression on Mainers as this description in the Bangor Daily News of the arrival of a large Italian railroad work gang in the Queen City in May 1905 indicates: “The atmosphere was brilliant with red handkerchiefs and caps and had a wonderful flavor of garlic and onions … There were extension cases and wooden boxes and shiny black trunks with tin bands about them. There were musical instruments galore and a cartload of bric-a-brac … they went staggering under their burdens, jabbering, waving their free hands and kicking up dust like a regiment of cavalry.”

One of the most important of these padroni in Maine was Bangor resident George Cuozzo, who was responsible for organizing and supervising much of the Italian labor that built major parts of the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad. Cuozzo was born in New York City, the son of Italian immigrants. His father had arrived during the Civil War, working as a shoemaker for years before bringing over his wife and two oldest children. One of them was Donato Cuozzo, who hired his younger brother George and then made him a business partner in their lucrative labor contracting business. Donato Cuozzo managed the office in New York City, while George Cuozzo eventually established one in Bangor.

George Cuozzo was only 17 when he first came to Maine to supply workers for construction of the B&A. Besides displaying leadership ability, he was bilingual, making him an instant asset in dealing with the complex and stressful negotiations between workers and local bosses. Poor working or living conditions or misunderstandings could result in a strike.

Between 1893 and 1907, Cuozzo provided more than 3,150 Italian laborers, according to historian Alfred T. Banfield, whose research while a student at the University of Maine included interviews with Cuozzo’s son G. Vincent Cuozzo, a longtime teacher and coach at Bangor High School. G. Vincent Cuozzo’s daughter Diane Shibles lives in Bangor today. George Cuozzo’s other son, Roscoe, was a scientist at the University of Maine for many years.

In 1893, George Cuozzo provided 600 Italian laborers when the B&A was grading its line from Brownville to Houlton after railroad officials failed to recruit enough workers. He provided 600 men when grading of the B&A’s Fish River extension began in 1902. He provided 600 in 1905 and 400 in 1906 to build the B&A’s Northern Maine Seaport Railroad between LaGrange and Searsport. In 1906, when he settled in South LaGrange with his family, and 1907, he provided 800 Italians to build the B&A’s Medford Cutoff. He resettled in Bangor about that time.

The Italian work gangs blasted ledges, filled swamps, built masonry foundations for culverts and bridges and performed other tasks. Their work was essential because there were too few native Mainers willing to do it for the pay offered. “It would be a difficult thing at the present time to build a railroad of any considerable length without Italian labor,” commented a Maine Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics report in 1900.

The padroni, like George Cuozzo and the Murray brothers, Bangor residents who had changed their name from Marino, were an essential link in the system. The good ones took care of their men. They acted as travel agents and, once they arrived at the work site, as landlords, storekeepers and bankers. A successful operation supplied its workers with spaghetti and beer, although local authorities sometimes caused problems because of Maine’s prohibition law. The Italian crews “had to have their own cooks and bakers, and their spaghetti and beer every day or they wouldn’t work,” according to Helen Hamlin in her book “Pine, Potatoes and People: The Story of Aroostook.”

Cuozzo kept a photograph album that has been donated to the University of Maine that shows his bakery in South LaGrange where 1,000 loaves of bread a week were produced. On his horse, Firewater, he made daily patrols of the rail bed where his crews were working. He established at his office in Bangor “the first private Italian bank … where he receives accounts, transfers money to all parts of the world, makes foreign exchanges, sells steamship tickets, etc.,” according to a 1912 story from the Bangor Daily Commercial preserved in a scrapbook at the Bangor Public Library.

By that year, Cuozzo was regarded “as one of Bangor’s most progressive and esteemed citizens,” according to the Commercial. He had enlarged his operation to include construction as well as labor contracting. He was “the largest employer in the state of skilled and unskilled labor … His considerate treatment and care of men under him … has resulted in huge bodies of contented and satisfied workmen.” But the era of the padroni was about over, and in the future, George Cuozzo would be known as a general contractor in his own right.

In 1914, he established Bangor Cast Stone Products with a plant in East Hampden and offices in Bangor on Central Street where he manufactured concrete blocks, sewer and water pipes, garden furniture and trim stone used on brick buildings such as the Coe Block and the Mary Snow School in Bangor. His company lasted until the Great Depression. His work can be seen today all over Maine as well as in other states.

Two of the other early padroni in the area, Ralph and Louis Murray, worked for him, while a third brother, Charles, started a filling station near the Tin Bridge in Hampden and later established Murray Motor Mart on Central Street in Bangor, according to Banfield.

While the majority of Italian immigrants returned to their homeland or went to one of the major metropolitan areas, their work was an important influence on the state’s industrial history. Much of it can still be seen today along its railroad tracks, in its old mills and other construction.

Tomorrow: Many African-Americans came from Canada.