Opening the Door: Italian Labor in Ashtabula
Labor contractors at this time were known as padroni in Italy. Padroni were labor agents and recruiters who were fairly knowledgeable about the needs of the labor market worldwide. Padroni, which literally means “patrons”, would scout out low-skill workers back in Italy to work in various American cities such as in Ashtabula. Italian laborers saw themselves as clients who were eager to take up work projects. This patron-client relationship was an integral part of Italian society, and was an important contributor to the labor market in the United States. Italian migrants primarily came to the United States to earn money to send back to their families in Italy. If a migrant decided to settle down, then they would save up their money to build or buy a house and to pay for their family's voyage.
The first wave of Italian Immigration to the city was through the construction of the waterworks system. 400 Italian men were contracted to work for the city to build the system. The men were previously working a construction job in Buffalo, NY. When the project was finished, most men moved on to other work, but some stayed and set up the foundations of the Italian community in Ashtabula. The Finnish and the Italians were also employed to build the new railroad lines into town.
Railroads and Docks
Ashtabula's geographical location became very important for both the coal and iron ore trades in North America. The iron ranges in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Wisconsin were surveyed and discovered in the mid to late 1840s. Iron ore was originally shipped by sled and by railroad because the schooners at the time could not carry ore loads at cost-effective quantities across the Great Lakes. It was not until more efficient steamboats were created and the construction of the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie in 1855, that shipping iron ore became a more viable option. Due to this, in the 1860s, railroad companies began to notice the importance of Ashtabula’s geographic location and began to survey the area. The Pittsburgh, Youngstown, and Ashtabula Rail Road Company (P. Y. & A.) was the first to create a line all the way to the harbor in Ashtabula. The P. Y. & A. would eventually be acquired by the Pennsylvania Railroad, giving it a major claim in the iron ore business. The Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway (L. S. & M. S.), already with a passenger line passing through downtown, and the P. Y. & A.’s main competitor, also constructed a line up to the harbor. Each railway controlled a dock on each side of the river. The construction of these lines now provided the harbor with a straight connection to the steel mills in Youngstown and Pittsburgh, and the Mahoning Coal Railroad that went to Wheeling, West Virginia. With the invention of the Hulett the efficiency of the docks skyrocketed, and by 1924 Ashtabula harbor was handling over a million tons of ore a day.