'Italians run amuck' was headline in 1912

In September 1912, while the dust was still settling from the Szabol murder, the Ashland Press printed a story under the headline “Italians run amuck.” Polk was the scene of the incident.

The Faultless Rubber Co. baseball team had just been beaten by the Polk players. While the young men from Ashland were waiting for the electric streetcar to return home, some of them took notice of some Italian workers on the Erie Railroad who were gathered around a train car nearby.

More: 'No more Merick for me:' More stories of foreigners in Ashland

The youths started mimicking and taunting the Italians, and then pelted them with apples. They soon had the Italians “stirred up like hornets around a nest,” the newspaper reporter. The Italian workers drew revolvers and chased their tormenters. The Ashland men scattered into a cornfield, while the Italians searched for them, muttering threats that they would kill them. By the time the marshal arrived on the scene, the “riot had subsided and the [Italians] returned to their car.”

The reporter seemed to think that, although the Ashland men “did not do right,” the reaction of the Italians was completely unreasonable. The general opinion was “these dangerous characters should be disarmed through legal processes if possible.”

Tenuous nature of security for immigrant families

A few years later, the newspaper reported the death of Daniel Mogus, a Romanian who also had worked on the Erie Railroad at Polk. His story points to the tenuous nature of security for immigrant families, many of whom came to the United States for economic opportunities, which could be wiped out by bad luck.

Mogus died of tuberculosis. During the past year, his health had failed so he could no longer work, and his family moved to Ashland. He had a wife and four children, with the eldest being just 14. Two of his children attended Ashland schools.

Mogus was buried in the Ashland Cemetery, with services conducted by a Catholic priest − probably Father Schmidt of Loudonville, who also served the Ashland church. On the way to the cemetery, his widow realized she had no photograph of her husband, so she secured the services of a photographer who took a likeness at the graveside.

I can only wonder what happened to the widow and her family, as I was not able to find any more information about Mrs. Mogus.

Child labor laws at that time allowed children to work if they were at least 14, which did happen. When I was looking at the 1910 census, there was one family living in Ashland’s “foreign settlement” in which a young widow lived with her two sons. The 12-year-old son was in school, while her 14-year-old son worked at the match factory.

Twin tragedies of grief, sudden financial loss

The newspaper reported on another family who faced the twin tragedies of grief and the sudden loss of financial support. Salvatore Degrossi (or Digregorio) was a section worker on the Erie railroad who was killed by a train in November 1911. He was on a handcar south of Nankin with four fellow countrymen when an Erie passenger train struck their car. The rest of the men managed to jump off, but the victim was thrown 40 feet.

The deceased man had left a widow and a 13-year-old daughter, Gaetanna, who were dependent on him. Later that month, the administrator of his estate filed a suit for damages against the Erie Railroad for $10,000 to support his family if they won the suit. I haven’t uncovered how that turned out.

This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Column: Conflict ensues between workers in 1912 Ashland County