The day-labourers of the Tavoliere. Masseria Canestrello, Apulia

The day-labourers of the Tavoliere

We have performed all types of tasks.

"Initially we went to <weed>, bent double to remove the weeds from the wheatfields, we cleaned the fields, starting early in the morning and finishing work only after sunset. Before finishing the day's work, when the sun started to set, we had to say the rosary to Saint Matthew, Saint Michael and only after prayers we returned to the farm, with the sacks full of hay; when we stopped working, all sweaty and ugly we went home."

Lucia Barbarossa (1904) day-labourer

These words of Lucia Barbarossa are a precious testimony of the rural world which today has been almost completely forgotten.
The day-labourers told of their life on the farm and their work, describing their various chores and the conditions in which they struggled to live on this land up until the first half of the last century.

Labourers on the Tavoliere

Harvesting

"The most important tool was the sickle, and to be able to harvest the wheat one had to bend down and work in that position for about ten-twelve hours a day under a scorching sun;
just reading about it hurts, so you can imagine what it must have felt like for the farm hands who probably prayed that a tiny cloud and a little breeze might cover the sun for a minute and bring a little bit of a refreshing pause. The day's work usually started with a long walk and the poor farm hands went barefoot so as not to wear out their shoes; what a hard, miserable life it must have been!"

Bifolchi e cafoni/Ploughmen and Peasants

"Getting to the farm; there were about three or four kilometres' walk before reaching the farm itself and when we got there, normally it was already dark and we couldn't see a thing. And at the farm there was always a cauldron boiling with cooked vegetables. The ploughmen and the peasants ate these vegetables. The ploughmen normally worked with the oxen, while the peasants ploughed the earth with the aid of horses - this was the difference between the two."

Giuseppe Angione (1895-1981) farm hand
From a manuscript, Cerignola (Foggia) 1977

From the manuscript "Cerignola in the past"

"Our forefathers did not yearn to possess a piece of land, because to own property it was necessary to have the tools to work it with, namely the plough and the horse, and so they preferred to work as day labourers because in those times work
was not easy to find and all work was prevalently manual - the harvesting, and the threshing especially; the stacks were placed on the ground and then the horses would go round on the threshing-floor; successively it was necessary to separate the grain from the hay; the work was very hard and tiring and it was indispensable to work from ten to almost fourteen hours per day.
The first machinery came in use only at the beginning of the 1900s; the harvesting machines were Cornich or Derinch and the threshing machines were either Claiton or Marscal."

Giuseppe Diploma, day-labourer

Memoirs of a Day-Labourer

"I went to school and I was in the fourth class of elementary school. But in December 1930 my parents decided to take me away from school because we needed to earn money. And so from January of 1931 they sent me in the countryside to work. Each one of us, when we started work, was assigned six furrows where we were supposed to cultivate wheat, weed the ground properly.
Then there were all the other odd jobs: weed removing, tilling, harvesting, separating the grain from the chaff, making haystacks and transporting them on carts drawn by horses or by oxen to the threshing ground where a few weeks later the threshing itself would take place."

Michele Sacco (1921) day-labourer

Giuseppe Di Vittorio

..."Giuseppe di Vittorio was orphaned a very young boy. His mother was deaf and he had a married sister. He used to go working in the fields, weeding the ground and with the sickle in hand when it was time to harvest the wheat, carrying the haystacks and tilling the ground in the vineyards.
But he had a natural instinct: to fight for better conditions for the workers in general; in fact whenever Giuseppe di Vittorio went to represent his co-workers he was often granted what was requested.".......

...."Pavoncelli, owned about six thousand hectares of property only in the province of Cerignola. He was a kind of Colossus: but Giuseppe Pavoncelli, always listened to what Giuseppe Di Vittorio had to say in favour of the farmhands, when he asked for a salary raise, and for a reduction of working hours.
He considered it brutal and animalesque to exploit a man from the break of day until sunset. And then the famous issue of the eight hours per day was introduced."

Matteo Di Vittorio, professional farm hand.

A team of day-labourers 1977. Photo by Mimmo Attademo

These texts and photos are taken from an interesting volume "La memoria che resta, vissuto quotidiano, mito e storia dei braccianti del basso tavoliere -”, edited by Giovanni Rinaldi and Paola Sobrero", published in Foggia by the Provincial Administration of Capitanata, 1981.
On the front cover we can read; Provincial Library of Foggia, Archives of Basic Culture.
The volume offers not only interesting articles on the above mentioned issues, but also a compendium of research collected in the 1970s among the day-labourers of the Tavoliere, and include first-hand reports and photographs of the people and their houses.

NEW EDITION:

"LA MEMORIA CHE RESTA
Vita quotidiana, mito e storia dei braccianti nel Tavoliere di Puglia"
di Giovanni Rinaldi e Paola Sobrero
Edizioni Aramirè, Lecce 2004

The photo of Giuseppe Angione is by Nicola Pergola while the photo of Savina Barbarossa and Michele Sacco are by Giovanni Rinaldi.

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