“Dyou must go to the Crespi Village, you have to see how well the boss treated his workers»Suggests a grandmother to her granddaughter who shivers at the word” master “. But for the grandmother, in that word there is no contempt or flattery, only the recognition of a role and the suggestion to the girl to go and see an incredible place that she herself would have liked to be a part of.
Crespi Village, a UNESCO site… inhabited
The idea crouches and rises until the day Alessandra Selmi begins to do the first research on the workers’ village of Crespi d’Addanow the protagonist of his book This side of the river (North), the story of the first Italian industrial village and the family that created it. Today, with the definitive closure of the factory in 2003, the workers’ village of Crespi d’Adda, in the Lombard municipality of Capriate, has been a Unesco heritage site since 1995the only archaeological site in the world to be inhabited, largely from the descendants of those first workers who came here to work in the Benigno Crespi cotton mill at the end of the nineteenth century.
Not far from Milan, Crespi d’Adda is a destination suspended in time, a place of industrial archeology that transports in a sepia-toned photograph, a dip in the Quarto Stato of Pellizza da Volpedo. “The main castle and the factory are now closed, as are the swimming pool and the theater, but the inhabited houses remainthe school works and the Church is a parish “says Alessandra Selmi who in her book follows the parable of the Crespi family and animates the village with life stories, giving a past that smacks of early capitalism and workers’ struggles, of champagne at the Castle and soup at the inn.
Life in the village
Moves its protagonists, Carlo, Malberti, Vitali, Emilia into the passions of a civilization that from peasant becomes worker and tastes the first well-being, living and working within a dream: Cristoforo Crespi’s utopia of building an industrial village that would give well-being to its workersa community project run from cradle to coffin around the needs of the factory.
@ Historical archive of Crespi d’Adda. Ing. Giovanni Rinaldi – Municipality of Capriate San Gervasio
Who was Cristoforo Crespi, the founder?
The Crespi were a family of dyers originally from Busto Arsizio. Known as “tengitt”, they had enriched themselves by dyeing the pieces in the vats, a mark of origin that will always keep them in awe of the nobility, with whom they still try to bind themselves with a marriage policy. Cristoforo graduated in accounting, studying at night while working as a clerk at the Turati cotton mill. During the American Civil War he speculates on the price of cotton, earning the capital necessary to start his dream of him: a place where workers can live in dignified and warm homes, all the same. The Castle, the family residence, the parish priest’s house and the doctor’s house, built a little higher up, almost symbolize the physical and moral supervision that the doctor and the curate carry out over the community, appear different. And yet the cemetery reflects this setting, with the family’s famine above embracing the sea of graves. Cristoforo’s vision includes the hospital for his workers, the sports field, the swimming pool, the purchasing cooperative… A felix micro world, of which the master was the demiurge.
What Italy was that back then?
A young country – the Unity dates back to a few years earlier – still deeply agricultural and backward but which feels the call of industry, with the first captains facing the factory scenario. For those farmers who lived in houses with dirt floors, infested with mice, it is a passage that represents the possibility of improving their condition, the call of the future, the opportunity not so much for themselves but for their children.
The master-worker relationship, Cristoforo Crespi and Carlo Vitali to bring us back to the novel, is friendly, almost ignoring the difference in class which will then become more marked with the succession of generations.
Cristoforo calls his workers “the little people”, the factory is like an extended family. Today, defining the owner as “master” is insulting to both parties, but the term at the time indicated a strict father who checks that everything goes as it should go: he earns money, but in exchange he grants home, school, well-being. The Crespi family were almost always in the village and in the factory. The family stayed at the Castle from May until the children started school again, and the little Crespi children played with the children of the workers as evidenced by the photos of the time.
It is from this closeness that Emilia’s character emerges: the daughter of a worker is the same age and friend of Silvio Benigno Crespi, heir of Cristoforo, until the social class weighs on their estrangement. What does Emilia represent and how likely is it?
One of the big risks when writing about historical matter is taking too much of us into an era that is not ours. But I remain of the idea that even if a hundred and fifty years have passed, the human being is always moved by the same feelings, love, the desire to improve, fear, envy. Identical impulses that were probably declined differently for the simple fact that there were different possibilities. There was no stove, there was no heating but we always felt the need to warm up. Emilia is the voice of the village: she enters it as a child, she sees it built by her father and she sees her whole family devote themselves to someone else’s dream.
You describe this world of workers without indulgence, at times merciless and steeped in misery and violence that almost pass from father to son.
Those were other times, husbands beat their wives and nobody said anything, it was a practice. Just as there were people who drank: the effort in the factory was so great, red wine flowed to forget it. But there were also beautiful stories, of great solidarity and friendship.
On this side of the river by Alessandra Selmi, NORTH496 pages, € 19
The character of Agazzi sums up the birth of the class struggle on himself: Cristoforo’s project, he says, is a cage; life revolves around the rhythms and needs of the factory, the owner takes care of his employees as well as fixes a machine when it breaks down: both serve to enrich it.
The master also bought the cross for those who died, paid school for good students, his wife gave away books and stationery… When I went to do the first research, at a certain point I thought: “Damn, how much control”. The interpretation given to such an adventure changes between generations. The paternalism accepted and wanted by the “old” workers, with the new generations is unthinkable. Cristoforo Crespi certainly had an entrepreneurial goal, but the foundation of the factory for him was his workers and he took care of it. He could also not do it, leaving them in their barracks, the law would have allowed him: let’s remember that the legal age to enter the factory was 9 years and working hours exceeded 12 hours.
However, family matters do not go smoothly …
Relationships are broken on matters relating to the name of the company. Cristoforo’s brother, Benigno, who married Countess Morbio, throws himself into a new adventure: he buys the ownership of the newborn Corriere della Sera from his wife’s family.
Cristoforo’s son, Silvio Benigno, consolidates and expands the estate, but then his younger brother Daniele leads the family to ruin which culminated in the loss of the cotton mill in the 1930s.
The notebooks of Silvio’s eldest son, Nino, that is Cristoforo’s nephew, tell of this uncle who likes the good life and who literally squanders an immense patrimony, also due to reckless business. It must be said that then he redeems himself morally with the First World War: he becomes a nationally known hero, founder of the Italian Alpine Association.
In the Thirties the star of the Crespi family went down, in the hands of various properties the factory survived until its definitive closure in 2003. In the exergue of the book you wrote a sentence: “Give us money and let us play”. What did she mean by her?
In the end, work is the game of the grown-ups. I imagine Cristoforo Crespi looking for funds to build his utopian city and I think all in all this was his great game.
From Milan by bicycle
Following the Naviglio della Martesana you arrive at the only Unesco site in the world still inhabited. The Crespi Village, in the municipality of Capriate San Gervasio, was born on a triangle of 85 hectares of land between the Adda and Brembo rivers. “At the height of its splendor, in 1920, the Crespi cotton mill had 3600 workers, 60 thousand spindles and 1300 looms” he says Stefano Scattini ofCrespi Village Cultural Association which takes care of its care and dissemination (for guided tours: Villaggiocrespi.it ). They count more or less 15 thousand visitors a year, fascinated by a place that seems frozen in time. “The whole life of the families took place inside the village, equipped with all the services, the laundry facilities, the thermal power plant, the hospital, the velodrome, the shops: the only thing that came out was the fabrics” continues Scattini. The area, as well as being a Unesco site, is located within the Adda Nord park, and can be the destination for a nice bike ride: along the Naviglio della Martesana, you arrive straight at the Crespi Village, a path of about 35 kilometers between period villas and dense vegetation. If you are tired, you can return by train.
iO Donna © REPRODUCTION RESERVED