Author’s Note: The statute of limitation regarding unlawful trespass in Vermont is 3 years so until 2023 I would like to state this is a work of fiction. Any actions described are just the result of my wild, wild imagination…

This country is littered with gutted, single industry towns of bygone eras. Still dressed in their party finest shuffling around the ruins of a remembered glory and usefulness like municipal Grey Gardens. Beautiful buildings and monuments built with the certainty that the center of the universe was a fixed point. Then the markets moved on and all that wasn’t solid stone started to sink, splinter, rust and burn. Proud, self-determined people shrank into hopelessness and all the hungry ghosts that follow.

That’s what I’ve seen travelling/living in these areas and that’s what I projected on Barre, last April while passing the remnants of glory, the empty structures of once relevant use. On the whole, the town seemed to be climbing out, at least before the lockdown. It had that worn, leathery look of a longtime addict who’s sober now, working the steps, coming back from a bottom. Hell what do I know, but at the same time you know it, ya know? I wonder if the architecture, the ornamentations of prosperous times can eventually become bitter millstones that carry you under? If the people feel hustled by what those reminders promised and what they’ve been denied?

Barre, “Granite City,” is home to the world’s largest deep-hole dimension quarry (I don’t know what that means either), 600 ft deep. In the late 1800s the massive appetite for granite created a demand for labor that was filled by an influx of immigrants. Though Scots were a large percentage originally, a strong Italian community soon took root. The population swelled from 2,000 to 10,000 in a short time. The Italians brought with them an extensive knowledge of stone harvesting and carving from working with the marble of their native land, and also radical politics. Strong anarchist and socialist movements began to blossom. In 1900 (the same year an anarchist assassinated the King of Italy) an anarchist in Barre attempted to assassinate the Barre chief of police Patrick Brown.

Late April, all was locked down. I pulled in the parking lot of the Rock of Ages Quarry to find it unexpectedly open and operational but on a smaller scale. No tours, no public access, but a growing need for headstones still projected. I wanted to see the main quarry but it was not visible from there. It sat way up in the hills, like the pit of a crater. A gravel road and a set of train tracks disappeared into the woods giving the only indication of the direction. I’m not sure how to convey this with brevity, but I’m a sucker for class history and dramatic landscapes, and I’d already decided I was going to see it that day. So that was that. I drove a little way down the road and parked on a residential street. Walked a few blocks like a normie and then cut into the brush.

Luigi Galleani was born in Vercelli Italy, 1861. He studied law until radical politics and the anarchist movements of the working class wooed him away. He would later described himself as a “a revolutionary propagandist dedicated to subverting established government and institutions by disseminating a political philosophy based on direct action.” A mouthful but he made good on it. He started publishing a radical, worker’s paper in Italy, Cronica Sovversia (“The Subversive Chronicle”) and soon his activities led to his arrest by the government. He was imprisoned for close to five years in a penal colony on Sicily until (rumor has it) he convinced the jailer’s wife to help him escape and together they fled to America. He and Maria ended up in Patterson, New Jersey, where he continued to write and speak, becoming involved in the struggle of the Paterson Silk workers. He threw his energy behind the striking textile workers and his orating skills soon won him influence and attention. As the strike progressed and grew more turbulent, martial law was declared. He was wounded when police opened fire on the strikers and soon a warrant was issued for his arrest for “incitement to riot.” President Mckinley had been assassinated by an anarchist a year earlier and as Paul Heller put it in his piece on Luigi “an anti radical furor gripped the country.” He and Maria skipped town and fled up to Canada. A year later they crossed back over the border into Vermont. Hiding out in the green mountains and the already radical town of Barre.

Walking the old vagrant trail that weaves through the forest, I passed the obligatory abandoned couches and discarded plywood of secret drinking spots until I came to large chunks of granite lining a forest road. It climbed, curved and disappeared over the ridge to where I assumed the quarry was. I moved along the shoulder, hiding from passing trucks when I heard them coming. I cut through the woods to the train tracks and then back tracked them so I could approach the crater from the backside where there were no roads, workers or risk of exposure.

In Barre he found a sympathetic community that embraced his efforts and politics. He befriended the Milanese artist Carlo Abate who also called the town “home.” Abate was a sculptor of some commercial success and renown (crafting busts of Shirley Temple and Thomas Edison as well as a famous monument to the first Boy Scout troop). Abate was also committed to social justice and a member of Barre’s vibrant anarchist community (formed in 1894, one of the first in New England). Again to quote Paul Heller, Abate “eschewed lucrative commissions in order to establish a drawing school in Barre and enable young men to earn a living without the deadly exposure to granite dust and the hazards of a working life in the granite quarries.”

Together he and Abate restarted Cronica Sovversia. Galleani writing, editing and overseeing it and Abate providing artwork and his name. See, since Galleani was still wanted and in hiding, the paper was published under Abate’s name. Its subscribers numbered in the thousands and its range was international attracting contributions from leading thinkers and activists.

At the edge of the treeline the land takes a right angle. The banks are covered entirely with chunks of granite large and small. Century old scrap or “groat piles” (as the Scots called em). There’s no order or reason to them, just massive hunks of rock rolled over the edge, the smaller ones the size of a VW Beetle and the larger stones close to a shipping container. I just wanted to crest the ridge and see what the quarry looked like for myself, so I began to scramble up them.

Climbing carefully on the larger ones, the higher I got the more paranoid I became about their precarious placement. Visions of my weight being the straw that shifts them from their perches started to play in my mind. I saw myself pinned beneath one with no one around, or being flattened, my body’s decimated husk like an exhausted tube of toothpaste. The turkey vultures calmly circling, grooming the thermals above didn’t do much to dissuade the rising concern.

The old Labor Hall - Deborah Alicen — *The old Labor Hall* - Deborah Alicen

Galleani’s Cronica Sovversia wasn’t the only game in town for radical, labor politics, a former adversary from Italy had also resettled in the states . Once again he was at odds with Giacinto Serrati, editor of the socialist newspaper Il Proletario from New York City. Serrati and Galleani’s dislike towards each other was not new, they had been opponents years earlier in Italy. Representing two different factions of revolutionary fervor, the fight was primarily over tactics and policy. Galleani pushing for confrontation, direct action and Serrati a more measured and moderate approach. The ideological war grew in intensity and animosity. Serrati was invited to Barre to speak at the Socialist Labor Party Hall (now a national historic landmark). The night he was scheduled to speak the hall was packed with socialists and anarchists, standing room only and tensions were high. Before Serrati could speak, an argument broke out in the crowd and a socialist, Allessandro Garetto fired two wild shots. One ricocheted but the other struck one of Barre’s most renowned stone carvers Elia Corti who was gathered with other anarchists by the entrance. Garetto fearing for his own life, fled the Hall to the police station for protection from the wrath of Corti’s friends.

Eventually I got to a place where there was no more going up without committing to some pretty sketchy moves and wholly trusting that objects at rest would remain at rest. Beneath my feet, between the granite boulders were dark crevasses, layers and layers of rolled stone from decades prior, I didn’t like the idea of slipping into one of those either. I scrapped the notion of moving directly to the crest. Instead I worked my way sideways from where I was stuck until I reached a swath of fallen trees and bramble that split between the piles and weaved along the ridge. What I’d thought was the top turned out to be the shoulder of an old road coated in crushed gravel. I began to walk up it, white stone surrounding.

The chief of police fearing that Garetto would be lynched loaded him into a wagon to bring him to Montpelier. As they left the town they stopped to pick up a patient in need of transport to the hospital in Montpelier. It was Corti. He looked at Garetto and uttered “you are the man that shot me.” The friend who was accompanying Corti immediately attacked Garetto and then attempted to seize an officer’s gun but was subdued. Corti died from his injuries a day later. Corti’s brother, stricken with grief carved a large, life sized monument to Elia (his carving tools at his feet) out of a single piece of stone. It stands prominently in the Hope Cemetery (visited it last summer). And though physically no longer a part of the Barre community, Corti remains a part of local lore. He had carved an impressive panel on the Robert Burns statue (commemorating the Scottish poet) which stands in the center of town. On Christmas Eve of 1903 one of Corti’s friends reported seeing Corti’s ghost, standing by the statue and studying the panel he’d carved. The friend approached and as he did Corti faded away. Since then others claim to have seen him, Christmas Eve, gazing sadly at his work. Garetto was found guilty on December 23rd of 1903 he served seven years and then returned to Italy.

The old road continued up the backside of the hill. Overall the land was quiet. There wasn’t heavy work going on, only a few machines. I stayed close to cover in case one of the random pickups appeared and eventually cut off the road and moved back through the woods. At the peak of the ridge was an old abandoned worksite.

An empty shack looking out over the valley. Windows smashed out, faded paint , stained, yellow papers shredded by mice and initials carved into the walls. Around it old, broken poles and cables from the systems of decades past lay in the weeds.

I stumbled upon half a porcupine, the leftover remnants of a coyote kill, the focus of the buzzards still above. Scraps and castoffs.

The disdain between the Galleani and the Seratti factions only grew, though much of the battle was carried out in print. It culminated in 1906 with Seratti publishing Galleani’s whereabouts in Il Proletario, extensibly outing the wanted Galleani to the authorities. Not long after the sheriff arrived at Galleani’s door and took him into custody to be extradited to New Jersey to face the “incitement to riot” charge.

The following day Galleani supporters, numbering in the hundreds saw him (and the federal marshals accompanying) off at the Montpelier train station. They pressured the Vermont governor to refuse the extradition but he declined. In a petition to the mayor they wrote “...let know to the grand jury of Passaic county court that it is the unanimous vote of the Barre workmen to have him come back to his family and to his apostolate of educating and emancipation.” Following his trial, the jury on the Paterson case was hung, it could not reach a verdict and Galleani was free. He returned with much fanfare to his adopted community. He was greeted by anarchist, feminist activist Emma Goldman and together the two spoke at the Barre Opera House to an overflowing crowd of enthusiastic supporters.

The land dipped and hit the road again before it split off to ring the rim of the crater. Crossing it I was totally exposed and so stayed low, out of site from the workers in the pits. Further down the path at the curve at the back of the wall pickup trucks and men gathered. None noticed as I moved behind the work shed and then down climbed to slip behind a tall wall of rock.

I approached the edge, studying the forests on the opposite bank. The old abandoned building that sat high, slouching across the chasm, left to slip away. Old iron railings were bolted into the rock and set up sporadically along the edge, from back when this was a high trafficked area. I put my back to the rock wall and then sitting, moved to the edge and under the guardrails.

Galleani continued to speak and publish and as his influence grew so did his enemies. His support for direct action, “audacious revolt” and his championing of militant anarchists (like Mckinely’s assassin and Bresci who had travelled from America to Italy and assassinated the King in 1900) began to draw the attention of US and international authorities.

The US investigators were hampered by the fact that they had no one on staff who could speak italian. It’s rumored that the Italian government sent spies into Barre who were discovered by Galleani supporters and run out of town. Not long after, the paper suffered a fire that many believed was the result of arson. Though it burned the administrative offices the printing press down the road was unharmed and so the paper continued.

The ending of earth and the solid smooth walls below me and across from me like a Tolkien set piece. The wall across the chasm a stacked patchwork of bright white columns splattered stone with Rorschach mineral trails.

Cleaved from buried and undulating earth forever ago they plunged hundreds of feet to exposed steps and pillars or the earth around the loading area. “Ground”is too generous a term for the ring of land hundreds of feet below that sloped into the milky, aquamarine water. Like a bright lake of absinthe filling and concealing greater depths of past operations. Ghosts and monsters down in the deep.

The wall across the chasm climbed high above me, old rusting iron ladders and staircases still bolted into its sides. A large chunk of stone moved slowly through open space, between the vibrant light of the exposed walls and the bright sky. Raised by a crane fastened on the edge of the chasm like sugar cube bait sent to coax out the creatures below.

Luigi remained in Barre until 1912. He continued to be one of the most influentia voices in the anarchist movement and at one point was considered “The most dangerous man in America” by the authorities. Among his followers were the radical Martyrs Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

*S&V. They met in Monterrey while following Galleani’s advice to hide out there during WW1*

Sacco and Vanzetti were italian immigrant anarchists whose trial (in 1919) and execution by the authorities (1927) is now widely regarded as a great miscarriages of justice. Sacco and Vanzetti’s final message to their supporters (after their appeal was denied) was “Remember, La Salute e in Voi” translated as “The Health is Within You.” Officials may have been ignorant as to this meaning but readers of the Cronica Sovversia understood it. It was the title of a 48 page pamphlet advertised and distributed by the paper that was actually an italian language instruction manual on the manufacture and use of explosives for the coming class war. In other words, their parting message was “retaliate.”

Galleani relocated and moved the paper to Lynn MA. He continued to advocate and expound on class/labor struggles and his ideas of direct action and violent resistance. From 1914 to 1917 bombings occurred targetting law enforcment, politicians and around the country. Many believed them to be linked to his supporters (“Gallaenisti”). He and his paper were also vocal and active opponents of the first World War. He openly encouraged men to refuse to register and participate in the draft. Many of his followers fled to Monterrey Mexico in 1917 (“coincidentally” when the bombings died down). In 1919 he was arrested and deported to Italy in an attempt to quell dissent but as the deportations increased so did the bombings. John D. Rockfeller and the Attorney General were targeted along with many others. In response several hundred people were seized and deported under the “Anarchist Exclusion Act.” In September of 1920 Wall Street was targeted. A horse drawn wagon was stopped across from JP Morgan bank and the bomb inside it detonated, killing 40 people and wounding over 100. Though no one was ever charged it is believed to have been carried out by Gallaenisti as revenge for the sentencing of Sacco and Vanzetti and the deportation of Gallaeni.

Little old Barre Vermont huh?

I sat there on the edge for a bit, watching the imaginary films of labor from centuries of folks. I wasn’t thinking of the loud voices of history, the known characters. I wasn’t even thinking of the buried/hidden characters, like Gallaeni and his followers. I was thinking of all those whose voices never even passed their lips. The men and women who lived and labored, nameless to any historic retelling beyond their own families. In the mills, mines, quarries and factories that now cast those long shadows on the towns that grew around them. I thought of my own grandfather who worked his whole life in a different quarry not far from there. How he fought the fascists in Germany, carried a union card and died young. “People just want dignity,” that’s all I think these days.

Gallaeni spent the remainder of his life in Italy, in and out of jail for his continued opposition to the fascist government of Mussolini. We can debate the ethics of his tactics for sure but his motivation I understand. It’s heartbreak pure and simple. We can all say violence is not the solution but if you make people desperate enough it will become an inevitability. I feel it as I see once vibrant towns swallowed by desperation and then handed over to addiction. As I stand in newly erected Dollar Stores and watch a strained-faced customer purchasing groceries, anxiously swiping a debit card praying it goes through. People just want dignity and to feel useful, relevant, hopeful.

I stayed on the ledge until the adrenaline dissipated and tiredness began to creep in; along with it a growing concern about getting caught. I moved along the cover of the wall, slipped across the road and disappeared into the woods. Using the abandoned areas, careful to keep my guard up until I got to the train tracks. Sweaty, covered with burrs and milkweed seeds I walked the cross ties till I reached the bum trail and slipped out onto the side streets. Feeling stupid, feeling free.

*Photo of one of the many granite sheds that used to dominate the area, 1884.*

Luigi Gallaeni died at the age of 70, he was buried in secret, at night, because the authorities feared his funeral might incite a riot.

This piece is indebted to the research of local Barre historían Paul Heller as well as articles from The Burlington Free Press, Vermont Historical Society, Seven Days, AK Press and good ol Wikipedia.

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