WWI and the big crisis

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During WWI the smithies had to close and the whole population of Ledro was deported to Bohemia and Austria. This fact caused a shortage of hobnails for the army. But thanks to the interest and help of Gerolamo Viviani, parish priest of Molina di Ledro exiled in Mies (Bohemia), it was possible to contact the authorities in Wien and suggest them that the skilled "chiodaioli" from Ledro continue their work in exile. As the best men were soldiers fighting at the front, the government recalled many of them back to St. Pölten, where old huts were arranged into smithies. In this way for quite a few men from Ledro the war was over at that time! When they came back to Ledro the villages were half-destroyed by the war, nevertheless the smithies (called "fusine") started to work again while the two cooperative broccami as well as the Ditta Casari opened up trade again making good use of the new market represented now by the northern Italian regions, but still supplying their old clients from the former Habsburg Empire. Thanks to this flourishing trade also in the straitened after-war period the Ledro families could get the fruits of a hard work that saw the "chiodaioli", from the early morning hours till after the sunset, busy and bent above their anvils, hammering with precision the red-hot iron sticks and forging thousands of hoe-hobnails. It was hard-earned money, which anyway could be supplemented by the income of a poor agriculture left in the hands of women and elderly people and allowed small savings for the rebuilding. In the years of the big crisis (1925- 1935) the hobnails manufacture became the only resource for the lower Valley, therefore also the other Ledro villages opened smithies and started to produce shoe nails.