Goffredo Casalis goes so far as to consider these 'Hotels for Virtue' as, so to speak, “the dawning of Piedmontese industry.”688 In 1771 an almshouse (it was known as L'Opera della Mendicità Istruita) was set up with a broader scope in mind. It had been created to teach Sunday school catechism to the poor and to provide them with basic assistance. Later on this activity broadened even further by offering other kinds of assistance: technical training, schools in various districts around the city which the Brothers of the Christian Schools were called to run, during the third decade of the 1800's.689 Naturally we should not forget the various works promoted by the Marchioness Barolo.
690
From the early 1840s Don Bosco began to espouse the cause of poor and neglected youth and give it all his youthful energy. He appealed to people of various categories and invited them to join him as his
close helpers. He did this by means of personal contacts, individual and circular letters, appeals,
advertising and in language which shifted betw een the realistic and the rhetorical.
He spoke of “orphans”, “poor and abandoned youth", “youth at risk”, “risky youth”. Terms like this and others, were repeated, unchanged, for decades in connection with very different types of youngster staying in his institutions: oratories, hospices, boarding schools for both academic and working students, agricultural schools. Then finally, Don Bosco's work extended to youth coming from the most heterogeneous layers of society, including youngsters from good families of the lower and middle class classes, and even of the nobility.
In 1857, Don Bosco sent out an invitation to a Lottery on behalf of the three boys' oratories in Turin, and explained that the aim of these oratories was to bring boys together at weekends, “gathering as many young people at risk as possible from the city and provincial towns, who had moved to the Capital'. However, the “house attached to the Oratory in Valdocco responds to essential needs such as shelter, food and clothing for those youngsters who, no matter whether from the city or from the provincial towns ..., are so poor and abandoned that they could not, otherwise, be trained for a skilled job or employment.”691
Similar invitations issued in the following years (1862, 1865,1866) took into account not only the Hospice for working boys but also the Hospice for academic students, “Since, some of the boys there come from Turin, but the majority come from other cities and towns either looking for work or to pursue their studies”.692
In the following decades, Don Bosco would use the same kind of language in reference to the situation in Italy, Europe and Argentina.
The Patronage Saint-Pierre in Nice was opened for “children at risk”,693A hospice for poor children to be trained in arts and craftswas opened in Buenos Aires.694 The schools for “poor working class
688G. Casalis, Dizionario geografico storico-statistico-commerciale degli stati di S.M. Il re di Sardegna, Vol XXI [v.
Turin]. Turin, G. Maspero and G. Marzorati 1851, v. Albergo di Virtù, pp. 690-692; G. Ponzo, Stato e pauperismo in
Italia: L'Albergo di Virtù di Torino (1580-1863). Rome, LA Cultura 1974, 150 p.
689G. Casalis, Dizionario…, Vol XXIX, v. Regia Opera della mendicità istruita, pp. 700-709; G. Chiosso, La gioventù
«povera e abbandonata» a Torino nell'Ottocento. Il caso degli allievi-artigiani della Mendicità Istruita (1818-1861), in
J.M. Prellezzo (Ed.), L'impegno dell'educare… pp. 375-402.
690Cf. R.M. Borsarelli, La marchesa Giulia di Barolo e le opere assistenziali in Piemonte e nel Risorgimento, Turin,
Chiantore 1933, XI-243 p.
691Catalogo degli oggetti esposti in lotteria a favore dei giovani dei tre oratorii… Turin. G.B. Paravia & Co.
692Elenco degli oggetti graziosamente donati… Turin, Oratory of St Francis de Sales Print Shop 1866 p.3 OE XVII 5; cf
Elenco degli oggetti… Turin, Speirani 1862, p. 2, OE XIV 198; Lotteria d'oggetti… Turin, Oratory of St Francis de
Sales Print Shop 1865. p. 2 OE XVI 248: «i giovanetti accolti in questa casa sono divisi in due categorie, studenti ed
artigiani».
693Inaugurazione del patronato di S. Pietro in Nizza a Mare… Turin, Oratory of St Francis de Sales Print Shop 1877, p,ì. 4,
OE XXVIII 382.
694Letter to Dr Edoardo Carranza, president of the Conference of St Vincent De Paul in Buenos Aires, 30 Sept. 1877, E III
221.