We receive all grades, from cultured professionals to
illiterate peasants, though mainly, of course, the peasant class. The
one common feature of the Italian provinces is the poverty produced by
the crushing taxes and agricultural depression. Absentee landlordism has
blighted southern Italy as it has Ireland. Yet with great tracts of
fertile soil thus held away from the people, and with no new territory
to cultivate, the population of Italy has increased within twenty years
from twenty-eight and a half to thirty-two and a half millions, an
average density of 301 per square mile, and the excess of births over
deaths amounts to nearly 350,000 a year. Hence the question with the
people in overcrowded districts is simply emigration or starvation. The
southern Italian is driven from home by necessity to work, and work is
to be found in America, so he comes. His labor is mostly unskilled, and
this is in demand here. The result is that almost eighty per cent. of
the Italian immigrants are males; over eighty per cent. are between
fourteen and forty-five, the working age; over eighty per cent. are from
the southern provinces, and nearly the same percentage are unskilled
laborers, and a large majority of these are illiterates.
Pages:
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137