He says that immediate work and high wages, and not
a love for the tenement, create our "Little Italies." The great
enterprises in progress in and about the city, the subway, tunnels,
water-works, railroad construction, as well as the ordinary building
operations, call for a vast army of laborers. It is the educated Italian
immigrant without a manual trade who fails in America. The illiterate
laborer takes no chances. The migratory laborer--for more than 98,000
Italians went back to Italy in 1903, and 134,000 in 1904--confers an
industrial blessing by his very mobility. Then, in his opinion, there is
something to be said for the illiterates who remain here. They are never
anarchists; they are guiltless of the so-called "black hand" letters.
The individual laborer is, in fact, rarely anything but a gentle and
often a rather dull drudge. More than this, our school system deprives
us of unskilled laborers. The gangs that dig sewers and subways and
build railways are recruited from the illiterate or nearly so, and for
our supply of the lower grades of labor we must depend upon countries
with a poorer school system than ours.
[Sidenote: Favorable Comparison]
[Sidenote: Italians Not Beggars]
Concerning the charge that the Italian is a degenerate, lazy and a
pauper, half a criminal, a menace to our civilization, it is shown that
in New York the Italians number about 450,000, the Irish over 300,000.
Pages:
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143