IMMIGRATION FROM EUROPE AND ASIATIC TURKEY BY COUNTRIES, 1882, 1902, 1906

188219021905
NUMBERPER CENTNUMBERPER CENTNUMBERPER CENT
Total Europe and
Asiatic Turkey		647,082100622,9871001,024,719100
Great Britain and Ireland179,42327.746,0367.4102,24110.0
Belgium1,431.22,577.45,099.5
Denmark11,6181.85,660.97,741.8
France6,003.95,117.89,386.9
Germany250,63038.726,3044.237,5643.7
Netherlands9,5171.12,284.44,946.5
Norway29,1014.517,4042.821,7302.1
Sweden64,60710.030,8945.023,3102.3
Switzerland10,8841.72,344.43,846.4

Total Western Europe		563,17487.0136,62022.0215,86321.7
Italy32,1595.0178,37528.6273,12026.7
Portugal42[41]5,307.98,517.8
Spain378[41]975.11,921.1
Austria-Hungary29,1504.5171,98927.6265,13825.9
Russia21,5903.3107,34717.2215,66521.0
Greece[40]73[41]8,1041.319,4891.9
Roumania[40]77[41]7,1961.24,476.5
Servia, Bulgaria,
and Montenegro		 [41]851[41]4,666.5
Turkey in Europe[40]86[41]187[41]9,510.9
Turkey in Asia82[41]6,2231.06,354.6

Total Southern and
Eastern Europe
and Asiatic Turkey		83,63713.0486,36778.0808,85678.9

Italians.—It was at this period that Italian immigration first became noticeable. Prior to 1880 this stream had been but the merest trickle, which now has become the greatest of all the foreign tributaries to our population. In 1873 the Italians for the first time reached 8000 in number, but they fell to 3000 in 1876 and so continued in moderate proportions, but suddenly in 1880 jumped to 12,000, and in 1882 to 32,000. Falling off again with the industrial depression to 13,000 in 1885, they reached 76,000 in 1891, and then with another depression to 35,000 in 1895 they have now gone forward by leaps to the high mark of 287,000.[42] The Italians seem destined to rival the Germans and Irish as the leading contributors to our social amalgam. Of course only a small part are as yet women and children, but this is because the immigration is in its early and pioneer stages. The women and children follow rapidly when the men have saved enough money to send for them. One-fourth of the emigration is on tickets and money furnished by friends and relatives in the United States.[43]

The immigrants from Italy differ from those from Austria, Russia, Hungary, and Ireland, in that they are not driven forth by the oppressions of a dominant race, but as a result of the economic and political conditions of a united people. This does not indeed exclude oppression as a cause of expatriation, but it transfers the oppression from that of one race to that of one class upon another. By far the larger portion of Italian immigration comes from the southern provinces and from Sicily, where the power of the landlords is greatest. In these provinces of large estates held by the nobility, the rents have been forced to the highest notch, an orange garden paying as high as $160 per year per acre, and the leases are short, so that the tenant has little to encourage improvement.[44] In many cases the land is rented by large capitalist farmers, who raise therefrom cattle, wheat, and olives, and are prosperous men. But their prosperity is extracted from the miserable wages of their laborers. The agricultural laborer gets from 8 cents to 32 cents a day through the year and 10 cents to 38 cents through the summer. Unskilled laborers get 25 cents to 50 cents a day, and such skilled trades as masons and carpenters get only 27 cents to $1.40 a day. This wide range of wages corresponds generally with the South and North, the lowest rates being in the South and the highest toward the North. In France and England wages are two and one-half times higher than in Italy, while in Germany they are about 30 per cent to 50 per cent higher.

Nor must it be supposed that the cost of living is low to correspond with the low wages. This is largely owing to the exaggerated system of indirect taxes. Although wheat is a staple crop, yet the peasants eat corn in preference, because, for a given expenditure, it gives a stronger sense of repletion. Of wheat and corn meal together the Italian peasant eats in a year only three-fourths as much as the inmate of an English poorhouse. Of meat the peasant in Apulia gets no more than ten pounds a year, while the English workhouse pauper gets fifty-seven pounds. The local taxes on flour, bread, and macaroni are as high as 10 or 15 per cent of the value, and the state tax on imported wheat is nearly 50 per cent of its value. The consumption of sugar has decreased one-fourth since heavy duties were imposed to protect native beet sugar, and it averages barely over five pounds per head. The consumption in the United States is sixty-five pounds per head. The iniquitous salt tax raises the price of salt from eleven pounds for two cents to one pound for two cents, and the peasants sometimes cook their corn meal in sea water, although this is smuggling. What the peasants lack in grain and meat they strive to supply by vegetables, and the proportion of vegetables, peas, and beans consumed is greater than that for any other country of Europe. The peasants drink no beer, spirits, tea, nor coffee, but the average annual consumption of wine is twenty gallons a head. Food alone costs the peasants 85 per cent of their wages, whereas it costs the German peasant 62 per cent and the American workman 41 per cent. The poor and working classes pay over one-half the taxes, amounting, even without wine, to 10 or 20 per cent of their wages. There are in the south and Sardinia some 13,000 sales of land a year on distress for non-payment of taxes, and the expropriated owners become tenants. Several villages in Southern Italy have been almost wholly abandoned and one village has recently announced its intention of removing itself entire to one of the South American republics.[45] The rich escape taxation, which is laid largely on consumption. Besides the state tax on imports, each city and town has its octroi, or import tax, on everything brought into the city. These “protective duties rob the poor to fill the pockets of the rich landlord and manufacturer.” Since 1870 wealth has increased 17 per cent and taxes 30 per cent. Taxes are nearly one-fifth of the nation’s income, against one-twelfth in Germany, one-sixteenth in England, and one-fifteenth in the United States. Wages rose from 1860 to 1885, but since 1890 they have fallen.

The army and navy are the greatest drain on the resources of the people. They cost one-fourth more of the national income than do the armies and navies of France and Germany. Eighty million dollars a year for military expenditures in Italy is over 5 per cent of the income of the people, whereas $194,000,000 for the same purpose in the United States is less than 2 per cent of our incomes. In the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, the latter country crushes its peasants in order to make a showing by the side of its wealthier partners. The army takes every able-bodied peasant from industry into barracks and drills for two years of his best vigor. But the long line of exposed coast and the general military situation in Europe make it unlikely that Italy for many years can shake off this incubus.

In addition to all these economic and political causes of pressure, there is another cause of a more profound nature, the rapid growth of population. Strange as it may seem, the very poverty of Italy increases the tendency to a high birth-rate, and the rate is highest in the very districts where illiteracy and poverty are greatest. Only the great number of deaths produced by poverty and lack of sanitation prevents the increase of population from exceeding that of the more rapidly growing countries of Germany, Great Britain, and Scandinavia. It is not among those classes and nations, like the middle classes and the thrifty people of France, that the largest number of children are born, but it is among those ignorant and low-standard peoples to whom the future offers no better prospect for their children than for themselves. Early marriages and large families are both a result and a cause of poverty. Parts of Lombardy and Venetia have a thicker population than any other European country except Belgium, which is really not a country, but a manufacturing centre of Europe. The density of population in Italy is in excess of that of Germany, France, India, and even China. It is exceeded only by the islands of Great Britain and Japan, and the states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.[46] Emigration is the only immediate relief from this congestion. All other remedies which operate through raising the intelligence and the standards of living require years for appreciable results, but meanwhile the persistent birth-rate crowds new competitors into the new openings and multiplies the need of economic and political reforms before they can be put into effect. Emigration is a relief ready at hand, but it is not a lessening of population. For many years to come Italy will furnish a surplus population to overflow to America.[47] Emigration is also a means of revenue for the mother country. For it is estimated that the peasants in foreign countries send back to their families and relatives $30,000,000 to $80,000,000 each year, and many of them return with what to them is a fortune, and with new ideas of industry and progress, to purchase and improve a farm and cottage for their declining years. It is said that already there are several small country towns in Southern Italy which have risen from squalor to something of prosperity through the money and influence of those who have come home. This temporary emigration is probably over 150,000 each year going abroad or to adjoining countries expecting to return.

Besides this temporary emigration there is an equally large permanent emigration. This is of two kinds, almost as entirely distinct from each other as the emigration from two separate nations. The North Italian is an educated, skilled artisan, coming from a manufacturing section and largely from the cities. He is Teutonic in blood and appearance. The South Italian is an illiterate peasant from the great landed estates, with wages less than one-third his northern compatriot. He descends with less mixture from the ancient inhabitants of Italy. Unhappily for us, the North Italians do not come to the United States in considerable numbers, but they betake themselves to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil in about the same numbers as the South Italians come to us. It is estimated that in those three countries there are 3,000,000 Italians in a total population of 23,000,000, and they are mainly derived from the north of Italy. Surrounded by the unenterprising Spanish and Portuguese, they have shown themselves to be the industrial leaders of the country. Some of the chief buildings, banks, flour mills, textile mills, and a majority of the wheat farms of Argentina belong to Italians. They are one-third of the population of Buenos Ayres and own one-half of the commercial capital of that city. They become lawyers, engineers, members of parliament, and an Italian by descent has been president of the Republic of Argentina, while other Italians have been ministers of war and education.[48] While these North Italians, with their enterprise, intelligence, and varied capacities, go to South America, we receive the South Italians, who are nearly the most illiterate of all immigrants at the present time, the most subservient to superiors, the lowest in their standards of living, and at the same time the most industrious and thrifty of all common laborers.

Aliens awaiting Admission at Ellis Island