There is one specially thriving Russian settlement to be seen in São Paulo state, at Nova Odessa; the wooden buildings are Russian in type, the tall churches are like pictures from a traveller’s Russian notebook, and the institution of the samovar and the huge family stove is clung to. These people are great lovers of land, and its possession has contented them; as yet there is little mingling with the social or political life of Brazil.
The system under which land is made over to colonists demands more explanation than space permits; São Paulo, briefly, only sanctions the establishment of nucleos near a railway line or navigable river, with an eye to marketing, and has inserted colonization clauses in more than one railroad concession to help develop these settlements along the route; lots are never, originally, of more than fifty hectares, and may be half this size if quite close to rail or river; “urban” lots are granted to settlers with money in hand to start a business, and “rural” lots to intending agriculturists; nobody can obtain a lot unless he has a wife and family, but sons twenty-one years old can also obtain grants while bachelors; payments are made on easy terms, generally at the end of each harvest for five successive years, prices varying according to locality from a few milreis to a couple of hundred per hectare—roughly speaking; I have never heard of unfeeling treatment in cases where settlers are unable to keep up payments in bad years, but encountered many stories of help given by the authorities. When the male head of a family dies before payments are complete, the widow and family are handed clear titles if three-quarters of the debt has been liquidated, and if ability to continue work is demonstrated; if not, the family is sent back to Europe at State expense. Rebates of ten per cent are given to settlers able to pay on taking up land.
Following this plan, it happens that for several years after the foundation of a new centre the colony is in debt, becoming emancipado as the obligations are paid off; São Paulo state is dotted with pleasant examples of these “emancipated” colonies, today flourishing agricultural regions well-farmed by the industrious and ambitious Europeans, adding enormously to the productivity of the State. At the end of 1915 the State was acting as god-mother to half a score of nucleos, of which the most promising are Campos Salles, Jorge Tibirçia, Nova Europa, Nova Veneza, Gavião Peixoto, and the Martinho Prado group. In the same year, the President’s message states, two hundred and ninety-three colonists completed payments on their lots and received definite titles in place of the provisionary ones first issued: over one hundred and eighty-five contos was paid on lots. “The total population still under State administration is 13,793 persons, who occupy an area of 54,666 hectares; of these over 14,000 are in cultivation, yielding produce worth 1800 contos of reis last year,” said Dr. Altino Arantes (July, 1916). Twenty thousand people came into the state in 1915, of whom six thousand were Portuguese, four thousand Spanish and four thousand Italian; this is but twenty per cent of pre-war average immigration to S. Paulo.
In the course of years very many colonies have developed into regular towns, long since “emancipated;” São Bernardo, Sabaúna and Bom Successo are notable instances, while the capital city itself has reached out and absorbed nucleo hangers-on to her spreading petticoats.
One of the interesting recent experiments of São Paulo was the cession of some twelve million acres of coastal land to a Japanese company with the object of creating an agricultural colony with Oriental brains and labour. The organizing syndicate, with the approval of the Japanese Government, was formed in Tokio in 1913, used Japanese capital, emigrants and ships, and has already settled several thousand people. Studied preparations and soil experiments were made before any colonists were carried over. Practical results so far have included a large addition to Brazil’s production of rice, while the resurrection of the once flourishing tea industry is also said to be in sight. This Japanese colony is notable for its tactful introduction: wishing to avoid even the chance of friction, the organizers stipulated its location in a spot which, able to communicate by water with markets, does not rub shoulders with other centres of population. Iguape is reached either by small steamers from Santos, or by rail from Santos to a spot on the river Iguape communicating with the colony by riverine boats, but little is heard of the Japanese settlement in São Paulo; they live to themselves and their chief appearance is in statistical reports. Besides the members of this agricultural colony there are at least another eight or ten thousand Japanese in Brazil, chiefly house servants, greatly liked for their quick, sophisticated resource.
Apart from the serious, long-continued work of the São Paulo authorities to win labour from abroad, there is still a remarkable amount of support given to immigration by the Federal Government; nucleos to the number of twenty are supervised by the authorities, seven of which have been “emancipated” while thirteen are still paying for their allotments. The seven free centres, Tayó, Ivahy, Jesuino Marcondes, Itapará, Iraty and Vera-Guarany, in Paraná, and Affonso Penna in Espirito Santo, contain nearly 33,000 persons, the remaining thirteen counting 19,000 persons: together the colonies had an agricultural yield in 1915 worth 14,223 contos of reis, and own livestock valued at 2,427 contos.
The State of Minas Geraes has made repeated efforts to encourage immigration and spent large sums upon propaganda and the establishment of nucleos. She has under supervision sixteen state colonies, with a total population of 26,000 persons, agricultural production from the lands under cultivation amounting in 1915 to the value of 3,155 contos of reis. There are also within the state borders two Federal colonies, one of which, João Pinheiro, has freed itself from indebtedness and is on the way to become an important agricultural and stock-raising centre; these two nucleos contain over two thousand persons.
In Rio Grande do Sul colonization has been seriously checked since 1913, but there are two important centres under State control which call for mention: one is the Guarany nucleo, in existence for a quarter of a century but counting only 25,000 inhabitants because it is off the line of communication with state markets; its position is strikingly contrasted with the Erechim colony, six years old, planted on the Rio Grande-S. Paulo railway line when the latter was opened to traffic, and which today has over 30,000 population grouped in six or seven bright little villages.
In 1915, when entries from abroad were checked on account of the war in Europe there were still immigrants from Portugal to the number of 15,000, 6,000 Italians, nearly as many Spanish, 600 Russians and 500 “Turco-Arabs:” also some two thousand Brazilians were moved from the “scourged” districts of the rainless north and sent south. From 1820 to the end of 1919 the number of immigrants entering Brazil has been as follows:—
| Italians | 1,378,876 |
| Portuguese | 1,021,271 |
| Spaniards | 500,378 |
| Germans | 127,321 |
| Russians | 105,225 |
| Austrians | 79,302 |
| Turk-Arabs | 54,120 |
| French | 29,665 |
| British | 28,798 |
| Japanese | 18,402 |
| Swiss | 11,376 |
| Swedes | 5,502 |
| Belgians | 5,289 |