Speaking of the agricultural attitudes of the Italian people, we will see farther on with what magnificent effort it is transforming the marshes into agricultural ground. For the present it is enough that I point out said effort, in order to note how the work that must give full efficiency to agricultural Italy for the very large capitals and the enormous mass of human labor that it requires, has a much slower process of development, than that of the increasing of the Italian population, and we can therefore presume that Italy who has given in the last 50 years 7,000,000 of her children to the two Americas without disturbing the development of her economic organization, it could easily bring, if requested, a powerful and steady contribution of labor strength to a larger agricultural valuation in the United States. POSSIBILITY OF RECRUITING IN ITALY STRONG LABORERS THAT HAVE THE REQUISITES NECESSARY TO REAL COLONIAL PIONEERS. Italy is not, as we have seen, a country agriculturally rich, but there is a continuous effort of making it so, under the pressure of the rapid increase of her prolific population. Many of her lands, as for instance, the very fertile lands of lower Lombardy, fertilized by the wonderful water system, greatly admired the world over, were at their origin, only a sequel of barren sandy lands; also the rich lands of the Bolognese country were formed by successive work of filling up, and those of Polesine and the Ferrarese with the drying kept up by powerful hydraulic machines. To these wonderful accomplished works we must add the 1,815,914 hectare to restore, part of which is already in the course of fertilization, and part with finished study of arrangement. All this shows how in Italy the agricultural production is not only the work of man, but also very often of the land on which the work is developed. This battle going on in Italy for centuries, in order to get more from the land than this can spontaneously give, is a school of long training, from which the Italian peasants have drawn their rare ability in the art of the fields, and their almost instinctive habit to overcome with tenacious laboriousness, obstacles and difficulties, in the face of which others would become confused. This is the attitude that the Italian farmers have brought into the virgin lands in which they emigrated. Their agricultural value hardly had an opportunity to assert itself in the United States where, with a few exceptions, they were carried away and absorbed by the vast human ocean of a people ethnically different, of great economic power and superior civilization. They did not have much better luck in Brazil, where, placed in the fazendas at their arrival, they did not find suitable conditions for the free development of their attitudes of initiative and labor. In the Argentine Republic instead they have fully developed their activity of colonial pioneers, because without any cooperation of labor from other emigrants, the Italian emigrants alone have with their tenacious toilsomeness and with genial initiative cultivated the 24,500,000 hectare of land that the Republic has at the present cultivated for cereals, vines, sugar cane, cotton, and other industrial plants. The Italian emigrants who have transformed the wild pampas into fertile agricultural territories, many losing their lives, certainly had the audacious temerity, the will, and the steel muscles of the famous pioneers of the West, and the heroic perseverance necessary to the conquest of new countries, but unfortunately they did not have, like the North American pioneers, the possibility and the power to value themselves with the rich lands torn from the wild desert. Their directive and administrative incapability and their illiteracy made them the victims of greedy exploiters. With such elements of proletarian agricultural strength it is obvious that the valuation of virgin lands of new countries can well be organized, when these elements placed and disciplined by capable, technical directive elements can in fact be considered, not simply as a temporary and sporadic instrument of labor, but as a real and integral strength of a healthy agricultural organization, just as it is with the Germans and Scandinavians organization, above mentioned, in the United States. The schools instituted for this purpose, with such practicability of intents, by the Italian general commissariat of emigration, also above mentioned, and of which I was to get direct particularized knowledge, give me full confidence that Italy is now on the right path to appreciate in the most promising manner her agricultural emigration, so valuable in quantity and quality. In the United States the labor of the Italian agriculturist did not have, as I have before mentioned, the opportunity of asserting itself but the United States have not failed, with their keen observation, to form a clear vision of its potential efficiency. This can be seen in the recent Reports of the Immigration Commission on Occupation and on Agriculture, in which is to be deplored how the Italian immigrants have no way of becoming acquainted with the opportunities that the agriculture of the United States can offer them, while if they were acquainted with these opportunities, offered in several localities for the acquisition of small administrations that are very often for sale at very convenient prices, almost laughable (a defect that I have deplored and that is the absence of serious organizations), after they have accumulated small sums they could become, with the judgment of the Federal commission itself, very good agriculturists, because the commission notes, according to the inspection made in many of their 10,614 administrations, that the Italians do not fear the comparison with agriculturists of other nationalities, either for activity or accuracy of details, and the united production reached, as for the products that they can get from their agricultural industries. POSSIBILITY OF RECRUITING IN ITALY AGRICULTURAL ELEMENTS NOT SUSPECTED OF SUBVERSIVISM. On this point, of fundamental importance for the introduction at the present, of proletarian masses in the United States, I wanted to personally make an inquiry, by coming in contact with big nuclei of Italian peasants, especially in the southern Provinces-Campania, Abruzzo, Molisano, Calabria, Basilicata, Sicilia and I have come to the firm conviction that the Italian peasants endowed of solid common sense, are contrary to any subversive movement. That this pesronal conviction, fruit of direct experience, reflects the reality of the situation is luminously proved by the complete failure of the whole pretendent subversive movement, largely proclaimed by the ones at the head, domestic and foreign, of the communist propaganda in Italy, failure due, it certainly can be said, almost exclusively, to the common sense and complete refractory feeling to said propaganda, of the peasants, with the exception of small negligible center, all over Italy in general, and especially of the southern Provinces. THE CERTAINTY OF NOT INTRODUCING WITH THE ITALIAN EMIGRATION PSYCHIC PETURBATING ELEMENTS. The equilibrium and the practicability of the Latin spirit, integrally reflected in the common sense of the Italians, can without a doubt harmonize with the moral health of the soul of the United States. In order to draw real advantages from the Italian agricultural emigration I think that it should be accepted as a real qualified agricultural emigration, therefore with the condition that the emigrants so accepted would be expelled from the United States if, instead of going to agriciutural districts, they would want to stop and look for occupation in the cities. INDEX. Aliens admissible, fiscal year 1924, number of Alien seamen. J. P.; Huddle, J. K.; Carr, Wilbur J.) (See statements of Doughten, Citizenship of consular employees, statement of Citizenship of foreign born in United States- Constantinople, conditions among migrants in. (See statement of Ring- land, Arthur C.) Consular Service, statement showing citizenship status of personnel_ Cost of consular examination, estimated_ Cuban Embassy, memorandum from__ Davis, Hon. Earl J., letter explaining communistic beliefs- Davis, Hon. James J., letter from, quoted__ Declaration of alien about to depart for the United States, copy of Doughten, J. P., statements of. Estimated additional cost of certificate plan of immigrant examination Fascism. (See statement of Fama, Dr. Charles.) Department of Justice, letter concerning Communist Party. Driver, Hon. W. J., statement of. Exclusion law of June 5, 1920, text of. Fama, Dr. Charles, statement of.. Furuseth, Andrew, statement of Giordano, Vincent, report on Italian agricultural immigration_. Page. 918 928 1160 943 1101 969 1104 1099 969 970 1096 1099 959, 1089 944 1099 924, 943 1051 970 928 1027 1108 1166 915 943 915 1107 1040 Information concerning passport visés, copy of State Department circular_ Italian agricultural immigration, report of Vincent Giordano _ - Luhring, O. R., statement of __ Mexican laborers. (See statement of Satterfield, W. R.) New York Board of Trade and Transportation, letter from.. Page. Secretary of Agriculture, report of, quoted_ Secretary of Labor, letter from, quoted_ Silver, Gray, recommendations submitted by. Satterfield, W. R., statement of. Seamen. (See statements of Hurley, Jeremiah J.; Furuseth, Andrew.) Soltes, Mordecai, article entitled "The Yiddish Press-An Americanizing 1051 1081 959, 1089 1160 |