ITALIANS IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.

SCOPE OF INVESTIGATION.

During the Commission's investigation regarding immigrants engaged in agriculture special agents visited rural colonies or settlements in the following southern States: North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Missouri, and Arkansas. The large number of rural settlements of foreigners precluded detailed investigations such as were made of some of the communities farther north. Much attention was given to rural settlements of North and South Italians, and what may be termed reconnoissance surveys were made of 31 distinct colonies of these two races from Italy, including cotton farmers, general farmers, small fruit growers, and truckers. The 31 settlements included more than 1,500 farm families, numbering almost 8,600 persons of Italian origin.

Difficulty was experienced in ascertaining the location of some of the many small rural groups, but probably every one of the more important Italian settlements in the Gulf States, Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee was visited. Some groups were located by special correspondents and field agents of the Department of Agriculture, who reported all colonies known to them in their respective territories. State officials, commissioners of agriculture and immigration, industrial agents of railroad lines, and private individuals in the field contributed information, and the Commission feels reasonably sure that few colonies of recent immigrants were overlooked, although not all were studied. Information concerning the number of foreign-born persons engaged in agriculture, by counties and races, is not available for all States from either Federal or State census reports, and some flourishing little settlements of Italians about which no data seem to have been published were discovered.

TABLE 4.-List of Italian rural communities in the South investigated by the Immigration Commission, 1909.

It is to be regretted that more detailed studies of many of these communities could not be made, for the reports dealing with them do not purport to be complete or intensive. They are cursory descriptions that may be valuable as points of departure for more detailed investigation. Moreover, in a large way, they are valuable for purposes of comparison and generalization. It is believed that they give true and unprejudiced accounts of the Italian on the land. In practically all colonies visited some schedules were secured from typical families, which in most instances have been incorporated in the reports. Prominent men, both Italians and others, were inter

viewed, public documents consulted, homes and farms visited, and information concerning schools, churches, and other social institutions was secured and checked to assure its reliability.

The investigation purposed to determine accurately the position of the immigrant farmer in southern rural economy, his economic and social status, his progress in Americanization, his effect upon the community and the effect of the rural environment upon him.

ITALIANS IN THE RURAL SOUTH.

Italian immigration into the States studied is comparatively recent, the greatest growth having been made during the past twenty years. In Texas, at Bryan, in Brazos County, is located the largest Italian agricultural colony in the South, numbering at least 1,700 persons. Its origin dates back to 1868. The Italian colony at Sunnyside, Ark., in the Yazoo delta region, established in 1895, is the largest colony in the "black belt," from which several smaller farm colonies throughout the delta and elsewhere can trace their origin.

Italian farming in the South covers a wide range of products, widely diversified soils and climatic conditions, several forms of land tenure, and various systems of culture. The North Italians among the mountains of western North Carolina practice a self-sufficing, diversified agriculture. In southeastern Louisiana and in the coastal plain belt of Alabama the South Italian truckers and small fruit growers are doing exceptionally well on the light sandy soils when they succeed in marketing their products in a satisfactory manner. In the "delta," both North and South Italian cotton tenants are showing the cotton growers of how much value careful cultivation, kitchen gardens, and small store accounts may be to the cotton "share hand" and tenant. In the Ozarks, Italians from the Sunnyside group have taken up new land, planted orchards, and become successful apple and peach growers. At Sunnyside all seem content to rent land and remain tenants indefinitely. At Knobview and Tontitown it is the open ambition of every man to become a landowner and an independent farmer. It is plain that the Italian farmer has been profoundly influenced by his environment. His farming has been directed and his agricultural methods and form of land tenure have been taught him by his new neighbors.

SOURCES OF IMMIGRATION.

The great majority of Italian agriculturists in the South came from rural communities in Italy. Most of them were farmers or farmers' sons abroad. Some few owned land, but many were tenant farmers or farm laborers before emigrating. Perhaps one-half of all interviewed came directly from Italy to rural districts in the southern States, and were first employed either as farm laborers or lumbermen, or were tenant farmers. Comparatively few were engaged in industrial pursuits or as day laborers in Mobile, New Orleans, Galveston, or other coast cities before becoming farmers. Immigration to the South is not only recent, but numerically insignificant. The table following shows that the total Italian immigration destined for southern States in the fiscal year 1909 was 3,701 out of a total Italian immigration of 190,398. During the same year 1,651 Italian emigrant aliens departed from these States, leaving a net gain of approximately 2,050

persons.

TABLE 5.—North and South Italians admitted and departed during the fiscal year 1909. [Compiled from Annual Report of the United States Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1909.]

The large percentage of Sicilians or South Italians in the South is notable. Probably more than 80 per cent of the rural Italians in Louisiana are Sicilians. The nearly 2,000 Italians at Bryan, Tex., are Sicilians, and several other settlements are peopled by immigrants from southern Italy. This fact may account in part for the greater percentage of Italian agricultural laborers in the South, and for the slower rate of Americanization in certain districts.

Italian immigration to the South has been in part stimulated by the cotton and sugar-cane planters, who, dissatisfied with negro labor, alarmed at the increasing scarcity of every sort of farm labor, and desirous of settling acceptable farmers on the immense tracts of unimproved land, have for years been striving to turn the tide of immigration southward. In the chapters following instances are cited of plantation owners who advanced the passage money for the transportation of groups of Italian families and settled them on their cotton plantations. The total immigration induced in this way is not significant, except as it formed nuclei around which gathered subsequent immigrants to the United States. Sunnyside colony, the mother of several rural settlements, originated in the importation of 100 or more families from northern Italy some years ago.

A number of colonies, notably in Texas and Louisiana, seem to have originated in the purchase of a few acres of land by some Italian farm laborer, who, arriving practically without money at a southern port of entry, sought employment on a neighboring plantation. A number of the strawberry growers of Tangipahoa Parish, La., were originally berry pickers who came out from New Orleans. Italian truckers in Texas were urban day laborers who bought a few acres near the city and let their families raise vegetables, first for home use and later for the retail trade. Some few colonies have been promoted either by Italian philanthropists or by land companies.

Not many Italians who were skilled workers in the trades or industries, here or abroad, have moved to farms, and comparatively few who, upon landing, found permanent unskilled work in industries later engaged in agricultural pursuits. But, notably in Texas, the building of railroads has brought in a number of South Italians, chiefly Sicilians, some few of whom have become either tenants or independent

proprietors of small market gardens or truck farms. It may be asserted confidently that there has been no marked shift of Italians from industrial pursuits or from city employments to farms in the southern States. In Missouri and Arkansas, indeed, many Italian farmers supplement their incomes by labor in the coal mines during the winter; otherwise the colonies are purely agricultural.

There is, moreover, a somewhat definite movement from the cane districts, where certain planters employ large numbers of Italians as farm laborers, to the cotton fields and truck farms farther north.

THE ITALIANS AS FARMERS.

It is to be noted that nearly all the Italians are small farmers; that, while they have engaged in diverse forms of agriculture, few have undertaken any agricultural enterprise that requires a large outlay of capital, either for permanent improvements or for tools, machinery, or live stock. There are no extensive rice growers, for example, and no sugar-cane planters were found. Truck crops, cotton, and small fruits require little capital equipment and a great deal of hand labor. The necessary investment in land is small; one may become a cotton cropper" with practically no capital. Where the climate is healthful the Italians have prospered; in fact, in many cases they have been able to surpass their neighbors because they exercise extreme thrift and indefatigable industry. They have been imitators, rather than originators, of agricultural methods. Very few innovations, either in crops, methods of culture, or improved machinery, can be credited to the Italians. They have developed a highly specialized agriculture at Independence, La., for example, where they are engaged in strawberry culture, but almost entirely along lines originated by the earlier American growers.

This specialization by communities is a noticeable economic feature. Every family in the community raises the same commercial crop. Instead of competition, this results in cooperation. Cooperatively the Italians have an advantage over the natives: if class consciousness has not been developed, there is at least a race consciousness which forms a basis for community consciousness and commercial cooperative endeavor. In Independence, where there was need, the Italian growers united with commendable facility to market their berries and to buy fertilizers and berry boxes. In certain northern colonies it was found that the Italians cooperated readily and worked together very successfully both in marketing produce and in buying supplies and equipment. In establishing local cooperative business enterprises they have been much more successful than their native white neighbors.

In careful tillage, clean cultivation, and attention to details the Italian almost invariably excels the negro and the old-time southern farmer. He is not wasteful and he makes his farm supply his table as far as possible. By living cheaply he soon accumulates some money, and, except in the cotton districts, probably invests in land. Ordinarily he makes a permanent addition to the agricultural population.

THE EFFECT OF THE ITALIAN ON THE RURAL SOUTH.

There are at present too few Italians engaged in agricultural pursuits to effect important changes in many rural communities. The tendency of the Italians to congregate by race groups is very marked. 72289°- -VOL 1-11--37

Where once a colony is started, the subsequent immigrants gather about the first nucleus, purchasing the neighboring unimproved land or the old farms of original owners. This grouping is not a characteristic peculiar to Italians; Bohemians, Poles, Swiss, and other non-Anglo-Saxon races are likely to settle in rather close groups. The effect of this segregation on the price of land is very noticeable in some districts, especially where the Italians have developed a specialized form of agriculture. Land within the limits of Italian occupation is frequently 50 per cent higher than land of the same fertility situated a short distance outside of the boundary lines. Segregation, too, has a tendency to perpetuate racial customs, traditions, and characteristics. This has been noted elsewhere, but in some sections of the South the tendency is strengthened by the fact that there are few American whites with whom Italians can associate, and in no place does there seem to be any inclination to mingle with the negroes more than is necessary.

There is a decided contrast between the attitude of certain North Italian and most Sicilian colonies in the South with respect to segregation. Where opportunity is afforded the North Italian seems to desire to mingle with the Americans, to learn the English language, to give his children an education, to become a citizen, and to exercise the prerogatives of citizenship. In fewer instances is this true of the Sicilian or South Italian. The result of this disinclination or lack of opportunity to fuse with the older white population, added to a feeling of superiority toward the foreigners on the part of the natives, has been to retard the assimilation of the foreigners in the South. Not only have they begun to occupy the farms of the native farmers, who have moved out to give place to them, but they have been the means of establishing Italian stores in the neighboring villages, where most of the rural Italian foreigners do their buying and selling.

The displacement of negro farm labor by the Italian has not yet assumed significant proportions, quantitatively. The reports on the Sunnyside and the "delta" settlements make clear the Italian's superiority over the negro, and the high regard in which he is held by the cotton planter in almost every instance. Not many negroes have been displaced, but the greater efficiency of the Italians assures them places as share hands or renters as fast as they come to demand them. Nowhere are the Italians held in higher esteem as farm laborers than among the large cotton planters in the delta region. Here they are raising successfully and profitably a crop of which they knew nothing previous to emigrating and for which it can not be said they had any natural aptitude. The influx to the cotton belt is slow, but this sluggishness is not due to lack of encouragement on the part of the planters. There is little doubt that the immigration will continue, but at the present rate there is no immediate prospect of the Italian's forcing out the negro.

There is an increasingly large movement of Italians, mostly Sicilians, into the sugar-cane region. New Orleans, which in 1900 had a larger "proportion of natives of Italy" than any other city considered in the United States," is situated in the midst of the sugar-cane parishes, and many Italians find their way from the city to the sugar plantations. They are excellent laborers and on some plantations have

a U. S. Census, 1900, Population, Vol. I, p. CLXXX.