PART I-RECENT IMMIGRANTS IN AGRICULTURE-GENERAL SURVEY. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Only a few of the more recent immigrant races, and those which we are accustomed to consider inclined to industrial rather than to agricultural pursuits, are the subject of the Immigration Commission's inquiry into immigrants in agriculture. The immigrant farmer in the United States, however, has a long history and traces his origin to many racial stocks. Statistics by races are not available, but in 1900 the federal census " reported 21.7 per cent of all foreign-born male breadwinners in the United States and more than one-fourth (25.9 per cent) of the nativeborn white of foreign parentage to be engaged in agricultural pursuits. In a general way, then, about one-fourth (22.9 per cent) of the first and second generation males of foreign-born parents were farmers or farm laborers. That is to say, of the 9,458,194 male breadwinners on farms, three-fifths were native whites of native parents, one-sixth were negroes, and the remainder were foreign-born and natives born. of foreign parents. Excluding the Chinese, Japanese, Indians, and other colored persons, the males of foreign origin constituted 25.4 per cent of the white males in agricultural pursuits. OLDER IMMIGRANT RACE GROUPS IN AGRICULTURE. Of the 2,105,766 males of foreign origin in agriculture, about 30 per cent belonged to the English-speaking races-Canadian, English, Irish, Scotch, and Welsh-nearly all of them comparatively early immigrants who are scattered the country over, and are so thoroughly Americanized, on the whole, that they have lost their racial characteristics. These races and the German and French report a larger number of second generation than of first generation males engaged in agricultural pursuits. GERMANS. Numerically, the German is the most important foreign race in agriculture, constituting in 1900 nearly three-eighths of the total number of males of foreign origin on farms. The male agricultural breadwinners of German parentage numbered 775,175, or more than 28 per cent of all male breadwinners of German parentage; of this • See Occupations of the First and Second Generations of Immigrants in the United States. Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 28. (S. Doc. No. 282, 61st Cong., 2d sess.) |