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sage, olives, peppers, and hard Italian bread are still used in New Jersey, but there is abundance of other foodstuffs also. It is certain that the settled farmers live better than the itinerant seasonal Italian laborers. Progress in language and in literacy is slower in segregated rural settlements than in cities, but more rapid among Italians than among Poles in some of the large rural settlements visited. Farm labor keeps children out of school, and lack of opportunity for intercourse with English-speaking people explains the persistence of the Italian tongue, even to the second generation in isolated districts. Compared with the progress made by north European immigrants on western farms, the Italians progress in Americanization has been slower; compared with many rural Poles, his advance has been quite as rapid. Fusion in the case of both races-Poles and South Italians-takes place in the third generation.

The quarrelsome, suspicious, mendacious Italian so frequently heard about in labor gangs, where numerous adult males live together, is unfrequently found in rural communities, very rarely among land

owners.

Progress in citizenship is less rapid among the South Italians than among those from the northern provinces of Italy ordinarily, but leadership and live local issues touching the property owners have much to do with the number of naturalized citizens. Voting is not the all-important test of Americanization, but in the town meeting of Hammonton, N. J., a vote argues more civic intelligence than in Christian street, Philadelphia. There is a noticeable cleavage along racial rather than party lines, but the country Italian in the North becomes a citizen sooner and votes more independently than the Italian in industry.

The rural Italian is still concerned with his material subsistence. He has a cheap frame house because he is not able to pay for a better one. Little about the house denotes leisure or higher living. Books, papers, and music, rocking chairs or hammocks or swings, find no place until the Italian is materially prosperous. His buildings and grounds do not compare favorably with his American neighbors except in a few localities where the second generation are operating the farms; but the houses are comfortably large for even large families, there is no overcrowding in the ordinary sense, and the houses, excepting those of recent arrivals, are fairly clean and comfortable. In some old localities living conditions are as good as in any homes in the neighborhood. The features of the home surroundings of Italians in the several communities are discussed in the monographs on these settlements.

All in all, the rural community has had a salutary effect on the Italians, especially those from the southern provinces of Italy. It has frequently taken an ignorant, abject, unskilled, dependent, foreign laborer and made of him a shrewd, self-respecting, independent farmer and citizen. His returns in material welfare are not great, but he lives comfortably and accumulates a small property. Where Italians have been established for some time in comparatively large groups in the open country they suffer little in comparison with other foreign farmers in the locality, and the farmers of the second generation are frequently not less progressive than the Americans.

SECOND GENERATION.

The second-generation Italians seem to be developing into good citizens in most instances. A fairly large percentage of them are likely to remain on the land. In most colonies the number of adult native-born is small of course, and it is difficult to predict the occupational outcome. Children remain on the farms until of age or work in neighboring industrial establishments and give their wages to their parents. In the Vineland settlement there are a number of good farmers of the second generation, and there the tendency seems to be to remain on the soil. In a few instances the young people have a reputation for trickery and dishonesty (see Cumberland report), but rural life seems on the whole to foster virtue and thrift rather than dishonesty and moral obliquity.

CHAPTER II.

VINELAND, NEW JERSEY NORTH AND SOUTH ITALIAN TRUCKERS AND FRUIT GROWERS.

INTRODUCTION.

Location. For the purpose of describing the Italian population, Vineland is the center of a half dozen small settlements in Cumberland, Salem, Atlantic, and Gloucester counties, largely colonized by (North) Italian vine dressers and small farmers.

Vineland lies about 35 miles southeast of Philadelphia, 120 miles south of New York, and 28 miles from the sea. The larger portion of the so-called "Vineland" tract is in Landis Township, in which Vineland borough is located. Three lines of railroad run through the district-the Central of New Jersey, which makes direct connection with New York, the West Jersey and Seashore line from Philadelphia, via Vineland and Millville to Cape May, and the Newfield and Atlantic branch of the same road from Newfield to Atlantic City. Excellent passenger accommodations and first-rate freight service are afforded. Vineland is one of the most beautiful and quaint little boroughs in South Jersey. The population is about 5,000. The real village is 1 mile square, with a broad avenue running along each side; it is bisected at right angles by two streets 100 feet wide, lined on either side with double rows of trees; at the center of the town is the Pennsylvania railway depot. Every street is straight, nearly all are bordered with magnificent trees, and from a point of vantage above the roofs of the houses the village in summer presents the aspect of a park or a forested estate. Paved streets, a perfect sewer system, municipal waterworks, an interurban street-car line, three banks, library, churches, excellent schools, several manufacturing industries, fine parks, and beautiful residences are some of the advantages and attractions of the borough.

In this village and within the circumference of a circle 7 miles from the Pennsylvania railway station is the most numerous aggregation of Italian farmers in the United States. In all there are about 950 families of Italian origin within the boundaries given, most of whom, outside of Vineland and Millville, are engaged in agricultural pursuits. All but one have settled in this section since 1873; most of them since 1880. The original immigration set in from northern Italy, but more recently a large number of Sicilians and other South Italians have come in. The first comers have passed well beyond the experimental and the pioneer stages, and many of them are now the most substantial citizens in the township of Landis. They are prosperous, influential, and intelligent farmers and proprietors. Others are just emerging from ignorance and debt-just rising above the line of subsistence farming. These are preparing to build better, spend

more freely, and "labor more abundantly." There are others who are still in the dependent class-day laborers in factories, ditches or berry fields, on the highways or railroads. These men nearly all have little homes with small acreages, on which their wives and children are endeavoring to make a living while they work for wages to pay for the house and land. One by one they are joining the ranks of farmers and giving up their outside work. All three classes are represented in the fifty farm schedules taken in about equal numbers. There is a fourth class, the American-born Italian, who represents the new Italian farmer, born on the soil he cultivates. He is the progressive farmer, who tries new machinery, new varieties, and new methods. He takes an agricultural paper and belongs to a farmers' cooperative society.

There are some exceptions and limitations which are noted in the report, but viewed as a whole the situation is decidedly encouraging. It is the country of the grape, the peach tree, and the sweet-potato vine; the Italians have added peppers to the list of staple products, and most farmers have a small berry patch. It is a section of small farms, located on sandy soil, and made valuable by hard and unremitting toil. Whatever wealth the Italians possess has been well earned, and nearly every home, beautiful or unattractive, cheap or substantial, is a home made by the owner's own hands, the product of his own labor; all are home makers in "Little Italy;" there are no parasites and no leisure class.

HISTORY OF THE SETTLEMENT.

In 1861, the region where Vineland now stands was a wilderness inhabited by a few charcoal burners and wood choppers. The land was held in large tracts, and the only inlet was a railroad, 22 miles long, running from Glassboro to Millville. One of the largest holders was Richard D. Wood, who owned 18,000 or 20,000 acres along the line of the road.

Charles K. Landis, then a young man of 28 years, encouraged by his success in inducing immigration to Hammonton, N. J., a movement which he initiated in 1857 with the aid of Judge Byrnes, of Philadelphia, was anxious to start independently on a grander scale and settled on the Vineland tract as a suitable spot on which to found a place which, to the greatest possible extent, might be the abode of happy, prosperous, and beautiful homes." "I proposed," he said, "to build up a city which would be filled with manufactories, shops, halls for recreations, and private residences, and to surround this square mile of the city, as far as the boundaries of the land would reach, with farms, gardens, orchards, and vineyards."

With this in view, he contracted with Richard D. Wood for 22,000 acres of land, and, with other lots, amounting in all to about 35,000 acres, he planned Vineland, driving the first stake in the center of the town site in 1861. Roads and avenues were laid out, the principal ones 100 feet wide and 10 miles long, through the almost unbroken forest. People thought him insane, but he went ahead, laid out his roads, advertised his land, sold to actual homeseekers, and by 1866 there was a population of 9,000 farmers and villagers on the tract. The land was sold uncleared at $20 to $25 per acre, under the stipulation that the owner build a house within a year on a site

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