Morning journal and courier., 1882-04-15
Italian Cheap Labor.

J
 The procession of the newly arrived Italian laborers is a spectacle of increasing ffequen. cy in our streets. They are sturdy young fellows with bronzed complexions and shaggy black hair. Each man carries on his back a huge white bag like pillow case. This is stuffed with his worldly effects and he bends beneath it's weight. These Italians march in Indian file, swiftly and quietly, looking neither to right nor left They follow their leader, a compatriot familiar with city ways, who takes them to the cheapest board and lodgings known only to the Italian colony. The aspect of the newcomers IS one of grim earnsstness They look desperately intent on earning dollars, for which purpose alone they exile themselves from sunny Italy. The only favor they ask is the right to work, and they will hire themselves out to any employ ment the most menial and repulsive at the best obtainable price. Rather than be though they may have handfuls of gold and silver sewn up in their rags. They love slavish toll, and have not the slightest objection to extreme risks and dangers Italian lsborers dug the Mount Cenis tunnel and did not mind dying in the operation. They yielded the pickaxes which broke through th7 last rocky barrier in the St. Gothard tunnel. Their ranks had been more than decimated by the premature
 
 originate in the bowels of the earth. But the survivors closed up and pressed forward undaunted. Like the Chinese, they would take a contract to die in sixty days for cash in hand paid. Italy has no more tunnels to dig She has no great railways or other pub. lie works in progress. So her sons arc swarming over the world in search of -Tail- ways to build, canals, cellars and ditches to excavate, streets and gutters to clean, aud any kind of labor, no matter how odious and odorous, to be performed. They are up for any msrket and ready for any job. As our country is rich in openings for any man who is able and willing to use his hands in honest industry, it is their first choice. The way IS long, but these Italians would go round the world for work. They come by steerage direct from Mediterranean ports. Since January nearly 5000 of them have landed in New York, and those we see marching up Broadway twice or thrice week are but the advance guard of the grand army which may be expected this summer.
 Italian laborers are to the East what Chi nese laborers are to the West-minus the talent of the latter for laundry and house work. Like the Chinese, they will take up the dangerous and noisome vacations reject ed by other men, and they will live and fat ten on what an American throws away. Southern Italy has acchmated them to the most malignant malarias. They are proof against the levers that throw so many Irish and German diggers and ditehers out oi work. And if disease carries them of, that is but an incident of their occupation. They are not addicted to drink or theft. Their names do not fill the station house 5lotters nightly. Like all southern races they are passionate, and if their jealousy and hate are reused will inhict ugly cut with their long, sharp knives. But all bosses and contractors testify that they are grateful for kind treatment. and easily controlled and kept up to work. Unless they are cheat ed in settlements of wages no laborers are more docile. In other respects they resem ble the Chinese. Their primary object ID coming here is not to become naturalized and settle down as American citizens. They take to repatriation no more naturally than the French. The gangs of men who are seen plying shovel and broom in onr streets are not musing upon the delights and dignities of voting and ofieeholding five years hence. They are only. thinking of the macaroni and thin sour wine they may enjoy when they re- turn to Italy after laying up thousand dol lars here. They are as fond of their native land as the Chinese; but as their civilization is more nearly akin to ours, the Italian i'm migrants become in time more easily assim Hated to our mixed population. Still in al essential particulars the cheap Italian labor now imported here in great quantity is ex | posed to the same objections from trade unions and party demagogues as the cheaI Chinese labor, which is the subject of sucf