News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1883-03-01
FROM ROME TO BAXTER STREET.
The Danger to the United STATES from tn
ItaIIRn Immigration.

ItaIIRB InImIgfaTIOn'
The New York Hour speaks as follows
of the danger to this country from the
Italian immigrants:
We stand in the presence of a curious
phenomenon. Italy, one Of the most
fertile of countries, is being depopulated,
and the United States, already rich i'll
labor, is being provided with a class of
laborers of which it has no need. So
long as there are streets to be swept,
organs to be ground, peanuts to be sold,
the italian immigrant will flock to our
shores, uncivilized, uninstructed, I'M
washed. His own soil, which can be
made to yield abundantly, is deserted
His own country, far too sparsely in
habited, is deprived Of strong right arms.
Our streets are filled, not only with the
large eyed, long-suffering peasant, who
still preserves the characteristics Of AN
cient Rome, but also with the brigands,
the outlaws, the fugitives from justice
who are sure to be found in the hive of
an italian colony. There is here scandal
which Immediately concerns the Govern
ment of SignOr Depretis.
Few Americans have any idea of the
misery of the italian population. From
the tower of the Capitol in Rome look
over the vast plain that stretches from
Civita Vecchi to Terracina and across to
the foot of the Alban Hills 1t is the
kingdom of fever. For five months in
the wear it exhales death. Yet at harvest
time the peasants come there to reap the
corn, counting death at every stroke.
They come from the Abruzzi, from UNI
bria, from the Apennines, whose blue
peaks CLEAN in the distance. They come
to labor like serfs, eating black bread,
drinking water mingled with vinegar,
sleeping in improvised huts grit with a
circle of burning straw to guard them
from the insects. But they cannot ward
off the approach of fever so easily. In
twenty-four hours they are dead, and
their bodies are huddled into a common
ditch. No italian Government has been
able to avert this plague. GarlbaIdl
wrestled with it, and confessed himself
beaten. Popes have shrank from it;
Parliaments have been afraid of 1t. Yet
it is driving Italians by thousands from
their fatherland.
In the fertile plains of Lombardy, the
most severe labor can barely provide the
agriculturist with the means Of existence.
The proprietors take the products OF the
soil, and leave their laborers such food
as the pigs would refuse. Tins is en-
gendered the disease of pellagra, which
has baffied the skill o! the most learned
physicians. Thus is produced the
popular despair which is shown in strikes
and political agitations. From north to
south the misery is the same. Little
suspicion has the traveller who visits
Naples of the poverty which surrounds
him. He sees the fair landscape, the
city sparkling in the sun, the translucent
waves of the Mediterranean, the per
fumed orange groves, the magical beauty
of the Bay, and has no thought that the
most hideous forms of pauperism lurk
under all those charms of nature. A
writer says that he was accOsted on the
Chiaia by an old woman. whose errand
needed no explanation. He followed her
silently to her home, where he found
pretty young woman seated with child
in her arms, q man of her own age beside
her staring moodily out of the window,
and in the corner an old man smoking
in silence. As the stranger entered, the
Young woman passed her child to the
Younger of the men and beckOned him
into an inner room. He asked her who
were her companions. He who took
nv child" said she, L" is my husband. J"
And the other?" "That is my father. J"
" And the old woman {" "She is my
mother. We can find no work and cannot
starve. SO we are reduced to this" The
stranger laid note of twenty francs on
the table, and went away in medlta-
ton.
These are the evils from which people
flee. Any fate. they think, is better
than that which would befall them in
their native land. Their sufferings
attract little attention from the Govern
ment, which is busy with its ironclads
and military reforms and schemes for
giving Italy place among the great
nations of the world. But the scandal
is growing too great to be borne. America
is being saddled with an alien population,
which is a tester in its civilization. Italy
is being impoverished and brought to
ruin. 1t is a disgrace to humanity.