Connecticut western news., 1883-02-14
FROM ROME TO BAXTER STREET.
The Danger to the United States from the
 Italian Immigration.

1
 The Danger to the United States from the | Italian Immigration.
 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 in labor, is being provided with 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, un- 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-sufering 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 It is the kingdom of fever. For five months in the year it exhales death. Yet at harvest time the peasants come there to reap the corn, courting death at every stroke. They come from the Abruzzi, from Um- bria, from the Apennines, whose blue peaks gleam in the distance. They come to labor like serfs, eating black bread, drinking water mingled with vinegar, sleeping in improvised huts girt with 8 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 common ditch. No Italian Government has been able to avert this plague. Garibaldi wrestled with it, and confessed himself beaten. Popes have shrank from it; Parliaments have been afraid of it. 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. Thus is en- gendered the disease of pellagra, which has baffied the skill of 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 oranges groves, the magical beauty of the Bay, and has no thought that the most hideous forms of pauperism Turk 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 a pretty young woman seated with child in her arms, @ man of her own age beside her staring moodily out of the window, and in the corner an old n,as 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 my child" said she, is my husband. ; "And the other p "That is my father. "And the old woman ?" ''She is mJ mother. We can find no work and cannot starve. So we are reduced to this" /" The stranger laid note of twenty francs o1 the table, and went away in medita tion.
 These are the evils from which peopl, flee. Any fate, they think, is bette than that which would befall them il their native land. Their suffering attract little attention from the Govern ment, which is busy with its ironclad and military reforms and schemes fo 1 giving Italy place among the grea nations of the world. But the scanda is growing too great to be borne Americ
 is being saddled with an alien population
 which is fester in it's civilization. Ital
 is being impoverished and brought t
 ruin. It is disgrace to humanity.