Arizona republican., 1893-01-17
ITALIANS AT HOME.
A Land That Is Overhowing with
 Poor People.
Immense Emigration to This Country Occasioned by a Lack of Employment in Italy - Large sums of
 Money Sent Back.

The great masses of the people barely make out to live. They are poorly fed, scantily clothed and badly housed h. dian meal Italian chestnuts and rice, with a little inferior fruit, constitute the staple diet of the majority of the Italian peasantry. In thousands of homes in this Heaven-favored land, meat and wheat bread are unknown. It is said that the great majority of the poor people eat meat but three or four times year at the most.
 Christmas and Easter are hailed as meat days rather than as holy days. For those who have eyes for anything but the beauties of art and the glories of nature, there are no sadder sights than can be seen in the streets of any Italian city. Multitudes of human be- ings, with pale faces, hungry eyes and dcjccted looks, throng all the highways of travel, and though begging is for bidden by law it is almost universally practiced. Old women and little chil- dren, the lame the halt and the blind, and even able-bodied men, besiege the stranger at almost every step.
 It is generally admitted that there is no remuncrativc employment in Italy, and, as a consequence, there is annual ly q large emigration to this country,
 Brazil and the Argentine Republic. The emigrants are poor, sometimes ignor- ant, and often vicious. There are two classes of emigrants from Italy, the permanent and the temporary. The | temporary are those who leave in the early spring and go north in search of labor, and late in the year return to | their native land. Statistics show that about one hundred thousand laborers migrate in this way every year.
 1t is estimated that those Italians who have sought homes in America nd back to their poor relatives no less than twenty million dollars every year. Italy
 is losing by emigration about two hun dred thousand of its population annual ly, but the natural increase of this pro life race more than makes good the loss While in France deaths are in ex- ! cess of births, in Italy the increase of population is rapid in spite of the ever | increasing exodus. What can be done
 to relieve the suffering masses is a problem of the greatest gravity.
 Fortunately, the climate does much to diminish the hardships of poverty. The short, sunny winters, the long, pleasant summers, enable the multi tudes to live on comparatively little. Except in cooking their scanty meal, the poor Italians seldom have fire, even in the sevcrcst weather. An Ameri- can family will consume more wood and coal in one week than the average Italian family uses in whole winter The cost of fuel is so great that fire is considered an expensive luxury. But there are days, and even weeks, during the winter, in all parts of Italy, when the weather is quite cold, and at such times the suffering is something fearful. When people have neither food nor fire on cold day, their condition is truly lamcntable.
 But it must be said to the praise of the Italians that, notwithstanding all their burdens of taxation, of poverty, and of sickness, they are still cheerful and patient race They are sober by habit, they are idle from necessity, if if not from choice. While this is true, it is also true that the comforts, pleas ures and enjoyments of life are far greater in this country than they are in Italv