ITALIAN AND OTHER LATIN IMMIGRANTS. 349 



about Cape Cod are giving up this pursuit and taking up farms in 

 that vicinity with their usual success. There is plenty of room for 

 these agricultural Portuguese immigrants in this country, particularly 

 in the south, and their coming will greatly increase the productiveness 

 of any state with waste land, or farms that have been abandoned for a 

 more fertile section. 



Little need be said of Spanish immigration, which is small, but of 

 excellent quality. Their total in 1903 was only 3,297. In striking 

 contrast to their neighbors, the Portuguese, they exhibited over $50 per 

 capita, and their illiteracy was only 9 per cent. They show less in- 

 clination to become permanent settlers, however, than the Portuguese, 

 as evidenced by the small number of women and children among them. 

 A large proportion was made up of merchants, professional men, stu- 

 dents, marines and skilled mechanics, and less than 1,000 were classed 

 as laborers. 



The Eoumanian, or Eouman, immigrants are classed as Latins, and 

 in their appearance and speech resemble that group of peoples. The 

 Eoumanian people numbers about 5,000,000, most of them in Bou- 

 mania. Eoumans are also found in considerable numbers in Hungary, 

 Transylvania, Bessarabia and the Balkan states. They are descended 

 from a blended stock, made up of Eoman colonists and disbanded sol- 

 diers, and the Illyrian and Thracian inhabitants of Macedonia at the 

 time of the Eoman conquest (146 B.C.). The whole of Macedonia 

 was, up to the seventh century and the coming of the Slav, occupied by 

 a Latin-speaking race. The Slavic conquest forced the Eoumans in 

 great numbers to their brothers north of the Danube, and many were 

 carried farther by the wave of invasion — as far west as the Tyrol. The 

 Eoumans in Macedonia are skilled in metal working and the building 

 trades, but we receive comparatively few Eoumans from either Mace- 

 donia or Eoumania. Eighty-five per cent, of our Eoumanian immi- 

 grants come to us from Austria-Hungary — and they are practically all 

 unskilled laborers. Although classed as Latins and speaking a Eo- 

 mance tongue, they show, in many cases, evidence of fusion with other 

 races, Magyar and Slav. The Eouman type is short and dark, and 

 they are usually free from disease and have a fairly good physique. 



They bring very little money — less than ten dollars per capita — 

 but, being unskilled laborers, seldom become public charges. They are 

 an industrious people and possess in a marked degree the pride of race 

 common to all peoples of Eoman blood. In desirability these various 

 Latin peoples might be rated higher than the Italians, but their 

 numbers are relatively so insignificant that more extended notice is 

 unnecessary. 



