Hereditary Trades 
sessed in marked degree the daring 
pioneer spirit, which, exemplified to a 
lesser extent in so many of our country- 
men, has made the epic of conquest of 
the continent. 
What a story it has been, of fortitude 
and sacrifice and of courage surpassing 
that of a soldier! We should fitly 
celebrate this struggle with the wilder- 
ness, with scorching heat and biting 
cold, with flood and drought and fire. 
We should be grateful for the planting 
here of those families fitted to cope 
with adverse circumstance and turn 
363 
mischance to victory, and for the best 
from many racial strains who followed 
acceptably where the greater personali- 
ties led. This is the story of ‘‘Amer- 
icanization’’ onits material side, though 
to it have been brought many of the 
finest qualities with which man is en- 
dowed. From one point of view, it is 
the story of chosen germ-plasms, that 
should lead every one who can even 
remotely appreciate it, to resolve that 
so far as possible his family shall be one 
of the chosen to lead further on the path 
of progress. 
HEREDITARY TRADES 
HE agricultural population of 
Italy furnishes a rather interest- 
ing example of the preservation of 
tribal occupational distinctions. For 
centuries the people of the Burino, 
Ciocare, Rieti, Abruzzi, or Ortanesi 
have followed their individual voca- 
tions of reapers, diggers, sowers, vine- 
trimmers, etc., in the fever-swept 
marshes of the Roman Campagna, and 
the names of these families who worked 
in the fertile though deadly plains 
have been adapted,.in the common par- 
lance of the agricultural world of Italy, 
to mean any follower of that trade. 
So identified with the art of seed-plant- 
ing are, for example, the Rieti, that 
sowers throughout Italy are called 
“Rieti,”’ regardless of their origin, and 
the threshers are known popularly as 
“Ciocare.”’ 
The really remarkable fact concern- 
ing the fidelity of each of these races 
toits vocation is that this adherence to 
tradition continues despite the un- 
healthy character of the region in 
which they have so long operated. 
They suffer no delusion as to the 
danger of working in the marshes, but 
the fertility of the soil, fram which 
may be garnered three crops yearly— 
grain, grapes, and charcoal—has kept 
generation after generation following 
in the footsteps of the preceding one. 
Few breaks from the lineal tradition 
have taken place. The terrible death- 
rate in the community has orphaned 
hundreds of children, and the orphan- 
ages with industrial schools and agri- 
cultural colonies, which the Junior Red 
Cross of America has founded at 
Piperno and Sezze, are filled largely 
with these children, still known by their 
racial cognomen, as “children of the 
reapers, vine-trimmers, etc.” 
These agricultural workers do not 
remain in the region throughout the 
year. As the season fitted to the 
occupation of each comes around, each 
community gathers together its goods 
and implements and migrates to the 
malarial marshes of the coastal plain. 
First to come in the spring are the 
Abruzzi, tillers of the soil from Aquila 
in the mountains above Rome, next 
follow the Rieti, sowers from the Sabine 
mountains, the reapers of the Burino 
race from the Lapini hills above the 
marshes, and then the threshers who 
still wear the heavy sandal-like shoes 
which aid their leathern flails in thresh- 
ing out the grain. 
Interesting and picturesque though 
these farmers may be from the view- 
point of heredity, they do not satisfy 
the laws of modern hygiene in their 
choice of territory. Many of the children 
of these races are now being taught 
trades in the Piperno and Sezze schools, 
which will doubtless take them away 
from the unhealthy plains, and the 
fate of the remainder depends largely 
upon the results of an Italian engineer- 
ing project, now on foot, which should 
succeed in making of the plague-ridden 
marshes a far more healthful neighbor- 
hood. A photograph of Italian orphans 
pruning vines is shown on the following 
page. 
