HUMAN EFFORT AS A FACTOR IN PRODUCTION 227 



from immigrants, half a dozen steps removed, could ask for greater 

 material progress, better buildings homes, churches, schools, and 

 town buildings than the Polish settlements around Warsaw, Poland, 

 Minto, and Ardock in Walsh County, North Dakota. The writer's 

 knowledge of this and other communities of like character leads him 

 to 'say that to encourage such settlements is to foster prosperity and 

 frugality as well as to place the stamp of approval upon a home- 

 loving, land-loving class of farmers. If we pass on to settlements of 

 Russians we may say nearly the same as above. 



Nor need we stop with the Swiss, Bohemians, Polanders, Ice- 

 landers, and Russians. If we turn our attention to the Italians com- 

 ing into the South we find them filling the various places demanding 

 attention. There is a large demand for white labor, and the mass of 

 Italians who do not intend to make this their life-home more and 

 more fill a long-felt need. With the great numbers of Mexicans com- 

 ing across the line for part of a season this demand may gradually be 

 better and better satisfied. There is also a large demand for tenants, 

 and this cry is being answered by Italians. These newcomers are 

 not only fitting into the cotton-growing industry in competition with 

 the colored people, but are proving their efficiency in vegetable and 

 fruit farming. Of late years such settlements as that of Italians at 

 Tontitown, Arkansas, in the Ozark Mountains, show also that Italians 

 can bring their home industry with them and succeed here. They not 

 only settle down as dignified farmers, but actually teach our farmers 

 many things. Vegetables, apples, plums, grapes, and other fruits are 

 successfully grown. If the colony located at Sunnyside, Arkansas, 

 at an earlier date was a failure at first, it is no sign that Italians cannot 

 succeed in agriculture. Immigrants, largely from other industries, 

 placed in competition with negroes in production of a crop that they 

 knew absolutely nothing about, under foremen accustomed to drive 

 slaves, in a swamp country hot and sickly to newcomers attacked 

 by malarial fever and losing a large number of the first settlers, it is 

 not to be wondered at that failure was threatened. But success has 

 come even in that case, where failure at first stared all in the face. . 



With colonies like the Brandsville Swiss settlement in Missouri, 

 with the Italians and Russians coming even into old New England, 

 with Mexicans pushing up into the Southwest, and with other nation- 

 alities gradually finding their own, we may indeed turn our attention 

 toward the agricultural industry as a much-neglected field. The cry 

 of "back to the land" will not go unheeded by immigrants who have 



