230 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



In Wisconsin, two rural settlements were investigated, aggregating 

 somewhat less than 250 families. One of these is an old colony of 

 North Italians at Genoa, near the Mississippi River, just south of La 

 Crosse. It represents the type of colony that has practically ceased 

 to grow by additions from without and whose members are as fully 

 Americanized as their German and Scandinavian neighbors. The 

 South Italian colony at Cumberland, Wisconsin, is a different type. 

 It is of recent origin, established on uncleared land, with great pine 

 and hard-wood stumps. The members are chiefly railroad laborers, 

 with whom agriculture is an incidental occupation until the land is 

 paid for. Paying for land with supplementary earnings from indus- 

 trial labor is not new, but there are few more pronounced types of this 

 on a community scale than that presented by the Cumberland colony. 



Reference has already been made to the fact that less than 7 per 

 cent of Italian immigrants engage in agriculture, although it may be 

 considered a safe generalization that more than one-half, perhaps 

 two-thirds, of the Sicilians and other South Italians and one-fourth 

 of the immigrants from Northern Italy were farmers or farm laborers 

 abroad. It is also significant that the proportion of North Italian 

 immigrants who have engaged in agriculture is much greater than the 

 proportion of South Italians, although a much larger proportion of 

 South Italians were farmers or farm laborers abroad. 



Substantially all Italian immigrants are poor and come to the 

 United States to better their economic condition. The newcomer, 

 therefore, rrtust at once engage in some occupation that will give him 

 immediate returns. He has no money to travel, and no capital ; of 

 necessity, he becomes a wage-earner. It is possible that many 

 Italians, after gaining their economic independence and accumulating 

 a little money, would become farmers if they knew where to buy 

 small parcels of cheap land. The deterrent influences are the isola- 

 tion of farm life, ignorance of the location of suitable farm lands for 

 sale, lack of experience in American farm methods, and the somewhat 

 tardy and uncertain returns from independent agriculture. 



Unless settled in communities, the Italians have not proved suc- 

 cessful pioneer farmers; nor are the most of them engaged in extrusive 

 agriculture, where many acres and considerable equipment are neces- 

 sary. In almost every instance they seem to succeed best, when they 

 live close together, cultivate small farms, and raise crops that require 

 hand labor rather than expensive, complicated machinery. Their 

 SM i;il instincts are strong, and tliesr must be reckoned with when the 



