232 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



At the South, the displacement of negro farm labor by the Italian 

 has not yet attained significant proportions, quantitatively. The 

 reports on the Sunnyside and the "delta" settlements make clear the 

 Italian's superiority over the negro, and the high regard in which he 

 is held by the cotton planter in almost every instance. Not many 

 negroes have been displaced, but the greater efficiency of the Italians 

 assures them places as share hands or renters as fast as they come to 

 demand them. Nowhere are the Italians held in higher esteem as 

 farm laborers than among the large cotton planters in the delta region. 

 Here they are raising successfully and profitably a crop of which they 

 knew nothing previous to emigrating and for which it cannot be said 

 that they had any natural aptitude. The influx to the cotton belt 

 is slow, but this sluggishness is not due to lack of encouragement on 

 the part of the planters. There is little doubt that the immigration 

 will continue, but at the present rate there is no immediate prospect 

 of the Italian's forcing out the negro. There is also an increasingly 

 large movement of Italians, mostly Sicilians, into the sugar-cane region. 



65. ASIATIC LABOR ON THE PACIFIC COAST 1 

 BY H. A. MILLIS 



Though a few thousand Armenians are found in the West, most 

 of them in Fresno County, California, and perhaps a thousand Syrians 

 in Los Angeles, most of the Asiatic immigration has been from Eastern 

 Asia China, Japan, Korea, and India. According to the census, the 

 number of Chinese in the continental United States in 1900 was 

 93,283. Of these, 88,758 were males and 4,525 were females. In all 

 probability the number of adult males was somewhat larger than the 

 figure reported, but it has become evident from the investigations of 

 the Commission that the number of Chinese in the West has materially 

 decreased within the last decade or so. 



The immigration of Chinese laborers to this country may be said 

 to date from the rush to California in search of gold sixty years ago. 

 Many engaged in unskilled work in mining, railroad building, salmon 

 canning, and in domestic service, laundries, and shops. Of still 

 greater importance, however, was their employment, beginning pre- 

 vious to 1870, as hand laborers in the orchards, fields, hopyards, and 

 vineyards of California north of the Tehachepi, and in the canneries 

 and other establishments incidental to the conserving and marketing 

 of the crops produced. They did most of the hand work, such as 



1 Adapted from Reports of the Immigration Commission, Vol. I, 654-82. 



