5 i 8 The National Geographic Magazine 



development societies. Every commer- 

 cial and industrial body acts also as an 

 immigration society. In Louisiana alone 

 there are more than one hundred ; one 

 of them has 7,000 acres of land for .sale. 

 The "colony" plan has also brought 

 desirable immigrants to the South. 



But the most potent factors in the 

 immigration movement are the rail- 

 roads. Each important railroad com- 

 pany has hundreds of thousands of acres 

 of land for sale and wishes to see in- 

 dustries developed along its lines. Until 

 within the last few years the North and 

 South lines have not offered special rates 

 to homeseekers except in colonies. 

 Now, on the first and third Tuesdays 

 in each month special homeseekers' 

 rates are offered on every road east of 

 the Rockies that runs into the South or 

 the Southwest. These excursions have 

 proved a great success. The Union sta- 

 tion at St Louis is crowded every other 

 Tuesday with men from the Northwest 

 bound to the South and Southwest. On 

 the night of September 15, 1903, the 

 Iron Mountain road carried out of St 

 Louis within two hours six special trains 

 with three thousand homeseekers. 



The South does not want the lower 

 class foreigners who have swarmed into 

 the Northern states ; it wants the same 

 sort of people who settled so much of 

 the West. The newcomers from the 

 Western states and from western Europe 

 are not mere laborers. They work for 

 themselves on their own holdings. In 

 those parts of the South, however where 

 unskilled labor is wanted to supplement 

 the work of the blacks, such immigra- 

 tion will not solve the problem. One 

 planter complained that he had land 

 sufficient to produce 1,000 bales of cot- 

 ton, but labor enough for only 300. 

 He thought that the exclusion laws 

 could be repealed if the Southern states 

 should advocate the policy. It is cer- 

 tain, however, that the South will not 

 tolerate the introduction of large num- 

 bers of Chinese, for fear of possible race 

 complications. 



The solution seems to be to induce 

 the Italians to come in as farm laborers, 

 with the prospect of becoming land- 

 owners on a small scale. They have 

 come in larger numbers than other for- 

 eigners, and, much to the surprise of 

 all, they have proved successful farmers 

 on the cotton and sugar plantations. 

 The great lumbering companies also are 

 employing them. The north Italian is 

 preferred, but the principal immigration 

 is from southern Italy, Sicily, and the 

 old Papal states. The numbers are con- 

 stantly increasing. In Louisiana in 1 900 

 there were 17,000 Italians; in 1904 

 there were 30,000. In 1904 it was es- 

 timated that more than 100,000 Italian 

 farm laborers were working in the 

 Southern states of the Mississippi Val- 

 ley. Numbers come from Sicily or from 

 the North to work during the cane- 

 cutting season, and then return to the 

 North or to Sicily. Between New Or- 

 leans and Baton Rouge the Italian 

 laborer has largely displaced the negro, 

 and the same is true of many other lo- 

 calities. 



At Independence, Louisiana, in 1904, 

 275 car-loads of strawberries, valued at 

 $500,000, were produced by Italian la- 

 borers. These colonists have begun to 

 purchase little farms, have good homes, 

 and money in the bank. The younger 

 ones do not expect to return to Italy. 

 A tract of i,6oo acres of land in this 

 community sold, in 1879, for $1,600; 

 in 1904, 200 acres of the same tract sold 

 for $10,400. In the same community 

 other pieces of the land have risen in 

 value from $1 to $50 per acre within 

 two years. Many planters have sub- 

 stituted Italians for negroes as tenants. 

 The former are not criminal, are prompt 

 to pay debts, and have improved mor- 

 ally as well as materially since they 

 arrived in America. 



In conclusion, it may be said that im- 

 migration to the South seldom reaches 

 the black belt. There seems to be a 

 dislike of contact with the negro. 



