ITALIAN IMMIGRATION INTO THE UNITED STATES 1 93
may be named low financial conditions and lack of administration in the communes, have hindered the southern populations from enjoying the fruit of legislative action in the same proportion as the northern populations have been able to do. Healthier eco- nomic conditions, the communes administered by more modern classes than the governing officials in the south, have, in a little more than forty years of national life, almost obliterated the plague spot of illiteracy in the northern parts of Italy. Illiteracy must diminish, as in fact it has always diminished, among the immigrants ; but it remains in relatively large proportion because improvement in this respect is necessarily slow. The question arises then : Is the illiteracy of the Italian immigrants a menace to those countries especially the United States to which they betake themselves?
Many writers upon immigration have given this question first place when speaking of the greater or less desirability of the same, but a closer view of the subject cannot but disclose the exaggera- tion of those who maintain that a heavy percentage of illiteracy is a grave peril for the United States. In the first place, illiteracy is not a new fact, nor can it be affirmed to be a characteristic of Italian immigration alone, because we ignore the number of illit- erates in the great immigratory currents which in the past fifty years have inundated this country. Only during the last few years has it become a feature of immigration statistics to take note of illiteracy. Given the relative recency of the acceptance of the principle of compulsory popular education in European states, and keeping in mind the origin of the Irish and German immi- grants (who formed the bulk of the immigration into the United States in the past), coming, as they did, from the least developed regions of their respective countries, it is not difficult to believe that the proportion of illiterates was, if not equal, at least little inferior, to that which the Italian immigration actually presents. As is well known, the Irish and Germans become elements of force and prosperity in the new country in which they settled. What, then, are the criteria for judging the desirability of immi- grants ? First, the possibility of utilizing the qualities of the new-
