i8 5
it is probable that in a short time the Italian government will withdraw its opposition, and that Brazil will again take up the work of encouraging Italian immigration. In such event, the immigratory current toward the United States will undergo a certain change, and necessarily diminish. It may be foreseen, therefore, that the succeeding years will bring into the United States a progressively decreasing number of Italians. Neverthe- less, even in view of these facts, it will be of interest to study in detail the present immigration into the United States. The anal- ysis of this immigratory current will form a basis for a true conception by American public opinion of its greater or less desirability, and, by showing its component parts and its distribu- tion over the areas of the United States, will indicate what is necessary to be done, either by private enterprise or by the gov- ernment, to utilize the qualities and energies which it brings into the country.
For the sake of brevity, and also because it is only in recent years that Italian immigration has assumed important propor- tions, the four years 1901-4 have been selected for the purposes of this study. It is thought that this limitation will not be prejudicial to a general conception of the entire Italian immigra- tion, as in the preceding years it was composed of similar elements.
According to the statistics compiled by the Bureau of Immi- gration, the entire Italian immigration, from the point of view of its derivation, has been divided, in the last three years, as follows :
TABLE III
Year
Northern Italy
Southern Italy
Total
Per Cent, of Southern Italians
1 00 1 .
22,103
115,704
137,807
83.23
1902
27,620
152,915
180,535
84.70
IQ03 .
37,429
196,117
23^.546
83.97
I Q04 .
36,699
159,329
196.028
81.28
It is southern Italy, then, which furnishes the greater number of immigrants. The southern element represents more than 80 per cent, of the total. This fact is explained by the geograph- ical position of Italy. While the exuberance of the northern
