y able-bodied peasant from industry into barracks and drills for two
years of his best vigor. But the long line of exposed coast and the
general military situation in Europe make it unlikely that Italy for
many years can shake off this incubus.

In addition to all these economic and political causes of pressure,
there is another cause of a more profound nature, the rapid growth of
population. Strange as it may seem, the very poverty of Italy increases
the tendency to a high birth-rate, and the rate is highest in the very
districts where illiteracy and poverty are greatest. Only the great
number of deaths produced by poverty and lack of sanitation prevents the
increase of population from exceeding that of the more rapidly growing
countries of Germany, Great Britain, and Scandinavia. It is not among
those classes and nations, like the middle classes and the thrifty
people of France, that the largest number of children are born, but it
is among those ignorant and low-standard peoples to whom the future
offers no better prospect for their children than for themselves. Early
marriages and large families are both a result and a cause of poverty.
Parts of Lombardy and Venetia have a thicker population than any other
European country except Belgium, which is really not a country, but a
manufacturing centre of Europe. The density of population in Italy is in
excess of that of Germany, France, India, and even China. It is exceeded
only by the islands of Great Britain and Japan, and the states of Rhode
Island and Massachusetts.[46] Emigration is the only immediate relief
from this congestion. All other remedies which operate through raising
the intelligence and the standards of living require years for
appreciable results, but meanwhile the persistent birth-rate crowds new
competitors into the new openings and multiplies the need of economic
and political reforms before they can be put into effect. Emigration is
a relief ready at hand, but it is not a lessening of population. For
many years to come Italy will furnish a surplus population to overflow
to America.[47] Emigration is also a means of revenue for the mother
country. For it is estimated that the peasants in foreign countries send
back to their families and relatives $30,000,000 to $80,000,000 each
year, and many of them return with what to them is a fortune, and with
new ideas of industry and progress, to purchase and improve a farm and
cottage for their declining years. I