ng class of Italy. Economically they are doubtless of value at
so many dollars per head. But of far more importance is the question,
what are they in the social fabric? If, as some assert, the Italian race
stock is inferior and degraded, if it will not assimilate naturally with
the American, or will tend to lower our standards, then it is
undesirable, even though the immigrant had a bank account in addition to
his sturdy body. The further one investigates the subject, the less
likely is he to conclude that the Italian is to be adjudged undesirable,
as a race. He must be judged individually on his merits.

[Sidenote: Demand for Unskilled Labor]

Mr. Carr draws a decidedly favorable picture of the Italians, whether
from north or south. He says that immediate work and high wages, and not
a love for the tenement, create our "Little Italies." The great
enterprises in progress in and about the city, the subway, tunnels,
water-works, railroad construction, as well as the ordinary building
operations, call for a vast army of laborers. It is the educated Italian
immigrant without a manual trade who fails in America. The illiterate
laborer takes no chances. The migratory laborer--for more than 98,000
Italians went back to Italy in 1903, and 134,000 in 1904--confers an
industrial blessing by his very mobility. Then, in his opinion, there is
something to be said for the illiterates who remain here. They are never
anarchists; they are guiltless of the so-called "black hand" letters.
The individual laborer is, in fact, rarely anything but a gentle and
often a rather dull drudge. More than this, our school system deprives
us of unskilled laborers. The gangs that dig sewers and subways and
build railways are recruited from the illiterate or nearly so, and for
our supply of the lower grades of labor we must depend upon countries
with a poorer school system than ours.

[Sidenote: Favorable Comparison]

[Sidenote: Italians Not Beggars]

Concerning the charge that the Italian is a degenerate, lazy and a
pauper, half a criminal, a menace to our civilization, it is shown that
in New York the Italians number about 450,000, the Irish over 300,000.
In males the Italians outnumber the Irish two to one. Consider these
facts: In 1904 one thousand five hundred and sixty-four Irish, and only
sixteen Italians, were admitted to the almshouse on Blackwell's
Island.[54] Mr. James Forbes, chief of the Mendicancy Department of the
Charity Organizatio