In the southern provinces both poverty and the unprogressive character of agriculture, the low wages, the oppressive fiscal taxes and the antiquated and almost feudal characteristics of the relations between the proprietor of the soil and the laborer, which are specially noticeable in agricultural contracts, are the causes that help to promote emigration.
To these causes must be added those of the intellectual condition, in this sense, that wherever' there is the greatest amount of illiteracy, as in the southern provinces, there may be found also the greatest amount of ignorance and belief in those who cry up the far superior conditions of labor and wages in trans-oceanic and European countries.
I-laving thus examined the principal causes which help to determine emigration, we have still to note the consequences which follow from them. And it is easy to understand that the increase in population, in consequence of the tide of emigration, must have a limit. In some regions one can notice either a decrease in the whole population, or a partial decrease, i.e., in a greater or lesser number of communes. The Basilicata, for instance, between 1881 and 1901 (the last two censuses) has diminished; and similarly also several districts of Calabria (Rossano, Castrovillari) ; of Sicily (Corleone, Termini) ; of Venetia (Rovigo, Massa Superi ore) ; of Piedmont (Salluzzo, Cuneo, Pinerolo, Aosta). But it is particularly the composition of the population that shows the effect of the enormous emigration. Thus, by the predomi nance of males who emigrate over females, the numerical equilibrium of the two sexes is changed, so that women predominate over men in the regions from which there is the largest emigration. In southern Italy, according to Professor Bbsco ((L'emigrazione del Mezzo in the Giornale degli Economisti di Roma, April 1906, p. 328) there are communi ties where the greater part of the population consists of women, children and old people, out of all proportion to the normal distribution of Sex and age. And another sign that the emigra tion in abnormal numbers of the strongest mem bers is beginning to have an effect on the physi cal constitution of the population is given in the remarkable number of conscripts who are refused on account of sickness, or physical im.
perfections, in several portions of southern Italy.
In regard to the economic consequences, it is certain that owing to emigration Italian labor has been better paid, that it has resulted in higher wages for those who emigrated; and the proof is in the savings sent back to the mother country in considerable sums, which, altogether, are calculated at over $40,000,000 a year. A considerable portion of these savings is employed to support the family at home; an other portion is used to defray the debts in curred by the emigrant before leaving, or on the occasion of his departure; a third portion sometimes assists parents or friends to emigrate, and hence serves as a stimulus to emigration; finally, one portion of the savings is invested in house or land, or in some form of economic activity. We must not forget that emigration in reducing the supply of labor has tended to raise wages and that it has procured in other countries a numerous "clientele° for Italian pro ducers and has procured for the mercantile ma rine, through its transportation of emigrants, a source of wealth which would be still greater if in this trans-oceanic movement the foreign flag was not superior in prestige to the Italian.
But as there are advantages, so there are also disadvantages arising from emigration, and among these may be mentioned. not alone the lack of labor and the consequent neglect of land cultivation (and this may be partly remedied by migrations to the country itself), not alone the withdrawal of much of the young, active, and therefore productive, element; not alone the breaking up of families, from many of which the head is absent; but also the habit of indul gence in alcoholics, particularly among the re turned emigrants. And sometimes there has also been noticed a physical degeneration among individuals: the diseases arising from bad economic conditions, it is true, have decreased; but those caused by vice in all its forms have increased. (Consult Pasquale Villari, (L'emi grazione italiana e le sue consequenze' ; in the Nuova Antologia. Rome 1 Jan. 1907). Delin quency has decreased in some forms, but has increased in other special forms, so that we may say that emigration, rather than diminish ing crime, has changed the form of the delin quency.