32                     THE ITALIAN CONTRIBUTION

of the people of Italian blood who come here worked
in the fields at home and that but 16% do similar work
here. The remainder are employed chiefly in the coun¬
try's silk mills, machine shops, subways, water-works,
railroad-construction gangs, quarries and mines.* Lauck
found that the largest number are employed in railroad
and other construction work.** Coming from Italy the
status of Italian immigrants for the last two decades
was as follows :t
OCCUPATION OF EUROPEAN IMMIGRANTS REPORTING

EMPLOYMENT 1899-1910
People             No. Reporting                      PERCENT

Employment

Professional Skilled   Laborers

Occupa-   Occupa- including Misc.
tions          tions       Farm

Italian, North          296,622          1.1           20.4           66.5          12.0

Italian,  South        1,472,659           .4           14.6           77.0    ^       19

Prof. Pecorini's study of the industrial distribution of
Italians in the United States shows that one-fifth of
those from the North of Italy and one-sixth from the
South are skilled.J

A distribution of such labor for 1914, the heav¬
iest year of Italian immigration to this country shows
up as follows :§

Group                          NORTH ITALIAN   SOUTH ITALIAN

Professional                                    508                                       608

Skilled labor                                 6,073                                   22,606

Misc. occupations                         2,079                    '             165,205

No occupation                            10,142                                   63,193

There is no way of telling what the wages of the dif¬
ferent industrial groups according to racial lines in
either New York City or elsewhere may be. Other im¬
migrants from South-eastern Europe include Poles,
Slavs, Hungarians, Austrians, etc., and all these are in-
* Mangano, Antonio—"Sons of Italy" p. 21.
♦* Lauck and Sydenstricker—"Conditions of Labor in Amer¬
ican Industry" p. 4.

t Statistical Review of Immigration, p. 53.
% Pecorini,   Alberto—"The   Italian   as   ah   Agricultural   La¬
borer," Annals of the American Academy of Political and So¬
cial Science, Vol. 38—1909.

§ Reports of Commissioner-General of Immigration, p. 62
seq.