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Chapalay's detaiUng of the lack of work opportunities for Italian speakers gained
support when the following anonymous letter from a repatriated emigrant was
pubUshed in IIRepubblicano della Svizzera Italiana in July 1855:
Appena sbarcati, cersi le centrade di Melbourne cercando lavoro,
ma invane, spesi alcuni giorni a bussare di porta in porta per peter
mettere a prefitto 1'opera mia, ma dovunque mi veniva risposte
nen esservi lavero di sorta.**^
In order to help his compatriots find work, Chapalay placed advertisements seeking
prospective employees in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Swiss and ItaUan immigrants H Ludwina. It being necessary to provide
these immigrants with employment at once, persons who may have read
of their services, will be kind enough to be on board vessel ... when
their consuls and some other gentlemen ... will be in attendance. There
are some of almost every trade, and a good many useful labourers."^
The Italian speakers unable to find work in their given trades ~ as they had been
promised by the shipping companies ~ were initially prepared (going by the evidence
of the extant letters) to work at anything and their first few weeks in the Colony were
characterised by a high degree of mobility:'*'* some found work as shepherds, eaming a
reputation as sober, able and very industrious. Language difficulties were, however,
their greatest barrier to employment, as well as their high rates of illiteracy. The
competition for jobs fostered friction between the ethnic groups and complaints that
EngUsh speakers too often gave work to their own. The most discriminated against
were the Chinese whose strange language and customs isolated them from the rest of
the community. As conflicts mounted, the authorities, revealing a bias which would
later find expression in the White Australia Policy, imposed their infamous immigration
tax to help reduce the Chinese numbers.'** There was an interesting consequence of
this impost which historians have yet to note. The Italian speakers, even before their
settiement among the English at Jim Crow, leamed in this way that they would be
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