EXAMINING PATTERNS OF ITALIAN IMMIGRATION TO ...

flooding it spread all over. The conditions which people endured in these areas were
exceedingly harsh as 2 million Italians died each year. 8
The agricultural system of Italy was not modernized, and there was little hope of
improving the situation. Moreover, increasing numbers of products from America invaded
Italian markets and made prices fall. There was no alternative other than to emigrate, and
several factors of attraction - pull factors - opened the way to it: the request for labor and the
decrease in the cost of travel.
1.3 The ways of emigration
The first to leave were the so-called pioneers that left Italy looking for opportunities.
Then emigration developed following the pattern of chain migration. These chains followed
familial, regional, and professional connections. In the case of regional connections, people
decided to emigrate to places where people from the same region were already living.
Professional connections led people with specific labor skills to reach places where suitable
jobs were available. In the case of family connections, relatives, friends or people from the
same village joined the first emigrants because of the news received by letters. These letters
often included prepaid tickets, the main form of emigration support during the 1890s.
Another way of financing the travel overseas was credit, and the agents of emigration
played a fundamental role. Before the Italian law of 1901 that established that the
intermediaries of emigration had to be employees of the navigation companies, the agents of
emigration were private citizens embarking in this activity to increase their incomes. They
were usually usurers, people in prominent positions such as mayors, priests, notaries, and
town council employees (or people in close contact with them) aiming at exploiting their
connections. Emigrants applying at the town council to obtain documents to expatriate and/or
to ask for advice from other important persons in their village sooner or later got in touch with
these agents. The agents did not always have the best intentions and numerous emigrants were
cheated in many ways: higher priced tickets, steamships that reached places they did not want
to go, false promises of fantastic places and jobs. With the law of 1901 on emigration, the
Italian state tried to solve this problem. Starting from that date, in fact, navigation companies
directly appointed their intermediaries to sell tickets. In most cases the navigation companies
8 Jones, A. Maldwin. The Italian Exodus. London, U.K.: Thames Television Ltd., 1976.
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