II

And what about the emigrants’ moral and physical dangers? Gentlemen, I shall not lose time describing them after what I have said so far. The emigrants are living without religious assistance. And, left to themselves, they fall into the most woeful indifference or abandon the faith of their fathers. They lose their sense of nationality and with it (a lump comes to my throat just to think about it) their Catholic outlook. They fall victim to Protestant propaganda and become hapless victims of sects, which are thriving there more than elsewhere. Yes, gentlemen, in your presence

allow a Bishop to weep over such a misfortune! The privation of the spiritual bread which is the word of God, the impossibility of reconciling oneself with God, the lack of devotions and of encouragement to the spiritual life, are having a deadly influence on the morale of the people. Even the better educated person is subject to such a danger, albeit to a lesser degree, because his education, his culture, and his theoretical knowledge of the faith are sufficient to protect him from the cold of indifference, because, if nothing else, he can be spiritually united with the sacred mysteries celebrated in other places and nourish his mind with uplifting readings. But how can common ordinary people entertain such lofty thoughts? To them the concept of religion is inseparable from that of the church and the priest. Where there is no visible religious instrumentality, they gradually become unmindful of their duties to God, and the Christian life in his soul withers and dies. But the thirst for truth does not die in them, nor does the quest for the Absolute! A modern philosopher writes: “Man has a natural need for religion and worship. He is religious by nature, just as he is a thinking being by nature. Or better, he is religious because he is a thinking being.” The less this inner need is fulfilled, the more it is felt. Among our emigrants we can touch this fact with our hand, even when, due to the absence of a priest, the most deplorable materialism is rampant among them. Gentlemen, imagine how much that need is felt by those – and they are the majority – who still feel the dignity of their person and are still sensitive to the voice of their conscience.

I still hear in my soul the haunting voice of a poor farmer from Lombardy who came to Piacenza about two years ago from the distant Tibagy Valley in Brazil to plead for a missionary in the name of that large settlement. “Ah, Father,” he was telling me with a lump in his throat, “if you could only imagine how much we have suffered! How much we have cried at the deathbed of our dear ones, who were desperately pleading for a priest and we couldn’t get one! Oh, my God, we cannot go on, we cannot live in this situation!” And with simple but eloquent language the poor man kept telling me about their plight! I must confess that never, like at that moment, did I wish that I were twenty years old so that I could trade in the golden cross of bishop for the wooden cross of a missionary and rush to the aid of those unfortunate, truly unfortunate people, because among all other dangers, there is also the one of falling into despair.

Gentlemen, the picture is somber, but it is not my fault if things are bleak! Everything I have been telling you could be documented by official reports and statistics and by the statements of people who have witnessed those sad events. What I have said goes to prove how accurate the Secretary of the Florence committee was when he said: “Where there is religion, you will find all good things; where religion is missing, all kinds of evil.”

And what about the economic conditions of the emigrants?

From a report to the President of the Society for Assistance submitted by someone especially sent there to study such conditions, I quote the following data taken from official publications in those countries.

After speaking about land reclamation and the reasons which made the first settlers rich and prosperous, the report deals with the present state of emigration, particularly in the farming areas, in these terms:

The golden age of emigration to America is over, and unfortunately so is the silver age. Emigrants seldom find the fortunes they dreamed of, sometimes a little prosperity. Most of them find a harsh life, without serenity or hope. Here are some figures. Miracles have been told about the fertility and productivity of those lands. But the average production there is not greater than that from our mediocre fields, because drought, floods, pests and other farming misfortunes are ruining the crops of the poor farmers. We calculate that in Italy farmers lose one out of every nine years; over there they lose one out of every three.

From “Descripcion Geografica y estatistica” of the Province of Santa Fe, a publication that has received an award from the Government of Argentina, I find proof of my statement. And please note that the Province of Santa Fe is the best developed area in the whole Republic and is called “the wheat region.” During the five-year period from 1878 to 1884, in this Province of Santa Fe, about 522,883 square “quadra” were planted (every “quadra” equals 10 metric perches) for a total of 5,228,506 metric perches, while the harvest yielded 4,052,530 “faneghe,” i.e., 5,228.50 hecto-liters of wheat. During those five years, in that very fertile soil of Santa Fe, one perch yielded one hecto-liter, less than the yield in the mediocre soil of Lombardy, the least productive in Italy.

Here are additional figures, equally interesting, taken from the statistics compiled by Gaetano Rispol and titled: “La Provincia de Entre Rios bajo sur diversos aspectos.” During the five-year period of 1879–1884, the settlement of Monte Caseras, which the publication calls extensive lands

(“immecorables”) received L. 254,150 for its 33,799 “faneghe” of corn; L. 1.685.4 60 for 71,194 “faneghe” of wheat; and L. 90,000 for the poultry – for a total of L. 1,924.460.

Now, if we subtract one third from this total for the lease, on the presumption that those settlers had the best contractual deal – i.e., two-thirds to the farmer and one-third to the owner – we have to conclude that those farmers might have earned L. 283,390, which, when divided among themselves (the community at the time numbered 1,922) means that, during that five-year period, each farmer might have earned L. 685, or L. 135 per annum. There, gentlemen, you have the long dreamed of El Dorado! And from these tolerable conditions you may judge what the bad ones must be, since Argentina is the country that offers our emigrants the best conditions.

The conditions of our emigrants in Brazil are even worse. The salaries promised in the advertisements generously distributed by all agencies are so absurdly meager, and the ridiculous monetary system in that country so blatantly criminal, that simply publicizing these facts should keep our workers from getting snared by the promises of emigration agents. A strong man in superb physical condition could cultivate 2,000 coffee trees, which require hoeing two or three times a year. With his work of hoeing, harvesting and cleaning of coffee beans, this man could earn between 100 and 120 thousand reis, a sum that whets the appetite of poor people but one that, in our present exchange rates, amounts to 300–350 lire. With such meager earnings, how can a poor man and his family survive? And what about the other less fortunate people and the farmers in the “fazendas?” I could not describe the situation more eloquently than through the cry of indignation from Dr. Ennes Sonza, a Brazilian: “We are not ready for agricultural colonization. Even if we wanted to, we could not settle twelve families, not even two families, according to decent human and financial standards. I am caught between white slavery, which seems to be getting worse and worse every day because of the deplorable contractual system, and my desire to cry out in protest and to warn the Europeans about the snare prepared for them. As the son of a country that has already disgraced itself in the universal infamy of slavery, I do not hesitate to denounce this sad state of affairs before the court of world opinion. Since Brazil is not capable of settling emigrant farm workers according to decent working standards, I consider it a crime against humanity to advertise for even one more family to come here, until conditions in our country are such that we can

guarantee a degree of independence to every emigrant who freely comes here.”

I could go on quoting facts and statements showing how wet the tears and how bitter was the bread of the emigrants, of those unfortunate souls, who, attracted either by vain hopes or false promises, found an Iliad of woes, abandonment, sorrow, hunger and not rarely death, where they had believed they would find a paradise. They saw an El Dorado, brightened by the mirage of need, without remembering that the violent wind of reality scatters in an instant the enchanted cities of dream! Unhappy ones! Exhausted by work, the climate, the insects, they fall disconsolate to the soil made fertile by their labors, on the edge of the green forests they have cleared, not for themselves nor for their children, shaken by the gentle and fatal sickness of nostalgia, dreaming perhaps of the motherland, which could not even feed them, calling in vain for the minister of the holy religion of their ancestors, who calms the terrors of the agony of death with the immortal hopes of faith.

What is even more saddening in all this is the thought that all religious, moral, economic evils our emigrant population is exposed to could easily be avoided or greatly diminished if Italian leaders were more aware of their obligation to our emigrant brothers and sisters. After all, gentlemen, the vast plains of America are not all so unwholesome that they cannot offer our emigrants a quiet little corner and not all the lands are so rife with exploitation that none can any longer be found that are fertile and inexpensive enough to guarantee the workers an honest return. One has only to point them out to our emigrants. When was this ever done in Italy? When did anyone tell the emigrant: watch out for that contract you are being offered; this or that other region you are being directed to is concealing this or that danger; those places are not safe, they are not healthy, they are not fertile; or, even if they are fertile, they are so far away from the means of communication and cut off from all social contact that the fruit of your work cannot be sold, making you rich and poor at the same time? I repeat: when was this ever done in Italy? At the most, there is an occasional public outcry and people feel sorry in the face of some incidents which, in the person of those brothers and sisters of ours, wound our own national pride. People denounce, feel sorry, and even call for some Government intervention. And then what? Everything will quiet down, everything will be forgotten, everything will become calm, like the calm treacherous wave that hides its victim and is ready to engulf others!