rom 1870 to 1885, for every one who immigrated to the United States, there were five who

chose to settle in Latin America, the majority of these, in Brazil. Why did they choose Brazil and Argentina when the burgeoning North American superpower, with the promises of jobs and a higher standard of living, beckoned?

The Great Emigration

During this period, most emigrants were families from the lower, primarily agricultural, valleys, i.e., from the Adige, Pianta Rotiliana, Vallagarina and Valsugana. These were people who had lost their land as a result of the economic crisis. By emigrating, they hoped to regain a piece of farmland so that they might continue living as they and their ancestors had always lived. However, in the United States, it was no longer as easy, as it had been in the past, for a poor European peasant to purchase land. That period was just about over! Purchasing land now required more money than most emigrants had.

building railroads, roads, aqueducts and housing. Many had sought work in the mines and quarries of Central Europe. These were the workers who arrived at Ellis Island prior to World War I. They were 'birds of passage' whose aim was to earn, in the least time possible, a nest egg to bring back to their mountains, where they would buy a piece of meadow, or some woodlands, or perhaps, reconstruct a home which had fallen into disrepair over the years. Some of these men made two, three or more round trips. With their savings, the real estate situation in the region stabilized and much of the housing was upgraded. With the American dollars (along with some francs, marks and crowns from European countries, and even some pesos and milreis from South America), the Italian Tyrol was able to survive the severe economic crises of 1870 through 1890. Over time, and because of new American laws, some of the emigrants decided to settle in the States, joined by their families.

From 1870 to 1890, about $900 were needed to purchase and equip a farm. The typical Trentino emigrant, upon arrival in the USA, had, on average, just $10 to $20! Brazil, on the other hand, was in the final years of a slave-based economy and was in dire need of European labor. Therefore, it offered the emigrant free passage and the opportunity to buy cheap land, though sometimes that land was virgin forest!

Over time, two trends became notable. The lower valleys no longer had a manpower surplus and the middle and higher valleys (above 500 meters), began sending out their workers into the world. These were usually only men, coming from a decades-long history of working "all'Aisempon`" (a dialectical term coming from the German "Eisenbahn arbeiter', that is, 'railroad worker'). Men had been going abroad for many years, to work on The Trentini, like the migrants from Venetia, Lombardy 16

In what sectors of the job market did these newly arrived Trentini work? And, in what area of the United States? There are two sources which can help us here. The first is the list provided, in 1921, to the newspaper L'Emigrante by Silvio Bernardi, himself an emigrant from Storo. This list was based on the research of two brothers, Enrico and Eugenio Gentilini, both pharmacists, who, in 1914, resided in Colorado and Los Angeles respectively. The second source is the 1914 research conducted by the Office of Labor Mediation, a department of the Roveretos Chamber of Commerce. At the start of World War I, these lists tell us, the Trentini were scattered over some forty states and in nine of those states, estimates indicated colonies of over one thousand people. The largest group, of about 9000, was in Pennsylvania, followed by 3,600 in Colorado, 2,050 each in Massachusetts and Wyoming, 2,000 in New York 1,460 in Vermont, 1,250 in Michigan, 1,100 in Ohio and 1,000 in Illinois. Groups of more than 400 could be found in Alaska, California, Connecticut, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin. These numbers include the immigrants themselves and their children, born in the USA, who, in the course of 40 years had had the time to spread out over the American landscape. There were 467 small 'colonies' of Trentini scattered across the USA.

Virginia. And many immigrants were ' aisemponeri', who continued that tradition on the railroads in Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and Virginia. But in Bernardi's list we find many trades that were truly unusual for these mountain people and an indication of their capacity to adapt to new activities. There were coopers on whaling ships, and fur trappers in Alaska, they constructed ports in Maryland and were fishermen in West Virginia. But the chief activity of the Trentini in the USA was work in the mines and stone quarries. The second most frequent occupation was as a factory worker. and Piedmont, seemed to avoid the big cities.

Exceptions were the knife-grinders of Rendena and the subway workers from the Non valley who settled primarily in New York City. By contrast, the great wave of workers from Southern Italy, after 1890, characteristically chose to stay in the urban areas. Five million Italians entered the USA in the period from 1876 to 1930 - four million of them from Southern Italy. At the beginning of the twentieth century, 60% of Italian immigrants lived in the 160 largest cities of the United State, primarily on the East coast.

There was another difference between the immigrant Trentini and other Italian immigrants, even those from other Northern provinces. Because of the laws governing education in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, by 1900, illiteracy had been stamped out throughout the Dolomites, so that almost all of the Trentini arriving in America were literate. The two sources we have cited were compiled 40 years after the start of that great wave of immigration. That is why they indicate a small number of Trentini settled as agricultural workers. These were mostly found in the western and mid-western states - Arizona, Callifornia, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Indiana. But there were also small colonies in Vermont, North Carolina, New Jersey, Michigan and Alabama. Some were owners of farms, others were cattle ranchers and still others were employees in these establishments.

Miners from the Trentino, from 1870 until 1920, and even as late as 1930, could be found in all the American mines. They prospected and dug for: gold in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and South Dakota - silver in Colorado and Idaho - copper in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Utah; - coal in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming; zinc in Arizona and Wyoming; antimony in Idaho, lead in Idaho and Nevada; iron in Minnesota, North Carolina and Wyoming. And then there were the stone quarries in Connecticut, Minnesota, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Wyoming. And lastly, there were groups of Trentini extracting oil from the bowels of the earth in Illinois and Indiana. Because they did not linger in the large cities and voluntarily gravitated to the mines, the Trentini were welcome in the USA, according to the Office of Labor Mediation. Life in the American mines was hard - very hard. Often, it was inhuman.

But the main occupations of our immigrants was not farming or ranching (though in 1914 there were some ranchers in Colorado, Connecticut and Texas). Neither were there many woodsmen among them, a trade widely pursued in their native land. There were a few lumberjacks in Alaska and 'woodcutters' in California and West 17

Renzo Grosselli is a noted journalist of LAdige the main newspaper of the Trentino. He has researched the history of emigration from the Trentino and has published the book LEmigrazione dal Trentino dall Medioevo all Prima Guerra Mondiale (Trentino Emigration from the Middle Ages to the First World War).