From New Orleans, with its 60,000, to New York with its nearly
half a million, scarcely a city is without an Italian colony, and
even villages and rural districts show a quota of these ubiquitous,
hard working, promising new Americans.

Italy, the land of art and beauty, contributes to us citizens with
an enormous capacity for industry and economy, warmth of nature,
response to beauty and openness to religious appeal, with a tendency
to crimes of passion and, in general, a most un-American attitude
toward the child, using him at the earliest possible age as a
commercial asset for the family.

Physically they are of marvelous vitality and strength, and like
other hardy peasant stock have great endurance and are very prolific.
Early marriages, arranged by the parents, and large families, are
the rule among them.

All of these factors are of greatest significance to us as a
nation, though we can not here enter into a discussion of the grave
potentialities involved in the absorption by our nation of a virile,
prolific, though not highly intelligent class.

We cannot, however, fail to be impressed with the urgent necessity
of imparting to such a people the ideals and standards essential
to their adoption into our body politic.

The church is qualified beyond all other agencies to accomplish this
end, and to give spiritual direction to the Italian-Americans who are
turning from the superstition and inadequacy of the religion which is