The thrift of the Italians is proverbial. To earn and save money they will live in conditions unsanitary, unhealthy, and degrading. It is not because they love dirt and degradation, but that they want money so much that they will put up with anything to get it. They can live and save a bit where an American family would starve. They have fairly monopolized for a time certain lines into which they entered--as the small fruit trade, the bootblacking business, and other pursuits. It is said that they have made the Americans a fruit-eating people. Supplanted in the street-vending of fruit by the Greek, the Italian has gone into business in earnest, and you find the small fruit stands everywhere, with always a good stock, and by no means a low price. As barbers and tailors, too, the Italians are becoming known. They have a passion for land, and acquire property rapidly. Take the increase of their real estate holdings in New York as an example. Mr. G. Tuoti, a representative Italian operator in real estate, says that twenty years ago there was not a single Italian owner of real estate in the districts where such owners now predominate. He has a list of more than 800 landowners of Italian descent, whose aggregate holdings in New York are approximately $15,000,000.[57] [Illustration: Born in Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Greece--Resident in the United States 1900 Reproduced by special permission from "The Worker's World." Copyright 1903.] [Sidenote: Property Holdings] As to Italian savings and investments in the same city, Mr. Gino C. Speranza, vice-president of the Society for Italian Immigrants, finds on computation the Italian investments in the city savings-banks to total more than $15,000,000. He puts the real estate holdings at 4,000, of the clear value of $20,000,000. He estimates that 10,000 stores in the city are owned by Italians, and sets their value at $7,000,000, with a further investment of as much more in wholesale business. He makes the total material value of the property of the Italian colony in New York to be over $60,000,000, and says this value is relatively below that of the Italian possessions in Saint Louis, Boston, and Chicago. The Italian Chamber of Commerce has over two hundred members, and has done much to promote the interests of the immigrants. There is one distinctively Italian Savings Bank, with an aggregate of deposits approximating $1,100,000, and about 7,000 open accounts. Sixteen daily and weekly Italian newspapers in New York alone indicate that the people are reading, and that not all are illiterates by any means. The Italian Hospital, the Italian Benevolent Institute, and over 150 Italian societies for mutual aid and social improvement--all this in New York--indicate a degree of enterprise and progress. In the smaller cities the condition of the Italians is in many respects much better than in the great centers, since the tenement evils are escaped. The