But on the other side there are many evil results to be reckoned with. The ignorant peasant has been cheated in the quality and price of the land he has bought, and after two or three years of unsuccessful effort learns that he cannot make even a living from it, and sells it at a great loss, sometimes to the very landlord from whom he purchased it. The southern provinces are losing their working population, so that the production, which was inadequate before, has become even more insufficient. Carefully cultivated and terraced land is being laid waste through neglect. As a result there has been a notable increase in prices and in the cost of living, which nearly or entirely offsets the higher wages of the peasants, and brings a disproportionately heavy burden on the salaried and clerical classes. Women have been driven to take up hard labor in the fields, to the extent that a physical injury to the rising generation is already observable. As a consequence of the breaking up of families, there has been a tendency toward moral degeneracy, not only on the part of the men who have emigrated, but of the women who are left. Prostitution, illegitimacy, and infanticide have increased. Children are growing up without salutary restraint. Tuberculosis, almost unknown in Italy before emigration, is spreading rapidly. Only a few of the returned emigrants are willing to settle down permanently in the old country, and work for its uplift, and there is no assurance that the money which has been sent to Italy for safe keeping will be ultimately spent there. Many of the young men who return, bring back vices with them, and serve as a demoralizing example while they remain.[382] From the governmental point of view, there is an alarming deficiency of recruits for the army. Even the new houses, built with American money, are not always an improvement on the old, as no new ideas come in with the remittances. A comparison of these two categories emphasizes the fact that the favorable effects are, in general, the more obvious and immediate ones. They are the ones which catch the eye of the traveler or the superficial observer. They are the ones which appear to have particularly impressed the Immigration Commission, as evidenced by their seemingly hasty review of conditions on the other side.[383] It is upon these that Professor Steiner, with his warm fellow-feeling for the immigrant lays special stress. Even Miss Balch gives prominence to this class of effects. The injurious results of such a movement as emigration are likely to be of such a nature as makes them slow of development, and difficult to observe and calculate. Physical and moral degeneracy are slower to appear than high wages and new houses, but at the same time they are more important. Taking everything into account, it seems probable that, for Italy at least, emigration under the present conditions will prove at least as much of a curse as a blessing.