Italians started immigrating to the United States between 1880's and 1915. About 3 million Italians immigrated to United States. The type of immigrants that came from Italy was mostly artisans and peasants and they mainly came from Mezzogiorno, Southern Italy. Many Italians were representing other regions such as Calabria, Campania, Abruzzi, Molise and Sicily. The other type of immigrants was farm laborers or just laborers in general just like my great great grandfather. The laborers were mostly agricultural and did not have much experience in industry such as mining and textiles. Craftsmen also emigrated from Italy to the US but only a small population of them. 1913 was the highest amount of Italian immigrants the US got; most of them came from Northern Italy. Poverty was a big reason on why Italian emigrated from Italy and came to the United States. Political hardship and being able to get enough money to buy more land was also a great pull factor. About 80% of the Italians that emigrated from Italy were big on agriculture and had known it their whole lives. American workers would get higher wages and the Italians that were in the workforce wanted that. An example of this would be agricultural workers who made only about 16-30 cents a day in Italy. A carpenter in United States would earn $18 working a 56 hour week. Going back to political hardship, the Italian government wanted to force on political views such as anarchy and socialism and Italians wanted to escape from that.
Most of the Italian immigrants came through Ellis Island. In the 1880's they numbered around 300,000 immigrants. In the 1890's they had about 600,000. A decade after that there were more than two million Italian immigrants that came from Italy. After Immigration started to drop and slow down it was around 1920 and more than 4 million Italians emigrated to the United States from Italy. The Italians came to the US by ships and the ships would always be packed to the gills.