The biggest reason for this was financial. Farming takes time to sow, grow and harvest, and there was simply not time for that; the Italian immigrant needed to make as much money as he could in the least time possible; farming simply would not work (2008). Farming also implied a certain amount of permanence, which was not the plan for many Italian immigrants (Mintz 2007).

Land in America was also quite expensive. There had been free land in the west that was given out under the Homestead Act, but that was no longer available (2008). The Italians with their agricultural backgrounds became mostly urban people (Oracle 2010). Rapczynski (2008) posits that another reason could have been because farming simply reminded them of the poor conditions that had left behind in Italy and they wanted to do something different. Because of the vastness of the land in America, many Italians considered...
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