Dear Miss Addams,
I do appeal [today] ↑to↓ your heart and the great Sisterhood of women of the whole world, to which I never ↑have↓ appealed in vain, when I asked for help for ↑the↓ poor suffering German, Polish or Austrian population. The U.S.A. the glorious young Republic has [always] been the one luminous star in the world darkness of hate and extreme Nationalism to which I turned my eyes, hungry for light.
Here in Italy, in my beloved Tuscany, in Rome, in the Campagna I heard [illegible] great tales of woe, of distress, of [despair]. The Italian population is growing rapidly, (and the causes are very moral indeed [for] this increase of healthy [beautiful] childhood). No alcoholism, no perversity, mothers feeding their children and looking at a big family like the greatest blessing of providence [and] divine love.
These happy and [country-bred] peasants were want to send the best of their sons and families abroad, they emigrated to the States. I remember the earthquake [illegible] at [Avezzano] in the first year of the World War and when I arrived at Rome, all the people I spoke to, asked me to write to the -- Americani -- the emigrants. The U.S.A. [were] also to them, the blessed country of their hopes, where they did find work and freedom. Now a law allows only 3845 subjects of the King to enter the [frontiers], which received before the war nearly 240,000 emigrants and for whose hospitality 300,000 Italians have made petitions.
My heart smote me when today one of the greatest heroes of the war, decorated with the Gold medal and now working with really [medieval] humility for the progress of his country and the [welfare] of the Emigrants told me of his hard plea. [page 2]
[How] can we teach love of our [neighbors] and explain the the necessity of peace -- world peace and civil peace -- to our peasants, when they hear, that for purely nationalistic and economical reasons, they are refused to look for work at their usual working places ↑just↓ because the syndicates and [labor] Confederations of the U.S.A. fear of the concurrence?
The distress is great, the misery is growing and the poor people are storming the emigration office and falling the prey of every swindler they meet in their yearning towards the promised Land.
Dear Miss Addams, may my [illegible] ↑letter↓ [illegible], the appeal of one who suffered hardship during the world conflict and now lives without home in the country where she passed a happy childhood in a sunny and green [country place] ↑homestead↓ touch you. I do ask your intervention, knowing your great influence, to increase the number, the allowed [quota] of Italian Emigrants, whom I do consider all my brethren, as well as our poor German Emigrants and all those in the world who live in exile and belong to two countries, between ↑which countries↓ they divide their feelings and to whom they give the whole loyalty and faith of their human soul.
I could not come to Washington this spring, as I explained at [Geneva] to our friends but I do hope to be able to join the next Congress and do believe me that everywhere, I work for our common ideals.
With my best love I do remain yours truly
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