The primary forces motivating Italian migration, at its height from 1880 to 1920, were overpopulation, a series of crop failures and agricultural depressions, and a general discontent among the contadini, the "peasants." And, at the time, the United States of America was in a position to receive newcomers. 

Technological advances in America, railroad expansion and new demands for coal and ores created a need for unskilled labor, and millions of Italians came to America to fill those needs. Despite the fact that for 80 percent of the Italian immigrants, agriculture had been their livelihood, they were the largest immigrant population to find work in the mines of America.