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villanies as freely in New York as in Naples and Palermo seems to them a reasonable cause for contempt. And this feeling is held even in the slums of these Italian cities.

This opinion of American authorities obtains not only in Italy, but in the Italian colonies here. At the time of the "barrel mystery" in New York a few years ago-when the body of an Italian was found in a barrel, plunged through and through with twenty or more knife wounds-a Sicilian living in New York told me that a fund of ten thousand dollars was being raised in the Italian colony to bribe the officials who had to do with the case. I do not know whether any such sum was ever raised or ever so used. But I do know that the man who told me thought he was telling the truth, and felt no surprise at the purpose for which the sum was destined. He accepted it in a perfectly matter-offact way. In discussing this matter with an Irish-American of New York after the Petrosino murder, he remarked, "What! Do you think a New York policeman would take money from an Italian?" His utterance of the word "Italian" implied that Italians were beings so unspeakably low that a New York policeman would not degrade himself by accepting money from them. I did not remind my Irish friend, as I might have done, that charges have many, many times been made that the police of New York took money from her fallen women. I did, however, recall to him an incident which he could not deny, because it became a matter of court record at the time. When William Dean Howells, Gino Speranza, and some other friends of Italians organized the Italian Immigrant Aid Society a few years ago, they found Italian immigrants being abominably fleeced even between Ellis Island and the Battery. One method was for agents of Italian boarding houses to gain their confidence on board the government boats from Ellis Island

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low Italian boarding house, where they were kept until their money was gone or until they made too much trouble, when they were kicked out to find their friends as best they could. So far this preying was by Italians on Italians, but in the street before the Barge Office would be great crowds of friends and relatives come to meet the newly arrived immigrants. They were systematically kept back until the runners had a chance to get away with the "greenhorns," and the men who kept them back, with all the weight of uniforms and clubs, were New York policemen. The new society laid its proof of this matter

before the authorities, and the system was broken up.

to

It is not necessary and neither is it possible to charge any connivance between policemen and Blackhanders. But of one thing any ordinary reader of the newspapers and observer of events can assure himself—there has been almost utter indifference crimes perpetrated in our Italian colonies so long as only Italians suffered. "Nothing but dagoes, let them kill each other." That has been the attitude; the spirit if not the letter of our dealings with this matter. An excellent method of impressing an immigrant population with the glories of this land of the free! No such series of crimes-I challenge contradiction-no series like that which has been perpetrated upon our decent, hardworking Italian immigrants for years past would have been suffered to continue had the victims been Americans. Men who came here for no other purpose than to make an honest living by hard work have been badgered, blackmailed, and killed, and no one punished for it. It is not alone the merchants, bankers, and importers of the Italian colonies. It is every man who may have accumulated a little store by incessant toil, and who chances to come under the attention of the blackmailers. Only a few weeks ago the papers contained an account of a poor shoemaker who was threatened with death if he did not pay toll from his little pittance-take bread from the mouths of his children to give to these blackmailers. And nobody has cared very much. The system has been left contemptuously alone by the police until the one man who tried to uproot it and protect the honest element among his race, has been killed for his activity. It so happens that he and his mission were of sufficient importance to attract international attention, and it is now time for us to take action.

Of course all our local authorities may be excused to some extent for

ransom.

not protecting life and property among the Italian immigrants, on account of the difference in language, and particularly on account of the extreme difficulty of securing any information from the Italians themselves, because of the almost invariable silence previously spoken of. The Whitla kidnapping case which recently occured in Pennsylvania was precisely the same sort of crime for which the Mafia or "Black Hand" is renowned-the abduction of a child to enforce the payment of a And the affair was planned by an American woman who, according to her own statement, was educated in an American convent. She and her husband, however, were apprehended in a few days. The keeper of a saloon frequented by the man had his suspicions aroused, and reported to the authorities. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred an Italian would not have done this. The American population has not the tradition or custom of concealing such crimes. If this saloonkeeper had felt a very strong. conviction that the man upon whom he informed would come back and kill him at the first opportunity, probably he would not have informed, even for the heavy reward. People do not very often voluntarily enter into the fear of death for the sake of money alone. It is this terrorization of the victim by deeds of violence, this insuring of silence by means of the vendetta, which makes the peculiar nature of what we call the Mafia or "Black Hand." There are crimes and criminals in all races; perhaps just as many in one as another, but the vendetta and omertà do not exist in all races, by any means.

It is in this peculiar situation that the home missionary can be of use; in learning the language, in securing the confidence of the alien population, and inspiring in them confidence in the government. One can hardly demand that all our city policemen should know the Italian language and

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people who worship the sous 20
derers. Five miles from th
which I lived in 1907 of the wis
of Sicily was a tie country
named Paceco. In the village
was a shrine to the soul of a Practo
man who had murdered his mze
some years before. A ST
started that miracles had been per
formed at his tomb, a local can g
up, and there are people who say ther
prayers at that shripe and to the so...
of that man. And I myself saw pace
crazy lunatics beaten with socks to
make them utter a certain formula be
fore a certain image of the Madonna
in a church at Trapani, which it was
believed would cure their lunacy.
People such as this are being incor-
porated in our racial stock. Those
who like to see abundant immigra-
tion to this country; harp fondly upon
the power of America to "assimilate"
alien races. Is there not a call to the
church to do some missionary work
before this assimilating begins?

If the church dwells rather upon
the patriotic side of its work, here
are plenty to be "trained for citizen-
ship," an abundance of poor to be
"protected from exploitation and de-
bauchery" so that they will not have
to send their children back to Sicily
for safety. But to accomplish any
such work effectively, missionaries
must be trained for it, as they are
trained for work in foreign fields, and
they must make it a life work, as they
make the foreign field a life work.
American missionaries spend years in
learning the frightfully diet an
guages of China, India and Africa.
How many home missionaries * 10
the Protestant churches of Amence
to-day can spec the tal *** 1%
beautif a tougme?

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worden thes to hire f
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York suburb After the ANHANG
ing none of the Italian mothers canse
again. One of the teachers asked me
to go with her to the homes and talk
Italian to the mothers, to myite them
to the meetings. When I found what
entertainment had been offered
them the first time I laughed. There
had been a program in English, of
which they understood not one word,
and they had been given tea to drink
Now in Italy the common people buy
tea by the teaspoonful at the drug
store when they wish to sweat.
low-class Italian would no more think
of drinking tea than medicine. The
American missionary could hardly be
required to offer them their native
wines, which they would com det
But a com
only decent hospitality
promise could be effected on coffer
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