It is a painful fact, but the average American’s conception of Italian immigration is that the majority of the Italians come from “down in the Boot,” and that they are all bad and undesirable. It is the usual thing to regard all southern Italians as unworthy of Americanism. One sees it constantly in public print or finds it in private discourse. And the phrase about the Boot is one which has been bruited around again and again from official report to alarmist editorial, and back to classical reference which was its origin. I have met many people who are not aware that the Sicilians, for instance, do not come from “down in the Boot.” These ideas all mate nicely with the one which attributes to every Italian the possession of a stiletto up his sleeve and an ever-ready hand to use it.

The poor southern Italians are the object of constant attack by the American public, of bitter contempt from the more fortunate people of the northern provinces, and of ceaseless worriment from the gentlemen legislators of the kingdom. Italia Meridionale is in a miserable condition compared with the north, and the people are ignorant, and the percentage of illiteracy is appalling; but, nevertheless, they are strong in body, steadfast in mind, willing of spirit and at all times thrifty; so that, speaking from an immigratory standpoint, I am convinced, after a survey of the entire experiment, that they are a very good sort of raw 48material and their immigration should be encouraged, if the rottenness that corrupts them after they are here—as a drop of poison can turn the blood of an entire body to virus—could be cut out before they start.

Poverty, ignorance and hot blood have fostered among them crime, treachery and immorality, and the larger towns have sufficed to gather these into festering clusters, leaving the countryside comparatively pure. The farmer-folk and the villagers are not criminal, dishonest or vicious; but when, in the process of emigration, nine of them are thrown with that one tenth man who is so, he leads them into ways that are not straight and paths that are turned, and in many, many instances organizes a band which holds a large coterie of families almost entirely in its power. This it can do by superior intelligence, boldness, etc., and the fact that the Italians in America are in a strange land, are “greenhorns,” as they say among themselves, lays them wide open to such invidious influences. If that one man or woman out of every ten who is vicious could be prevented from sailing, a few years would see Italian names almost entirely effaced from the criminal news and the court and prison records. If the system of social poisoning of the densely populated immigrant quarters is not destroyed, it will ultimately prove a menace to all law and order in the large cities or industrial districts populous with immigrants.

Before we went to Sicily to study the peculiar conditions surrounding the Squadrito family and their neighbors, we took up the general investigation through the country south of Rome, gathering what we could by going from town to town, asking questions, asking questions, always asking questions. 49Much was to be learned from watching even the tiniest things in the newspapers and from observing the people themselves as they passed about the most inconsequential pursuits of their daily existence.

To give the matter a topical consideration, it separates itself naturally into five divisions, which are semi-geographical merely for convenience, as it would be erroneous indeed to consider each province according to its political boundaries: The Zone of Naples, the Zone of Rome, the Provinces of the Heel, the Provinces of the Toe and Sicily. In those portions of the following consideration topicalized as zones, the distinctions are made, because the regions dealt with have all their general social conditions very largely shaped by the subtle cumulative influence of the life in the two great cities, Rome and Naples. It is possible that few Italians are aware of the differences, but they are palpable to an outsider immediately. Every village that is within touch of either the Italian capital or the most important port and city partakes of the markedly contradistinct life of the two. If Naples is correctly called a City of Thieves, then is Rome equally well named a City of Institutions, and there is the difference. Abruzzi, Molise and Puglie (Apulia), having greater extents of plain suited to agriculture than any of the other southern provinces and being farther from the emigration centres on the west side of the peninsula, form a group by themselves under the title Provinces of the Heel. Basilicata (Potenza) and Calabria, being nearly uniformly mountainous even out to the sea line and having the most potent influences at work to urge emigration, are considered under Provinces of the Toe; while, as for conditions in Sicily, 50they are best told in connection with our own experiences there with the people of Gualtieri-Sicamino and other towns.

As for general comparative conditions of education, amount of emigration and a very interesting sidelight on the Italian administrative attitude towards emigration, I give a translation of an article which appeared some months since in Il Progresso Italo-Americano, of New York, a newspaper of importance, and one which is usually able to reflect the Italian government’s position in anything that pertains to social and educational subjects. The article, which is editorial, reads:
“EMIGRATION AND EDUCATION

“The Bureau of Education in Rome has recently received the following telegram from Inspector Adolfo Rossi, who is at present in South Africa.

“‘According to the decree already published in the Official Gazette, the landing of illiterate immigrants at Cape Town shall be prohibited.’

“South Africa now follows Australia and British Columbia, and before long the United States will emulate their example.

“The law already approved by the House of Representatives is now before the Senate, being favorably reported by the Senate Committee, and from the last message of President Roosevelt (of which the readers of Il Progresso are not ignorant) it is evident it will have all the support of the Presidential power. What will then become of our emigration, and particularly that from the southern provinces? This has been a frequent question, and it is now becoming acute. A comparison between the grand total of permanent emigration from the Neapolitan provinces for the first six months of the year, and the percentage of illiteracy shown by the last compulsory enrollment of troops is necessary, in order to comprehend the terrible menace hanging over those regions, and the duties devolving upon the officials directing affairs.

Peasant Types

51“The following tables give the statistics referred to:
Emigration for Six Months     Illiteracy
Abruzzi     28,412     49.59 per cent.
Campania     41,066     44.05 per cent.
Apulia     8,434     53.05 per cent.
Basilicata     7,840     52.13 per cent.
Calabria     21,262     55.02 per cent.

“During the first ten months of 1902 there emigrated from Naples to the United States 145,629, of which number more than eighty-eight per cent were over ten years of age.

“Given the application of the law presented to Congress at Washington by the Hon. Mr. Shattuc, with amendments of the Hon. Mr. Underwood, about 70,000 persons from the Neapolitan provinces alone would have been returned from the American ports during the period mentioned. The following extract is taken from the report of the Senate Committee:

“‘While we are spending millions to eradicate from our country the evil of illiteracy, we are opening our doors to illiterate men of all nations. One may have the opinion that education is not a guaranty of character, any more than the want of education may be of dishonesty, but it is undoubted that education constitutes the fundamental basis of any moral and intellectual progress.’

“The last message of the President of the United States contains the following:

“‘The second object of an immigration law should be that of ascertaining, by means of an accurate examination and not one simply relative to illiteracy, whether the immigrant has the intellectual capacity of being able to act healthfully and judiciously as an American citizen.’

“In view of such danger, what action remains to be taken? It is illusory to hope that the action of our diplomacy (no matter what eminent statesmen we may have) can succeed in preventing the enactment of 52the law in America, any more than it could have prevented such action in Australia, British Columbia or Cape Colony.

“We can only endeavor to maintain for as long as possible the openings which we at present have for our emigration, and to endeavor to acquire new ones, as, for instance, the Transvaal mines. A strong economic crisis continues in the Argentine Republic, and at present immigration is necessarily suspended. In Brazil, where there is still much field for opportunities, it would be heartless to encourage our emigrants and afterwards see them in the ‘fazendas,’ treated with inhumanity and oppression, without being able to render them any effectual protection.

“On the other hand it is a duty of the Italian state energetically to provide for the education of the southern proletarian masses, which the local administrations cannot do, deprived as they are of resources and oppressed by debts and taxation. In the south it is the duty of the State to conduct, at least in the minor communities, the elementary education, causing the communities to contribute only in accordance with their means, thereby avoiding an unnecessary aggravation of their present condition. As stated by the Honorable Sonnino in his speech in Maddaloni Hall, Naples, modern Italy has so far deplorably failed in the first of its duties to civilization: that of giving primary education to the poor masses of its most unfortunate provinces.

“It is now time to resolve for energetic action, in order to eradicate from one-half the kingdom of Italy the stigma of being the leading nation of Christian Europe in illiteracy. Considerations of prudence as well as humanity advise us to take such a step.”

In a word, nearly half of the people are unable to read and write in Italia Meridionale, because the communes are too poor to pay the expenses of maintaining schools except in the larger towns and cities. The attitude of the Italian government is very nicely shown 53also. It looks on emigration as the only safety-valve for the districts which are over-populated, and recent years have proved that an immense improvement always follows in any village when the proportion of its emigration rises above ten per cent. The reason is that the Italians in America, South America, South Africa and Australia save enough money to send home enormous sums to their relatives, with the result that in Basilicata, for instance, which has been heavily drained by emigration, there are entire communities in a flourishing condition solely on the savings of their emigrants. By most careful estimates, made by comparison of consular reports with Italo-American banking statements, the Italian money post, and the statistics of the Italian Bureau of Emigration, I have concluded that in the year 1902 between $62,000,000 and $70,000,000 was sent home to Italy from the United States alone. In the year 1903 between $57,000,000 and $65,000,000 was the estimated amount.

The decrease is to be accounted for by the great increase in the number coming over to join those in the United States who had been sending them money. A great difficulty that blocks accuracy in these things is the concealment of funds by returning emigrants and by recipients of money in Italy. I found a family in Caivano, near Naples, for instance, who received through a cousin who returned to Italy on the Lahn, at the same time with us, $3,500, jointly sent by a father and three sons working in the mills in Birmingham, Ala. Only by chance did I learn of it, and then they besought me to keep their secret, fearing that “the King would get it.” When the Italian pays his two or three per cent to the government he says, “it has gone to the King.” H. J. W. Dam’s “The Tax 54on Moustaches” very nicely touches up this matter of national taxes in Italy. I know personally of a large number of instances of returning emigrants carrying large sums of money with them, and I have the statements of scores of money-changers to whom American dollars are sold; so that I feel justified in saying that a very large portion of the emigrant savings goes home clandestinely and is never caught in the government net, yet blessed is the lot of the tax-collector in a village which has twenty or more per cent of its native-born in America. His lot is an easy one compared with the corresponding official in a village of small emigration.

Particularly as to conditions in the zone of Neapolitan influence, emigration is the most important feature of life there to-day, for the reason that the emigration from Campania has been and is enormous, and that, should Naples suddenly cease to be the greatest of all ports of embarkation, a financial paralysis would strike the city and province.

Over large districts, the vital arteries of which are the river valleys of the Volturno and Garigliano and the country back from the Gulf of Naples and the Bay of Salerno, the influence of Naples obtains, and its dominant tone, as has been said, is dishonesty. Naturally, since Naples is the metropolis of the region, the Neapolitan point of view is the one emulated, and though I have seen many types of lying, lazy, morally oblique peoples, I have never dwelt among any where a constant exercise of one’s vigilance on the defensive was so absolutely necessary.

A rather good story which illustrates the propensities of the Neapolitans was told me by an Englishman whom I met in Caserta. According to his relation, a German Jew, a Scotchman and a Connecticut Yankee 55formed a company for the exportation of wine from Naples and went there to set up business. After being in the city several days, and having a few business transactions with the Neapolitans, the Yankee said to his partners:

“Well, boys, we had better settle down and live here for about ten years until we learn a few tricks and then start business, or we had better give these chaps all we have at once and save them the trouble of taking it away from us.”

From Frosinone south to the valley of the Sele and back as far as Ariano we found even the simple-minded peasants to have that touch of Neapolitanism, which is, to say the least, an undesirable characteristic. In the city itself it is so serious that not many years since the organized ruffians of the Cammora, recruited from all stations of society, were a power of terror, and since then men more polite, but just as criminal, bankrupted the city and brought general conditions to such a pass that the national government was forced to step in and take control till municipal and provincial affairs could be put on an honest and paying basis. The people are more noisy, more gross in their habits, and more irresponsible in their conduct than any class in any part of Italy. Constant change of government in the past, lack of things of an institutional nature and the focusing of all the bad in the south of Italy may have had the degenerating effect; but, whatever the cause, the effect exists, and the social virus seems to have poisoned many a man I know who, but for his brief stays in Naples, would be a very decent citizen, either in his native town, in other provinces, or in his new home in America. The bad Italians in the United States are in clusters, and the heads of the 56majority of these groups are men trained in theft, trickery and crime in the excellent schools of Naples and Palermo.

In the city there are few factories, though the government is bringing every influence to bear to promote industries in Naples, and under the new municipal plan a large tract of the side of the city that lies towards Vesuvius is arranged for factory sites; but there are three important things lacking: raw material, skilled labor and confident capital. Even the excellent street-car system is controlled by Belgians. The north of Italy continues to be the industrial section. The business that emigration engenders is first in importance. Vesuvius, Pompeii, the Bay and the climate form the next important asset, and the exportation of agricultural products and wholesale business of all sorts the third. Two hundred thousand people in the city live on so little a year that the statement of the amount would sound ridiculous.

Mangling Hemp

We traversed the country of the arbitrarily indicated zone in the time of the full harvest, when the bits of plain on which rows of trees, themselves loaded with fruit, were seen to be the supports of miles of running vines bearing great bunches of grapes, heavily covered with dust. In every village were to be seen the hemp workers, where the long stripped stalks were piled up in bound bundles waiting to be laid in the mangling machines, operated as a rule by women and hand-mangled. On carefully brushed stone squares men, women and children were threshing beans and peas. Before every door were flat shallow troughs in which figs or fruit of some sort were drying. On the house-tops the tomatoes were being converted into a dark red mash, which is called pomidoro and is used to 57make the delicious sauces with which macaroni is dressed. Long-horned oxen or patient donkeys, with now and then an undersized horse, drew along the dusty highways carts loaded with casks made ready for wine, bundles of hemp stalks or shocks of wheat. In every village were to be seen the several offices of the steamship companies’ sub-agents. The countryside simply teemed with life. There was never a spot where one might stand and, though there was no one in sight, not hear voices all about. In nearly every group of people was to be seen one or more who bore the signs of recent return from America or indications of near departure. Over everything lay the white dust from the dry plains and slopes, and the sun beat down with distracting fervor.

It did not seem to me that in the country districts of the Neapolitan zone the Church exercised quite the influence for good or evil in the material affairs of the people that it does elsewhere in Italia Meridionale, and it was noticeable that the people had stronger commercial instincts, being more inclined to buy and sell if given the opportunity. That finds an expression in America in this way. So many of the lace-workers, barrow-men, coal, wood and ice men are Neapolitans, or are from the villages in the Neapolitan zone. But, in the social organization of the countryside everything led to the impression that, as each child grew up, his or her elders forced a place in the already existing throng for him or her, a place wherein a bit to eat and a scrap to wear might be won, and above that place the child could scarcely hope to rise, inasmuch as it was difficult to maintain the foothold, let alone improve it. Those who were unfit for the struggle became beggars and wanderers, not paupers in the Italian sense, for the Italian 58pauper is a person not only penniless, homeless and friendless, but physically incapable of taking any care of himself whatever. The inmates of the Reclusario of Naples are the most shocking lot of human wrecks I have ever beheld aggregated.

If a family or group of families is suddenly deprived of the source from which it has been eking a slender livelihood, the desperation to which it is driven is well instanced by the terrible tragedy at Torre-Annunziata. Immediately on hearing of the first outbreak there, I took up the investigation, and in brief this is the story of the occurrence.

It was merely one of those risings of the common people which occur every now and then, and in which they uniformly get the worst of it. It seems that the estate owned by the Ferroni Corporation had for fifteen years been allowing the farmers about Sarno, Castellamare-Torre-Annunziata, to have cheaply certain waste materials for fertilizing their farms. These were suddenly cut off, and the tenants demanded the immediate delivery of the manure for their common use, but to their demand no attention was paid.

This led to a discontent, which it is claimed was fostered by the local Chamber of Labor, and they were exhorted by a Socialist by the name of Vincenzo Presenzano with the result that on the 31st of August over two hundred of them, armed with sticks, forks, spades and stones, gathered on the property of one Gennaro Salto and stopped the carts coming from the estate with the material, and, the high iron bridge over the River Sarno being close at hand, they dumped the entire outfit into the deeps.

Five municipal guards and two city officials intervened in an endeavor to maintain order; but by this 59time the crowd had grown to over five hundred, and, after securing information for making arrests, they retired.

In a little while there arrived a small force of Carabineers, city and municipal guards, and they were so outnumbered by the rioters that the latter attacked them vigorously. The commandant of the municipal guard and one Carabineer fell wounded.

Then the order to fire into the mob was given. It was the claim of the military that the first shots were fired into the air, but men who were in the mob averred that they opened fire even before the commandant was wounded.

Men, women and children withered away before the blazing rifles like so much grass, and, when the mob had dispersed, three lay dead on the grass, two more of the wounded died in a short time, and four were known to be in a very serious condition, while numbers of others were hurt. The exact number did not even come out at the investigation which was ordered by the government.

When I visited the commune it seemed as if a plague had fallen. More soldiers were being hurried to the district and posted in spots to command the situation, arrests were being made, even in houses where the dead lay; but a terrible silence hung over both military and populace. I talked with one of the Carabineers, and he told me he could never forgive himself for helping to shoot down his own people, and that he longed for the day when he could leave the service. It was the second disturbance in which he had been, and in both cases the sufferers were the simple-minded peasantry who, finding themselves deprived of what they regarded as their just rights, had been incited to violence by Socialists.

60The disgrazia made a profound impression throughout the kingdom, and more than one resident foreigner in speaking of the subject remarked: “Some day there is going to be more than that. The people who really work and produce something in this country are getting about tired of paying enormous rents to support the aristocrats, and heavy tithes and taxes to maintain the Church, the army, and a government of splendor. We expect trouble, and that before long.”

The Socialists are growing, and a paper called Avanti, published in Rome, is the chief organ of the malcontents. During our stay in Italy it made a number of successful exposés of ministerial and official derelictions and won suits brought against it in retaliation, while numerous illustrated weeklies indulged in caricatures and cartoons of the Pope, cardinals and ministers, that seemed to meet with great popular favor; but my observation was that socialism as a principle was not generally understood by the masses, and the only reason that the socialistic groups have much following was because they are against things as they are rather than for socialism as a solution of the problem of what they should be. Socialism as a political belief is not being readily transplanted to this country by any class of the emigrants except the educated emigrants from the north and in and about Rome.