In a half-hearted, divided-responsibility sort of way, the Italian government, the steamship companies and the United States authorities endeavor to do at Naples, the world’s greatest port of emigrant embarkation, what should be done thoroughly a stage sooner, viz., to sort out those who are likely to be turned back at Ellis Island and to prevent them from sailing. How much easier, cheaper and more effective to have done it at home!
So far as this narrative of the experiences of my wife and myself and our family party is concerned, I would estimate that stage of the process which was reached at Naples as of equal or greater importance than the Ellis Island process proper.
Before we left our native land to begin the research in Italy, we were under the impression that emigration was merely a matter of so many hundreds of thousands of people traveling each season from their homes in Europe to the nearest ports, and taking third-class passage to New York, where they were landed at Ellis Island and examined. That is the American idea of it,—that and no more! That anything befell them, other than happens to traveling families in any place, before they reached Ellis Island, never occurred to us. The process of birth certificates, passports, declarations, and grouping by the numbers on the ship’s manifest was all unexpected; and here at Naples was yet more 139formality, and, looking back over the whole trip, the Naples stage seems really more interesting and surely as important as the Ellis Island one.
The morning (30th of September) that we arrived on the Reina Margherita from Messina, and debarked with our baggage at nine o’clock on the quay before the Capitaneria del Porto, with no shelter from the sun already beginning to send down rays of broiling heat and blinding whiteness, we were rallied into one crowd by agents of the North German Lloyd broker, Vincenzo di Luca fu Giacomo, who stood at the foot of the gangplank crying, “Germanese! Germanese!” and into another by agents of the La Veloce Line broker, who stood on the other side and called, “Veloce! Veloce!”
Across the quay, directly opposite where the Reina Margherita had docked, lay the beautiful long gray Citta di Napoli, ready to sail that day, and from the other side of the Capitaneria we could see emigrants who were going in her, pouring out of the examination-rooms in hundreds, and carrying their baggage aboard. All the third-class passengers among us who were going by the Veloce Line were quickly herded together, and rushed away and put through the process. As our steamer did not sail yet for two days, we were left to wait while all the Veloce baggage was passed through the custom-house, and then that of all the first class from the Reina Margherita, as there is a city customs duty in Naples in addition to the national revenue, and baggage is looked at very carefully for comestibles, or anything that can be eaten or converted into food-stuffs.
We had had no breakfast; we had had exceedingly little sleep; the air outside the bay had been chilling; 140and now we were left huddled in the dust under that pouring sun till it was somebody’s pleasure to remove us. A high iron fence topped with spear pickets prevented our getting out, and if we tried to go through the doorway into the Capitaneria there were policemen to push us back. Despite the strict rules of the Capitaneria concerning any Neapolitans being allowed in among third-class passengers not yet admitted to the port, or among those passed for embarkation, peddlers, water-sellers, beggars and mendicant friars began to filter through the Capitaneria and over the fence, until, even if we were oppressed with weariness, heat, dust and hunger, we at least had diversion, and were able to buy warm water with a dash of licorice in it. One buxom young woman who came in with an ollah and served all customers out of the same glass was of a fine cheery type, and when some of the people about us complained and asked whether this was what they were to expect in the way of treatment, she would laugh and say:
“Oh, do not trouble yourself because you are weak with weariness and have no place to sit down but the dust in the hot sun. This is heavenly to what you will find later on.”
I heard her tell Camela and Concetta this, and the effect was anything but cheering on them. Antonio tried to comfort them, but he was almost at his wits’ end, answering questions from all the members of our party as to when they were going to get something to eat, whether we were to go at once on the steamer, whether or not they looked “sick in the eyes,” and might they open one of the trunks to get a bottle of wine, and so on indefinitely.
The begging friars were nearly all Franciscans, and 141moved about the various enclosures among the thousands of emigrants, telling them that they could best ward off the fearful dangers of the voyage and in the new, wild land, America, by purchasing prayer-cards. They got a great deal of money in this way.
It was with keen disappointment that I saw a party of three persons, an old woman, her daughter and the daughter’s small boy, who were going by the Citta di Napoli, brought off the Reina Margherita and hurried away with the other Veloce people. I had observed their diseased eyes the evening before, and had warned all of our party to keep away from them; but the young woman had made friends with one of our neighbors, to whom she confided the fact that this was her third trip to Naples with her mother and her boy. She had tried twice before to go to America, but all had been turned down on account of trachoma, and sent back to Messina, where they lived. Now, by arranging to perform that indefinite process I heard so much about, “Pay some money to some people,” she fully expected to get through at Naples and to be landed in New York. I had planned to check up every step of her process and see if she really did get through with the old woman and the child; but now she was hustled away, and we were left standing helpless. I had the name she gave to our neighbor, and the address in Messina, but either the neighbor was mistaken or the name fictitious.
Soon after they had gone, an old man with a swarm of young clerks appeared, and, calling the roll of the party, issued tickets which were good for daily rations, while we were held in Naples, at the North German Lloyd’s contract restaurant, the Trattoria Retifilero in Via Lanzieri. It was a long, tedious process, involving 142much argument and searching for passports, tickets and papers.
When the old man was finished, he and his henchmen marshaled the crowd, divided it off into groups amid a wild uproar, and each group of thirty or forty followed one of the young clerks into the Capitaneria, where they were led before the city customs officials, who ransacked their baggage for comestibles. A number of the members of our party were intensely agitated over the performance, it being their first experience, and little Nastasia, who had wine and cheese in his box, was wild with fright. He was afraid he would be arrested, or something would happen that would prevent his going.
A few times before, I had seen evidences of this fear among others of our party, and I soon realized that what makes the emigrant so meek in the face of outrageous brutalities, so open to the wiles of sharpers, so thoroughly disconcerted and bewildered in the face of an examination, is his terrible dread of not being allowed to enter America. He would as soon think of cutting off a hand as doing anything that “would get him into trouble.”
When the city customs officials were finished with us, we were passed through to the front of the Capitaneria, and to the left, where the steamship broker’s representatives were busy checking the heavy baggage. Almost the entire party was dependent on Antonio and me to worry the score of big trunks, boxes and bundles through, and, this spot being just as hot and dusty as the other side of the Capitaneria, the whole party was in a deplorable condition when at last we were ready to be led to our abiding-place for the two nights we would be in Naples.
143Once outside the iron fence bounding the Capitaneria, the group largely made up of our party straggled along under the weight of their baggage, following the young clerk who piloted us along the Marina, with its turmoil of commerce, and soon we turned into the Vico di via Porta. Threading our way through the narrow street, jammed with all the life of the lower classes, we came at last to the Albergo della Rosa, or Rose Hotel, in the Lanzieri.
It is one of the many houses whose great source of income is the housing of emigrants at fixed rates of from one to two lire per night. The first floor was occupied by shops; around the entrance were gathered carts loaded with all sorts of wares from vegetables to trumpery combs, mirrors, soaps, baggage-straps,—in fact, all of the things which the poor emigrant could be led to fancy he wanted for the voyage. The house did not look very inviting, and as we hesitated a horde of runners from other houses pounced upon us and almost dragged us elsewhere. Some of our people would have gone if a respectable old gentleman passing by and hearing the commotion had not stopped and addressed us, saying, “Go to this hotel if the company sends you here, and do not take up with these thieves. Some of the places they recommend are of a most dangerous character. Emigrants are robbed there constantly.”
I had firmly decided that our party should stop at the Albergo della Rosa, and contrived to persuade the others in our group not to be influenced by the importunate Neapolitans.
The host—a short, unshaven, bibulous-looking person—appeared, and we were conducted to the second and third floors, and allowed to sort ourselves out into 144three large rooms, filled with single beds. All of the women and children were given a front room with light and air, and the men took the others.
Here occurred an evidence of that class feeling which exists from the beggar up in Italy. There is no democracy. By a very natural process, with no words or discussion, Nunzio Giunta, Antonio Squadrito, Nicola Curro and one or two others, who considered themselves members of a better class than our farmer-boys from Socosa, for instance, took the best room, leaving the third, which was dark and close, to the others, who accepted it without a murmur. In this connection I would note an amusing thing: Antonio never carried his own baggage till he reached............