Bright and early I set about contriving some method of getting out of Italy in the guise I wished. I could not get an Italian passport in Naples, for the same reason I could not get one in Gualtieri. I could not get a birth certificate in the municipality, for the very good reason that I had not been born there. Yet I must have a passport, either Italian or American, if I wished to be allowed to go aboard the Prinzessin Irene as a third-class passenger. If I desired that my wife and I should travel first-class no questions would be asked us by anybody, either in Naples or New York. That would ruin my chain of investigation. I must go in the steerage, and I must go through Ellis Island. With American credentials I would leave the Prinzessin Irene at the docks in New York, which I did not desire to do, and without the credentials I could not get on board the ship. It was truly a puzzling situation. I sounded first the underground methods, of which I will have more to say later, and found that they were too dangerous to my work. Then I decided to go aboard as an American and get off as an Italian, and to go aboard as an American I must go to the consulate, make application for a passport, and then, having been properly identified, hurry to the American embassy in Rome and get the passport, a paper which only the ambassador can issue.
152The American consul in Naples is A. Homer Byington, a name famous among journalists from Maine to California; and, going to the consulate, I made a clean breast of the whole affair to Mr. Homer M. Byington, his vice-consul.
“It is a shame to let a good story fall down,” said he. “Wait till I can get Mr. St. Ledger, our vice-consul, on the docks, and we will see what can be done.”
In half an hour I had the assurance that Com. Aillo, chief officer at the Capitaneria, would allow me to pass without a passport, Mr. St. Ledger being my sponsor.
I had yet to buy our tickets, and, going to the offices of Vincenzo di Luca fu Giacomo, the North German Lloyd broker, the man who handles all the third-class passengers, I applied for a ticket, and was refused because I had no passport, as the law under which the government selects the brokers of emigrants’ tickets strictly forbids a ticket being sold to an emigrant unless he has a passport.
The Barcelona sub-agent of the La Veloce broker at Messina was caught sending over-aged emigrants overland from Italy to Bremen and Hamburg, whence they embarked for the United States, and was arrested and given a term of imprisonment. He had been smuggling across the northern border persons refused passports because of age and the likelihood of their being returned to Italy from Ellis Island. One party lost a trunk and wrote back from Hamburg about it, and, the whole plot thus revealed, the arrests followed.
The court of last resort was Mr. Nicolo Padolfino, in charge of the Neapolitan broker’s department of declarations, and by assiduous efforts I got his ear and 153took him into my confidence. I began to feel that if I kept on at this rate there would be few officials in the region but would know all about my doings, and my opportunities would be correspondingly limited. Many things transpired but—I emerged from the fray with the third-class tickets that would land my wife and myself in Ellis Island—all of which goes to show how difficult it is for an emigrant to leave Italy without all of his papers being straight from his native village or town, on up to the last gate at Naples. During a previous stay in Naples I had heard of a school in the Via St. Sebastian which coached illiterate and ignorant emigrants sufficiently to ensure their being passed at Ellis Island. Now I heard of yet another, and, looking them up, found that they had the moral support if not the financial assistance of the Italian Bureau of Emigration and the Emigrant Congress, which had just finished meeting at Udine. All this sounded very interesting and seemed to have its startling features, but a little further investigation showed me that while their intents are bad enough for the interests of the United States, their achievements are not at all dangerous. While these places are anxious to coach up undesirable emigrants and get them out of the country, the foolish, unappreciative emigrant refuses to come to the schools to be coached. If ever these schools should be again “discovered,” I hope that the seeker for truth will learn the whole truth and have a good laugh over it.
At this point a word should be said about the Emigrant Congress. It is one of those highly public-spirited societies, that delights in its annual session and the attendant junketing, the speeches that “view with alarm” conditions which statistics show to exist, and, 154having appointed a committee to attend to the readjustment of this and that particular phase of national life, passes resolutions, adjourns only to meet again another year, and hear to what extent the committee has annoyed truly businesslike statesmen. The Udine session was just such a one. Some of the speeches made showed a ridiculous lack of knowledge of American conditions. The proceedings lie before me as I write, and they certainly are most futile. I am glad they are. Here, with occasional bracketed insertions to lighten passages which are obscure even in a very liberal translation, are the resolutions adopted:
On the topic of organization of the emigrants the insertion in “the order of the day,” moved by “Congressman” Cabrini and carried, was:
“This assembly considers that a professional [formed by salaried organizers] organization open to all laboring men, without political or religious prejudice, is one of the very soundest methods of ameliorating the economic conditions, both moral and intellectual, of the laboring classes: holding that it is indispensable to the formation of a feeling of fraternal cordiality in the country, the control of the temporary emigration, the organization of the poor artisans; furthermore contending that for the assistance of the emigrants it is necessary that an organization of all Italian operatives consider the importance of all this and pray the Honorable Secretary of Emigration to instruct at all times, more than in the past, their leader’s actions.”
On the topic of educating the emigrant so that he may avoid being barred because of illiteracy, and may not be victimized by the patrone system, Professor Frescura introduced the following:
155“All are in accord as to the necessity for instructing the emigrant. But be it held that the programme presented by Professor............