Few immigrants come to America these days who have not some relative already here, who has prepared some sort of foothold for them, and all have friends who will look out for their interests to a certain extent. This explains nicely the mystery of why immigrants will mass in the four States of the East which lie nearest New York, when the South is offering inducements for Italian and Austrian labor, and the West never has enough farm hands. I am in receipt of letters from large landholders in several parts of the West who want immigrants to come and settle on their lands, and do not understand why, no matter how much publicity is given to the advantages in the West, the immigrants persist in clinging to the East. The reason is that they wish to stay where their friends and relatives are, and their friends and relatives are already situated in the industrial centres of the East, where they in their turn had been detained by the first comers.

The two Gualtieri boys came “raccomended” to Ferruchio Vazzana and Tommaso Figaro, neither of them relatives, but merely friends, and both with enough to do in looking after their own family circles’ interests, so that the two were thrown very largely on their own resources; and their adventures in New York, on which I have kept a very careful eye without 239too much interference, form a very typical story of what befalls the “greenhorn.”

Both had a small amount of money, and, if necessary, Nunzio could have sent home for more, but his pride forbade. With Nicola it was different; the entire family fortunes depended on this venture, though I did not know it for some months: the bit of property his father owns is worth about $300, and represents the toil of a lifetime. This had been mortgaged for $60 at twenty per cent for six months, in order that Nicola might come to America. His wages as a cabinet-maker and finished carpenter in the village had been a most important factor in the family support. The family consists of his father and mother, his wife a girl not yet eighteen, and their year-old baby. To make up for the lack of this, the three adults all engaged in work of some sort until the time when Nicola could begin to send home the splendid earnings to which he looked forward in America.

He had received a good education in the academic and technical schools of Messina, and in addition to being a first-class cabinet-maker is an excellent trombonist. He had served his term in the Guardia di Finanza, and had at one time been awarded a prize of 100 lire for bravery and efficiency in trapping some west-coast smugglers.

With Nunzio the case was different. Though big and strong, he had no technical training whatever, the five years of his life which he had spent in the Carabineers precluding all opportunities for that. He could be only an unskilled laborer.

The first thing to do was to find them living quarters, and this was done by their friends. Nicola got a room which he shared with four other men, and his board 240and washing, for $3.20 per week, and Nunzio got a tiny single room, in another house, with board, for $3.50 per week. A part of Nicola’s slender store went at once to buy him a cheap overcoat.

The very next day after being settled, they began the hunt for work, accompanied by Tommaso or Ferruchio. Wherever Nunzio went, bosses, superintendents, managers looked at his massive frame and seemed inclined to hire him until they found he could speak no English, and then they turned away, saying they had no time to bother in teaching him how to take orders. All of the contractors for gangs of Italians seemed to have all the men they wished, and as day after day went by, tramping the city, going to as many as forty places in one afternoon, and meeting with a refusal everywhere, Nunzio began to get very discouraged, and Ferruchio to protest that he could not afford the time from his own business to go about and interpret, and Nunzio tried to go alone one morning. It was late in the afternoon before he even found his way back home, and he was very badly frightened. In a little while his money was entirely gone, and he was on the verge of despair.

When things were the blackest, he heard that a number of Italians were being employed to clean out a big store in some place where the “L” trains ran by, and reported it to Ferruchio, who followed up this slender clew and found that Siegel & Cooper were taking on all Italians for their night porter’s staff, as they found them much better workmen than the mixed Germans, Irish, and negroes they had had. In brief, Nunzio secured a place in the big department store, going to work at seven in the evening and working until seven in the morning for $7.50 per week, and 241good pay for overtime. He had Italians all about him, and the work, though heavy, was not unbearable. I photographed him and his associates one night, and the pictures tell the story very well. The great disadvantage was that he could not hear any English spoken, and at the end of six weeks in this country could say nothing but “Good-morning” and a few bits of profanity. Meanwhile he was sleeping all day, working all night, and saving every cent he earned. His hands were growing calloused in the spots that had been sore the first few days, and he was much happier than he had been at any time. But misfortune came. He was detailed to work with a Calabrese who had charge of the day work in the room where the store’s waste paper is baled. There was $17 profit for the company on the saving and selling of each day’s waste paper. The Calabrese spoke English and took the orders from the superintendent, translating them to Nunzio and another “greenhorn.” Shortly after Nunzio had been promoted to day work and his pay raised a dollar, a cousin of the Calabrese arrived in New York, and the Calabrese wanted Nunzio’s place for the cousin, so he began systematically to undermine Nunzio. If the superintendent ordered one thing, the Calabrese told Nunzio it was another, and when the superintendent kicked because the work was improperly done, the Calabrese laid the blame on Nunzio. At last one night the superintendent asked all hands to work a part of the night, and the Calabrese informed him that Nunzio refused to do so, something which Nunzio had not the slightest idea of doing, and in ten more seconds Nunzio found himself being suddenly and inexplicably ushered outside.

Of course it was not difficult to reinstate him in a 242day or two, but after the holiday rush was over scores of people were discharged, and Nunzio went among the rest. Once again he began ............