Courts, Criminals and the Camorra

by Arthur Cheney Train

It is impossible to estimate correctly the number of Italian criminals in America or their influence upon our police statistics; but in several classes of crime the Italians furnish from fifteen to fifty per cent of those convicted. In murder, assault with intent to kill, blackmail, and extortion they head the list, as well as in certain other offences unnecessary to describe more fully but prevalent in Naples and the South.

Joseph Petrosino, the able and fearless officer of New York police who was murdered in Palermo while in the service of the country of his adoption, was, while he lived, our greatest guaranty of protection against the Italian criminal. But Petrosino is gone. The fear of him no longer will deter Italian ex-convicts from seeking asylum in the United States. He once told the writer that there were five thousand Italian ex-convicts in New York City alone, of whom he knew a large proportion by sight and name.[19] Signor Ferrero, the noted historian, is reported to have stated, on his recent visit to America, that there were thirty thousand Italian criminals in New York City. Whatever their actual number, there are quite enough at all events.

By far the greater portion of these criminals, whether ex-convicts or novices, are the products or by-products of the influence of the two great secret societies of southern Italy. These societies and the unorganized criminal propensity and atmosphere which they generate, are known as the “Mala Vita.”

The Mafia, a purely Sicilian product, exerts a much more obvious influence in America than the Camorra, since the Mafia is powerful all over Sicily, while the Camorra is practically confined to the city of Naples and its environs. The Sicilians in America vastly outnumber the Neapolitans. Thus in New York City for every one Camorrist you will find seven or eight Mafiusi. But they are all essentially of a piece, and the artificial distinction between them in Italy disappears entirely in America.

Historically the Mafia burst from a soil fertilized by the blood of martyred patriots, and represented the revolt of the people against all forms of the tyrannous government of the Bourbons; but the fact remains that, whatever its origin, the Mafia to-day is a criminal organization, having, like the Camorra for its ultimate object blackmail and extortion. Its lower ranks are recruited from the scum of Palermo, who, combining extraordinary physical courage with the lowest type of viciousness, generally live by the same means that supports the East Side “cadet” in New York City, and who end either in prison or on the dissecting-table, or gradually develop into real Mafiusi and perhaps gain some influence.

It is, in addition, an ultra-successful criminal political machine, which, under cover of a pseudo-principle, deals in petty crime, wholesale blackmail, political jobbery, and the sale of elections, and may fairly be compared to the lowest types of politico-criminal clubs or societies in New York City. In Palermo it is made up of “gangs” of toughs and criminals, not unlike the Camorrist gangs of Naples, but without their organization, and is kept together by personal allegiance to some leader. Such a leader is almost always under the patronage of a “boss” in New York or a padrone in Italy, who uses his influence to protect the members of the gang when in legal difficulties and find them jobs when out of work and in need of funds. Thus the “boss” can rely on the gang’s assistance in elections in return for favors at other times. Such gangs may act in harmony or be in open hostility or conflict with one another, but all are united as against the police, and exhibit much the same sort of “Omertà” in Chatham Square as in Palermo. The difference between the Mafia and Camorra and the “gangs” of New York City lies in the fact that the latter are so much less numerous and powerful, and bribery and corruption so much less prevalent, that they can exert no practical influence in politics outside the Board of Aldermen, whereas the Italian societies of the Mala Vita exert an influence everywhere—in the Chamber of Deputies, the Cabinet, and even closer to the King. In fact, political corruption has been and still is of a character in Italy luckily unknown in America—not in the amounts of money paid over (which are large enough), but in the calm and matter-of-fact attitude adopted toward the subject in Parliament and elsewhere.

The overwhelming majority of Italian criminals in this country come from Sicily, Calabria, Naples, and its environs. They have lived, most of their lives, upon the ignorance, fear, and superstitions of their fellow-countrymen. They know that so long as they confine their criminal operations to Italians of the lower class they need have little terror of the law, since, if need be, their victims will harbor them from the police and perjure themselves in their defence. For the ignorant Italian brings to this country with him the same attitude toward government and the same distrust of the law that characterized him and his fellow-townsmen at home, the same Omertà that makes it so difficult to convict any Italian of a serious offence. The Italian crook is quick-witted and soon grasps the legal situation. He finds his fellow countrymen prospering, for they are generally a hard-working and thrifty lot, and he proceeds to levy tribute on them just as he did in Naples or Palermo. If they refuse his demands, stabbing or bomb-throwing show that he has lost none of his ferocity. Where they are of the most ignorant type he threatens them with the “evil eye,” the “curse of God,” or even with sorceries. The number of Italians who can be thus terrorized is astonishing. Of course, the mere possibility of such things argues a state of mediævalism. But mere mediævalism would be comparatively unimportant did it not supply the principal element favorable to the growth of the Mala Vita, apprehended with so much dread by many of the citizens of the United States.

Now, what are the phases of the Mala Vita—the Camorra, the Black Hand, the Mafia—which are to-day observable in the United States and which may reasonably be anticipated in the future?

In the first place, it may be safely said that of the Camorra in its historic sense—the Camorra of the ritual, of the “Capo in Testa” and “Capo in Trino,” highly organized with a self-perpetuating body of officers acting under a supreme head—there is no trace. Indeed, as has already been explained, this phase of the Camorra, save in the prisons, is practically over, even in Naples. But of the Mala Vita there is evidence enough.

Every large city, where people exist under unwholesome conditions, has some such phenomenon. In Palermo we have the traditional Mafia—a state of, mind, if you will, ineradicable and all-pervasive. Naples festers with the Camorra as with a venereal disease, its whole body politic infected with it, so that its very breath is foul and its moral eyesight astigmatized. In Paris we find the Apache, abortive offspring of prostitution and brutality, the twin brother of the Camorrista. In New York there are the “gangs,” composed of pimps, thugs, cheap thieves, and hangers-on of criminals, which rise and wane in power according to the honesty and efficiency of the police, and who, from time to time, hold much the same relations to police captains and inspectors as the various gangs of the Neapolitan Camorra do to commissaries and delegati of the “Public Safety.” Corresponding to these, we have the “Black Hand” gangs among the Italian population of our largest cities. Sometimes the two coalesce, so that in the second generation we occasionally find an Italian, like Paul Kelly, leading a gang composed of other Italians, Irish-Americans, and “tough guys” of all nationalities. But the genuine Black Hander (the real Camorrist or “Mafioso”) works alone or with two or three of his fellow-countrymen.