Jeers and shouts of scorn and anger rose on every hand, and I observed that the leaders in this expression were those men whom I knew to be American citizens or Italians, Jews or Greeks of some length of residence in the United States.
As the young mandolin-player walked away, I stopped him and spoke to him in English, asking him if he was a Forester. He told me he was and that he belonged to a lodge in Stonington, Conn., and, having been in America five years, was now going home “for the women folks.”
In brief, I found in him and his family the ideal group for which we had been looking. He was sufficiently Americanized to appreciate the object of our investigations, and we speedily became good friends.
His name is Antonio Squadrito, and he had with him his father, Giovanni. Five years before, he had left his native Sicilian village, Gualtieri-Sicamino, as one of the first to depart for America from all that country. He had done so because he had his choice between going into the Carabineers, or rural police, and taking up a trade. He had told his father that if he would help him borrow the money he would go to America. This was done, though the neighbors all prophesied disaster and misfortune “in that strange wild land.”
He landed at the Battery from the Kaiser Friedrich, being “recommended” to a distant relative from a northern province who was already in New York; and the first work he got was in the quarries of Westerly, R. I., where he worked for three months at $1.10 per day. He played the mandolin even then with fair skill, and made friends with an Italian who had a barber shop in Stonington. Antonio went there to work, and as he saved his money he sent back, little by little, enough to pay off his debt at home, and the remainder his boss “borrowed” from him. Some domestic relations of the boss caused him to desire to sell out, and one day he came to Antonio and told him he must buy his barber shop or he would not get back the borrowed money. Antonio protested that he could not speak enough English to run the business, but the boss insisted, and in the end Antonio found himself possessed of the shop and a new debt of $100 which he had got as a loan from a man who had taken an interest in him.
The shop prospered. Antonio sent over for his brother Giuseppe to come over and help him. Giuseppe is older and had married a year before, and his wife Camela had presented him with a pretty little girl baby whom they had named Caterina after her grandmother Squadrito. The next year the shop was doing so well that Carlino, the brother next younger than Antonio, was sent for; and the next year Tommasso, a still younger brother, and Giovanni the father were brought over. The father worked at carpentering and coopering in Stonington, making as much as $1.80 per day; but he could not learn the language, and when I met him his English was limited to “All right!” “Fine day!” “Yes, sir!” and “cuss words.”
In the last year before our meeting Antonio had married the widow of a whaling-captain of the town, who had been left property by her husband estimated roundly at $60,000. By this time Antonio had made in his barber shop and cigar store and by furnishing music for dances, etc., $8,000, and had sent home five or ten dollars each month. A nice little acre or two of garden land had been bought east of the village, and of this Antonio was very proud, as in his country none but the fairly well-to-do owns land.
Now he was going home to get a party of the family, of cousins and neighbors, and he expected to return in two or three months. That suited the limits of our time, and the location of the family in one of the hotbeds of emigration was most pleasing; so we were delighted when he cordially invited us to go home with him. We explained that we wished to make a sort of general study of the country as it related to the immigration question, before we took up the subject in particular, and he confided that his principal reason for wishing to have us visit him in Gualtieri was to show the people there that all the wonderful stories they had been hearing about him were true in the main. He carried no proof except banking papers, and he was anxious about “what the home folks might think.” I often think of how much of the strenuous endeavor in all lines in this world is to “impress the home folks.” How many men and women have been disappointed when they went out into the world and did something that was absolutely beyond the comprehension—even belief, perhaps—of the simple-minded “folks at home.”
The next day, late in the morning, signs began to show in the east that we were nearing the shores of Italy, and late that afternoon the Lahn forged into a berth close to the naval sea wall before the beautiful city of Naples.
As we were leaving the ship we saw Carabineers at the gangways arresting several men who had been in the steerage with us. I made inquiry, and was informed that the men arrested had left Italy to avoid military duty, and they had been kept track of. When they sailed home, the Italian authorities in New York had notified the questor, or chief of police, at Naples.