As the tender which took us ashore steamed away from the Lahn, we got a fine view of the ship and its surroundings. It was encompassed on every hand by bumboat-men selling the sweet fruits of Italy, for which her sons and daughters had hungered and thirsted so long. Just outside of the ring of bumboat-men were the twoscore or more boats of the runners for emigrant lodging-houses. These men would get the eye of a returned emigrant on board and would bargain with him for a room, then take him off with his baggage. A police official in plain clothes who was aboard the tender told me that among the curses of the city are the practices in these lodging-houses, where every sort of evil element congregates to prey on the simple-minded countryman who has been to America for two or three years, toiled hard for the few hundred dollars he is bringing back, and yet has not wit enough to keep the thieves of Naples from getting all or a portion of it. However, the returned emigrants are not to be condemned for their witlessness. I flatter myself that I know a thing or two, and yet I found myself on the constant qui vive to keep from being “done” in Naples, and even my great vigilance did not save me once or twice. Dishonesty is part of the air in Naples, just as is the smell that is famous.
CHAPTER IV
CONDITIONS IN THE NEAPOLITAN ZONE
It is a painful fact, but the average American’s conception of Italian immigration is that the majority of the Italians come from “down in the Boot,” and that they are all bad and undesirable. It is the usual thing to regard all southern Italians as unworthy of Americanism. One sees it constantly in public print or finds it in private discourse. And the phrase about the Boot is one which has been bruited around again and again from official report to alarmist editorial, and back to classical reference which was its origin. I have met many people who are not aware that the Sicilians, for instance, do not come from “down in the Boot.” These ideas all mate nicely with the one which attributes to every Italian the possession of a stiletto up his sleeve and an ever-ready hand to use it.
The poor southern Italians are the object of constant attack by the American public, of bitter contempt from the more fortunate people of the northern provinces, and of ceaseless worriment from the gentlemen legislators of the kingdom. Italia Meridionale is in a miserable condition compared with the north, and the people are ignorant, and the percentage of illiteracy is appalling; but, nevertheless, they are strong in body, steadfast in mind, willing of spirit and at all times thrifty; so that, speaking from an immigratory standpoint, I am convinced, after a survey of the entire experiment, that they are a very good sort of raw material and their immigration should be encouraged, if the rottenness that corrupts them after they are here—as a drop of poison can turn the blood of an entire body to virus—could be cut out before they start.
Poverty, ignorance and hot blood have fostered among them crime, treachery and immorality, and the larger towns have sufficed to gather these into festering clusters, leaving the countryside comparatively pure. The farmer-folk and the villagers are not criminal, dishonest or vicious; but when, in the process of emigration, nine of them are thrown with that one tenth man who is so, he leads them into ways that are not straight and paths that are turned, and in many, many instances organizes a band which holds a large coterie of families almost entirely in its power. This it can do by superior intelligence, boldness, etc., and the fact that the Italians in America are in a strange land, are “greenhorns,” as they say among themselves, lays them wide open to such invidious influences. If that one man or woman out of every ten who is vicious could be prevented from sailing, a few years would see Italian names almost entirely effaced from the criminal news and the court and prison records. If the system of social poisoning of the densely populated immigrant quarters is not destroyed, it will ultimately prove a menace to all law and order in the large cities or industrial districts populous with immigrants.
Before we went to Sicily to study the peculiar conditions surrounding the Squadrito family and their neighbors, we took up the general investigation through the country south of Rome, gathering what we could by going from town to town, asking questions, asking questions, always asking questions. Much was to be learned from watching even the tiniest things in the newspapers and from observing the people themselves as they passed about the most inconsequential pursuits of their daily existence.
To give the matter a topical consideration, it separates itself naturally into five divisions, which are semi-geographical merely for convenience, as it would be erroneous indeed to consider each province according to its political boundaries: The Zone of Naples, the Zone of Rome, the Provinces of the Heel, the Provinces of the Toe and Sicily. In those portions of the following consideration topicalized as zones, the distinctions are made, because the regions dealt with have all their general social conditions very largely shaped by the subtle cumulative influence of the life in the two great cities, Rome and Naples. It is possible that few Italians are aware of the differences, but they are palpable to an outsider immediately. Every village that is within touch of either the Italian capital or the most important port and city partakes of the markedly contradistinct life of the two. If Naples is correctly called a City of Thieves, then is Rome equally well named a City of Institutions, and there is the difference. Abruzzi, Molise and Puglie (Apulia), having greater extents of plain suited to agriculture than any of the other southern provinces and being farther from the emigration centres on the west side of the peninsula, form a group by themselves under the title Provinces of the Heel. Basilicata (Potenza) and Calabria, being nearly uniformly mountainous even out to the sea line and having the most potent influences at work to urge emigration, are considered under Provinces of the Toe; while, as for conditions in Sicily, they are best told in connection with our own experiences there with the people of Gualtieri-Sicamino and other towns.
As for general comparative conditions of education, amount of emigration and a very interesting sidelight on the Italian administrative attitude towards emigration, I give a translation of an article which appeared some months since in Il Progresso Italo-Americano, of New York, a newspaper of importance, and one which is usually able to reflect the Italian government’s position in anything that pertains to social and educational subjects. The article, which is editorial, reads:
“EMIGRATION AND EDUCATION
“The Bureau of Education in Rome has recently received the following telegram from Inspector Adolfo Rossi, who is at present in South Africa.