A rather good story which illustrates the propensities of the Neapolitans was told me by an Englishman whom I met in Caserta. According to his relation, a German Jew, a Scotchman and a Connecticut Yankee formed a company for the exportation of wine from Naples and went there to set up business. After being in the city several days, and having a few business transactions with the Neapolitans, the Yankee said to his partners:
“Well, boys, we had better settle down and live here for about ten years until we learn a few tricks and then start business, or we had better give these chaps all we have at once and save them the trouble of taking it away from us.”
From Frosinone south to the valley of the Sele and back as far as Ariano we found even the simple-minded peasants to have that touch of Neapolitanism, which is, to say the least, an undesirable characteristic. In the city itself it is so serious that not many years since the organized ruffians of the Cammora, recruited from all stations of society, were a power of terror, and since then men more polite, but just as criminal, bankrupted the city and brought general conditions to such a pass that the national government was forced to step in and take control till municipal and provincial affairs could be put on an honest and paying basis. The people are more noisy, more gross in their habits, and more irresponsible in their conduct than any class in any part of Italy. Constant change of government in the past, lack of things of an institutional nature and the focusing of all the bad in the south of Italy may have had the degenerating effect; but, whatever the cause, the effect exists, and the social virus seems to have poisoned many a man I know who, but for his brief stays in Naples, would be a very decent citizen, either in his native town, in other provinces, or in his new home in America. The bad Italians in the United States are in clusters, and the heads of the majority of these groups are men trained in theft, trickery and crime in the excellent schools of Naples and Palermo.
In the city there are few factories, though the government is bringing every influence to bear to promote industries in Naples, and under the new municipal plan a large tract of the side of the city that lies towards Vesuvius is arranged for factory sites; but there are three important things lacking: raw material, skilled labor and confident capital. Even the excellent street-car system is controlled by Belgians. The north of Italy continues to be the industrial section. The business that emigration engenders is first in importance. Vesuvius, Pompeii, the Bay and the climate form the next important asset, and the exportation of agricultural products and wholesale business of all sorts the third. Two hundred thousand people in the city live on so little a year that the statement of the amount would sound ridiculous.
Mangling Hemp
We traversed the country of the arbitrarily indicated zone in the time of the full harvest, when the bits of plain on which rows of trees, themselves loaded with fruit, were seen to be the supports of miles of running vines bearing great bunches of grapes, heavily covered with dust. In every village were to be seen the hemp workers, where the long stripped stalks were piled up in bound bundles waiting to be laid in the mangling machines, operated as a rule by women and hand-mangled. On carefully brushed stone squares men, women and children were threshing beans and peas. Before every door were flat shallow troughs in which figs or fruit of some sort were drying. On the house-tops the tomatoes were being converted into a dark red mash, which is called pomidoro and is used to make the delicious sauces with which macaroni is dressed. Long-horned oxen or patient donkeys, with now and then an undersized horse, drew along the dusty highways carts loaded with casks made ready for wine, bundles of hemp stalks or shocks of wheat. In every village were to be seen the several offices of the steamship companies’ sub-agents. The countryside simply teemed with life. There was never a spot where one might stand and, though there was no one in sight, not hear voices all about. In nearly every group of people was to be seen one or more who bore the signs of recent return from America or indications of near departure. Over everything lay the white dust from the dry plains and slopes, and the sun beat down with distracting fervor.
It did not seem to me that in the country districts of the Neapolitan zone the Church exercised quite the influence for good or evil in the material affairs of the people that it does elsewhere in Italia Meridionale, and it was noticeable that the people had stronger commercial instincts, being more inclined to buy and sell if given the opportunity. That finds an expression in America in this way. So many of the lace-workers, barrow-men, coal, wood and ice men are Neapolitans, or are from the villages in the Neapolitan zone. But, in the social organization of the countryside everything led to the impression that, as each child grew up, his or her elders forced a place in the already existing throng for him or her, a place wherein a bit to eat and a scrap to wear might be won, and above that place the child could scarcely hope to rise, inasmuch as it was difficult to maintain the foothold, let alone improve it. Those who were unfit for the struggle became beggars and wanderers, not paupers in the Italian sense, for the Italian pauper is a person not only penniless, homeless and friendless, but physically incapable of taking any care of himself whatever. The inmates of the Reclusario of Naples are the most shocking lot of human wrecks I have ever beheld aggregated.
If a family or group of families is suddenly deprived of the source from which it has been eking a slender livelihood, the desperation to which it is driven is well instanced by the terrible tragedy at Torre-Annunziata. Immediately on hearing of the first outbreak there, I took up the investigation, and in brief this is the story of the occurrence.
It was merely one of those risings of the common people which occur every now and then, and in which they uniformly get the worst of it. It seems that the estate owned by the Ferroni Corporation had for fifteen years been allowing the farmers about Sarno, Castellamare-Torre-Annunziata, to have cheaply certain waste materials for fertilizing their farms. These were suddenly cut off, and the tenants demanded the immediate delivery of the manure for their common use, but to their demand no attention was paid.