In general it is safe to say that half of the Italians from the better classes who come to America are far more undesirable than any of the lower-class immigrants except that certain class of habitual criminals who are doing so much to get their race despised by honest, clean-handed Americans.
One of their worst influences is to retard the assimilation of their people by the great American body politic, by refusing to be themselves assimilated, even going so far as to send their children to private schools in order that they may not learn English, and in insisting on wearing clothes of imported make or pattern. They are by birth, tradition and intent the leaders of Italian communities in this country, and their prejudices and examples confuse if not entirely divert the natural social development of their humbler countrymen all about them.
Many of them are estimable, as are Chevalier Tonella and his clever, cheery wife, but their influence is negatively wrong.
One evening I was sitting with an Italian carpenter, a friend of the landlord’s, in a corner of a Thompson Street saloon, and we were discussing the effect of union-labor regulations on the labor of immigrants and the way in which skilled masons, carpenters, cabinet-makers, smiths, etc., are forced to become peddlers, common laborers, bootblacks, etc., instead of having opportunities to follow their trades, when we were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a very excited man. He was a young barber, flushed with wine and good fortune. He burst into the room with a shout and a rattle of oaths and slammed down a handful of mixed money on a table.
The people about were saying so much and delivering it in so short a time that it was a full five minutes before they began conversation piano enough for me to get the idea. The young barber had won three hundred dollars at lotto and had just received it.
I knew that in Italy nearly every block in the cities has its banco di lotto run by the government and supposed that the young chap had been playing the lottery from this side and had won but I soon learned that the national love of lotto gambling has been transplanted to America, and that since the laws here forbid lotteries the Italians of the country are forced to run them under cover, and do so very successfully. After that I often heard of plays made by my friends and of winnings now and then by people I did not know, but never at any time was I able to fathom the method by which the business was carried on. Instead of being officially conducted by any society, each lottery is entirely a private venture, and its patronage is confined to those who are compare as the dialect has it. It is a word difficult to render into English, but all those Italians who come from one town or province and have mutual interests and trust each other are compare. Not only does this freemasonry exist as to lotto, but it pervades all their other social relations. It is a potent force never reckoned with among those who persist in misunderstanding the “dirty dago.”
Very soon after we had taken up our residence in the quarter I found out the true reason for the prospect of an enormously increased immigration for 1903. The ponderous articles and profoundly wise comments on the question had attributed it to a number of things. Among these were: an increasing demand for labor that made a market for the immigrants’ muscles, advertising efforts on the part of competing steamship lines, oppression of the Jews, deflection of German emigration from South America to North America, increased taxes and failure of crops in southern Europe. Balderdash and folly! The truth was that every man who had any relatives to bring over to the United States had read of the new strictures in immigration laws that impended and was straining every nerve to bring them and get them passed before the new laws could be passed and put into effect. Thousands and thousands of people whom the laws would not have affected in the least came this last year when if there had been no change of legislation in prospect, they would have waited a year or two more. I know personally of a score of families whose plans were affected by this very thing and by no other consideration.
It should be remarked at this stage that one of the first things I learned among the Italians (and I knew later that it extended to all races) was that the alien considers the United States code of immigration laws a very complex, fearsome and inexplicable thing, to be thoroughly respected but if possible, evaded.
More than once I have been asked the following question which bears its own token:
“If a man and his family are good enough to live in Italy, why are they not good enough to live in the United States?”