The Italian is a good business man and a good organizer, having a talent for the dollar which to-day makes him a new business force in Europe, and one to be reckoned with; especially if he improves his business morals, which are very poor.
In spite of the fact that Italy is the centre of the most dogmatic Christian Church, the Italian is tolerant towards those of other faith or race, even while being superstitious to a degree. He loves the pomp and splendour of the Church but has not been deeply touched by her ethical features, and is in a measure, as much pagan as when his forefathers worshipped local deities; although now he calls them patron saints.
One might justly accuse the Catholic clergy of not having risen to their responsibility, of having increased the enmity rather than the love of a large portion of the population, of having played politics on the off side and of having had no social vision. But a charge like this though true, has back of it certain facts which would, perchance, show us the Roman priests in a better light. There are priests and priests, bishops and bishops, even as there are popes and popes. If the clergy of Italy was made after the pattern of the present Pope, if it had his spirit, his devotion and his piety, the Italian might still become a Christian who would prove the power of his faith and who would be thoroughly genuine and tolerant; not a dogmatist, a thorough optimist, a man of great faith, and consequently not a good politician.
We know enough of Pope Pius X to wish for Italy and for America also that he might become the model for all Roman Catholics; then indeed the immigrant would be to us no problem but a blessing. Yet one cannot judge the hierarchy by the Pope, and there are in Italy not a few discerning men who distrust the Church the more, in the measure in which it has a good Pope behind whom to hide its evil designs.
Yet who that has looked into the face of Pope Pius X will ever forget its strong, yet sweet manliness? He must indeed have no religious sensibilities who does not realize when in his presence that he is face to face with a man of God. Shortly after his elevation to his office he stood before a congregation of some ten thousand people who filled the court of St. Damassia. His face shone from the pleasure of loving those who stood before him, and they could not help loving him. He began to speak, and gradually a deep-felt silence crept over the vast assemblage. “I am so glad,” he said, “my dearly beloved friends, to see so many of you here, and I thank you all from the depths of my heart. They tell me that society is corrupt, full of weakness and disease, a sickly dying body, but I,” he said, and his voice was filled by the strength of his faith, “do not believe it.” He then told the simple story of the child which Jesus raised from the dead; he told it as simply as it was written, as a disciple of Jesus who was an eye-witness might have told it to the humble folk of Judea. He told how Jesus with His companions came, how He looked upon the girl, and as He laid His hands upon her head said, “The child is not dead; it is not true.”
With his face bathed in a flame of holy passion the great pope and preacher said to the breathless multitude: “Non e vero”—it is not true; “Non lo credo”—I do not believe it; “and if we all cling to one another I believe that humanity still has vitality, and that it will come to full life and health, as long ago did the little child in Palestine.”
As I look upon the Italian at home with his many social diseases which have so deeply eaten into his life that one might judge him incurable—I nevertheless say: “Non e vero, Non lo credo.” It is not true, I do not believe it. True, my faith in his healing does not rest with the Pope, in spite of his native piety and his sterling character. The Italian is sick and sore because the Church which has so long been his physician, acknowledges no error, and even its humble Pope will not persuade it that it must radically change its treatment; this not only for the sake of Italy but for the sake of America also. The most dangerous element which can come to us from any country, is that which comes smarting under real or fancied wrongs, committed by those who should have been its helpers and healers. Such an element Italy furnishes in a remarkably great degree, and I have no hesitation in saying that it is our most dangerous element.
XVIII
THE ITALIAN IN AMERICA
IT is hard to determine how long it is since the first Savoyard came to our country with his trained bears, making them dance to the squeaky notes of his reed instrument, as he wandered from town to town. He and the man with the monkey and organ were of the same adventurous stock, and they were the vanguard of a vast army of men who were to come; first with a push-cart, later with shovel and pickax. Not to destroy, but to build up and to help in the great conquest of nature’s resources, so abundantly bestowed upon this continent.
While the average Italian immigrant is not regarded by any of us as a public benefactor, it is a question just how far we could have stretched our railways and ditches without him; for he now furnishes the largest percentage of the kind of labour which we call unskilled, and he is found wherever a shovel of earth needs to be turned, or a bed of rock is to be blasted. Hundreds of thousands come each year and each one of them fits into the work awaiting him, moving on to a new task when the old one is finished. The kind of work which they do calls for unattached, migrating labour, and eighty per cent. of those who come have no marriage ties to hinder their movements. When the winter comes and out of door work grows slack, or when the labour market is depressed, these unattached forces return to Italy and bask in its sunshine until conditions for labour on this side of the sea grow brighter. Their quarters, which are as near as possible to their work, are easily recognized; not because they are more slovenly than their neighbours, but because there is such a “helter skelter, I don’t care” sort of atmosphere about their squalor. This comes from the fact that they regard their quarters as purely temporary, and treat them as one might a camping-ground, which to-morrow is to be abandoned for a better site.