On the Trail of the Immigrant

by Edward Alfred Steiner

I have thus far refrained from using statistics, largely because they may be juggled with, as has been done very successfully; just as zealots juggle with Bible texts to prove their contentions. I have done something besides gathering figures, and that something may be of importance. I have visited nearly all the penitentiaries in the eastern and western States; not to ask how many foreigners there are in jail, but to ask why and how they were convicted, what their present behaviour is; to look the men and women squarely in the face and to converse with them. Let me say here again, emphatically, that statistics are misleading and that in spite of the large number of Italians in prison, there are by far fewer criminals among them than the statistics indicate. In a large number of cases, the crimes for which the Italian suffers, have grown out of local usage in his old home. None the less are they justly punished here, lest they be permitted to perpetuate themselves in the new home.

Most of the Italians in prison have used the stiletto and the pistol too freely, just as they used them at home when jealousy made them mad, or when they were in pursuit of vengeance for real or fancied wrongs. There are not a few real criminals who have used the weapon for gain, but in the majority of cases the stabbing or shooting was an affair of honour with those concerned, and even the aggrieved parties preferred to suffer in silence and die, bequeathing their grudge to the next generation, rather than bring the affair before a sordid court. Testimony in such cases is very hard to get, and I have seen many a wounded Italian bite his lips, inwardly groaning, and suffering in silence, unwilling to let strange ears hear the proud secret of which he was the keeper and the victim.

Italian burglars have not reached proficiency enough to have a place in the “Hall of Infamy,” and bank robbers and “hold-up” men need not yet fear serious competition from that source. The prisons contain many Italians who transgressed out of ignorance as well as from passion; numbers suffer because they do not know the language of the court, and did not have enough coin of the realm.

The worst thing about the Italians is that they have no sense of shame or remorse. I have not yet found one of them who was sorry for anything except that he had been caught; and in his own eyes and in the eyes of his friends, he is “unfortunate” when he is in prison and “lucky” when he comes out. “He no bad” his neighbour says: “He good, he just caught,” and when he comes out, he is received like a hero.

This is the severest indictment that can be brought against the Italian, and it is severe enough; but it comes largely from his attitude towards the State and from the nature of the crime. Lillian Betts, who knows her foreigners critically and sympathetically, says: “In New York, the streets the Italians live in are the most neglected, the able head of this department claiming that cleanliness is impossible where the Italian lives. The truth is that preparation for cleanliness in our foreign colonies is wholly inadequate. The police despise the Italian except for his voting power. He feels the contempt but with the wisdom of his race he keeps his crimes foreign, and defies this department more successfully than the public generally knows. He is a peaceable citizen in spite of the peculiar race crimes which startle the public. The criminals are as one to a thousand of these people. On Sundays watch these colonies. The streets are literally crowded from house line to house line, as far as the eye can see, but not a policeman in sight, nor occasion for one. Laughter, song, discussion, exchange of epithet, but no disturbance. They mind their own business as no other nation, and carry it to the point of crime when they protect their own criminal. Like every other human being in God’s beautiful world, they have the vices of their virtues. It is for us to learn the last to prevent the first.”

In spite of the fact that Italy seems to be the land of beggars, the Italian immigrant is rarely a medicant and (according to Jacob Riis), among the street beggars of New York, the Irish lead with fifteen per cent., the native Americans follow with twelve, the Germans with eight, while the Italian shows but two per cent. In the almshouses of New York the Italian occupies the enviable position of having the smallest representation, with Ireland having 1,617 persons and Italy but nineteen; while the figures for the United States are equally favourable.

Considering the congested conditions of the tenements, the Italian retains much of his inherited vigour, but consumption which plays havoc with him in this uncongenial climate is aggravated by his mode of living that is so entirely changed. Especially do the women and children suffer, for they are suddenly transferred from a complete out-of-door life to the prison-like walls of the tenements.

In Chicago I visited a family in which I had become interested through a son who was in constant antagonism to the school law and who was the special pet of the truant officers. When I first saw these people they occupied two rear rooms in which the mother had been for three months without once going out of doors. She was coughing constantly although hard at work making vests; and the husband could not understand how her red cheeks could so soon have disappeared, or why her colour was as yellow as the light of the coal oil lamp by which she worked ten of the fourteen working hours of the day. Thomasio, the son, was stunted physically and mentally, and the mark of the tenement was upon him. He was the oldest of eight children and had borne the burden of his seven brothers and sisters as if it were his own. While the other boys were playing on the sidewalk, he had to rock the baby. Through seven years he had rarely seen God’s out of doors, except as it shone upon him through a little spot in the air shaft of the tenement. He and his parents hated the school and the school officers who were after him, and that c-a-t spells cat will be as much as he will know of all the mysteries, in spite of the zealous truant officers and teachers, lay and clerical. The public schools will be unable to work their magic not only upon Thomasio and his family of seven, but upon numbers of the same kind, reared under the same circumstances, for even before they were born they were robbed of their mental and physical background, and their horizon will always be bounded, more or less, by garbage cans, barrels of stale beer, wash-tubs full of soiled clothing, and by cradles full of little bambinos.

Nevertheless the Italian is not a degenerate; he usually survives the wretched years of his infancy and then like all people who share his environment, grows up less rugged, perhaps more subtle, and hardened to some things which would prove a very serious handicap to those of us who know the value of pure air and of soap and water.

It would seem upon a superficial glance that the large incursion of Italians to America would add strength to the Roman Catholic Church here, and that their coming into a community would be welcomed because of that; but I have found almost the opposite to be true. The Irish priests do not like them; they lack the serious devotion to the Church which characterizes Irish or German parishioners, they care only for the show element in religion and are not willing to pay even for that. They will come to church on great holidays, when many candles are lighted and banners are carried; but they do not bother themselves to come to early mass, nor are they the best attendants at the confessional. They will spend much money upon showy funerals and christenings, but if the Catholic Church were dependent for its support upon the Italian immigrants it would fare badly. This of course may be due to the fact that they are very poor and that in Italy the Church is comparatively rich; but it is most largely due to the fact that, contrary to the common opinion, the Italian is not religious by nature, that as a rule he has no understanding for the serious and ethical side of religion, that he is a heathen still who needs to have his spiritual nature discovered and stirred, after which he should have the alphabet of the gospel preached to him in the simplest possible way. The Italian priest in America is the poorest kind of vehicle for that purpose; in proof of which I quote Lillian W. Betts because she cannot be accused of prejudice in the light of the conclusions which she draws: