The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow

by Edward Alfred Steiner

The hour which he daily spent on deck was an hour of singular triumph. Almost reverently the crowd stared at him, as if he had just dropped from heaven or risen from his grave. I am sure that no one felt any ill will towards him, and even the sailor who, revolver in hand, stood guard over him, shared the distinction which the steerage felt in having a murderer there. The fact is, he did not look like a murderer or even like the typical bad man; neither did he seem smitten by remorse, nor did he exhibit any kind of bravado which might have aroused resentment.

Graciously he accepted the cigar which some one gave him, and as graciously permitted me to light it for him (his hands were in irons) while with remarkable frankness he told me his history and the story of his crime.

Of course he was an Italian, born in a southern town in which some 20,000 people had accepted poverty as their inheritance, and made little or no struggle against it. They had also accepted the burden of taxation and exploitation by government officials; although here and there some one with the gleam of freedom in his breast felt the grievousness of it, and secretly or openly protested.

Patriot brigands enough there were, and the stories of their exploits fired the imagination of a number of boys, of whom Luigi (the murderer) was one. On Sunday evenings under a clump of cedars these boys gathered, until in imitation of their elders they organized a society, whose patriotic purposes involved nothing less than the overthrow of monarchy, and wiping Church, priests and Pope from the face of the earth. A rather ambitious program for minors; but they had imbibed the “Zeit-geist” in an exaggerated form, had begun to feel the great social wrongs of the times, and like most youths, admired the heroic.

Luigi told me frankly that he committed thefts first from the till of his father, a shopkeeper, who, upon the discovery of his son’s pilfering, beat him half to death and drove him out of the house. After that the boy stole from any one and any place; because the “Society for the Liberation of the People of Italy” needed money, first, last and all the time, to carry on its ambitious schemes. Ultimately he was caught and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.

I know something of the horrors of Southern Italian prisons, and I could well believe that three such years would ripen rebellious thoughts into desperate ones. Luigi left the prison with vengeance in his heart, slew the judge who had sentenced him, and fled to America.

I have purposely robbed his story of all its patriotic and picturesque elements, for I do not wish to glorify Luigi. He is just a type, perhaps not a very fair type, of many of his countrymen whose coming to America disturbs us and whose leaving it causes no regrets.

Luigi’s further history was interesting to me because he knew some things about America which I did not know. He had lived a number of years in the state of New Jersey, which seems to be a sort of haven of refuge for Trusts and Anarchists. During those years he had been in intimate relation with our courts, jails, prisons and police. He had plotted for them, with them and against them, and now was being sent back in irons because (he said) his remaining in the United States would embarrass certain officials. Luigi saw no great difference between prisons here and in Italy; between jailers there and jailers here; between judges on this side the water and on the other side. The only difference that Luigi did see was that over here they are much smarter than in Italy.

There was but one good thing which Luigi experienced in America. They had been good to his “kid.” Over and over again he told me that, and over and over again he blessed the good women of a certain New Jersey town for being good to his “kid.” Often as he cursed the police (police, state and nation are one in the mind of Luigi and his kind) so often did he bless two women at the edge of that New Jersey town, who had truly revealed the heart of a nation, whose conscience had been falsely revealed to him by the police and the petty courts.

Looking over the railing, the cabin passengers watched the murderer as eagerly as those in the steerage, and when I returned after my interview with him, every one clamoured for a report of the conversation. Many of the men sneered at my suggestion that the murderer might be a victim of circumstances.