Utter Weariness
Bohemian Woman on East Side, New York, after the Day's Work
TRAITS OF ITALIAN CHARACTER
The South Italian is volatile, unstable, soon hot, soon cool. Says one observer, "The Italian vote here is a joke. Every candidate claims it because they were 'for' him when he saw them. But the man who talks last to them gets their vote." A charity worker declares that they change their minds "three steps after they have left you." It is not surprising that such people are unreliable. Credit men pronounce them "very slippery," and say that the Italian merchants themselves do not extend credit to them. It is generally agreed that the South Italians lie more easily than North Europeans, and utter untruth without that self-consciousness which makes us awkward liars. "Most of my countrymen," says an educated Italian in the consular service of his country, "disregard their promises unless it is to their advantage to keep them." The man who "sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not" is likely to be a German with his ideal of Treue, an Englishman with his ideal of truth, or an American with his ideal of squareness.
The Italians are sociable. Who can forget the joyous, shameless gregariousness of Naples? As farmers they cluster, and seem to covet the intimacies of the tenement-house. The streets of an Italian quarter are lively with chatter and stir and folks sitting out in front and calling to one another. In their family life they are much less reserved than many other nationalities. With instinctive courtesy they make the visitor welcome, and their quick and demonstrative response to kindly advances makes them many friends. Visiting nurses comment on the warm expressions of gratitude they receive from the children of Italians whom they have helped.
Before the boards of inquiry at Ellis Island their emotional instability stands out in the sharpest contrast to the self-control of the Hebrew and the stolidity of the Slav. They gesticulate much, and usually tears stand in their eyes. When two witnesses are being examined, both talk at once, and their hands will be moving all the time. Their glances flit quickly from one questioner to another, and their eyes are the restless, uncomprehending eyes of the desert Bedouin between walls. Yet for all this eager attention, they are slow to catch the meaning of a simple question, and often it must be repeated.
Mindful of these darting eyes and hands, one does not wonder that the Sicilian will stab his best friend in a sudden quarrel over a game of cards. The Slavs are ferocious in their cups, but none is so ready with his knife when sober as the South Italian. In railroad work other nationalities shun camps with many Italians. Contractors are afraid of them because the whole force will impulsively quit work, perhaps flare into riot, if they imagine one of their number has suffered a wrong.
The principal of a school with four hundred Sicilian pupils observes that on the playground they are at once more passionate and more vindictive than other children. Elsewhere, once discipline has been established, "the school will run itself"; but in this school the teacher "has to sit on the lid all the time." Their restlessness keeps the truant officer busy, and their darting, flickering attention denies them concentration and the steady, telling stroke. For all their apparent brightness, when at fourteen they quit school, they are rarely beyond the third or fourth grade.
As grinding rusty iron reveals the bright metal, so American competition brings to light the race stuff in poverty-crushed immigrants. But not all this stuff is of value in a democracy like ours. Only a people endowed with a steady attention, a slow-fuse temper, and a persistent will can organize itself for success in the international rivalries to come. So far as the American people consents to incorporate with itself great numbers of wavering, excitable, impulsive persons who cannot organize themselves, it must in the end resign itself to lower efficiency, to less democracy, or to both.
