CHAPTER XXVI
"BLACK-HAND" PROPAGANDA
The method followed in enlisting Antonio Schiavi into the service of the gang affords a typical example of the cunning, watchful procedure of the Lupo-Morello secret propaganda, which was in a fair way to become of world-wide scope. A gang member, Giuseppe Gudo, managed to send Schiavi to a drug store where he was sure to meet Antonio Miloni.[7]
Schiavi tells of leaving Rio de Janeiro about February 23, 1909, on the steamship Gunther, and arriving in New York in the middle of February of the same year. While on shipboard he became acquainted with Giuseppe Gudo, a tailor of Newark, New Jersey. After striking up a friendly acquaintance with Gudo Schiavi says, and telling Gudo that he was a litho-engraver, Bono sent him to the drug store of Mocito, at No. 20 Broome Street, where Schiavi was to ask for Giuseppe Carlino, another litho-engraver who would get employment in New York for Schiavi.
Schiavi never met any Carlino, he says, but Gudo had spoken about him (Schiavi), the latter learned at the drug store. Accordingly, Schiavi continued to go to the Mocito store and remained there for a half day at a time in the hope of meeting Gudo. He was unsuccessful in this, though, but often met Cecala at the drug store. One day Cecala spoke to him, Schiavi says, and suggested that with a little money he (Schiavi) could start in a profitable business.
Cecala never said much more concerning this business venture, though, to Schiavi, but one day Cecala made a further suggestion that Schiavi might help a certain man learn the photo-engraving business. This man, according to Cecala, had been in the bicycle business, but had given up this enterprise and was looking around for employment that promised to be more remunerative.
Finally, one day at the drug store, he was introduced to Antonio B. Miloni by Cecala who told Schiavi that Miloni was the man of whom Cecala had been speaking and who wanted to learn the photo-engraving business.
Schiavi and Miloni had an extended conversation, and Schiavi agreed to go to the home of Miloni and teach him the business. Then for about six weeks or two months Schiavi went to the home of Miloni daily, and taught the "Black-Hander" the essentials of the photo-engraving business. At the end of that time, according to Schiavi, Miloni discovered that he could proceed by himself and announced to Schiavi that he (Miloni) had joined the photo-engravers' union.
About a year or so after this, Schiavi says he met Miloni on Third Avenue near One Hundred and Fourteenth Street, and Miloni was on his way home. The latter had in his possession, Schiavi says, a camera and all the necessaries for photographing. Also, Schiavi says, Miloni took him along to a photo-engraving supply store at No. 103 Mott Street, where the "Black-Hander" bought several kinds of the supplies necessary to the photo-engraving business.
Schiavi then tells of making a rendezvous of the Mocito drug store after this incident. He met a man in the drug store by the name of Don Ciccio (Francesco) who made the drug store a camping place. This Don Ciccio posed as being in the real estate business and declared that he was an agent. What manner of agent he was, Schiavi says, Don Ciccio never made clear. This same Don Ciccio, according to Schiavi, once asked him whether he were able to make plates for money. Schiavi informed the real estate man that he could make the plates, but preferred his liberty to a term in the confines of a jail. Miloni was present during the conversation between Schiavi and Don Ciccio, according to Schiavi, but Miloni did not enter into the conversation. There were others who frequented the drug store and who were identified by Schiavi as members of the gang now imprisoned on the charges of counterfeiting.
In many ways, too numerous to relate, information of this sort came to me until the Secret Service was facing the onerous task of digesting and coördinating it for its special needs to keep the legal tender of the country secure.