THROUGH THE CITY OF THIEVES
In a half-hearted, divided-responsibility sort of way, the Italian
government, the steamship companies and the United States authorities
endeavor to do at Naples, the world’s greatest port of emigrant
embarkation, what should be done thoroughly a stage sooner, viz., to
sort out those who are likely to be turned back at Ellis Island and to
prevent them from sailing. How much easier, cheaper and more effective
to have done it at home!
So far as this narrative of the experiences of my wife and myself and
our family party is concerned, I would estimate that stage of the
process which was reached at Naples as of equal or greater importance
than the Ellis Island process proper.
Before we left our native land to begin the research in Italy, we were
under the impression that emigration was merely a matter of so many
hundreds of thousands of people traveling each season from their homes
in Europe to the nearest ports, and taking third-class passage to New
York, where they were landed at Ellis Island and examined. That is the
American idea of it,—that and no more! That anything befell them, other
than happens to traveling families in any place, before they reached
Ellis Island, never occurred to us. The process of birth certificates,
passports, declarations, and grouping by the numbers on the ship’s
manifest was all unexpected; and here at Naples was yet more formality,
and, looking back over the whole trip, the Naples stage seems really
more interesting and surely as important as the Ellis Island one.
The morning (30th of September) that we arrived on the _Reina
Margherita_ from Messina, and debarked with our baggage at nine o’clock
on the quay before the Capitaneria del Porto, with no shelter from the
sun already beginning to send down rays of broiling heat and blinding
whiteness, we were rallied into one crowd by agents of the North German
Lloyd broker, Vincenzo di Luca fu Giacomo, who stood at the foot of the
gangplank crying, “_Germanese! Germanese!_” and into another by agents
of the La Veloce Line broker, who stood on the other side and called,
“_Veloce! Veloce!_”
Across the quay, directly opposite where the _Reina Margherita_ had
docked, lay the beautiful long gray _Citta di Napoli_, ready to sail
that day, and from the other side of the Capitaneria we could see
emigrants who were going in her, pouring out of the examination-rooms in
hundreds, and carrying their baggage aboard. All the third-class
passengers among us who were going by the Veloce Line were quickly
herded together, and rushed away and put through the process. As our
steamer did not sail yet for two days, we were left to wait while all
the Veloce baggage was passed through the custom-house, and then that of
all the first class from the _Reina Margherita_, as there is a city
customs duty in Naples in addition to the national revenue, and baggage
is looked at very carefully for _comestibles_, or anything that can be
eaten or converted into food-stuffs.
We had had no breakfast; we had had exceedingly little sleep; the air
outside the bay had been chilling; and now we were left huddled in the
dust under that pouring sun till it was somebody’s pleasure to remove
us. A high iron fence topped with spear pickets prevented our getting
out, and if we tried to go through the doorway into the Capitaneria
there were policemen to push us back. Despite the strict rules of the
Capitaneria concerning any Neapolitans being allowed in among
third-class passengers not yet admitted to the port, or among those
passed for embarkation, peddlers, water-sellers, beggars and mendicant
friars began to filter through the Capitaneria and over the fence,
until, even if we were oppressed with weariness, heat, dust and hunger,
we at least had diversion, and were able to buy warm water with a dash
of licorice in it. One buxom young woman who came in with an ollah and
served all customers out of the same glass was of a fine cheery type,
and when some of the people about us complained and asked whether this
was what they were to expect in the way of treatment, she would laugh
and say:
“Oh, do not trouble yourself because you are weak with weariness and
have no place to sit down but the dust in the hot sun. This is heavenly
to what you will find later on.”
I heard her tell Camela and Concetta this, and the effect was anything
but cheering on them. Antonio tried to comfort them, but he was almost
at his wits’ end, answering questions from all the members of our party
as to when they were going to get something to eat, whether we were to
go at once on the steamer, whether or not they looked “sick in the
eyes,” and might they open one of the trunks to get a bottle of wine,
and so on indefinitely.
The begging friars were nearly all Franciscans, and moved about the
various enclosures among the thousands of emigrants, telling them that
they could best ward off the fearful dangers of the voyage and in the
new, wild land, America, by purchasing prayer-cards. They got a great
deal of money in this way.
It was with keen disappointment that I saw a party of three persons, an
old woman, her daughter and the daughter’s small boy, who were going by
the _Citta di Napoli_, brought off the _Reina Margherita_ and hurried
away with the other Veloce people. I had observed their diseased eyes
the evening before, and had warned all of our party to keep away from
them; but the young woman had made friends with one of our neighbors, to
whom she confided the fact that this was her third trip to Naples with
her mother and her boy. She had tried twice before to go to America, but
all had been turned down on account of trachoma, and sent back to
Messina, where they lived. Now, by arranging to perform that indefinite
process I heard so much about, “Pay some money to some people,” she
fully expected to get through at Naples and to be landed in New York. I
had planned to check up every step of her process and see if she really
did get through with the old woman and the child; but now she was
hustled away, and we were left standing helpless. I had the name she
gave to our neighbor, and the address in Messina, but either the
neighbor was mistaken or the name fictitious.
Soon after they had gone, an old man with a swarm of young clerks
appeared, and, calling the roll of the party, issued tickets which were
good for daily rations, while we were held in Naples, at the North
German Lloyd’s contract restaurant, the Trattoria Retifilero in Via
Lanzieri. It was a long, tedious process, involving much argument and
searching for passports, tickets and papers.
When the old man was finished, he and his henchmen marshaled the crowd,
divided it off into groups amid a wild uproar, and each group of thirty
or forty followed one of the young clerks into the Capitaneria, where
they were led before the city customs officials, who ransacked their
baggage for _comestibles_. A number of the members of our party were
intensely agitated over the performance, it being their first
experience, and little Nastasia, who had wine and cheese in his box, was
wild with fright. He was afraid he would be arrested, or something would
happen that would prevent his going.
A few times before, I had seen evidences of this fear among others of
our party, and I soon realized that _what makes the emigrant so meek in
the face of outrageous brutalities, so open to the wiles of sharpers, so
thoroughly disconcerted and bewildered in the face of an examination, is
his terrible dread of not being allowed to enter America. He would as
soon think of cutting off a hand as doing anything that “would get him
into trouble._”
When the city customs officials were finished with us, we were passed
through to the front of the Capitaneria, and to the left, where the
steamship broker’s representatives were busy checking the heavy baggage.
Almost the entire party was dependent on Antonio and me to worry the
score of big trunks, boxes and bundles through, and, this spot being
just as hot and dusty as the other side of the Capitaneria, the whole
party was in a deplorable condition when at last we were ready to be led
to our abiding-place for the two nights we would be in Naples.
Once outside the iron fence bounding the Capitaneria, the group largely
made up of our party straggled along under the weight of their baggage,
following the young clerk who piloted us along the Marina, with its
turmoil of commerce, and soon we turned into the Vico di via Porta.
Threading our way through the narrow street, jammed with all the life of
the lower classes, we came at last to the Albergo della Rosa, or Rose
Hotel, in the Lanzieri.
It is one of the many houses whose great source of income is the housing
of emigrants at fixed rates of from one to two lire per night. The first
floor was occupied by shops; around the entrance were gathered carts
loaded with all sorts of wares from vegetables to trumpery combs,
mirrors, soaps, baggage-straps,—in fact, all of the things which the
poor emigrant could be led to fancy he wanted for the voyage. The house
did not look very inviting, and as we hesitated a horde of runners from
other houses pounced upon us and almost dragged us elsewhere. Some of
our people would have gone if a respectable old gentleman passing by and
hearing the commotion had not stopped and addressed us, saying, “Go to
this hotel if the company sends you here, and do not take up with these
thieves. Some of the places they recommend are of a most dangerous
character. Emigrants are robbed there constantly.”
I had firmly decided that our party should stop at the Albergo della
Rosa, and contrived to persuade the others in our group not to be
influenced by the importunate Neapolitans.
The host—a short, unshaven, bibulous-looking person—appeared, and we
were conducted to the second and third floors, and allowed to sort
ourselves out into three large rooms, filled with single beds. All of
the women and children were given a front room with light and air, and
the men took the others.
Here occurred an evidence of that class feeling which exists from the
beggar up in Italy. There is no democracy. By a very natural process,
with no words or discussion, Nunzio Giunta, Antonio Squadrito, Nicola
Curro and one or two others, who considered themselves members of a
better class than our farmer-boys from Socosa, for instance, took the
best room, leaving the third, which was dark and close, to the others,
who accepted it without a murmur. In this connection I would note an
amusing thing: Antonio never carried his own baggage till he reached
America, nor did he ever fail to protest when I shouldered mine. He was
afraid we should lose caste in the eyes of the people we met.
It was not ten minutes after we were indoors, before every member of the
party was stretched out and sound asleep, being simply exhausted by the
strain under which we had been for two days.
It was nearly six o’clock when the host roused everybody to tell them
that if they wished to take advantage of the one meal a day the
steamship broker was paying for, they should be going to the
_trattoria_.
It was a subdued party that arrayed itself, filed down the stairs, and
went to its first substantial meal since noon of the day before. There
was less talking done than there had been over anything since we started
from Gualtieri.
At the restaurant we found some hundreds of emigrants coming and going,
and others seated at the tables. For a half hour we waited until those
eating made room enough for us, and then we gathered around one of the
large tables arranged about the long room, and soon were served by
unkempt waiters with soup made with tomatoes and paste, a stew of meat
and vegetables, the meat being from portions of the goat not the most
savory, melons and wine. Poor little Ina was very hungry but very brave.
She confessed, after we had all been cheered and stimulated by the meal,
that she had been afraid she would “faint, and they would not let a
fainty girl go to America.”
Nothing was of more interest to me than the rapid broadening of the
mental scope of the children and young folks in our party. Pretty
Concetta, in all her sixteen years, had never been away from home
before. Some of the youths had never been outside the village community
of Gualtieri. Little Ina showed how bright she is and how well she had
understood all the wonders that had been told her, by refusing to be
appalled by the tremendous size and unheard-of splendor of Naples, for
such the town, shabby and tumbledown as it is in the parts they had
visited, seemed to them. She took her new experiences as a matter of
course.
We walked out into the city after supper, and Concetta was as nearly
like a wild, frightened animal of the forest as anything of which I can
think. As I knew the city well, I piloted them to the portions where
there would be the most interesting sights in the sunset hours and the
early evening. As we were crossing the Piazza Borsa, with its busy
traffic and many speeding electric cars, she clung to Camela’s arm, and
Camela clung to my wife. The passing horses and cars seemed to utterly
bewilder them, and when we were little more than halfway across, Camela
and Concetta broke into a wild run, and, despite my wife’s resistance,
dragged her the remainder of the way to the sidewalk, the last spurt
being directly in front of a Toretta train. When we were all safely
assembled on the sidewalk, Giovanni Pulejo, himself trembling all over,
turned to me and said:
“Oh, all this noise makes my head as big as my body. Let us go back to
the house.”
In one of the little side streets Camela suddenly stopped with an
exclamation of disgust, and pointed to some boys with a plate of
macaroni. They were shoveling it into their mouths with their fingers in
the fashion that is met with only in Naples.
After we had passed through the splendid business arcade, the Galleria
Umberto, had seen the Royal Palace and other wonders, we came suddenly
to a little street which has a peculiar reputation in Naples. It is the
Vicolo del Pallonetto. Many years ago, when both the Mafia and Camorra
were flourishing institutions in Italy, some strange things happened in
this street.
It is so steep that it is paved with stones set like stairs, and many
are the dead who have been found there at dawn. Now the street is
inhabited for the most part with honest people of the Neapolitan brand
of that virtue, and it has the distinction of having sent great numbers
of street-piano Italians to America. “The dago with the monkey” was the
pioneer of Italian emigration to the United States; then came the
lemon-seller, who took to the banana and peanut business. Some people
take it as a matter of course that bananas and peanuts have their home
in Italy. An Italian fruit-vender whom I know tells me he has people ask
him nearly every day whether he has any Italian bananas. The truth is
that both bananas and peanuts are as rare in Italy as alligator pears in
New York. Several house-owners in this street are retired hand-organ
players who have made substantial fortunes in America in other years.
[Illustration: The Storied Vicolo del Pallonetto in Naples]
As we came through the street with our trailing, staring, interested
party, scores of persons with relatives in America came out of the
houses or called down from the balconies, desiring that we look up their
friends in the States and take them messages. Lest some who read these
lines may find in them fresh cause to raise the Mafia bugaboo, I will
repeat an earlier assertion: while it is no use denying that once the
Mafia was a large, well-organized and most murderous society, and that
for a long period it built up a record of atrocious crimes, extortions
coupled with murders, the stringent measures adopted in Italy have
suppressed it so effectually that actual Mafia members are only a few
middle-aged or old men, who keep their allegiance only for fear of their
old comrades. No man dares raise his voice to-day and call himself
“_Mafite_” except in America, and here the man who does it is a common
criminal, trading on the terrors of the old bloody band.
This country was greatly roused over the operations of a secret society
in New Orleans, and much was written and said about the Mafia at the
time. It is true some of the men were old _Mafiti_, but I have the word
of an Italian secret-service official of high rank that the band was a
purely independent organization. About a year ago a terrible murder was
committed by Italians in New York, and there was not one of the great
leading dailies and the reviewing periodicals but pronounced it an
outbreak of a Mafia band. A number of men were arrested, with strong
proof against them, and they were labeled “The Band,” and connections
with other Mafia bands sought for in Buffalo, Chicago, New Orleans, and
elsewhere. Very serious editors discussed “the growth of the Mafia in
America” and “the frightful influx of criminal Italians.” The whole had
considerable influence on the Shattuc bill. The truth of the matter is
that “The Band” was merely a small gang of counterfeiters, most of them
men of such undesirable qualities that they would never have been able
to gain admission to the Mafia; and they were no more _Mafiti_, strictly
speaking, than are the members of the American Board of Foreign
Missions. I repeat, “the Mafia in America” is nothing but a bugaboo. Men
who belong to small criminal gangs used the word as a means of
extortion, and the mysterious murders which happen frequently—always
with Italians as the victims—are private vendettas. When we consider
that the Sicilian considers it just as much his inherent right to stab a
man who has done him a great wrong as the American Southerner to lynch a
negro who has turned beast, and that criminal Italians in America work
astounding injustices on their gullible countrymen, it is a wonder that
there are not more mysterious murders than there are. The deportation
from America of about six shiploads of Italian parasites who live on the
labor of their fellows would put an end to all such things in this
country. The average Italian living in America would rather go to prison
for five or ten years than be deported. And many an Italian gladly goes
to prison to be maintained while he learns a trade and how to read and
write English.
It seemed strange indeed to be leading a company of honest country folk
along a street so noted for its dark crimes, but in the hearty greetings
and hospitality of the people about us in the Pallonetto there was no
sign of the blackness of that other day.
It was most amusing when I piled the whole crowd on a car bound out
toward Possilipo, past the villas on the northern rim of the wonderful
bay. I had let many cars go by till I saw one coming that was nearly
empty, and when we were all in we nearly filled it. The boys all wanted
to sit together. They were in high glee, and crowded nine into one seat,
to the dismay of the conductor and the entertainment of the other
passengers. The conductor stopped the car and straightened them out,
distributing them into empty places. When the car was going at full
speed I looked back and saw that every one was holding on to the seat
for dear life, and watching Antonio and myself anxiously to see if we
gave any sign that we were in danger. Having occasion to change cars,
Concetta and Camela lost their heads and sprang upon the other car while
it was still in motion. Antonio and the conductor caught them and lifted
them up, or else one or the other would certainly have been hurt. If our
people were so overwhelmed by life in Naples I wondered what they would
do in New York. However, before this evening trip was over, and we went
back to the Albergo della Rosa, my wife and I both remarked a change
that had come over all, especially the younger ones. It was one of the
first displays of their adaptability,—one of the best characteristics of
the Italians now pouring into America. In a few hours they had got a
fine grasp on city ways, and the people we brought back to the emigrant
lodging-house behaved far differently from those we had taken away. The
wild look was gone from Concetta’s eyes, and only in the roar of
Broadway did I see it again.
There is no part of southern Italy where the flea is not a bloodthirsty
brigand, but in Naples he seems to partake of the characteristics of the
city and is clever, wily, bold, and—oh! so numerous. In the Albergo
della Rosa, that night, it really seemed that the vermin of southern
Europe, brought to the lodging-house by emigrants from all lands, had
assembled for an international clinic, and we were the subjects. If that
great man who makes animals talk in his books had only been there, he
would have heard the Grecian bedbug telling the Russian Jew louse that
he and the Syrian sand-gnat had just had a choice nip of raw American
that had been pointed out to him by the Calabrese fleas who were
first-cousins of their hosts the Neapolitans.
Some beast of the night had bitten little Ina on the right eyelid, and
when we arose in the morning the eye was almost closed.