ROGUERY AND ILLITERACY
Bright and early I set about contriving some method of getting out of
Italy in the guise I wished. I could not get an Italian passport in
Naples, for the same reason I could not get one in Gualtieri. I could
not get a birth certificate in the municipality, for the very good
reason that I had not been born there. Yet I must have a passport,
either Italian or American, if I wished to be allowed to go aboard the
_Prinzessin Irene_ as a third-class passenger. If I desired that my wife
and I should travel first-class no questions would be asked us by
anybody, either in Naples or New York. That would ruin my chain of
investigation. I must go in the steerage, and I must go through Ellis
Island. With American credentials I would leave the _Prinzessin Irene_
at the docks in New York, which I did not desire to do, and without the
credentials I could not get on board the ship. It was truly a puzzling
situation. I sounded first the underground methods, of which I will have
more to say later, and found that they were too dangerous to my work.
Then I decided to go aboard as an American and get off as an Italian,
and to go aboard as an American I must go to the consulate, make
application for a passport, and then, having been properly identified,
hurry to the American embassy in Rome and get the passport, a paper
which only the ambassador can issue.
The American consul in Naples is A. Homer Byington, a name famous among
journalists from Maine to California; and, going to the consulate, I
made a clean breast of the whole affair to Mr. Homer M. Byington, his
vice-consul.
“It is a shame to let a good story fall down,” said he. “Wait till I can
get Mr. St. Ledger, our vice-consul, on the docks, and we will see what
can be done.”
In half an hour I had the assurance that Com. Aillo, chief officer at
the Capitaneria, would allow me to pass without a passport, Mr. St.
Ledger being my sponsor.
I had yet to buy our tickets, and, going to the offices of Vincenzo di
Luca fu Giacomo, the North German Lloyd broker, the man who handles all
the third-class passengers, I applied for a ticket, and was refused
because I had no passport, as the law under which the government selects
the brokers of emigrants’ tickets strictly forbids a ticket being sold
to an emigrant unless he has a passport.
The Barcelona sub-agent of the La Veloce broker at Messina was caught
sending over-aged emigrants overland from Italy to Bremen and Hamburg,
whence they embarked for the United States, and was arrested and given a
term of imprisonment. He had been smuggling across the northern border
persons refused passports because of age and the likelihood of their
being returned to Italy from Ellis Island. One party lost a trunk and
wrote back from Hamburg about it, and, the whole plot thus revealed, the
arrests followed.
The court of last resort was Mr. Nicolo Padolfino, in charge of the
Neapolitan broker’s department of declarations, and by assiduous efforts
I got his ear and took him into my confidence. I began to feel that if I
kept on at this rate there would be few officials in the region but
would know all about my doings, and my opportunities would be
correspondingly limited. Many things transpired but—I emerged from the
fray with the third-class tickets that would land my wife and myself in
Ellis Island—all of which goes to show how difficult it is for an
emigrant to leave Italy without all of his papers being straight from
his native village or town, on up to the last gate at Naples. During a
previous stay in Naples I had heard of a school in the Via St. Sebastian
which coached illiterate and ignorant emigrants sufficiently to ensure
their being passed at Ellis Island. Now I heard of yet another, and,
looking them up, found that they had the moral support if not the
financial assistance of the Italian Bureau of Emigration and the
Emigrant Congress, which had just finished meeting at Udine. All this
sounded very interesting and seemed to have its startling features, but
a little further investigation showed me that while their intents are
bad enough for the interests of the United States, their achievements
are not at all dangerous. While these places are anxious to coach up
undesirable emigrants and get them out of the country, the foolish,
unappreciative emigrant refuses to come to the schools to be coached. If
ever these schools should be again “discovered,” I hope that the seeker
for truth will learn the whole truth and have a good laugh over it.
At this point a word should be said about the Emigrant Congress. It is
one of those highly public-spirited societies, that delights in its
annual session and the attendant junketing, the speeches that “view with
alarm” conditions which statistics show to exist, and, having appointed
a committee to attend to the readjustment of this and that particular
phase of national life, passes resolutions, adjourns only to meet again
another year, and hear to what extent the committee has annoyed truly
businesslike statesmen. The Udine session was just such a one. Some of
the speeches made showed a ridiculous lack of knowledge of American
conditions. The proceedings lie before me as I write, and they certainly
are most futile. I am glad they are. Here, with occasional bracketed
insertions to lighten passages which are obscure even in a very liberal
translation, are the resolutions adopted:
On the topic of organization of the emigrants the insertion in “the
order of the day,” moved by “Congressman” Cabrini and carried, was:
“This assembly considers that a professional [formed by salaried
organizers] organization open to all laboring men, without political or
religious prejudice, is one of the very soundest methods of ameliorating
the economic conditions, both moral and intellectual, of the laboring
classes: holding that it is indispensable to the formation of a feeling
of fraternal cordiality in the country, the control of the temporary
emigration, the organization of the poor artisans; furthermore
contending that for the assistance of the emigrants it is necessary that
an organization of all Italian operatives consider the importance of all
this and pray the Honorable Secretary of Emigration to instruct at all
times, more than in the past, their leader’s actions.”
On the topic of educating the emigrant so that he may avoid being barred
because of illiteracy, and may not be victimized by the _patrone_
system, Professor Frescura introduced the following:
“All are in accord as to the necessity for instructing the emigrant. But
be it held that the programme presented by Professor Galeno [a noted
philanthropist who recommended that special schools with government-paid
teachers be established], though splendid, is too vast. It is far better
that there should come about a modification of those schools which we
already have.”
When a lawyer named Cossattini had amended to increase the pay of the
teachers in the districts where help was most needed, and “Congressman”
Giradini had amended that instruction vary according to the exigencies
of emigration, the Frescura resolution was passed.
In the matter of temporary emigration the Congress merely followed the
lead of Professor Levi-Morenos, who was a member also of the
International Agricultural Congress at Rome in May, 1903, in which it
was bewailed that German and other ships were sharing so much Italian
traffic back and forth between Italy and North and South America, and
that so many emigrants were returning broken in health and injured.
There was a lively row over contract labor of temporary emigrants. We
are accustomed to think that our very stringent contract-labor laws are
successfully excluding aliens under contract, but debate in the Congress
would lead one to think the laws had merely made the _patrones_ more
powerful by making “smuggled” alien labor more valuable to American
corporations.
In the matter of the “mediazione” of labor, or “bureauizing” it, as it
were, to avoid the necessity or opportunity for _patrones_, or, as they
are referred to by real sociologists of the first water on the other
side, _sfruttratori_, a lively debate brought out some sharp attacks on
government methods, Senator Bodio making a great speech and pushing to
acceptance the following:
“This Congress considers it is necessary to exercise in behalf of our
emigrant labor a convenient _mediazione_ for avoiding that going forth
blindly and that exposure to perfidious ‘grafters’ and innumerable
perils, so coming to a condition of things that produces an obnoxious
and foolish reduction of their pay, raises the animosity of their
fellow-craftsmen [of America], causes prohibitive laws by the
governments [American, etc.], acknowledging the purely negative
character of our insufficient information and the hurtful and too widely
public quality of the positive sort.
“It is our wish that a more useful and rational method of private
_mediazione_ of our labor, as already presaged in the acts of the
Secretary of Emigration of Udine, come to be followed by the secretaries
in similar offices in the chief places in the provinces, which action
should be co-ordinated by means of a National Federation centralized,
with branch sessions in each important centre of emigration in each
particular province.”
It was decided to hold another Congress in Rome in two years.
Barring Italian emigrants because they are illiterate will result merely
in their being given a superficial education in reading and writing to
enable them to pass our port examinations, and will not raise the
standard of their intelligence in the least; furthermore, what advantage
will the United States derive from their being taught to read and write
in Italian when the ability to read Italian newspapers in this country
will but serve to delay their thorough Americanization. It must not be
forgotten that the many Italian newspapers in this country are not
American any more in sympathy than in print. A thoroughly American
newspaper printed in Italian would be a blessing in both New York and
Boston.
The evening before the day we were to go aboard, we went for a trip
outside the city to get a little rest and recreation before encountering
the ordeal of going through the Capitaneria and embarking. I saw by the
roadside a party of emigrants from one of the villages back of Naples,
who were driving in with huge carts, and had stopped, possibly for the
night. They were the poorest that I had yet seen, and two old women,
whom I observed, I felt sure would be refused by the doctors on their
general physical condition.
On our way home we changed cars in the San Fernandino, and as we stood
waiting I noticed an evil-looking “bravo-like” sort of a chap eyeing me
closely, and I moved away from the remainder of the party in order to
see if he would approach me. I found I was right in my estimate of him.
He evidently took me for a returned emigrant with good American dollars
in my pocket, for he came over, walked along slowly behind me, slapped
me on the shoulder, and said in English,—
“Hello, John!”
“Che?” I answered, feigning stupidity and half-recognition as I turned
toward him.
Then he came out with the old, old, very old confidence game. He asked
me where he had seen me last. I surmised it was in Pittsburg; and he was
at once sure it was, and we chatted on in Italian, or rather I answered
merely enough to keep my lingual discrepancies from being observed. Just
then another of his sort came along and inquired the way to a near-by
street, showing a fifty-lire note, and saying he had been sent by a man
to deliver it, and was so unfamiliar with Naples he had lost his way.
Thief Number One winked at me and said in English:
“Come on, John, we get dat moneys.”
“How?” said I.
Thief Number Two was staring around at the buildings to give Thief
Number One full chance with me. This worthy made a quick sign of playing
cards. I saw the car approaching which I wanted our people to take, and
so, to end matters, I turned him “the sign of the thumb,”[1] a signal of
the freemasonry of thieves which I had picked up long before in the
Italian quarter in New York, and at it the words died on his lips. The
other man caught it too, and his eyes got very wide with surprise, then
suddenly narrowed and darkened. Both responded with lightning-like
signals that were so near to natural movements of the right hand that if
both had not done it I would not have known it was a signal, and when I
could not respond in kind they darted away as if from sudden death.
Footnote 1:
The sign of the thumb is a quick motion of the hand by turning the
whole hand palm up, fingers half closed and thumb out. It is a very
general sign of suspicion of a third party or of confidence between
two.
If I had gone with Number One in the first place to try to fleece Number
Two, there would have been another case for the Naples police of the
“mysterious disappearance” of a returned emigrant. I could not long have
concealed my nationality, and that might perhaps have saved me.