NAPLES AND THE LAND OF THE EMIGRANT
I had crossed Europe from north to south before I got my first glimpse
of an emigrant bound for America. On the way from Vienna to Naples I
stopped at midnight at Rome, and in the interval between trains I spent
an hour in wandering about in the soft southern air--such air as I had
not found anywhere since I left my home in Alabama.
In returning to the station my curiosity was aroused, as I was passing
in the shadow of the building, by what seemed to me a large vacant room
near the main entrance to the station. As I attempted to enter this
room I stumbled over the figure of a man lying on the stone floor.
Looking farther, I saw something like forty or fifty persons, men as
well as women, lying on the floor, their faces turned toward the wall,
asleep.
The room itself was apparently bare and empty of all furniture. There
was neither a bench nor a table, so far as I could see, in any part of
the room. It seems that, without any expectation of doing so, I had
wandered into the room reserved for emigrants, and came accidentally
upon one of the sights I most wanted to see in Italy--namely, a party
of emigrants bound for America.
As near as I could learn, these people were, for the most part,
peasants, who had come in from the surrounding country, carrying what
little property they possessed on their backs or tied up in little
bundles in their arms, and were awaiting the arrival of the train
that was to take them to the port from which they could take ship for
America.
I confess it struck me as rather pathetic that, in this splendid
new and modern railway station, in which the foreign traveller and
the native Italian of the upper classes were provided with every
convenience and luxury, so little thought had been given to the comfort
of these humble travellers, who represent the people in Italy who pay
proportionately most of the taxes, and who, by their patient industry
and thrift, have contributed more than any other class to such progress
as Italy has made in recent years.
Later on I had an opportunity to pass through the country from which
perhaps the majority of these emigrants had come. I travelled through
a long stretch of country where one sees only now and then a lonesome
shepherd or a wretched hut with one low room and a cow-stall. I also
visited some of the little villages which one sees clinging to the
barren hilltops, to escape the poisonous mists of the plains below.
There I saw the peasants in their homes and learned something of
the way in which the lowly people in the rural districts have been
neglected and oppressed. After that I was able to understand that it
was no special hardship that these emigrants suffered at Rome. Perhaps
many of them had never before slept in a place so clean and sanitary as
the room the railway provided them.
Early the next morning, as my train was approaching Naples, my
attention was attracted by the large number of women I saw at work
in the fields. It was not merely the number of women but the heavy
wrought-iron hoes, of a crude and primitive manufacture, with which
these women worked that aroused my interest. These hoes were much like
the heavy tools I had seen the slaves use on the plantations before the
Civil War. With these heavy instruments some of the women seemed to be
hacking the soil, apparently preparing it for cultivation; others were
merely leaning wearily upon their tools, as if they were over-tired
with the exertion. This seemed quite possible to me, because the
Italian women are slighter and not as robust as the women I had seen
at work in the fields in Austria.
I inquired why it was that I saw so many women in the fields in this
part of the country, for I had understood that Italian women, as a
rule, did not go so frequently into field work as the women do in
Austria and Hungary. I learned that it was because so many of the men
who formerly did this work had emigrated to America. As a matter of
fact, three fourths of the emigration from Italy to America comes from
Sicily and the other southern provinces. There are villages in lower
Italy which have been practically deserted. There are others in which
no one but women and old men are left behind, and the whole population
is more than half supported by the earnings of Italian labourers in
America. There are cities within twenty miles of Naples which have lost
within ten years two thirds of their inhabitants. In fact, there is
one little village not far from the city of which it is said that the
entire male population is in America.
Ten days later, coming north from Sicily, I passed through the farming
country south of Naples, from which large numbers of emigrants go
every year to the United States. It is a sad and desolate region.
Earthquakes, malaria, antiquated methods of farming, and the general
neglect of the agricultural population have all contributed to the
miseries of the people. The land itself--at least such portion of
it as I saw--looks old, wornout, and decrepit; and the general air
of desolation is emphasized when, as happened in my case, one comes
suddenly, in the midst of the desolate landscape, upon some magnificent
and lonely ruin representing the ancient civilization that flourished
here two thousand years ago.
Statistics which have been recently collected, after an elaborate
investigation by the Italian Government, show that, in a general way,
the extent of emigration from southern Italy is in direct ratio to
the neglect of the agricultural classes. Where the wages are smallest
and the conditions hardest, there emigration has reached the highest
mark. In other words, it is precisely from those parts of Italy where
there are the greatest poverty, crime, and ignorance that the largest
number of emigrants from Italy go out to America, and, I might add,
the smallest number return. Of the 511,935 emigrants who came to North
and South America from Italy in 1906, 380,615 came from Sicily and the
southern provinces.
One of the most interesting experiences I had while in Europe was
in observing the number of different classes and races there are in
Europe who look down upon, and take a hopeless view of, certain of
their neighbours because they regard them as inferior. For example, one
of the first things I learned in Italy was that the people in northern
Italy look down upon the people of southern Italy as an inferior race.
I heard and read many times while I was in Italy stories and anecdotes
illustrating the childishness, the superstition, and the ignorance of
the peasant people, and the lower classes generally in southern Italy.
In fact, nothing that I have known or heard about the superstition
of the Negro people in America compares with what I heard about the
superstition of the Italian peasants. What surprised me more was to
learn that statistics gathered by the Italian Government indicate that
in southern Italy, contrary to the experience of every other country,
the agricultural labourers are physically inferior to every other class
of the population. The people in the rural districts are shorter of
stature and in a poorer condition generally than they are in the cities.
For all these reasons I was the more anxious to learn for myself what
these people were like. I wanted to find out precisely in what this
inferiority of the southern Italian consisted, because I knew that
these people were very largely descended from the ancient Greeks, who,
by reputation at least, were the most gifted people the world has ever
known.
The city of Naples offers some advantages for studying the southern
population, since it is the port at which the stream of emigration from
the small towns and farming districts of the interior reaches the sea.
The exportation of labourers to America is one of the chief businesses
of that city. It was at Naples, then, that I gained my earliest
first-hand acquaintance with the Italians of the south.
I think the thing that impressed me most about Naples was the contrast
between the splendour of its natural surroundings, the elegance and
solidity of its buildings, and the dirt, disorder, and squalor in which
the masses of the people live. It was early morning when I arrived in
the city for the first time. The sun, which was just rising over the
black mass of Vesuvius, flooded the whole city and the surrounding
country with the most enchanting light. In this soft light the gray
and white masses of the city buildings, piled against the projecting
hillside to the right and stretching away along the curving shores to
the left, made a picture which I shall never forget.
Some of this sunshine seemed to have got into the veins of the people,
too, for I never saw anywhere so much sparkle and colour, so much life
and movement, as I did among the people who throng the narrow streets
of Naples. I never heard before so many curious human noises or saw
such vivid and expressive gestures. On the other hand, I never saw
anywhere before so many beggars, so many barefooted men, so many people
waiting at the station and around the streets to pick up a casual job.
It seemed to me that there were at least six porters to every passenger
who got off the train, and these porters were evidently well organized,
for I had the experience of seeing myself and my effects calmly
parcelled out among half a dozen of them, every one of whom demanded,
of course, a separate fee for his services.
My experience in Europe leads me to conclude that the number of casual
labourers, hucksters, vagabonds, and hunters of odd jobs one meets in
a city is a pretty good index of the condition of the masses of the
people. By this measure I think that I should have been able to say at
the outset that there was in Naples a larger class living in the dirt,
degradation, and ignorance at the bottom of society than in any other
city I visited in Europe. I make this statement even though cities like
Catania and Palermo, in Sicily, which are surrounded by an agricultural
population just as wretched, are little, if any, better than Naples in
this respect.
Very few persons who go to Naples merely as sightseers ever get
acquainted, I suspect, with the actual conditions of the people. Most
travellers who see Naples are carried away by the glamour of the
sunshine, the colour, and the vivacity of the Italian temperament. For
that reason they do not see the hard struggle for existence which goes
on in the narrow streets of the city, or, if they do, they look upon
the shifts and devices to which this light-hearted people are driven
in order to live as merely part of the picturesqueness of the southern
life and people.
I have been more than once through the slums and poorer quarters of
the coloured people of New Orleans, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New
York, and my personal observation convinces me that the coloured
population of these cities is in every way many per cent. better off
than the corresponding classes in Naples and the other Italian cities
I have named. As far as the actual hardships they have to endure or
the opportunities open to them, the condition of the Negroes in these
cities does not compare, in my opinion, with that of the masses of the
Italians in these southern Italian cities.
There is this difference also: the majority of the Negroes in the
large cities of the South and North in the United States are from the
country. They have been accustomed to range and wander in a country
where life was loose and simple, and existence hardly a problem. They
have not been accustomed to either the comforts or the hardships of
complex city life. In the case of the Italians, life in the crowded,
narrow streets, and the unsanitary intimacy and confusion in which men,
goats, and cattle here mingle, have become the fixed habit of centuries.
It is not an unusual thing, for instance, to find a cow or a mule
living in close proximity, if not in the same room, with the rest
of the family, and, in spite of the skill and artistic taste which
show themselves everywhere in the construction and decoration of the
buildings, the dirt and disorder in which the people live in these
buildings are beyond description. Frequently, in passing through the
streets of these southern cities, one meets a herd of goats wandering
placidly along over the stone pavements, nibbling here and there in the
gutters or holding up in front of a house to be milked.
Even where the city government has made the effort to widen and improve
the streets, let in air and sunlight, and maintain sanitary conditions,
the masses of the people have not yet learned to make use of these
conveniences. I recall, in passing along one of these streets, in
the centre of the city, which had been recently laid out with broad
stone sidewalks and built up with handsome three and four story stone
buildings, seeing a man and a cow standing on the sidewalk at the
corner of the street. It seemed to me that the natural thing would have
been to let the cow stand in the street and not obstruct the sidewalk.
But these people evidently look upon the cow as having the same rights
as other members of the population. While the man who owned the cow was
engaged in milking, a group of women from the neighbouring tenements
stood about with their pitchers and gossiped, awaiting their turn at
the cow.
This method of distributing milk--namely, by driving the animal to
the front door and milking while you wait--has some advantages. It
makes it unnecessary to sterilize the milk, and adulteration becomes
impracticable. The disadvantage is that, in order to make this method
of milk delivery possible, the cow and the goat must become city
dwellers and live in the same narrow streets with the rest of the
population. Whatever may be true of the goat, however, I am sure that
the cow is not naturally adapted to city life, and where, as is true
in many instances, whole families are forced to crowd into one or
two rooms, the cow-stall is likely to be still more crowded. Under
these conditions I am sure that the average cow is going to be neither
healthy nor happy.
For my purposes it is convenient to divide the life of Naples into
three classes. There is the life of the main avenues or boulevards,
where one sees all that is charming in Neapolitan life. The buildings
are handsome, streets are filled with carriages, sidewalks are crowded
with handsomely dressed people. Occasionally one sees a barefooted
beggar asleep on the marble steps of some public building. Sometimes
one sees, as I did, a woman toiling up the long street side by side
with a donkey pulling a cart. There are a good many beggars, but even
they are cheerful, and they hold out their hands to you with a roguish
twinkle in their eyes that somehow charms the pennies out of your
pocket.
Then there is the life of the narrower streets, which stretch out in an
intricate network all over the older part of the city. Many of these
streets contain the homes as well as the workshops of the artisan
class. Others are filled with the petty traffic of hucksters and small
tradesmen. In one street you may find a long row of pushcarts, with
fish and vegetables, or strings of cheap meat dangling from cords,
surrounded by a crowd, chaffering and gesticulating--Neapolitan
bargain-hunters. In another street you will find, intermingled with
the little shops, skilled artisans with their benches pushed half
into the street, at work at their various tasks. Here you will see
a wood-carver at his open doorway, busily engaged in carving out an
elegant bit of furniture, while in the back of the shop his wife is
likely to be engaged in getting the midday meal. A little farther along
you may meet a goldsmith, a worker in iron or in copper. One is making
a piece of jewellery, the other is mending a kettle. In these streets
one sees, in fact, all the old handicrafts carried on in much the same
manner and apparently with the same skill that they were carried on
three hundred years ago.
Finally, there are the narrower, darker, dirtier streets which are
not picturesque and into which no ordinary traveller ventures. This
seldom-visited region was, however, the one in which I was particularly
interested, for I had come to Naples to see the people and to see the
worst.
In the neighbourhood of the hotel where I stayed there was a
narrow, winding street which led by a stone staircase from the main
thoroughfare up the projecting hillside to one of those dark and
obscure alleyways for which Naples, in spite of the improvements which
have been made in recent years, is still noted. Near the foot of the
stairs there was a bakery, and not far away was the office of the
State Lottery. The little street to which I refer is chiefly inhabited
by fishermen and casual labourers, who belong to the poorest class of
the city. They are the patrons also of the lottery and the bakery, for
there is no part of Naples that is so poor that it does not support the
luxury of a lottery; and, I might add, there are few places of business
that are carried on in a filthier manner than these bakeries of the
poorer classes.
I was passing this place late in the afternoon, when I was surprised to
see a huckster--I think he was a fish vender--draw up his wagon at the
foot of this stone staircase and begin unhitching his mule. I looked
on with some curiosity, because I could not, for the life of me, make
out where he was going to put that animal after he had unhitched him.
Presently the mule, having been freed from the wagon, turned of his own
motion and began clambering up the staircase. I was so interested that
I followed.
A little way up the hill the staircase turned into a dark and dirty
alleyway, which, however, was crowded with people. Most of them were
sitting in their doorways or in the street; some were knitting, some
were cooking over little charcoal braziers which were placed out in the
street. One family had the table spread in the middle of the road and
had just sat down very contentedly to their evening meal. The street
was strewn with old bottles, dirty papers, and all manner of trash; at
the same time it was filled with sprawling babies and with chickens,
not to mention goats and other household appurtenances. The mule,
however, was evidently familiar with the situation, and made his way
along the street, without creating any surprise or disturbance, to his
own home.
I visited several other streets during my stay in Naples which were,
if possible, in a worse condition than the one I have described. In a
city where every one lives in the streets more than half the time, and
where all the intimate business of life is carried on with a frankness
and candour of which we in America have no conception, there is little
difficulty in seeing how people live. I noted, for example, instances
in which the whole family, to the number of six or seven, lived in a
single room, on a dirt floor, without a single window. More than that,
this one room, which was in the basement of a large tenement house, was
not as large as the average one-room Negro cabin in the South. In one
of these one-room homes I visited there was a blacksmith shop in one
part of the room, while the family ate and slept in the other part. The
room was so small that I took the trouble to measure it, and found it 8
× 13 feet in size.
Many of these homes of the poorer classes are nothing better than dark
and damp cellars. More than once I found in these dark holes sick
children and invalid men and women living in a room in which no ray of
light entered except through the open door. Sometimes there would be
a little candle burning in front of a crucifix beside the bed of the
invalid, but this flickering taper, lighting up some pale, wan face,
only emphasized the dreary surroundings. It was a constant source of
surprise to me that under such conditions these people could be so
cheerful, friendly, and apparently contented.
I made some inquiry as to what sort of amusements they had. I found
that one of the principal forms of amusement of this class of people is
gambling. What seems stranger still, this vice is in Italy a Government
monopoly. The state, through its control of the lottery, adds to the
other revenue which it extracts from the people not less than five
million dollars a year, and this sum comes, for the most part, from the
very poorest part of the population.
There are, it seems, something like 1,700 or 1,800 offices scattered
through the several large cities of Italy where the people may buy
lottery tickets. It seemed to me that the majority of these offices
must be in Naples, for in going about the city I saw them almost
everywhere, particularly in the poorer quarters.
These lottery offices were so interesting that I determined to visit
one myself and learn how the game was played. It seems that there is a
drawing every Saturday. Any one may bet, whatever amount he chooses,
that a number somewhere between one and ninety will turn up in the
drawing. Five numbers are drawn. If you win, the lottery pays ten to
one. You may also bet that any two of the five numbers drawn will turn
up in succession. In that case, the bank pays the winner something like
fifty to one. You may also bet that three out of five will turn up, and
in case you win the bank pays 250 times the amount you bet. Of course
the odds are very much against the player, and it is estimated that the
state gets about 50 per cent. of all the money that is paid in. The art
of the game consists, according to popular superstition, in picking a
lucky number. In order to pick a lucky number, however, one must go to
a fortune-teller and have one's dreams interpreted, or one must pick a
number according to some striking event, for it is supposed that every
event of any importance suggests some lucky number. Of course all this
makes the game more interesting and complicated, but it is, after all,
a very expensive form of amusement for poor people.
From all that I can learn, public sentiment in Italy is rapidly being
aroused to the evils which cling to the present system of dealing with
the agricultural labourer and the poorer classes. But Italy has not
done well by her lower classes in the past. She has oppressed them with
heavy taxes; has maintained a land system that has worn out the soil
at the same time that it has impoverished the labourer; has left the
agricultural labourers in ignorance; has failed to protect them from
the rapacity of the large landowners; and has finally driven them to
seek their fortunes in a foreign land.
In return, these emigrants have repaid their native country by vastly
increasing her foreign commerce, by pouring back into Italy the
earnings they have made abroad, by themselves returning with new ideas
and new ambitions and entering into the work of building up the country.
These returned emigrants have brought back to the mother country
improved farming machinery, new methods of labour, and new capital.
Italian emigrants abroad not only contribute to their mother country
a sum estimated at between five and six million dollars annually, but
Italian emigration has awakened Italy to the value of her labouring
classes, and in doing this has laid the foundation for the prosperity
of the whole country. In fact, Italy is another illustration that the
condition of the man at the bottom affects the life of every class
above him. It is to the class lowest down that Italy largely owes what
prosperity she has as yet attained.