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.
152the 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 153took 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, 154having 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:
155“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 156attacks 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 157sympathy 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 158been 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.
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.