Courts, Criminals and the CamorraTrain, Arthur Cheney
History
Courts, Criminals and the Camorra
Train, Arthur Cheney
Camorra; Criminals -- United States; Justice, Administration of -- United States
These two cases are extreme examples of the mediævalism that to a
considerable degree prevails in New York City, probably in Chicago and
Boston, and wherever there is an excessive south Italian population.
The conditions under which a large number of Italians live in this
country are favorable not only to the continuance of ignorance,
but to the development of disease and crime. Naples is bad enough,
no doubt. The people there are poverty-stricken and homeless. But
in New York City they are worse than homeless. It is better far to
sleep under the stars than in a stuffy room with ten or twelve other
persons. Let the reader climb the stairs of some of the tenements in
Elizabeth Street, or go through those in Union Street, Brooklyn, and
he will get first-hand evidence. This is generally true of the lower
class of Italians throughout the United States, whether in the city
or country. They live under worse conditions than at home. You may go
through the railroad camps and see twenty men sleeping together in a
one-room hut of lath, tar-paper, and clay. The writer knows of one
Italian laborer in Massachusetts who slept in a floorless mud hovel
about six feet square, with one hole to go in and out by and another
in the roof for ventilation—in order to save $1.75 per month. All
honor to him! Garibaldi was of just such stuff, only he suffered in a
better cause. In Naples the young folks are out all day in the sun.
Here they are indoors all the year round. For the consequences of this
change see Dr. Peccorini’s article in the _Forum_ for January, 1911,
on the tuberculosis that soon develops among Italians who abroad were
accustomed to live in the country but here are forced to exist in
tenements.
Now, for historic reasons, these south Italians hate and distrust all
governmental control and despise any appeal to the ordinary tribunals
of justice to assert a right or to remedy a wrong. It has been justly
said by a celebrated Italian writer that, in effect, there is some
instinct for civil war in the heart of every Italian. The insufferable
tyranny of the Bourbon dynasty made every outlaw dear to the hearts
of the oppressed people of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Even if
he robbed them, they felt that he was the lesser of two evils, and
sheltered him from the authorities. Out of this feeling grew the
“Omertà,” which paralyzes the arm of justice both in Naples and Sicily.
The late Marion Crawford thus summed up the Sicilian code of honor:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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