The prevention of kidnapping, bomb-throwing, and the other allied manifestations of the Black Hand depends entirely upon the activity of the police—particularly the Italian detectives, who should form an inevitable part of the force in every large city. The fact of the matter is that we never dreamed of a real “Italian peril” (or, more accurately, a real “Sicilian peril”) until about the year 1900. Then we woke up to what was going on—it had already gone a good way—and started in to put an end to it. Petrosino did put an end to much of it, and at the present time it is largely sporadic. Yet there will always be a halo about the heads of the real Camorrists and Mafiusi—the Alfanos and the Rapis—in the eyes of their simple-minded countrymen in the United States. Occasionally one of these big guns arrives at an American port of entry, coming first-class via Havre or Liverpool, having made his exit from Italy without a passport. Then the Camorrists of New York and Brooklyn get busy for a month or so, raising money for the boys at home and knowing that they will reap their reward if ever they go back. The popular method of collecting is for the principal _capo maestra_, or temporary boss of Mulberry Street, to “give” a banquet at which all “friends” must be present—at five dollars per head. No one cares to be conspicuous by reason of his absence, and the hero returns to Italy with a large-sized draft on Naples or Palermo. Meanwhile the criminal driven out of his own country has but to secure transportation to New York to find himself in a rich field for his activities; and once he has landed and observed the demoralization often existing from political or other reasons in our local forces of police and our uncertain methods of administering justice (particularly where the defendant is a foreigner), he rapidly becomes convinced that America is not only the country of liberty but of license—to commit crime.