The plan, or rather the ship’s company’s ideal of it, is that the _capo di rancio_ shall take the big pan and the bucket, get the dinner and the drinkables, and distribute the portions to his group. But it works out that one or two assistants are needed to carry the bread if it is not desired to soak it by dropping it into the mess in the pan, and a woman with a baby in her arms cannot very well carry a full pan and a full bucket. When the meal is over, some one of the group is supposed to collect the tin utensils from whatever part of the steerage quarters the group has chosen to eat its meal in for that time, take them to a wash-room under the fo’c’s’le head, where there are several tanks with running water, and wash them ready for the next time. But the crowd in the wash-room after meals was so great that about one third of the people chose to rinse off the things with a dash of drinking-water; others never washed their cups and pans; and still others waited till the next meal and then washed their kit just before they ate. When I say that the water supplied for washing kits was raw sea water and cold at that, any housewife will understand instantly why none of the cups, pans, spoons, or forks were clean and fit for use after the first meal, if they were even then. Yet the emigrant pays half the first-cabin rate for fighting for his food, serving it himself, and washing his own dishes. This night we had little trouble, for Antonio and I understood the order about the groups of six, and we did everything in order; but the mob was two hours in getting its supper satisfactorily, by which time that portion of it which had been hot was unfit to eat. Just before the bell was rung there came down from the boat deck a trim young man in the uniform of an Italian naval officer, and as he passed me I saw that he was of surgeon’s rank and knew he was Dr. Piazza, the surgeon detailed by the government to the _Prinzessin Irene_ to look after the welfare of the emigrants, just as an Italian naval doctor travels on every emigrant ship leaving Italian ports. The Italian government does about twenty times as much for the emigrants as the United States, yet the condition of health and finance in which they arrive in America is of concern here and not in Italy, for they become a part of us. It is to our interests that they should not be oppressed, underfed, robbed, or given unsanitary treatment.