An Italian of humble birth who may have prospered in this country and have risen to a position of commercial and political eminence among New Yorkers will cringe unhesitatingly to some worthless scamp who chances to be well born. I have seen this instanced many times and in various ways. Twenty years of residence and fifteen of citizenship in the United States will change the average Italian into a very American sort of person, but I know to a certainty that he will suffer silently at the hands of a countryman of superior birth what he would not submit to for one minute from an American no matter what might be the latter’s station in life. It is certainly a curious fact. In general it is safe to say that half of the Italians from the better classes who come to America are far more undesirable than any of the lower-class immigrants except _that_ certain class of habitual criminals who are doing so much to get their race despised by honest, clean-handed Americans. One of their worst influences is to retard the assimilation of their people by the great American body politic, by refusing to be themselves assimilated, even going so far as to send their children to private schools in order that they may not learn English, and in insisting on wearing clothes of imported make or pattern. They are by birth, tradition and intent the leaders of Italian communities in this country, and their prejudices and examples confuse if not entirely divert the natural social development of their humbler countrymen all about them. Many of them are estimable, as are Chevalier Tonella and his clever, cheery wife, but their influence is negatively wrong. One evening I was sitting with an Italian carpenter, a friend of the landlord’s, in a corner of a Thompson Street saloon, and we were discussing the effect of union-labor regulations on the labor of immigrants and the way in which skilled masons, carpenters, cabinet-makers, smiths, etc., are forced to become peddlers, common laborers, bootblacks, etc., instead of having opportunities to follow their trades, when we were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a very excited man. He was a young barber, flushed with wine and good fortune. He burst into the room with a shout and a rattle of oaths and slammed down a handful of mixed money on a table. The people about were saying so much and delivering it in so short a time that it was a full five minutes before they began conversation _piano_ enough for me to get the idea. The young barber had won three hundred dollars at _lotto_ and had just received it.