CHAPTER XX THE STRUGGLES OF THE GUALTIERI BOYS IN NEW YORK Few immigrants come to America these days who have not some relative already here, who has prepared some sort of foothold for them, and all have friends who will look out for their interests to a certain extent. This explains nicely the mystery of why immigrants will mass in the four States of the East which lie nearest New York, when the South is offering inducements for Italian and Austrian labor, and the West never has enough farm hands. I am in receipt of letters from large landholders in several parts of the West who want immigrants to come and settle on their lands, and do not understand why, no matter how much publicity is given to the advantages in the West, the immigrants persist in clinging to the East. The reason is that they wish to stay where their friends and relatives are, and their friends and relatives are already situated in the industrial centres of the East, where they in their turn had been detained by the first comers. The two Gualtieri boys came “raccomended” to Ferruchio Vazzana and Tommaso Figaro, neither of them relatives, but merely friends, and both with enough to do in looking after their own family circles’ interests, so that the two were thrown very largely on their own resources; and their adventures in New York, on which I have kept a very careful eye without too much interference, form a very typical story of what befalls the “greenhorn.” Both had a small amount of money, and, if necessary, Nunzio could have sent home for more, but his pride forbade. With Nicola it was different; the entire family fortunes depended on this venture, though I did not know it for some months: the bit of property his father owns is worth about $300, and represents the toil of a lifetime. This had been mortgaged for $60 at twenty per cent for six months, in order that Nicola might come to America. His wages as a cabinet-maker and finished carpenter in the village had been a most important factor in the family support. The family consists of his father and mother, his wife a girl not yet eighteen, and their year-old baby. To make up for the lack of this, the three adults all engaged in work of some sort until the time when Nicola could begin to send home the splendid earnings to which he looked forward in America. He had received a good education in the academic and technical schools of Messina, and in addition to being a first-class cabinet-maker is an excellent trombonist. He had served his term in the Guardia di Finanza, and had at one time been awarded a prize of 100 lire for bravery and efficiency in trapping some west-coast smugglers. With Nunzio the case was different. Though big and strong, he had no technical training whatever, the five years of his life which he had spent in the Carabineers precluding all opportunities for that. He could be only an unskilled laborer.