On the 1st of March he must send home the money to lift the debt on his father’s property, or the family’s little all would go. He was not yet caught up with his own debts in this country, and so he abandoned all hope for the time being of trying to get employment at his trade, and began to look for employment as an unskilled laborer. At the end of a black week he found this in Charles Schweinler’s printing establishment in the Lexington Building on East Twenty-fifth Street, and at this writing he is still laboring there, carrying bundles of paper from press to table and such tasks. He is receiving about $8 a week, adding in his pay for extra time. When the 1st of March came he had just $7 instead of the needed $60, and when every ray of hope seemed gone and he was nearly wild with worry a way was opened and the debt was paid. So far both boys have been so intent on their own struggles and their own work that neither has given much thought to the country in which he now lives, and less to the rights as a citizen which he may come to enjoy legally in five years, or illegally at any time he wishes by purchasing fraudulent naturalization papers. The night we landed in New York from Ellis Island there were signs everywhere of the bitter battle between Low and McClellan and their respective supporters. I explained it all carefully to our people, and they were greatly interested, for they thoroughly understood the electoral form of government, as communal and legislative officials are elected by popular vote in Italy. Two days later Nunzio told me that an Italian friend of his had asked him if he did not want to make a couple of dollars voting at the election two weeks hence. “Why, I cannot vote; I have not been here long enough,” said Nunzio. “Huh, you _are_ a greenhorn. I have only been here two years, and I have voted twice and belong to a political club. You come around to the club with me, and I will introduce you to a man who will give you naturalization papers. We will register you, and you will never need think of it after that. You will be just as much of a citizen as any of us.” When I explained to the boys how illegal this procedure would have been, Nunzio said: “Well, if that is the sort of thing being a citizen is, I don’t believe I want to be one.” CHAPTER XXI LEGISLATION AND EVASION It is exasperating to any patriotic American to have brought convincingly before him the proofs of a wholesale evasion of a very carefully planned code of laws which he fain would think is a sufficient protection of his civic rights and his country’s best interests. It is more annoying to realize that the successful evaders are for the most part foreigners, and those, too, of commonly despised races.