For all the great majority of the Italian immigrants are peaceable and industrious, no other element matches them in propensity for personal violence. In homicide, rape, blackmail, and kidnapping they lead the foreign-born. Says the Immigration Commission: "The Italian criminals are largest in numbers and create most alarm by the violent character of their offenses in this country." Among moderns, gainful offenses occur from three to seven times as frequently as crimes of violence. The medievalism of the South Italians appears from the fact that they commit more deeds of personal violence than gainful offenses. Browning, who knew the Italians, expresses this cheerful alacrity in murder when, in "The Ring and the Book," the _Pope_ tells of the four "bright-eyed, black-haired boys" _Count Guido_ hired for his bloody work: Murder me some three people, old and young, Ye never heard the names of--and be paid So much. And the whole four accede at once. Demur? Do cattle bidden march or halt? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . All is done purely for the pay--which earned, And not forthcoming at the instant, makes Religion heresy, and the lord o' the land Fit subject for a murder in his turn. The patron with cut throat and rifled purse, Deposited i' the roadside ditch, his due, Naught hinders each good fellow trudging home The heavier by a piece or two in poke, And so with new zest to the common life, Mattock and spade, plow-tail and wagon-shaft Till some such other piece of luck betide. It was frequently stated to the members of the Immigration Commission in southern Italy that crime had greatly diminished in many communities because most of the criminals had gone to America. One Italian official at Messina stated that several years ago southern Italy was a hot-bed of crime, but that now very few criminals were left. When asked as to their whereabouts, he replied, "Why, they are all in the United States." From the Camorra, that vast spider-web of thieves and prostitutes by whom life and politics in Naples are controlled, have come thousands who find the hard-working Italian immigrants a richer field of exploitation than any field open at home. Still more harassing is the Mafia, by means of which Sicilians contrive to ignore police and courts and to secure justice in their own way. A legacy of Spanish domination and Spanish arrogance is the sense of _omertà_, or manliness, which holds it dastardly to betray to justice even one's deadliest foe. To avenge one's wrongs oneself, and never to appeal to law, is a part of Sicilian honor.