If it be demurred that the ignorant, superstitious Neapolitan or Sicilian, heir to centuries of Bourbon misgovernment, cannot be expected to prove us his race mettle, there are his children, born in America. What showing do they make? Teachers agree that the children of the South Italians rank below the children of the North Italians. They hate study, make slow progress, and quit school at the first opportunity. While they take to drawing and music, they are poor in spelling and language and very weak in abstract mathematics. In the words of one superintendent, "they lack the conveniences for thinking." More than any other children, they fall behind their grade. They are below even the Portuguese and the Poles, while at the other extremity stand the children of the Scandinavians and the Hebrews. The explanation of the difference is not irregularity of attendance, for among pupils attending three fourths of the time, or more, the percentage of South Italians retarded is fifty-six as against thirty-seven and a half per cent. for the Russian-Hebrew children and twenty-nine per cent. for the German. Nor is it due to the father's lack of American experience, for of the children of South Italians who have been in this country ten or more years sixty per cent. are backward, as against about half that proportion among the Hebrews and the Germans. After allowing for every disturbing factor, it appears that these children, with the dusk of Saracenic or Berber ancestors showing in their cheeks, are twice as apt to drop behind other pupils of their age as are the children of the non-English-speaking immigrants from northern Europe. [Illustration: Photograph by Hine Board of Special Inquiry, Ellis Island] [Illustration: Photograph by Hine. Courtesy of The Survey Utter Weariness Bohemian Woman on East Side, New York, after the Day's Work] TRAITS OF ITALIAN CHARACTER The South Italian is volatile, unstable, soon hot, soon cool. Says one observer, "The Italian vote here is a joke. Every candidate claims it because they were 'for' him when he saw them. But the man who talks last to them gets their vote." A charity worker declares that they change their minds "three steps after they have left you." It is not surprising that such people are unreliable. Credit men pronounce them "very slippery," and say that the Italian merchants themselves do not extend credit to them. It is generally agreed that the South Italians lie more easily than North Europeans, and utter untruth without that self-consciousness which makes us awkward liars. "Most of my countrymen," says an educated Italian in the consular service of his country, "disregard their promises unless it is to their advantage to keep them." The man who "sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not" is likely to be a German with his ideal of _Treue_, an Englishman with his ideal of _truth_, or an American with his ideal of _squareness_.