The Italians are the second largest nationality in the classification of the domestic relations court cases. The Italians are very apt to be disorderly persons. They are hot tempered, quick to strike and a great many times an Italian wife appeals to the domestic relations court because her husband has been cruel to her and struck her, and this court is obliged to send her to the magistrates court in order that her husband may be treated as a disorderly person. In justice to the Italians of Northern Italy, it should be stated that it is very rare to find an Italian in the domestic relations court who originally came from any province in Italy north of Rome. The great mass of Italians who get into this court are Neapolitans, Calabrians and Sicilians. The third group are from Central Europe, Hungarians, peoples from the Balkan states, Galicia and other provinces of Austria. The French rarely are obliged to appeal to the domestic relations court. The French are naturally a home-loving people, and anything like a domestic break is rare among them. Only two or three times since this court was established have French couples been obliged to appear there. A great many people classify themselves as Americans when as a matter of fact they are foreign born, so that the figures in regard to the number of Americans in this court are misleading. Negroes, however, turn up here in great numbers. Colored men often have no sense of responsibility whatever and they are constantly forsaking their wives and families or going off with somebody else’s wife. The excuses offered by colored men who are haled into this court are often very amusing. For the most part, however, this is not an amusing court. The long line of people who press before Judge Cornell and Judge Harris day after day, is for the most part a sordid, hideous line, and the tales the complainants tell fill one with contempt and sourness toward humanity. The domestic relations court offers an even seamier picture of life in this city than the magistrates courts. While it is true that occasionally a family of the better class makes appeal to this court, for the most part the clients are illiterate and very poor. A very large per cent. of the cases that are brought here are people who, if abandoned, would become public charges. That is why the state interests itself to the extent of providing a counsel for complainants, in order to protect itself from the burden of caring for helpless women and little children, whom some individual has simply deserted. There are people who pretend to find amusement in the rehearsal of the marital woes of the poor. To be sure, occasionally a case turns up with its funny side, but to me the recitals are heartbreaking and dreary.