Any one who has had anything to do with the administration of criminal justice in a city with a large Italian population must have found himself constantly hampered by precisely this same “Omerta.”  The south Italian feels obliged to conceal the name of the assassin and very likely his person, though he himself be but an accidental witness of the crime; and, while the writer knows of no instance in New York City where an innocent man has gone to prison himself rather than betray a criminal, Signor Cutera, formerly chief of police in Palermo, states that there have been many cases in Sicily where men have suffered long terms of penal servitude and even have died in prison rather than give information to the police.

In point of fact, however, the “Omerta” is not confined to Italians.  It is a common attribute of all who are opposed to authority of any kind, including small boys and criminals, and with the latter arises no more from a half chivalrous loyalty to their fellows than it does from hatred of the police and a uniform desire to block their efforts (even if a personal adversary should go unpunished in consequence), fear that complaint made or assistance given to the authorities will result in vengeance being taken upon the complainant by some comrade or relative of the accused, distrust of the ability of the police to do anything anyway, disgust at the delay involved, and lastly, if not chiefly, the realization that as a witness in a court of justice the informer as a professional criminal would have little or no standing or credence, and in addition would, under cross-examination, be compelled to lay bare the secrets of his unsavory past, perhaps resulting indirectly in a term in prison for himself.* Thus may be accounted for much of the supposed “romantic, if misguided, chivalry” of the south Italian.  It is common both to him and to the Bowery tough.  The writer knew personally a professional crook who was twice almost shot to pieces in Chatham Square, New York City, and who persistently declined, even on his dying bed, to give a hint of the identity of his assassins, announcing that if he got well he “would attend to that little matter himself.”  Much of the romance surrounding crime and criminals, on examination, “fades into the light of common day”—­the obvious product not of idealism, but of well-calculated self-interest.

* Much more likely in Italy than in the United States.

As illustrating the backwardness of our Italian fellow-citizens in coming forward when the criminality of one of their countrymen is at stake, the last three cases of kidnapping in New York City may be mentioned.