and corruption so much less prevalent, that they can exert no practical influence in politics outside the Board of Aldermen, whereas the Italian societies of the Mala Vita exert an influence everywhere—­in the Chamber of Deputies, the Cabinet, and even closer to the King.  In fact, political corruption has been and still is of a character in Italy luckily unknown in America—­not in the amounts of money paid over (which are large enough), but in the calm and matter-of-fact attitude adopted toward the subject in Parliament and elsewhere.

The overwhelming majority of Italian criminals in this country come from Sicily, Calabria, Naples, and its environs.  They have lived, most of their lives, upon the ignorance, fear, and superstitions of their fellow-countrymen.  They know that so long as they confine their criminal operations to Italians of the lower class they need have little terror of the law, since, if need be, their victims will harbor them from the police and perjure themselves in their defence.  For the ignorant Italian brings to this country with him the same attitude toward government and the same distrust of the law that characterized him and his fellow-townsmen at home, the same Omerta that makes it so difficult to convict any Italian of a serious offence.  The Italian crook is quick-witted and soon grasps the legal situation.  He finds his fellow countrymen prospering, for they are generally a hard-working and thrifty lot, and he proceeds to levy tribute on them just as he did in Naples or Palermo.  If they refuse his demands, stabbing or bomb-throwing show that he has lost none of his ferocity.  Where they are of the most ignorant type he threatens them with the “evil eye,” the “curse of God,” or even with sorceries.  The number of Italians who can be thus terrorized is astonishing.  Of course, the mere possibility of such things argues a state of mediaevalism.  But mere mediaevalism would be comparatively unimportant did it not supply the principal element favorable to the growth of the Mala Vita, apprehended with so much dread by many of the citizens of the United States.

Now, what are the phases of the Mala Vita—­the Camorra, the Black Hand, the Mafia—­which are to-day observable in the United States and which may reasonably be anticipated in the future?

In the first place, it may be safely said that of the Camorra in its historic sense—­the Camorra of the ritual, of the “Capo in Testa” and “Capo in Trino,” highly organized with a self-perpetuating body of officers acting under a supreme head—­there is no trace.  Indeed, as has already been explained, this phase of the Camorra, save in the prisons, is practically over, even in Naples.  But of the Mala Vita there is evidence enough.