Occasionally one of these big guns arrives at an American port of entry, coming first-class via Havre or Liverpool, having made his exit from Italy without a passport.  Then the Camorrists of New York and Brooklyn get busy for a month or so, raising money for the boys at home and knowing that they will reap their reward if ever they go back.  The popular method of collecting is for the principal capo maestra, or temporary boss of Mulberry Street, to “give” a banquet at which all “friends” must be present—­at five dollars per head.  No one cares to be conspicuous by reason of his absence, and the hero returns to Italy with a large-sized draft on Naples or Palermo.

Meanwhile the criminal driven out of his own country has but to secure transportation to New York to find himself in a rich field for his activities; and once he has landed and observed the demoralization often existing from political or other reasons in our local forces of police and our uncertain methods of administering justice (particularly where the defendant is a foreigner), he rapidly becomes convinced that America is not only the country of liberty but of license—­to commit crime.

Most Italian crooks come to the United States not merely some time or other, but at intervals.  Practically all of the Camorrist defendants on trial at Viterbo have been in the United States, and all will be here soon again, after their discharge, unless steps are taken to keep them out.  Luckily, it is a fact that so much has been written in American newspapers and periodicals in the past few years about the danger of the Black Hand and the criminals from south Italy that the authorities on the other side have allowed a rumor to be circulated that the climate of South America is peculiarly adapted to persons whose lungs have become weakened from confinement in prison.  In fact, at the present time more Italian criminals seek asylum in the Argentine than in the United States.  Theoretically, of course, as no convict can procure a passport, none of them leave Italy at all—­but that is one of the humors of diplomacy.  The approved method among the continental countries of Europe of getting rid of their criminals is to induce them to “move on.”  A lot of them keep “moving on” until they land in America.

Of course, the police should be able to cope with the Black Hand problem, and, with a free use of Italian detectives who speak the dialects and know their quarry, we may gradually, in the course of fifteen years or so, see the entire disappearance of this particular criminal phenomenon.  But an ounce of prevention is worth—­several tons of cure.  Petrosino claimed—­not boastfully—­that he could, with proper deportation laws behind him, exterminate the Black Hand throughout the United States in three months.