A considerable percentage,
especially of those from the cities, are criminal. Even for a
long time after landing in America, the Calabrians and
Sicilians often exhibit a lack of enlightenment more
characteristic of the Middle Ages than of the twentieth
century.
At home they have lived in a tumble-down stone hut about
fifteen feet square, half open to the sky (its only saving
quality); in one corner the entire family sleeping in a
promiscuous pile on a bed of leaves; in another a domestic zoo
consisting of half a dozen hens, a cock, a goat, and a donkey.
They neither read, think, nor exchange ideas. The sight of a
uniform means to them either a tax-gatherer, a compulsory
enlistment in the army, or an arrest, and at its appearance
the man will run and the wife and children turn into stone.
They are stubborn and distrustful. They are the same as they
were a thousand or more years gone by.
When the writer was acting as an assistant prosecutor in New
York County, a young Italian, barely twenty years of age, was
brought to the bar charged with assault with intent to kill.
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