In 1908,
there were forty-four bomb outrages reported in New York City.
There were seventy arrests and nine convictions. During the
present year (1911) there have been about sixty bomb cases,
but there have been none since September 8, since Detective
Carrao captured Rizzi, a picciott', in the act of lighting a
bomb in the hallway of a tenement house.
This case of Rizzi is an enlightening one for the student of
social conditions in New York, for Rizzi was no Orsini, not
even a Guy Fawks, nor yet was he an outlaw in his own name.
He was simply a picciott' (pronounced "pish-ot") who did what
he was told in order that some other man who did know why
might carry out a threat to blow up somebody who had refused
to be blackmailed. It is practically impossible to get inside
the complicated emotions and motives that lead a man to become
an understudy in dynamiting. Rizzi probably got well paid; at
any rate, he was constantly demonstrating his fitness "to do
big things in a big way," and be received into the small
company of the elect--to go forth and blackmail on his own
hook and hire some other picciott' to set off the bombs.
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