lready gone a good way--and started in to put
an end to it. Petrosino did put an end to much of it, and at the present
time it is largely sporadic. Yet there will always be a halo about the
heads of the real Camorrists and Mafiusi--the Alfanos and the Rapis--in
the eyes of their simple-minded countrymen in the United States.

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 co