ncs fifty and twenty-five francs a week; there are many
labourers who receive less and do more with it. Of course, they would
like more wages--everyone would like more wages--but what the
sulphur-miners really want is the intelligence to use wisely what they
have and also some change, if it were possible, in the conditions under
which their work is done. Beppe assured me that the question is not
being overlooked, but it has roots which extend further and are more
complicated than the galleries in the mine--roots which are tangled with
the roots of other questions affecting other interests, and these again
affect others. So I bowed before the other considerations and hoped that
with the changes that are continually taking place in Sicily something
may soon be done for the sulphur-miners, trusting that in the meantime we
are not paying too dearly for the advantage of getting our sulphur so
cheap.

CHAPTER XIII
OMERTA AND THE MAFIA

When the drunken sulphur-miners quarrel and kill one another on Saturdays
and Sundays, the murderers are seldom brought to justice because of
Omerta; a word which is said to be derived from uomo and to signify
manliness in the sense of power of endurance, the power, for example, of
keeping silence even under torture; hence it comes to be used for an
exaggeration of that natural sense of honour, that Noblesse Oblige or
Decency Forbids, which makes an English schoolboy scorn to become a
sneak. It may be false and foolish, it may be noble and chivalrous,
whatever it is, they say, it has such a firm growth among them because
the history of Sicily is the history of an island which has for centuries
been misgoverned by foreigners, and the people have lost any faith they
may ever have had in professional justice. If one were to be involved
with a Sicilian in committing a crime, one might be perfectly certain
that he would never turn King's evidence, he would say, "Io son uomo, io
non parlo" ("I am a man, I know how to hold my tongue") and he would
rather die than betray an accomplice who is his friend and probably his
compare. Nor need the criminal fear that the victim or anyone in the
secret whether accomplice or not, will blab. A man with a wound on his
face, made obviously by a knife, will swear to the police that in drawing
a cork he fell and cut himself with the bottle. He does not intend his
assailant to go unpunished, but he will not have the police interfering
if he can prevent