VIII. Voices of Sorrow

The dangers the emigrants must face are so many and so different that not even a perspicacious person could avoid them completely. And what

shall we say of the poor and totally inexperienced peasants who entrust themselves to people who in every emigrant see an object to be exploited?

Unfortunately, people who read the newspapers surely have in mind a number of incidents, sometimes shameful, sometimes tragic, but always heartbreaking, of which our poor brothers and sisters are the victims. A few years ago, newspapers reported that two or three hundred emigrants who had arrived at the port of embarkation – I can’t remember if it was Genoa or Naples – found out that the money they had saved up by much hard work and the sale of their remaining belongings had ended up in the hands of swindlers.⁴ Hence the tears, outcries, curses, and then the return to the hometown at public expense.

In early winter 1873, a steamship loaded with many families of farmers from the Abruzzi region arrived in New York. The emigration agents had put them aboard the ship with the promise that they would sail for Buenos Aires, where relatives and friends were anxiously waiting for them. But those poor wretches, who had already suffered so much during the crossing, found themselves on the wrong shores, exhausted, far away from their intended destination and without money to continue their journey.

These might be exceptions. But the general rule is the manner in which our emigrants are transported. They are stowed into ships worse than beasts, in numbers much greater than the regulations or the capacity of the vessels allow. They make the long uncomfortable voyage literally huddled together, with what damage to their health and morality can easily be imagined.

What can we say about the even more tearful situation that awaits them on their arrival at the longed-for destination? They are often taken in by clever tricks, dazzled by a thousand false promises, and forced by necessity to bind themselves in contracts that are a veritable form of slavery, their children led from begging to crime and the women thrown into dishonor.⁵

The vast uncultivated lands of South America are leased out to the emigrants either directly by the Governments themselves or by private organizations that have acquired that land for speculation. After a certain number of years and upon payment of appropriate fees, the peasants become owners of the land they have drenched with their sweat. The settlers pitch their tents in these regions and transform them into productive

and prosperous lands. These peasants often come from the same area, sometimes from the same village, and name after their hometown the new settlement where Divine Providence has led them.

But while these settlements can lessen the dangers of emigration and can make life safer and less oppressive, they can also, if not well overseen, cause countless material and moral evils. In fact, our poor peasants run the risk of being hoodwinked by exploiters into spending their whole life on sterile lands and in unwholesome places, exposed to wild animals and fierce tribes. All these things have already happened, and more than once. The press and public opinion have repeatedly raised a hue and cry over these conditions.

Lest anyone think I have painted an already gloomy picture in even darker colors, I here quote some of the many official documents in my possession that confirm those facts in all their harshness. In his report on Italian Emigration in the Republic of Argentina, dated July 5, 1885, Domenico Brunenghi wrote:

First of all, we need to exercise surveillance on the recruiting practices of emigration agents, be they native or foreign, and to strictly apply the penalties envisioned by the laws for infractions committed in the performance of their tasks, and thus protect the emigrants from the exploitation and enticements to which, even before departure, they are victims, either out of ignorance or naivete.

One of the surprises the emigrant least expects, a surprise that not only causes him great financial losses but is often the beginning of a whole series of irreparable evils, is that of being transported to a place different from the one he intended to be brought to and for which he has paid his passage...

When our domestic carriers leave our own ports, for those destinations, as often as they can, they embark more passengers than regulations allow. A steamship that carries between 700 and 750 passengers may pack in up to 900, 1000, and even more . . .They are crowded into the hold of the ship, where they breathe unwholesome air instead of the fresh air they need for their health. The number of sick people keeps growing; and as illnesses increase, so do the deaths, especially of the little ones....

The farmer assigned to Government settlements should receive what he needs to clear and till the land, to seed it, and the land should also be surveyed. When the given period of time has passed and the obligations have been fulfilled, the farmer has to make repeated requests that the cultivated land be surveyed and the property deed transferred to him. Both requests are stalled for a long time.... The farmer’s complaints to the authorities, who themselves depend on the Government, are to no avail. If he insists too much with his complaints and grievances, he ends up paying for them with harassment and imprisonment. In this way, the settlement goes downhill and is soon wrecked.

How many areas in Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, not to mention other countries, have been littered with the bones of our emigrants, who were attracted down there by unfulfillable promises, almost like in an ambush!

The colony of Port-Breton, the territories of Sao Paulo and the settlements along the Bahia-Minas railroad, and many others, have written heartbreaking pages in the history of our emigration.

Such incidents worried the country for a moment. In the parliamentary session of June 21, 1878, the Hon. Del Giudice and the Hon. Minghetti introduced and sponsored two bills: the first, on the measures to be taken concerning emigration and emigration agents; the second, on the establishment of a special office to supervise the same. At the February 12, 1879 session, the Hon. Antonibon returned to this painful subject with facts and figures of exceptional gravity and, before the Ministers and deputies, with a heavy heart, gave voice to the cries of pain which reach us incessantly and urgently from those lands, and which I here transcribe:

Don’t pay attention to the letters some people write to you. Believe us: we are desperate. Here, most of us die from heartache and hunger.

This is what someone from Morettes wrote.

Another one writes:

I am nailed to the cross; I am thirsty and hungry; I feel betrayed. Out of one hundred people, only forty of us are still left. Some have lost husbands, others have lost wives, still others have lost their children. Some people from Tyrol – so the story around here goes – have eaten their child to keep from starving. Who is defending us? No one. We don’t have policemen or authorities. The landlords in Italy mistreated us, but we were better off in Italy.

Another one writes:

Here, we live like animals, without priests or doctors. The dead are not even buried: we are worse than chained dogs. Tell the landlord that I would be happier in Italy in his pigpen than in a palace in America.

Still another writes:

They told us that Our Lord was born and died in this part of the world and that the gifts of the Magi were to be found here. Instead, we ended up in hell: They have interned us in a deep jungle full of wild animals and mosquitoes. Again and again, we have called for our consul, but have never been able to see him . . .!

A fifth emigrant writes:

When two of our people caused a noisy disturbance, they were tied with a rope by the neck to the legs of a horse and had to run many miles, while the director kept whipping the horse to make it move faster.

“I have a volume here,” continues the Hon. Antonibon, “in which are described the atrocious sufferings of this new exodus..., and I felt I had to put on display for you these tears of our people, who thought they were going to find the Garden of Eden and found, instead, anguish, suffering and hunger; who saw a mirage in the desert of their needs and forgot that the violent storm quickly destroys that city of dust; who are decimated by the climate, by insects and fatigue; who die in despair, struck down by that gentle yet terrible sickness called homesickness; who die reminiscing perhaps of that Italy they cursed at their departure!...Oh, yes, the emigrants’ dreams are beautiful, gentlemen. I get a lump in my throat when I recall my conversations with these people before their departure for America, when I remember how convinced they were that they were going to find gold in the streets, productive fields, large herds of cattle, bloated ears of wheat, and manna from the heavens. Instead, they bring all the human miseries along with them...!”

But all this talk was not enough to get the proposed bills enacted into law. Just four years later, in a circular to the Prefects of the Kingdom, dated February 6, 1883, the Minister of the Interior urged his officials to keep an eye on the emigration agents, and he laid down regulations to make the agents’ work less harmful and to punish them if they went beyond the limits permitted. The circular is beautiful and timely but has just one defect: that of being a circular, that is, something that is transitory by its very nature, something that has the short life of the Florentine laws, of which Dante says: “...until mid-November does not last what thou in October doth weave.”

From the New York newspaper, Progresso Italo-Americano, I take the following incidents that took place these days and that all too eloquently describe the conditions of our emigrants in the New World:

In one of our previous articles, written on behalf of the honor and peace of an Italian community, that of Vicksburg (Mississippi), we described the turmoil our countrymen there are facing, after the unbelievable provocation and gross insults hurled at them by a segment of the local population, and particularly by the local newspaper, the Daily Commercial Herald, which, we don’t know why, has started an unfair and vicious crusade against the Italians.

In Vicksburg, a year ago, the masked lynching heroes assassinated an Italian, Villarosa, considered innocent by public opinion. In Vicksburg, a few weeks

ago, the assassin of an Italian, the late Tironi, was acquitted by the judges. In Vicksburg, the vicious and evil-minded local press is publishing malicious articles against the Italians.

A few weeks ago, some Italian workers from the Southern Provinces (of Italy) on their way back from a town fifty miles from Vicksburg, passed through the city. They stopped there to pick up some mail that would tell them to go to Birmingham (Alabama) to do some work on the railroad . . . . That was enough for the evil-minded to spread the rumor that they, the dirty and ragged Italians, as they falsely called them (the emigrants, in fact, were dressed in their Sunday best and certainly looked decent and dignified) had gone there to compete with the local people and work for lower wages. The local people took this occasion to give vent to all the bitterness they felt against those unfortunate individuals and against all the other Italians of Vicksburg.

We have reported that the local Italian organization, Margherita di Savoia, had planned to accept the challenge and to do something concrete. A special meeting was held for this purpose. All the members of this flourishing organization attended and, through our newspaper, decided to lodge a protest against the insolent people of the place.

“We welcome this honest decision and make it our own. We ask why, despite promises from higher-ups, the assassin of poor Villarosa has gone unpunished and why the representatives of our Government in Vicksburg are not coming to the defense of our countrymen, as they should. . . .

By now, with certain judges and courts, we Italians must play the part of Arlequin, who, after having been insulted and beaten up, would issue a formal receipt. I am referring to a recent court case heard at Vicksburg (Mississippi) against the assassin of an Italian, in which the alleged assassin was acquitted. These words of ours are even-tempered, measured and almost facetious, because, if we were to give vent, through the spoken or written word, to what is in our heart, we might lose the respect we owe ourselves and our readers.

What happened even recently in Vicksburg is simply disgusting and infamous: you be the judges!

Six months ago, Giovanni Tironi, a vendor of oysters and fish at a bar-room on Washington Street, a quiet and peaceful man, dedicated to work and family, beloved by everybody, was insulted by an Irishman, a certain Dan Keefe, one of those characters for whom the clubs of the policemen and the handcuffs of the sheriff of Salisbury would be too gentle and pleasant. Tironi was insulted for no reason at all, out of sheer spite and malice. Poor Tironi tried to be patient and to appease his insulter with kind words. In fact, Tironi kept begging him to stop the argument . . . when Keefe got all the more infuriated: he draws a revolver, aims, shoots . . . . Tironi falls dead: the bullet entered the back of his head and lodged in his brain . . . .”

The assassin was arrested and then set free on five hundred dollars bail. He went on trial, but after fifteen minutes the jury found him innocent. After his acquittal, he left the courtroom smiling, to the applause and boorish guffaws of friends and countrymen of his ilk.

There is no other case of a more blatant miscarriage of justice, no, not even in the most uncivilized country. Italians in the Vicksburg community and surroundings who have heard the news are disgusted and filled with sorrow and indignation. Since we cannot do anything else, we want at least to give voice to their feelings. We add that it is very discouraging indeed to realize that there is no help for us, no help from Italian authorities, that we are at the absolute and arbitrary mercy of the partisan decision of judges . . ., that there isn’t the remotest hope these authorities will break their lethargic and bureaucratic sleep to lift a finger or say a word on our behalf or in our defense.

Even more significant than all the documents we have mentioned so far, both for the importance of the assembly that discussed the issue and for the measures envisioned is the proposed bill that Captain Celso Cesare Moreno had introduced about a year ago in the House of Representatives in Washington through Senator Lovering for the purpose of striking down the so called “padrone” (patron) system, a system that serves as a coverup for the abominable commerce in human flesh.

The purpose of this bill is expressed in the following words: “To abolish the importation of Italians or of other slaves or workers recruited and held in forced servitude in the United States of America.” Articles 1 and 2 concern those persons in U.S. cities who either have recruited children or caused them to be recruited. These articles lay down a penalty of a jail sentence not exceeding five years and a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars.

We quote Article 3 in its entirety because it shows to what extremes of barbarity we have descended:

Sec. 3 – That any Italian “padrone” or his accomplice, or whatever other person or persons who shall bring to the United States, the territories thereof, or to the District of Columbia any man, woman, or child of either sex from Italy or elsewhere and use them as organ-grinders, street-musicians, dancers, mountebanks, or persons who fake blindness or illness at the corners of streets or churches; or as beggars, gatherers of rags, waste paper, decayed meat, bread or other rotten food; or in any vagrant, low, and degrading trade, vice, work, performance, or profession or shall contract them individually, or by squads, or en masse, to work on the railroad, canals, reservoirs, or museums at a low price, and shall compel them to pay to the “padroni” (patrons) or their accomplices, or to any other person or persons two-thirds of or any portion of their earnings, shall be deemed guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be imprisoned for a term not exceeding five years, and shall pay a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars.

Article 4 states that all Italian travelers or “padroni” who bring people to the United States by luring them with promises of profitable work may be imprisoned for up to ten years and fined up to ten thousand dollars.

Article 5 inflicts the same penalties on the padroni and their accomplices who hire people by forcing them to do services of any kind they are unwilling to do.

Article 6 reads as follows: “Anyone who is indicted for the above-mentioned felonies may be tried in the District in which such felonies have taken place or in the District or in others in which the person seduced, kidnapped, or hired, etc., is held in bondage or kept in forced servitude and vile slavery.”

Article 7 then lays down the procedures by which the court has to gather proof of evidence.

Article 8 prescribes the immediate implementation of the law.

I have said enough about so much human misery, because what I have reported (and it is very little compared to what I have to leave out, so as not to go beyond my self-imposed limits) is more than enough to show all those who love religion and country that the evil exists and that it is immense, and that it is our solemn duty to put a remedy to it.