Show fi bINGITALiANS j FORM SEcRET JL A 1iU IDJ 1Ib JArHrRHARD T 1 IJ1i WiI Iri 1i niZA1r e1JltJia 1I VA1i STAMP OUT THE 1f Jfl1r 1rM aa Jn l m > n IDJj nill1f ITITOO o tt TIOO t om OJJ01ru BLACK HAND pa p 4 1 o 1J BV YORK italian Ainerl cans of prominence and wealth are banding together to-gether to put down the so 4 culled Black Hand There pas just been organized In his city a secret oathbound brother ood to stamp out the Italian criminal n this city They have sworn to ut erly exterminate the scores of mar ndlsg bands that are making the reels dangerous with private ward war-d are mercilessly levying blackmail pen rich Italians The new orgaulza Ion will be 7cn more relentless than he criminals they are pursuing The Innumerable blackmailers hleree and assassins who have so per itently oparated under the name of La Mano Nera are not however toe to-e exterminated with pistol and stll eto The new organizations plan Iso Is-o prosecute them Judicially Through 1 own secret agencies it will collect rldence against these men assem log It In such magnitude and so con tingly that the Black Hand oper or will have no more leeway This ew oath bound body will have such trength that It will be able to protect Ithout difficulty all those who aid It As a matter of fact the Black and Is not an organization there iso is-o body of men of that name banded ojethcr for any particular purpose I IB simply a convenient term that a been applied to the acts of a thou and Independent gangs of vicious or rlmlnal Italians The name Black and us applied to a criminal socl 11 was coined some few years ago In newspaper article Tho criminal ulians were quick to take it up and opt It as It gave a dignity and lower to their demands So one after other of the countless independent angs tho groups of two or three the ee lances took It up and began sign g their threats with La Mano Noras ulster name and emblem Quickly he Idea spread throughout Now York nd America that tho Black Hand as a vast and Immeasurably power ul organization with a single head any lieutenants and Innumerable embers limit no such organization lists If It did It would be compara rely easy for the authorities to breakup break-up It could hardly last a months termlned onslaught Its unwieldy re would breed many enemies be gals would follow Its leaders would In the grip of justice and all would oon be over UT with perhaps a thousand marauding mar-auding bands operating In secret firing fear In countless ways by irealu of bombs stilettos and pistols and too often making their threats oodthe evil has become a menace tat IB more than difficult to stamp ul Where one band Is caught a omen more spring Into being while the tribute levied by the so ailed Illack Hand has for some line been wrung from Italians of with the recent spread of Its depre Mons and persecutions has touched iot t only almost every class of Italians al t also many other foreigners and a ew Americans as well and caused the tuition to become alarming The difficulty of combating Italian rime Is greater than that of combats combat-s the crime of any other nationality ople or class Tho Italians above J I other races are abnormally secrete secre-te they settle their quarrels among ffl6elven without recourse to the Jw > by a system of retaliation and per final payment of Injury for Injury as Id as Homo Itself It Is therefore po uarijr fitting and quite In keeping w their racial traits that the Ita lJ1a > should have evolved this scheme I tiling the difficult Black Hand wlon themselves this Plan of the great oath bound rtlerhood has been set afoot be aUSe the italians ° t New York realize bat t the municipal government Is un 1l Ie J to cope with the danger The lice stand helpless before the rnml tauPDS of the criminals that black all and terrorize Evidence cannot ecured at Important Junctures hole h who endeavor to help the police re 8H upon at tho fir > > t available op rtnlty by the bands that lurk en the witness Is not safe upon the bid A secret sign conies from some in of the < courtroom and there Is an mi at Ions of memory caused by a carol loss of life A LL this will bo changed it Is anticl Dated when this remarkable new rot Uierhood the like of which never lore has been known In America MI fairly under way For It will be o ore k powerful than the criminals temselves T It will Intimidate them ii it by fear of death but by fear of aIL TV eht I The t whole iInn Is only what have been anticipated the ils ° t of the good ItallimB of New York low buuu iailuilB Ol wow luiix r Clot out the stigma that Is no fault 1 r elre but Is a stain undo liy those their i elr own blood The Interesting part forfl11 all HS that It will be a mat ter of fighting fire with are by n se cret organization gradually growing f so Powerful that the criminal on the street never will know whether the man he speaks to In his own tongue the man from his own village Is or Is not n member of the secret body thai will light crime to Its vanishing point The nameless brotherhood for Its name as well as the names of its Individual I Indi-vidual members will bo kept secret I already has been formed The first meeting has been held There were 00 men present at this At tho next meeting 300 are promised to be on hand Within three months it is expected ex-pected that there will be 3000 memo hers The unwritten prospectus provides pro-vides for the establishment of a large highly organized and efficient body of secret agents The first object will bo the protection of the homes thin families mid the property of the members mem-bers of the organization this to be expanded ex-panded gradually until every good Italian of New York is under the direct di-rect care and guard of these Italian vigilantes The city Is not to be called upon for a single cent The organization proposes pro-poses Jo raise among Us members all of the large sums that will be necessary neces-sary to carry on Its work The amount required will not be small A very great share of It will be appropriated for rewards for the secret agents The scheme for these secret agents is remarkable re-markable and It really Is the keynote of the entire plan Regular detectives will be employed only to a moderate extent A vast amount of the preliminary prelimi-nary work of collecting evidence will be done by Italians of both sexes while engaged In their regular occupations occu-pations who thus will be able to move among their countrymen without suspicion sus-picion In addition to this these secret se-cret agents will be guarded carefully against harm As one of the men most powerful in the establishment of the brotherhood expressed It Few criminals will attempt to do anything against our agents If they know that they are watched HE Italians who are the projectors THE of this brotherhood are widely representative rep-resentative citizens of Now York and come of many different classes Some of them are rich others of moderate means In the organization already are to be found natives of all parts of Italy and of all shades of political belief be-lief It Is the scheme to havo the membership Include not only big and little business men but a large proportion pro-portion of the laboring element The secret agents will be picked designedly designed-ly from this class As the element to be fought comes mostly from the south of Italy It Is planned to have as many of the secret agents as possible from the same region Experience has shown that the slower witted more plodding Italian from the north Is no match for the devious ways of those that are born In Sicily and the south Hitherto the great trouble has been to get tho natives from the south of Italy to testify at all In Black Hand matters An American who Is not an Italian Arierlcam has no Idea of the terrorism that is employed It Is a terrorism that Is below time surface not to bo seen by the outer world It Is this that has handicapped beyond belief the efforts to secure Justice In the Italian blackmailing cases of New York A thousand secret agents for example exam-ple men working at their dally trades can bo had at the price of say ten police detectives These thousand men and women will not be Vldocns nor will they have the skill of a Sherlock Holmes Yet they will have two marvelous mar-velous advantages advantages that In cannot be estimated too strongly their Identity will bo the first place hidden absolutely When once this organization or-ganization Is fully started any Italian secret met with may bo one of these agents The laborer playing morro in of a dingy saloon with the I back room be found friends may a party of new one nn Italian physician or lawyer of high repute and Income may be another an-other Secondly there will be n thousand thou-sand of these men and women perhaps per-haps several thousahdall listening questioning remembering repeatlng permeating every strata of Italian life New York and together they will have In the mastery of every dialect and custom of Italy tT PROBABLY is not known general I that New York city Is Italian ly moeres very curiously as concerns Its Italian The Italian quarters are population into what practically divided up tof hundreds of little villages amounts small from a n Italian in Calabria comes soy He is followed by own that others And all that come tram endeavor to live In time same town the as tenement house It Ilossiblo first man It not In time sallie block for the sake of com rbls Is prituntilfor 1 lJill aa lfU a ffi bQ < tlJJ D panlonshlp because It brings old friends together and second I for the reason that tho dialects of different differ-ent districts of Italy are very distinct ly different and the customs of these same dlstilcts no less diverse To really enjoy Ameilca an Italian family wants to live with families that speak the same patois and do the same things that have over Interest In common Any regular police detective Is at a double disadvantage He not only Is known as u detective but ho also Is only In complete sympathy with the people of the district In Italy from which he comes These considerations considera-tions greatly limit his usefulness The plan of having a thousand and more secret agents eliminates at once all this trouble It means tho getting right down to a scientific method of keeping a watch upon people Thus the first object of the organization organiza-tion will he a thorough espionage upon every Italian of criminal tendencies In New York the bringing to book sharp ly I and suddenly of such people when they begin to terrorize preventing them In this way from terrorizing at all Tho way in which this is going to be worked out is very complete and systematic No one will know what the society is doing except three people peo-ple the president treasurer and executive ex-ecutive This mystery will go far Among these excitable people It will prove vastly more effective than if tho organization was working openly and above board I But the work of this nameless brotherhood bro-therhood Is not to end here What has been told already is but the beginning of their big task The Italians who are heading this movement realize there Is a vast amount to be done to make their lives and property safe More than this they realize that they must do It themselves Thore must be they foresee a change In the immigration im-migration laws much more careful regulation as to the admission of Italians Ita-lians and all other foreigners Into America There must be much more cwM m provisions as to tho carrying of Mi arms and the sale of fireworks rything In a word must be done to prevent the criminal Italian from getting the upper hand ho now has flE secret part of the organizations THE work has already been dwelt upon In detail There will be what may be called a public branch besides It follows fol-lows that many of the reforms these representative Italians have In mind cannot be carried out so completely as desired unless they are carefully pushed taken up In detail with the national and municipal governments What is wanted what must be done according to the belief of these men to bring Italian America Into just the position they desire Is a long story It these plans are carried out they will result In a very thorough addi tlonal revision of the existing immigration immi-gration laws What these representative Italians want are provisions so that every Immigrant Im-migrant over 16 of whatever nationality nation-ality must possess not only a passport but a certificate that shall bear the official seal of the municipality or town from which he comes signed by the t mayor or chief of police This certificate cer-tificate must state that Its holder never has been accused convicted or Imprisoned for any crime enumerated In tho new Immigration laws It must bear a date not earlier than three days before his departure from such town or district and not over 30 days earlier than his arrival In this country A provision like this it Is contended would prevent a man committing a crime and hurrying at once to France or England and then coming from a port In one of those countries to the United States Even with a law like this the chiefs of the now organization contend there Is yet a loophole that must be carefully care-fully guarded It Is known that a large number of foreign criminals reach this country as sailors According Accord-ing to present regulations they are en ablod to get Into America safely Now if these are bona fide sailors these ropieKentntive Italians Insist they should bo compelled to furnish a certificate cer-tificate from their last captain It Is a question of guarding every possible point There are literally dozens of ways by which a foreign criminal seasoned and hardened in vice can get into this country with comparative ease They are helped to do so by men employed on time big liners and Indeed on every vessel sailing from Italian ports These men in most cases belong to the same secret se-cret organization as those of the crlm Inal classes they wish to aid It Is a comparatively easy mutter to hide a stowaway If certain members of a ships crew make up their minds to do so Men have boon sewed up in mattresses headed up In casks and have been undiscovered after hours of persistent search Later on It has been equally simple for the stowaway to make his way off tho ship and out on the pier In an old suit of overalls or a uniform This has been done not once but countless times and tho authorities au-thorities have seemed to bo powerless to prevent itT It-T In Italian criminal has u genuinely hard time of It in his own country Ho Is beset by police regulations If he Is an exconvict ho IB l under the constant necessity of reporting frequently fre-quently to tho pollco ho cannot carry i I any deadly weapon not even a pock etknlfe and the permission of the chief of police Is necessary before he can obtain employment The law In addition says that he must not leave Italy refusing him a passport This has made the smuggling of the criminal crimi-nal on ships bound for the United States quite a profitable little sub industry in-dustry among Black Hand sympathizers sympa-thizers who happen to hold posts of one sort or another upon the Mediterranean Mediter-ranean steamers As the months goby go-by one criminal after another slips through and almost Invariably makes his way Into New York Tho nameless brotherhood has yet other projects of reform In view It I confesses freely that regarding the public part of Its work It wants tho open support of tho people and the government It will ask for making punishable by imprisonment as well as by fine the carrying of flicarniH It will demand the restriction of the sale of fireworks to national holidays Now there arc innumerable saints I days among the Italian population of Now York and these celebrations are elaborate beyond all description Fireworks Fire-works have grown to be a very largo and Important feature of them They are a constant source of danger for the reason that during tho firing off of rockets and tho Incident noise of other I I explosions there is ample opponunity for a criminal who wants to setuc a private grudge or to terrorize in someway some-way to whip a pistol from his pocket and fire hurriedly His victims drop In the general excitement and noise it is scarcely known how N EVERY vessel sailing from Pal ON ermo or Naples are a dozen or more members of the Cammorra or the Mafia employed as sailors coal heavers and stewards says Lindsay Denison in Everybodys It Is their fraternal duty to aid their brethren to evade the passport law It there are six or more members of a ships company earnestly desirous of concealing con-cealing a stowaway tho thing can always al-ways be done There are recorded Instances where a stowaway has been hunted for three hours by 20 men after all the officers and crew have been sent ashore and has remained undiscovered because he was sewed up In a mattress in a bunk When the steamship has tied up at her berth in an American port the fugitive puts on tho uniform or overalls over-alls of one of his confederates and easily makes his way off the pier And thus a seasoned and hardened criminal crimi-nal his bloodstained hands against all the world as the worlds hands are against him ho Is turned loose In the land of the free and the home of the bravo Every steamship man concerned con-cerned In the Mediterranean trade knows something of the system one of them has admitted these facts It Is the theory of the professional policeman po-liceman of America that the Italian criminal comes to us through France and Canada That Is nonsense he has neither the intelligence nor the means Tho exconvict has the New York address of one or more former members mem-bers of his society in Italy He makes his way to this address as quickly as he may He Is without work and In a strange country It maybe may-be that happy chance will find honest work for him at once But usually It Is not so Ho becomes more likely a willing and useful tool of tho Block Hand a dependent on the generosity of more thoroughly acclimated criminals crimi-nals The stealthy delivery of blackmailing black-mailing letters the stahblngs the bomb plantings and oven the murders of the Black Hand type are done by I men who are so Ignorant and so helpless help-less that they face starvation if they do not carry out the orders of the Black Hand thugs who house and feed them after their surreptitious entry Into the United States |