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Show V ; The Mafia. foI10U?Lh he members of the Sicilian Mafia who have just been arrested In t w. ork on. charges of murder, coun-terleltlng coun-terleltlng and other crimes committed in the I nltcd States belong to the dregs of, ItU floauiatlon, it must not for oue mo. ment be believed that the Mafia is recruited re-cruited from these clashes of society, and in spite of the assertion of the New York police, I venture to doubt whether any of their prisoners can lay claim to being even the head of any important branch of the- Mafia on this Bide of the Atlantic. They are much more likely to be mere instruments, in-struments, the real direction of the society, so-ciety, both at home and abroad, being restricted re-stricted almost exclusively to men of intellect, in-tellect, education and frequently of birth. Indeed, the Sicilian nobility figures extensively ex-tensively in the Mafia. Thus the Marquis de Cordova, a territorial magnate at Montemaggiore. in Sicily.-, and Count Cuccione. another great landed proprietor propri-etor at Commorate, have just been arrested ar-rested bv the Italian authorities as prom- i inent members of the Mafia and as confederates con-federates of the celebrated brigand v er- ! salonu, who. in spite of the reward, of $5.C00 offered for his capture, dead or alive, has succeeded in maKing nis escape, es-cape, and is understood to have arrivcv within the last in America under. an assumed as-sumed name. The two dukes. Francis and Peter So-tarbartolo-Villarosa. who own one of the most beautiful palaces in Palermo, arei now serving a sentence of penal servitude as members of the Mafia and as perpetrators perpe-trators of a singularly cowardly murder. In fact, there is a large representation of the old Sicilian nobility in the rankJ of the Mafia, and. being men of education, educa-tion, of means, and of social position, as well as of brains, they are naturalU much better qualified to direct the operations opera-tions of'this much dreaded secret society than .mere ignorant peasants and work-ingmen. work-ingmen. ... This is a fact which the authorities ii. this country do not tuk? into sufficient consideration in dealing with the Sicilian Mafia and the Camorra of the Italian mainland. They are satisfied to believe that the activity of these foreign criminal crim-inal organizations in America can be guided and directed by nun of the class arrested in connection with the so-called "barrel murder" at New York last week. This is quite wrong. The moving spirits not onlv in Italy but also here are men of a far superior type of intellect and birth, men of apparent wealth, aducation and breeding, who. as far as this country is concerned, en.ioy the esteem and respect re-spect of their fellow citizens. Marquis di Fontenoy in Chicago Tribune. |
