the
kidnappers, Dr. Scimeca would not give them any information. It is known
on pretty good authority that the sum of $10,000 was at first demanded
as a ransom, and was lowered by degrees to $5,000, $2,500, and finally
to $1,700. Dr. Scimeca at last made terms with the kidnappers, and was
told to go one evening to City Park, where he is said to have handed
$1,700 to a stranger. The child was found wandering aimlessly in the
streets next day, after a detention of nearly three months.

The second case was that of Vincenzo Sabello, a grocer of 386 Broome
Street, who lost his little boy on August 26, 1911. After thirty days he
reported the matter to the police, but shortly after tried to throw them
off the track by saying that he had been mistaken, that the boy had not
been kidnapped, and that he wished no assistance. Finally he ordered
the detectives out of his place. About a month later the child was
recovered, but not, according to reliable information, until Mr. Sabello
had handed over $2,500.

Pending the recovery of the Sabello boy, a third child was stolen from
the top floor of a house at 119 Elizabeth Street. The father, Leonardo
Quartiano, reported the disappearance, and in answer to questions stated
that he had received no letters or telephone messages. "Why should I?"
he inquired, with uplifted hands and the most guileless demeanor. "I am
poor! I am a humble fishmonger." In point of fact, Quartiano at the time
had a pocketful of blackmail letters, and after four weeks paid a good
ransom and got back his boy.

It is impossible to estimate correctly the number of Italian criminals
in America or their influence upon our police statistics; but in several
classes of crime the Italians furnish from fifteen to fifty per cent of
those convicted. In murder, assault with intent to kill, blackmail,
and extortion they head the list, as well as in certain other offences
unnecessary to describe more fully but prevalent in Naples and the
South.

Joseph Petrosino, the able and fearless officer of New York police
who was murdered in Palermo while in the service of the country of
his adoption, was, while he lived, our greatest guaranty of protection
against the Italian criminal. But Petrosino is gone. The fear of him no
longer will deter Italian ex-convicts from seeking asylum in the United
States. He once told the writer that there were five thousand Italian
ex-convicts in New York City alone, of whom he knew a large proport