by personal allegiance to some
leader. Such a leader is almost always under the patronage of a "boss"
in New York or a 'padrone' in Italy, who uses his influence to protect
the members of the gang when in legal difficulties and find them jobs
when out of work and in need of funds. Thus the "boss" can rely on the
gang's assistance in elections in return for favors at other times. Such
gangs may act in harmony or be in open hostility or conflict with one
another, but all are united as against the police, and exhibit much the
same sort of "Omerta" in Chatham Square as in Palermo. The difference
between the Mafia and Camorra and the "gangs" of New York City lies in
the fact that the latter are so much less numerous and powerful, and
bribery and corruption so much less prevalent, that they can exert no
practical influence in politics outside the Board of Aldermen, whereas
the Italian societies of the Mala Vita exert an influence everywhere--in
the Chamber of Deputies, the Cabinet, and even closer to the King. In
fact, political corruption has been and still is of a character in Italy
luckily unknown in America--not in the amounts of money paid over (which
are large enough), but in the calm and matter-of-fact attitude adopted
toward the subject in Parliament and elsewhere.

The overwhelming majority of Italian criminals in this country come from
Sicily, Calabria, Naples, and its environs. They have lived, most
of their lives, upon the ignorance, fear, and superstitions of their
fellow-countrymen. They know that so long as they confine their criminal
operations to Italians of the lower class they need have little terror
of the law, since, if need be, their victims will harbor them from the
police and perjure themselves in their defence. For the ignorant Italian
brings to this country with him the same attitude toward government
and the same distrust of the law that characterized him and his
fellow-townsmen at home, the same Omerta that makes it so difficult
to convict any Italian of a serious offence. The Italian crook is
quick-witted and soon grasps the legal situation. He finds his fellow
countrymen prospering, for they are generally a hard-working and thrifty
lot, and he proceeds to levy tribute on them just as he did in Naples or
Palermo. If they refuse his demands, stabbing or bomb-throwing show that
he has lost none of his ferocity. Where they are of the most ignorant
type he threatens them with the "evil eye," the "curs