on every corner a saloon, and usually a private bank with
a steamship agency and the office of the local _padrone_. Scores of
the lesser cities also have their Italian contingent, usually in the
poorest and most neglected part of the town, where gaudily painted
door jambs and window frames and wonderfully prosperous gardens
proclaim the immigrant from sunny Italy. Not infrequently an old
warehouse, store, or church is transformed into an ungainly and
evil-odored barracks, housing scores of men who do their own washing
and cooking. Those who do not dwell in the cities are at work in
construction camps--for the Italian has succeeded the Irishman as the
knight of the pick and shovel. The great bulk of these swarthy,
singing, hopeful young fellows are peasants, unskilled of hand but
willing of heart. Nearly every other one is unable to read or write.
They have not come for political or religious reasons but purely as
seekers for wages, driven from the peasant villages by overpopulation
and the hazards of a precarious agriculture.

They have come in two distinct streams: one from northern Italy,
embracing about one-fifth of the whole; the other from southern Italy.
The two streams are quite distinct in quality. Northern Italy is the
home of the old masters in art and literature and of a new
industrialism that is bringing renewed prosperity to Milan and Turin.
Here the virile native stock has been strengthened with the blood of
its northern neighbors. They are a capable, creative, conservative,
reliable race. On the other hand, the hot temper of the South has been
fed by an infusion of Greek and Saracen blood. In Sicily this strain
shows at its worst. There the vendetta flourishes; and the Camorra and
its sinister analogue, the Black Hand, but too realistically remind us
that thousands of these swarthy criminals have found refuge in the
dark alleys of our cities. Even in America the Sicilian carries a
dirk, and the "death sign" in a court room has silenced many a
witness. The north Italians readily identify themselves with American
life. Among them are found bakers, barbers, and marble cutters, as
well as wholesale fruit and olive oil merchants, artists, and
musicians. But the south Italian is a restless, roving creature, who
dislikes the confinement and restraint of the mill and factory. He is
found out of doors, making roads and excavations, railways,
skyscrapers, and houses. If he has a liking for trade he trundles a
push