52 idly extending its nefarious influences. | gon, intonation, and gesticulation of their C The difference between the rich and the own. For instance, the word for prison is poor Mafiosi is merely one of degree. "cullegiu " (college); for manacles, "cuThe wealthy proprietor becomes an ally either to carry on an hereditary feud, to make himself a beneficiary of past crimes, or merely to gratify a desire for power. If he is not in voluntary sympathy with the offenders, he is constrained to lend himself directly or indirectly to their schemes. Otherwise, a gun-shot, a general slaughter of his cattle, a fire that consumes his harvest, a threatening letter or sequestration of his person reminds him that, while the law has many formalities and delays, the action of the Mafia is summary. He rarely hesitates longer as to where he shall attach his interests; if he does, his own life pays for the delay. It happens thus that a family may be obliged to witness the murder of a relative and remain silent, rather than incur the further action of the Mafia, as they would do by having recourse to the criminal courts. CT A similar interest impels the peasant to seek the protection of the lawless, no matter what his better inclinations may be. Should he seek a livelihood by honest labor alone, he will find himself despised, oppressed, and almost starved; but if he violates the law, the Mafia protects him, conceals him, provides him with funds, and contrives that he shall escape punishment. Then the obscurity in which he has dwelt hitherto is exchanged for the esteem of all other delinquents, by whom he is acclaimed as a man of honor, and one who has proved himself worthy of a place in the ranks of those who have shielded him. There is a distinction between the Mafiosi of the mountains and those of the seashore, especially those of the commercial cities. In the mountains the crimes are of a ruder sort-stealing and slaughtering cattle, incendiarism, and other outrages; along the coast and in the cities, the alliance works with fraud, extortion, and assassination, with a cunning skill that attains to the perfection of a fine art. The most important and general of the meeting-places of the Mafia are the great cattle fairs, of which a regular series is held from April until October. Here they assemble from Palermo, Girgenti, Caltanisetta, Trapani, and other provinces; and allies of every grade adjust their reciprocal interests, devise their criminal projects, and plan the execution of them. These fairs are the interprovincial congresses of the organization, and especially of the agricultural members. For the inter'change of opinion they use a certain jar runa" (rosary); for sword, " statia " (steel- a Members of the Mafia have many secret maxims, which are learned by heart on admittance to the alliance. The following are some of these rules of conduct: The poor resort to force, fools resort to law. Take the life of whoever makes you lose the means of living. Be respectful to officers of the law, but stand afar off. If I die, I will be buried; if I live you will be. Of what does not concern you say neither good nor evil. Testimony is good unless given against your neighbor. He that dies is buried, he that lives gets married. An influential friend is worth more than a thousand "lire "in your pockets. Impris onment, sickness, and misfortune prove the hearts of friends. The essence of the constitution of the various bands of the alliance, in city and country alike, is as follows: Ist, Ready, passive, and constant obedience to the head of the band. 2d, Absolute silence as to the composition and enterprises of the band. 3d, Material, moral, and pecuniary aid to all members, and especially when arrested. 4th, Never to have recourse to legal authority, but to refer all disputes to the leader of the band. The penalty for a violation of any of these obligations is invariably death. In all the societies the character of ini tiation is the same. The candidate takes his place before a table on which the effigy of a saint is displayed. The neophyte then offers his right hand to the two associates who have presented him for membership, and they cut his thumb until enough blood | necessary, punish his persecutors. Re has flowed to smear the effigy. He then takes the oath and sets fire to the saint. The candidate is afterwards required to shoot at a crucifix as a symbol of his willingness to assassinate any person, how ever dear to him. Colacino, in his "Rivista di Discipline Carcerarie," gives the oath of the Fratellanza as: "I swear on my honor to be faithful to the Fratellanza as the Fratellanza is faithful to me. As this saint is buried and these drops of my blood, so will I shed all my blood for the Fratellanza; and as these ashes and this blood cannot be restored, so can I never be released from the Fratellanza." marks of this last kind rarely fail of their purpose, for cases are known where jurymen and witnesses have been murdered the day following that on which a prisoner has been found guilty. Money is used with both jurymen and witnesses, if they are susceptible to that argument; and the organization seldom fails in its afforts to secure an acquittal. In fact, it is impossible for a jury to do its duty with the Damoclean sword of the Mafia hanging over its head. The formula for the recognition of one member by another is somewhat interesting. The colloquy begins with a familiar question: "Have you a cigar stump? My tooth aches." "Yes." "What time is it?" 66 My watch is thirty minutes slow." "How long since?" "Since the 25th of March, the day of the Annunciation." ." "Where were you on that day?" "I was at- (here he names the place where he was initiated). "Whom do you and the moon." "Aremi" (a play adore ?" The Mala Vita, the organization of which is very elaborate, is divided into three sections the Camorristi, Picciotti, and Giovinotti. The oath of initiation is comprehensive: "With one foot in the grave and the other in chains, I swear to abandon father, mother, wife, children, and all kindred in order to make war upon the infamous and to protect the humble." The object of this society is theft, the fundamental principle being that "those who possess nothing have a right to live at the expense of those who have property." The license to steal is given to all members; but they are required to divide the spoils with the Camorristi. The other obligations imposed upon members are similar to those already mentioned. If a member of the Mafia is arrested, the machinery of the fraternity is put into play at once, and much ingenuity is displayed to secure his release. Should it happen that the case is referred to the criminal court, there commences a series of intrigues and intimidations that continue until the jury have given a verdict. The names of the jury are first procured, and attempts are made to influence those who may be engaged. A possible juryman hears intimations that the prisoner is the victim of the plots of his enemies, but that he also has many powerful friends, who will defend him at any cost, and, if When the society is short of money, subscriptions are requested with a politeness so formal as to be humorous. The preliminary movement is a threatening letter, full of "humility," and couched in artful terms of diplomacy. It begins with a flourish of titles: "Your Excellency and your illustrious Lady have an abundance, and it is necessary to make an appeal to your generosity, though it is unfortunate that your Excellency should be disturbed. Some poor fathers of family are in great destitution, and ask for [here the amount is inserted] "because their dependents are many." They are sure he will grant their request, and beg to assure him of their eternal gratitude and unconditional devotion, and they also add that he will be "left in peace." If, after some days, no response is made, a second letter follows, in which the writer intimates that, because of the delay, he himself is being suspected of treachery to his fellow-sufferers, who are now discussing the use of harsh measures. Then, if the recipient of these communications still remains silent, woe betide him! The heads of family issue their final warning: "You are a dead man!" or, "You will pay dearly for this!" The police are informed, and make a fruitless search for the offender and his accomplices. For a time, when the informer goes out, he takes a protective escort of a few friends or servants; but lulled to a sense of security by two or three months of immunity from attack, he finally ventures out alone, is assassinated, and all the neighborhood knows whence the blow fell. That the strength and influence of the Mafia is recognized with apprehension by the Italian government is undeniable; and facts revealed at the recent trials at Bari and New Orleans tend to confirm the opinion that it is now closely allied with the Anarchist movement. Notwithstanding the efforts of the Italian police, its power is rapidly increasing, and its attitude towards both government and society is certainly the reverse of reassuring. From The Spectator. THE ULSTERMAN IN AMERICA. astical intolerance held them were the main cause of the long-continued exodus; Now that the eyes of the whole country but the confiscation on a colossal scale of are turned towards Ulster, the moment is their improvements by some of the greater opportune for a brief glance at the not- landlords was a constant source of irritaable share her sons took in the founding tion and rupture. The Scotch-Irish imof America. To any one who is in touch migration was unlike any other great with genuine American feeling on these movement of population into America, matters, it would seem almost cruel to either before or since. Such towns as compare the position held by the two there then were they gave no thought to. branches of the Irish race in the Transat- The older farming settlements they left at lantic mind. The modern Irish-American, once behind them. The half-settled territhe Catholic from the South and West, tory further back they rarely stopped in; numerically powerful though he be, is an but by far the greater portion went straight importation of yesterday. As a social to the wilderness, and prepared to fight element in American life, he belongs both the forest and the Indian. New Enwholly to the latter half of the nineteenth gland seems to have been uncongenial to century. It would be ludicrous to pretend these Irish Puritans, and the stream that he is regarded by any American who flowed, and continued for fifty years to is independent of his vote with either lik-flow, into the middle and southern coloing or respect. In fact, the contemptuous nies for the most part. The Ulstermen, bitterness with which educated Americans however, mingled neither with Quaker, in private life inveigh against the Irish nor with Dutchman, nor with Cavalier. element in their midst is so unmeasured, that even the brutal Saxon and most abandoned of Balfourians cannot help feeling something like a touch of weariness, and even resentment, at this wholesale denunciation of his late fellow-subjects. To appreciate the singular independence of their settlement, one must call to mind the map of the American colonies of that date, and the distribution of the colonist population. Roughly speaking, the English settlements south of New England In almost grotesque contrast to this is consisted of a strip upon the Atlantic the veneration, the profound respect, ac- coast, averaging perhaps two hundred corded to everything connected with the miles in width. Behind this strip-along Scotch-Irish stock and their history. It is the whole line of its rear - from Georgia hardly too much to say that the two races to the borders of New York, towered the stand, in the estimation of the average frowning ranges of the Alleghany MounAmerican, at the opposite poles. The tains, while behind the Alleghanies were modern Irish immigrant suggests to his chaos and the dreaded Indian. Into the imagination at once a pauper who shuns troughs of the mountains, into the densely the forest and the prairie, swells the slums wooded and well-watered valleys that lay of the big cities, amasses money by para- between the lateral ranges, far in advance sitical rather than industrial methods, and of the mansion of the planter and the uses it to debauch the body politic. The farmhouse of the English settler, the Scotch-Irishman, on the other hand, is a Ulstermen threw themselves with fearless historical figure. In the most critical and and splendid confidence. They had carved dramatic periods of American history, out homes once on the stony hillsides of when the sword and the plough, the rifle Ulster. Their reward had been contempt and the axe, were carving out great States, and banishment. This time they were the Ulsterman was conspicuously pre-determined the fruits of their labors eminent. In the Middle and Southern should be their own. The exodus was States to-day, when a man is spoken of as divided, and took two different routes. being of Scotch-Irish stock, a compliment One stream poured into the country at is implied as a matter of course in this Philadelphia, the other at Charleston. simple statement of a fact. Thence they went straight to the frontier. The Irish-Protestant Nonconformists As years passed on, the northern stream began their great exodus to America about pushed its way southwards along the 1720. It would be futile to lament at this slopes of the Alleghanies, and the southlate date the direful policy that drove thou-ern stream moved northward along the sands upon thousands of the virile race that same great mountain rampart, till they had conquered and civilized Ulster to a dis- met. Their ministers, their customs, and tant land. A hundred thousand are said their religion went with them. They to have crossed the Atlantic in ten years. were nominally within the boundaries and The civil disabilities under which ecclesi-jurisdiction of various colonies. Yet they ย The were neither Carolinians, Virginians, or to the last extremity, for death was infiPennsylvanians, but Scotch-Irishmen al-nitely less to be dreaded than captivity ways, a sinewy band of fighting farmers, when the Red Indian was the foe. that for half a century stood between the Indian in warfare, it must be remembered, colonists and the Indians. A generation was really formidable in those days. born in the woods arose, that came to be Regular troops, or ordinary colonial miliknown simply as backwoods men. And tia, were at his mercy in the woods. The the backwoodsmen of the eighteenth cen- trained backwoodsman alone was able to tury were a type apart as much almost meet him, and even he could not do so from the ordinary colonial as from the upon more than equal terms. The great European. The vanguard of Western fight at the Greenbriar levels, in West civilization in those days, it must be re- Virginia, in 1774, is one of the most stirring membered, was almost stationary for two in the whole of Indian warfare. About generations, while the Indian contested eleven hundred warriors fought upon each upon even terms every foot of its advance. side, the whites being tried backwoodsmen The Scotch-Irishman, with a leaven of from the Ulster settlements. The latter kindred spirit, formed the vanguard; and won the day, and it is said by one of the a thin line of hardy settlers, stretching one greatest authorities on this subject, that it thousand miles from north to south, stood is the first authentic occasion on which a almost the whole brunt of Indian warfare large body of white troops had actually for fifty years. All this time the back- defeated an equal number of Indians. woodsmen from Ulster remained a race Every one knows what a part the Ulster apart. Isolation and the ceaseless strain immigrants played in the Revolutionary and hardship of their lives modified many War. But the crossing of the Allegha of their characteristics, and intensified nies, and all that is implied in that short others. The most religious grew more phrase, is the greatest contribution that fanatic, the least zealous lapsed into irreg- the Scotch-Irishman has made to American ularities. Every man was a warrior, liable history. The great states of Kentucky at any moment and ever ready to meet the and Tennessee, the valley of Virginia, and Indian that greatest of all known savage the fat plenty of the Ohio basin, are lasting warriors in deadly conflict alone per- monuments to his valor.. The familiar haps in the sombre forests that covered names and many of the characteristics the whole land. The settlers pushed tamp whole regions as civilized to slowly forward. Whte plough was day as Kent or Hampshire, and we have being driven along the furrow, leant against the nearest trous gen durselves in more than one roomy Mansion, the old Kentucky rifle and even wife was ready in her lord's absence to the bunting-shirt of the pioneer ancestor and ball. defend the shanty with PEW YORUlster, preserved as sacred relics. ARTIFICIAL "WATER MARKS."-Every distinguish between the real and fictitious. thing is artificial nowadays, from rubies down- Like many such things, it is extremely simple wards. One would have thought that, except when you know how to do it. In the genuine for the possible purposes of fraud, no object water mark the lines consist of portions of would have been gained by the production of paper which actually contain less material the "water mark" in paper by other than than similar neighboring parts, while in sputhe legitimate means, which consist in form-rious cases the quantity of paper pulp is the ing the device constituting the water mark in slight relief on the surface of the roll used in forming a film of paper pulp as the initial step towards its becoming a sheet. Misplaced ingenuity has, however, sufficed to produce a spurious water mark by mere pressure on the finished paper, and it is sometimes of importance, particularly in forensic chemistry, to same all over, and it is only compressed into less thickness along the lines of the so-called water mark. If then the paper be caused to swell by immersion in a strong solution of caustic soda, the compressed fibre will return to its original thickness and the water mark disappear, while a genuine water mark similarly treated will become more prominent." Industries. Fifth Series, Volume LXXIX. No. 2514.-September 3, 1892. { From Beginning, e d: CONTENTS. I. SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. By Sir Henry Elliot, Nineteenth Century, stir A Temple Bar, Blackwood's Magazin, 579 586 600 For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. |