SICILIAN GANGS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXIX, Issue 7815, 7 June 1909, Page 1

SICILIAN GANGS.

Towards the end .of the last century the Sicilian gangs which' made their living by blackmail became aware that not a few Italians who had left their home country as peasants had acquireji wealth across the Atlantic. , Even the ordinary workman, they learnt; whip could pain only 40 cents a day, lip Sicily, could make about four times that wage m New York. . Accordingly they hastened to exploit by their familiar methods the rfch field.;of the Italian colony m that city.' It was ntft long before the American police found! themselves faced by aa elaborate machinery of crime far. "more Ingenious and complicated than ■ anything- with which they had previously had'to deal. The Black Kand_, as the society called itself, proceeded normally to extort what it wanted by frank demands and threats, and it did not. hesitate at kidnapping, outrage and murder when these means seemed necessary to its ends. A few specimen cases will illustrate the activities of this organisation. There was the murder, a couple of years ago, of Deranimo, an ex-. policeman from Italy, through whose eiforts a number of members, of, the Mafia had been arrested. He had been pursued by the vengeance of his.^enemies from city to city, until he was lured one day into the hallway,of ja tenement building m New York,. land shot dead. Then there was the slaying of Salvatore Bossotto, the son of 4 n Italian restaurant-keeper. Young Bossotto had called m the police to arrest a Sicilian for attempting to defraud of their money a party of Italian miners. One morning he found on the glass of the front door the sign of the "bridge of death"—a perpendicular line, crossed at regular intervals, by throe horizontal lines, with small crosses m the two spaces at the right hand. The prediction was fulfilled shortly af.-, tor, when the accused; Sicilian, shot Bossotto m his,own restaurant. Last year there were several cases of the dynamiting .of stores m . ; New York owned by Italians who' had refused tribute to the Black Hand. It needed: a body of State troopers to root out gangs of the Black Hand. that.. had made "dens'! m the Westmoreland, Fayette, and Washington counties. In one case the. troopers could only succeed m then 1 attempt by blowing up the house, gang and all. Tho very terrorism inspired by these. criminal? is, of course, their greatest,protection. In too many cases the police hear nothing of tho sending of the threats until the threats themselves ftris fulfilled i