THE MAFFIA IN NEW YORK.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11562, 20 April 1903, Page 5

THE MAFFIA IN NEW YORK.

ITALIANS ARRESTED FOR MURDERS.

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received April 18th, 8.46 a.m.) NEW YORK, April 17. Twelve Italians, ringleaders in the New York Maffia band, have been arrested on charges of murder. Incriminating documents, proving their connection with other murders than that wiih which they are charged, aud evidence of counterfeiting and blackmailing have been discovered.

The dread secret society the Maffia, has its foothold so firm in Southern Italy and Sicily—in Sicily particularly—that nearly every one belongs to it, even men of the highest standing, while it can even make its unwritten law felt far away in the United States—witness the notorious disturbances at New Orleans a few years ago. The Maffia. which h;is been intimately connected with the internal political history of Sicily for very many years past, was originally an underground" means of bringing political pressure to bear on individnais or districts, but latterly it became a terrori-ins power, without a "responsible head or elefinite objects, and was tuscd as a cloak to cover robbery nnd murder, to say nothing of blackmailing and brigandage. It is a very dangerous factor in Sicilian and Italian life, lis members, like Count Fosco, "stick at nothing," and so farreaching is its arm that :it can often defy the law and deal out its punishments — mor.tly death—with the secrecy, suddenness, and certainty which make it universally dreaded.