UNWELCOME INVESTIGATORS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1125, 12 May 1911, Page 5

UNWELCOME INVESTIGATORS.

THEIR MOTOR FIRED. By Telegranh-Press Association-Oopyrieht Rome, May 10.An American couple named Train, who are investigating the inter-relations of Italian secret societies and tho • American Black Hand Societies, were motoring at Viterbo, when a miscreant fired the benzine dripping beneath their motorcar. The occupants were rescued with difficulty. The car and a valuable jewel case wero destroyed. ORIGIN OF ME "BLACK HAND." Nobody knows how the "Black Hand" originated. It was supposed for somo years that it was not an organisation, but thai one ot- two Italian blackmailers used a representation ot a bhek hand on letters to their victims, and that tho custom spread. This theory, tho "Daily Mail" states, has now been abandoned in most quarters, and it is believed that the "Black Hand" is not only well organised in America, but that it is also affiliated with tho "Mafia," or tho "Camorra" or both.

Tho "Black Hand" has grown like some monstrous mushroom because of defective immigration laws, las police methods, a judicial system which is all in favour of the criminal, and corruption in municipal politics. Italian and Sicilian criminals, fleeing from their own country to tho United States, found that they were able to engage in their old trade of blackmail and murder as easily as at home, and with less risk of punishment. It is hardly necessary to give any description of conditions as they were sonic years ago in. the New York Police Department—the Lexow investigation opened the eyes not only of America but of tho world to a state of affairs that was appalling.

Long after its activities began the "Black Hand" was practically immune. Even when, by some accident, tho nolice managed to find one of the criminals, he usually escnped conviction. Rome ten years ago there was n narticnlarly atrocious murder of nn Italian, whoso body was found in a barrel. The nolice believed that they had caught the murderer.'; red-handed; but no conviction was obtained. Indeed, it was the facility with which Italian* accused of murder and other grave offences secured witnesses whose tesfimonv refilled in verdicts of Nnr Guilty that first convinced the authorities that there must exist a large organisation of Italian criminals.