A WAVE OF CRIME.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1221, 1 September 1911, Page 5

A WAVE OF CRIME.

& ITALIAN CONVICTS IN NEW YORK. By Telegraph—Press Association-Copyright New York, August 30. A wave of crime in the city's Italian colony is engaging the attention of a force of detectives. It is stated that. 5000 ex-convicts have arrived in recent years. ' ' AMERICA'S ITALIAN PROBLEM. While public attention has from time to timo been attracted or directed to immigration perils, real or imaginary, in tho West, writes the American "Review of Reviews," there has been gradually growing up in the East, and more particularly in the City of New York, an immigration problem which, ,thongh not an insoluble ono, is likely to call for considerable care in the handling: it is tho Italian problem. Of the' 2,000,000 or more Italians in tho United States, more than 500,000 livo in tho City of New York; and at the present rate of increase it seems probable that in 1917 or 1918 the Italian population will number 3,000,000, one-sixth of the residents, instead of one-eightli as to-day. Many Italian derelicts are imported annually, but there is also another way in which ignorance among Italians in America breeds criminals: "The children born in this country of the Italian illiterate labourer neVer see a book or a newspaper in their homes, until they bring tlie'm there from the public schools. Theso children cannot help making comparisons ' between the palatial surroundings of the school and tho squalid tenements in which they live. If the illiterate father succeeds iit swearing falsely as to the age of his child, and sonds him to work at tho ago of twelve, tho 'chances are that he will make of him an honest and industrious worker , and a second-rate citizen. If, however, tho boy goes on to the ninth grade, ho too often breaks from tho influence of his parents, wlion he begins a careei of idleness in the pool-room, continues it in the saloon, and ends in the reformatory or the jail. Tho breaking up of family ties results even more disastrously in the case of girls, but fortunately natural instinct keeps them more securely under tho influence of tho mother. Tho younger American-educated Italian criminals' already constitute a much graver problem than-tho uneducated criminal from Italy, or the older Italian criminals created by environments in this country."