LITTLE ITALIAN SLAVES.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12718, 14 February 1910, Page 4

LITTLE ITALIAN SLAVES.

Mainly from Southern Italy there is a brisk traffic in the deportation of children of tender years and of both sexes to ono or other of the French seaports on. the. Mediterranean, the little victims being sold by their parents to dealers who, at the port of debarkation, sell them in turn to this or that "impresario" under whom, generally an organ-grinder or a vendor of statuettes and stucco-ware, they make the tour of the European capitals, Continental and British. Their fate is a pathetic one, and to prevent its befalling them a society (says the Italy correspondent of the "Lancet") has been organised under the aegi of the Italian Embassy at ■Paris to rescue the little unfortunates and check the traffic at its source. From timo to time the most harrowing of details of the brutal treatment to which th« children are subjected find their way into the police courts. They are ill-fed and ill-clothed, and are mercilessly beaten when they fail to ! bring back to their cruel task-masters : the expected coins. One remedy to this crying abuse the travelling "public can contribute, and that is the withholding of all almsgiving on the streets. "You freehanded English and American" "Italian 'philanthropists say) '•'keep up this white slave .traffic, and, indeed, mendicancy in general, by making it aj paying business."