Presiding at the annual meeting of the "Society of Friends of Foreigners in Distress," which was held in April last (1891), Count Deym, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador, stated that "the charity was founded as far back as 1806, and that the necessity for it had now increased a hundredfold. During the past year the Society paid £2151 to 285 poor foreigners, in regular instalments of from two and sixpence per week to five shillings per month, and £1357 in casual relief to 4264 persons of almost all nationalities." This is only one of the many similar societies existing in London for the aid and relief of poor and destitute foreigners—other than those which are exclusively Jewish. Such Societies are the SociÉtÉ FranÇaise de Bienfaisance À Londres, SociÉtÉ Belge de Bienfaisance À Londres, the German Society of Benevolence, which relieves Germans, Austrians, and even Russians; and the Italian Benevolent Society. It is unnecessary to enter into detailed statistics as to the amount of money expended yearly by the different Societies, or the number of members relieved; but some idea of the extent of their operation may be gathered by the fact that over £1100 was expended last year by the Italian Benevolent Society alone.

Of late years the immigration of Italians has increased to an alarming extent. London and our large provincial cities are crowded with a class of Italians who are for the most part non-producers. The Italians were amongst the earliest immigrants here, and in many respects they are the most undesirable. In this condemnation, I do not of course include those Italians who upon arriving in England take up some definite trade or employment, and who are skilled labourers, and industrious, law-abiding citizens. Unfortunately the great bulk of Italian immigrants differ widely from such as these; they are, for the most part, the idle, the vicious, and the destitute, who come here simply to pursue that nefarious course of vagrancy and begging which is now so rigidly forbidden in their native land. They bring with them slothful and degraded habits, and where they congregate to any extent, their influence upon our own people cannot fail to be otherwise than injurious.

Many of them arrive here absolutely destitute, and go at once to the Italian Consulate and beg for alms, or ask how to be put in the way of begging. The Consulate does everything in its power to discourage these people from coming to England, but they come all the same. Some of them are trained professional beggars, versed in every trick and dodge of the trade of mendicancy. Others are socialists and revolutionists of the worst type, who endeavour to use the liberty enjoyed by them here, in forming secret revolutionary societies, and in preaching the most dangerous doctrines. They work so secretly that few have any knowledge of their real influence and numbers. I am informed by an Italian gentleman, whose name I am not at liberty to give, but who has exceptional opportunities of proving the truth of his statements, that the increase of foreign and secret revolutionary societies in the Metropolis has recently been very great. The same authority writes to me in a recent letter:—"There is a large influx of destitute Italians going on: there is no work for them to do here, and they will not return home.... I believe there is a real danger in allowing aliens of all nationalities to arrive so freely in such conditions, while not socialism but anarchy is now preached in the open streets of the quarters especially resorted to by them. The result will be some serious trouble very soon, especially in winter."[12] These are not the careless words of a superficial observer, but the deliberately expressed opinion of one who holds an official position, and has intimate knowledge of the facts. With the object lesson which the recent Italian riots in the United States has presented to us, there can be little doubt that in the rapid increase of these revolutionary societies of indigent foreigners lurk the elements of a very grave political and social danger.

Thus we seem to have drifted into a position somewhat analogous to that of Rome in the closing days of her Empire. Juvenal in the second of his Satires complained that Rome had become a sink for the vices and iniquity of the known world. Johnson imitated this Satire in the following vigorous lines:—

Juvenal was not alone in his complaint. Horace had said somewhat the same thing before. The Satirists had certainly ample opportunities of observing the facts. When Rome was newly founded it was desirable and even necessary to encourage immigration, because citizens and soldiers were sorely needed to defend the infant State. But when Rome had advanced to the height of her Imperial power, the immense influx of foreigners attracted to the Eternal City by her wealth and by her luxury, was most calamitous. The native population of Rome were reduced to permanent pauperism, or were driven away to the colonies. The yeomanry of Italy disappeared; they took service in the Legions, and were sent away to distant settlements, their place in Rome being taken by large bodies of imported slaves, who brought with them all the habits and vices generated by long centuries of oppression and wrong. "The salvation of a country lies in its middle class." Such was the wise dictum of Aristotle; but in the latter days of the Roman Empire the middle class was wanting. How fatal was this, is clearly seen by the different powers of resistance that Rome exhibited at different periods of her history. Under the Republic, when the middle class was dominant, though Italy was several times invaded, the native population always proved too strong for the invaders. When under the latter days of the Empire the middle class was wanting, and there was nothing but fabulous wealth and prodigal luxury on the one hand, and abject poverty and consequent misery on the other, the heart of the State became corrupt; and as soon as the Barbarians had broken through the cordon of Legions at the frontier, the mighty Roman Empire sank to rise no more.

Historical parallels are often misleading, and this analogy, like other analogies, may of course be carried too far; but it is in some respects a close one. When Rome in the height of her Imperial splendour welcomed all nationalities who ministered to her profligacy and luxury, it was a sign of the canker which in time ate away the heart of the Empire. So too, England in the Victorian era—an era of prosperity unequalled even by Imperial Rome—throws open wide her arms to receive the destitute, the criminal, and the worthless of other lands, heedless of the injury which the influx of such a class must work upon her own community, and forgetful that the first duty of the State is towards its own people.

The saddest aspect of this question of Italian immigration is the traffic in Italian children, which has been for so long carried on in this country under the auspices of the padroni, and which continues to flourish despite all the efforts which have been made to check it. "Child-slavery in England" it has been called; and certainly the condition of these poor children is in many respects little better than that of slaves. I have spoken and written so much about this matter,[13] that there is little now left to be said; still, in spite of laying myself open to the charge of repeating an oft-told tale, I must needs allude to it once more, since no treatise upon Italian immigration would be otherwise complete.

The traffic is carried on in this wise:—The children are brought over from Italy by men who obtain them from their parents upon payment of a very small sum; for a few ducats annually (a ducat equals 3s. 6d.), and upon undertaking to clothe and feed them. The parents who thus dispose of their children are for the most part poor peasants living in Calabria, and the south of Italy. Sometimes the parents will bring the children to England themselves, and sometimes they are confided to relations; but often it is a traffic, and they sell their children into what is a veritable slavery without troubling about their future, and glad to be relieved of the responsibility and expense of their maintenance and education. The padroni—that is the masters—having thus gained possession of the children, they bring them to England. Some travel by railway, but many of them actually journey on foot, walking from town to town, village to village, all the way up to Dieppe or Calais, and from thence crossing over to our shores.

The children are imported here simply for the purpose of following one or the other of the vagrant professions in the streets of London and throughout the country. They are sent out early in the morning with an accordion, concertina, or other instrument, and told to sing or play before houses, and then to wait for money. As a rule they do not openly beg for alms, as this would bring them within the reach of law; but they just stand and wait, and benevolent persons, attracted by their picturesque appearance, are moved to compassion, and give them money, ignorant or forgetful of the fact that this money benefits them personally not at all, but the padrone whose property they are.

The padroni are often very severe, and treat the children just like slaves. If they do not bring home a sufficient sum they are cruelly beaten and ill-treated, kept without food or nourishment, and sent hungry to bed. Very often these poor children do not get home from their weary rounds until past midnight, and they are often found utterly worn out, and fast asleep under an archway or upon a doorstep. They are wretchedly lodged, huddled together, four or five sleeping in a bed when they have one to sleep in at all; and being private houses, their lodgings are not in any way open to inspection or improvement.

The traffic is most lucrative, and the gains the padroni make out of these children are very large—so much so indeed, that after a few years they are able to retire to Italy and to live as country gentlemen afterwards. Sometimes a child will bring home as much as 10s. or more a day; and as often one padrone has as many as fifty children under his care, spread about in companies in London and in the country under the supervision of his confederates, it will be seen that the total amount of a number of small sums accumulating daily must be very large. Of course sometimes the children bring home very little, and sometimes nothing at all; but the penalty in this case is to be beaten and kept without food, so fear stimulates their efforts, and they do not often return quite empty-handed.

The effects of this evil system upon its victims is necessarily very bad. They do not go to school, they become very idle, and begin early to drink, smoke, and take all kinds of vices. They grow up immoral, illiterate, vicious, and low; a degraded class, exercising a most undesirable influence among the surrounding population. The girls especially all go to the bad, because they are sent into low drinking-shops, public-houses, and similar places. When they grow up, they all become beggars and vagrants by profession, and always remain so, for they have learned no other trade, and many can neither read nor write. Some remain in England, but many go over to Italy, and bring over children themselves. Sometimes, when they are seventeen or eighteen years old, they run away from the padrone and set up on their own account.

Many efforts have been made to put a stop to this disgraceful traffic; but hitherto everything seems to have fallen short of the mark. The Italian Benevolent Society has been untiring in its efforts to stop the trade. So long ago as 1876 the Society went on a deputation to the London School Board, with the result that it was decided to compel these children to go to school in the same way as if they had been English children. But the padrone was equal to the occasion. He removed his troupe from Saffron Hill, to the outlying districts of Deptford, Greenwich, and Hammersmith. There the School Board takes no action, and there the children dwell in large numbers, free to ply their trade, and secure from compulsory education. The Children's Protection Act was also another step in the right direction, and it has certainly ameliorated the state of affairs; but for various reasons, chiefly because the limit of age is rather too low, it does not seem to go to the root of the evil.

Several suggestions to remedy this state of affairs have been made, all worthy of consideration. One is that there should be a tightening of the compulsory action of the School Boards all over the country. It is illogical that these children should be compelled to go to school in London, and in the country allowed to roam where they please. Doubtless this would have a very good effect, and the gains of the padroni would be sensibly diminished. Another suggestion is, to increase the limit of age laid down in the Children's Protection Act to eighteen years of age in the case of persons of both sexes, thus bringing the Act into accord with a drastic law which was passed in Italy in 1873,[14] and which has been found very effectual there. This course, however, is obviously open to objection, since it might press hardly upon individual cases. The most effectual remedy would be to adopt the plan followed in America, namely, to stop these children at the port of arrival, and the padroni, and send them all back at once to their own country. In all European countries they are expelled, or refused admission. Such a course, however, would require a special law, and that necessarily will be some time in coming. The question is:—what is to be done in the meantime? That the evil still continues to flourish there can be no manner of doubt. The padroni do not confine their attentions only to children, but frequently bring over whole families as well. A case came to light in Birmingham this year,[15] of a padrone named Delicato, who had brought over an Italian family—a father, a mother, and two daughters. At the end of two years the record of that unfortunate family was as follows:—The father was paid £2 for two years' work and discharged; the mother had previously been sent back to Italy, because from ill-health she had become practically useless to her master. One of the daughters Delicato had seduced, and she is still living with him; the other daughter ran away and married, and her husband brought an action to recover her earnings. When the case came before the Court, the whole transaction was exposed. Inquiries were also instituted as to the antecedents of Delicato, and it was found that he had been carrying on this nefarious trade for years, and had three separate establishments in different parts of the country. It was found that this man had seduced no less than three young girls who had been committed to his care, and then abandoned them. This is no uncommon occurrence, for the padroni are men utterly without principle, and thoroughly bad in every way.

The parents are almost as bad as the padroni, as the following instance will show:—An Italian named Mancini was recently[16] charged before the Bow Street Police Court for causing a child to solicit alms. It was a case of heartless cruelty. The little girl, his daughter, was engaged in dragging a heavy barrel-organ about the streets. At intervals she stopped and turned the handle, her father meanwhile standing a little way off to see what coppers she obtained. It was raining at the time the man was taken in charge, and the child's boots were saturated with water, and her clothes literally drenched. She was only nine years of age. Another instance of the rapacity of the padroni is illustrated by the following case, of even more recent date.[17] A young ice-cream vendor named Romano brought an action against his master, Auguste Pampa, at the Brompton County Court, for the recovery of four months' wages. It appeared that Romano had arrived in this country in a state of absolute destitution. Pampa, a compatriot, agreed to give him work, and an agreement was drawn up between them. It set forth that Pampa engaged Romano for one year to sell ice-cream in the streets of London; that he should be paid £1 2s. a month, and that Pampa should board and lodge him, and provide him with clothes. The plaintiff said that the defendant used to send him out in rags in all sorts of weather, and that he literally had no clothes to cover him. The judge gave a verdict for the plaintiff. The case throws a strong light upon the fate of Italian immigrants in London, and upon the class of Italians who come here.

The best way to put down this infamous traffic, in default of restrictive legislation, is undoubtedly to lose no opportunities of bringing the painful facts before the public. If once the charitable public could be made to understand that the money they give to those little ones benefits them personally not at all, but goes to swell the gains of the rapacious padrone, who laughs and grows rich upon the sufferings of his victims, the supplies would be cut off at their source, and the dream of the padrone to return to sunny Italy and live there as a country gentleman, vanish for ever.

Few have any conception of the extent or nature of Italian immigration. Signor Righetti, the Secretary of the Italian Benevolent Society, estimates the number of Italians in London alone at upwards of 9000. In this estimate his opinion is corroborated by Signor Roncoroni, Secretary of the SocietÁ dei Cuochi e Camerieri, who states that out of this 9000, 2000 are employed as Italian cooks and waiters in London. These of course can in no sense be objected to, because they are skilled labourers. Of the remaining 7000, the vast majority are either organ-grinders or ice-cream vendors. The head-quarters of the organ-grinders is—or was—at Eyre Street Hill, a steep and narrow thoroughfare forming a connecting link between Leather Lane and Coppice Row in Clerkenwell. There are a few minor settlements in Kensington, another in Notting Hill, a third in Somers Town; but the principal foreign colony is situated at Eyre Street Hill. Eyre Street Hill has tortuous ins and outs, and numerous blind alleys, in each and all of which Italians swarm.

The Italian ice-cream barrow has become as familiar a picture in London street-trading as the apple-stall, baked chestnuts, or baked potato stove. The profits derived from the sale of this unwholesome compound are said to be very satisfactory; and certainly the quantity manufactured must be enormous. There is a depÔt for ice on Eyre Street Hill. All day long, during the summer months, may be seen there waggon-loads of ice-cubes, which are afterwards broken up for the purpose required. Also the vendor of lemons does a brisk business in the same locality, and likewise the milkman—or rather, I should say, the man who sells what passes for milk. The ingredients of the ice-cream may possibly be found harmless enough; but the way in which the compound is prepared is in the last degree objectionable. The manufacture is often carried on in the living-room of the family, the condition of which is filthy and disgusting in the extreme. Near Leather Lane there is one short street of high black houses, the windows of which are patched and plugged with paper and rags. The passages and stairs are dilapidated and filthy, and the sanitary conditions simply abominable. In almost every room of each of these houses, resides at least one ice-cream maker, and vendor. Such a room will serve as a living and sleeping room for a whole family—the man, his wife, and a numerous progeny.

The inhabitants of this foreign colony work all the week with their ice-barrows or their barrel-organs, but Saturday evening is, with them, a time of relaxation and pastime. With the natives of the sunny South, not to enjoy is not to live; and though I do not include in the numbers of those who amuse themselves, the miserable little victims of the padroni, the comparatively well-to-do Italians always go in for amusing themselves as soon as they can afford it. Dancing is the chief pastime of these people. On Saturday nights they regularly assemble together for this purpose, the women arrayed in the picturesque attire of their native country, and the men in their holiday garments likewise. As I have never been to one, I cannot say how these gatherings are conducted. They are not carried on in licensed premises, but in the cellars and kitchens of private houses, where admission to strangers is denied. Probably they are harmless enough. One thing is tolerably certain, refreshments are not supplied on the premises. There are plenty of public-houses hard by; and an observant person standing in the bar of one of them while the dancing is going on in an adjoining house, will note from time to time a sudden inrush of several couples still flushed and panting from the Terpsichorean exercise in which they have been indulging; who after a hearty draught of something in a pewter pot will rush off, and dance away again. On Saturday night the tap-rooms of the taverns in the vicinity of Saffron Hill are well filled; and brisk business is done in drinkables. The company, however, is not exclusively Italian; there being a goodly number of Irish besides.

The Italians are credited as a race with having a sensitive ear for music. One can only say that those of their countrymen who come over here and inflict upon us the ear-torturing melodies of their barrel-organs and accordions sadly belie the reputation of their country. When once asked in the House of Commons if he could do anything to put down this nuisance, Mr. Goschen replied that it was a difficult matter, inasmuch as many derived great pleasure from the music of the barrel-organ. Such an answer leads one to suppose that Mr. Goschen has not such a keen ear for music as he has an eye to finance, and also that he is ignorant of the true facts.

Even on a superficial aspect the nuisance is intolerable; but that is the least part of the evil. When we come to look beneath the surface of the seemingly careless existence of these Italian street musicians, and see the cruelty, hardships, and injustice which is undoubtedly bound up with the system, we shall recognize that it is high time that something was done to put down what is not only an intolerable nuisance, but also an evil trade.

For a nation which was foremost in abolishing the slave-trade, to tamely tolerate in its midst an inhuman traffic like this, is something worse than an anachronism—it is a disgrace, and a reproach upon our vaunted civilization.