CHAPTER IX

CAN WE MAKE CAMP? A last rush for shelter as the blizzard strikes, wiping out all landmarks.

Hamilton glanced at the paper with redoubled interest.

"I suppose it was no use trying to get the pouch back," he said.

"I didn't think it would be," the Alaskan replied "but I tried to reach the place where the sled had been overturned, an' each time the weather drove me back. On the third day I got a chance to go with some Eskimos with reindeer to a little settlement about twenty miles off, an' so I went along and got the names there, comin' back on a reindeer sled. That's the only time I ever felt like Santa Claus. I'm sure I don't look it."

TO ESKIMO SETTLEMENTS BY REINDEER. Census enumerator using half-wild animals when dog-team was too exhausted to go farther. (Courtesy of the Bureau of the Census.)

Hamilton looked at his spare figure and laughed.

"No," he said, "I don't think an artist would be likely to pick you for the part. How did you like the reindeer, though? I've always wondered that they didn't use them more in Alaska. The government keeps a herd, doesn't it?"

"Yes," was the reply, "but that is more for fresh meat than for travel. A good reindeer is a cracker-jack of an animal when he wants to be, but when he takes a streak to quit, it doesn't matter where it is or what you do to him, he won't go another step. A balky mule is an angel of meekness beside a reindeer. You can always make a mule see what you want him to do—although the odds are that he won't do it even then—but when a reindeer gets stubborn,—why, he just can't be made to understand anythin'!"

"Yet I've read that they use them a good deal in Lapland!" said the boy in surprise.

"They have domesticated them more thoroughly, I guess," the Northerner replied. "In time they may be worked up here in the same way, and when you consider how short a time the government has had to do what is already accomplished, it seems to me the result is wonderful. Of course, so far as traffic is concerned there are dogs enough, and they do the work in mighty good shape."

"How did you work back from the settlement which you had got to with such difficulty?" the boy asked.

"I came back another way, in order to take in a little group of houses on a small pay-creek," was the reply. "But it was comin' back from that trip, on the Koatak River, that I had quite a time, although I was not the sufferer. We had been havin' a hard spell of weather, but there come a week when conditions on the trail were much better an' we were reelin' off the miles in great shape. I hadn't a place on my map for about sixty miles, when in the distance I saw a little hut, just in the fringe of some stunted cottonwoods and some scraggy willows, for we were not far from the timber limit.

"'Billy,' I called to the Indian, 'ever see that hut before?'

"The Indian shook his head, but knowin' that I wanted to see an' count everybody in the district, he turned off the trail—he said it was a trail but I couldn't see it—an' led the way to the hut. I went in an' found a man lying on a couple of planks, just about dead. He was one of the survivors of the wrecked steamerFilarleon, and had frozen all the fingers of both hands. Two or three were turnin' gangrenous; an' one of these had got so bad that with his other crippled hand, he had sawed off the decomposin' member with his pocket-knife. One foot also was frozen an' had turned black, but that afterwards recovered."

"What did you do for him?" asked the boy.

"Put him on the sled, of course," the Alaskan answered, "an' took him to the nearest settlement. I afterwards heard that a doctor happened in to camp soon after I left, an' got at his hurts right away, an' that he was put back into fair condition all but the one finger.—That's no tenderfoot's country up there."

"I wonder you stuck it out," said Hamilton. "But then," he added a moment later, "I can see how a fellow would hate to quit."

"It was tough," reluctantly admitted the narrator, "an' I'll tell you what I did. I'm not much of a hand with the pen, but right in the middle of the work I found a man who was goin' down the river, an' I sat down and wrote a long letter to the supervisor. It was about as plaintive a thing as I ever read. I had no reason to expect an answer, but by chance another party was comin' up that way, an' some weeks later I received a reply. What do you suppose he said!"

"I haven't the least idea," answered the boy.

"His answer read just this way:

"'I chose you because you were experienced in the treeless coast. Go to it. We are expecting you to make good.'"

"And," Hamilton said, his eyes shining, "I'll bet you did!"

The sidelights that Hamilton had received on the Alaskan enumeration had given him a greater zest for census work than ever, and he devoted not a little of his spare time to the study of conditions in the far North. Indeed, the lad became so enthusiastic about it that every evening, when he reached home, he worked out the route of the enumerator whose schedules he had edited during that day's work. He had secured the big geological reconnaissance map of Alaska for the purpose. Consequently, it was with a sense of regret that he faced the day when the last of the Alaskan schedules had been edited.

"What next, I wonder, Mr. Barnes?" said Hamilton, laying down his pen and glancing round to his companion. "How about Porto Rico? They had a census this spring, too, didn't they?"

"I imagine the Porto Rico work is about done," his friend replied, "at least I know that most of it came in some weeks ago. How are you on Spanish?"

"I can read it all right," Hamilton answered, "although I don't write particularly well. But are the schedules all in Spanish?"

"Yes, indeed," said the other.

"I don't think simple Spanish would bother me at all," Hamilton replied. "I knew a chap who was going to the Philippines and he wanted some one to take up Spanish with him so that he wouldn't be alone in it; and to keep him company, I hammered at it too. But, after a bit, he joined a class, so I dropped out, although I did study once in a while so as not to forget it altogether."

"Why don't you suggest that you know Spanish," remarked Barnes, "and perhaps you'll get the chance."

Accordingly, when a little later, the final copy on the Alaskan schedules was turned in, Hamilton asked concerning the Porto Rican work, and ventured his slight familiarity with Spanish.

"We have several translators," replied the chief, "but still, I suppose Mr. Alavero can make you useful. I'll let you know later on."

In a few moments he returned and beckoned to the boy, who followed him, with a word of farewell and thanks to the editor of the Alaskan schedules with whom he had enjoyed working greatly.

"Mr. Alavero," the official said, introducing Hamilton, "this is Noble. I don't know what his Spanish is like, but I think he may be of some use to you in getting out the manufactures statistics, as he did some work along that line early in the year and has been with the census ever since."

The editor smiled affably at the boy and shook hands with heartiness.

"The schedule work is all done," he said, "but it will take some time preparing the report. It is going to be fuller than most of them because there is so much American capital invested in Porto Rico that a detailed analysis will be of value."

"It is real editorial work, then!" Hamilton said, with a note of pleasure in his voice.

"I think," said the chief dryly, "that Mr. Alavero will do the editorial work, as you call it, since he is the editor; you are to assist him in preparing tables and matters of that kind."

But no sooner had the Bureau official gone than the Porto Rican came forward.

"If you like," he said, "we'll try to arrange some part of the work that you can do all yourself, writing and everything else, so that it will be 'real' editorial work, and you'll be able to see your own writing in print."

Hamilton thanked him fervently, and from that day on would have done anything for his new superior.

"This is a considerable change, Mr. Alavero," said Hamilton the following morning, when he found himself at a table littered with maps and drawings of the island, with papers in Spanish and English, with reports and circulars containing pictures of the sub-tropical landscapes and towns of Porto Rico. "I have been doing nothing but Alaska for a month past."

"Too cold!" the Porto Rican cried, with a shrug of the shoulders. "I was in Washington this last winter and I thought I should die of freezing."

"You are from Porto Rico yourself, Mr. Alavero?"

"I was never away from the island at all," was the reply, "never even on a steamboat until I came to the United States last autumn; I came to show the people in your Congress that the coffee growers of Porto Rico need help."

"Why?"

"Porto Rican coffee is the finest in the world," the editor answered with a graphic gesture, "and when Porto Rico was Spanish we could sell in Europe at high prices, but now the European tariff against the United States includes us, and our coffee is taxed so that we cannot sell it. And the American market is satisfied with Brazilian coffee, which is of a cheaper grade."

"Is coffee the principal crop down there?" queried the boy. "I notice that nearly half these papers and books deal with coffee plantations."

"It is still, but not as it once was," the Porto Rican answered. "Sugar and tobacco are the other big crops."

"Coffee is easy to grow, isn't it?" asked the boy. "It doesn't want all the attention that cotton does?"

"After a grove is well-established, no, though we prune a great deal; but sugar, yes. That's not such an obstacle though. There is plenty of labor on the island."

"Isn't the bulk of the island colored?"

"No, no, no," answered the Porto Rican, shaking his finger in emphatic denial, "more than three-fifths are pure white, a much smaller proportion of negroes than in some of your Southern States. The negroes were slaves, but Spain freed them in 1873. There was no war." He smiled. "We are a most peaceful people."

GATHERING COCOANUTS. Where the census-taker in Porto Rico had to wait for his figures until the head of the house climbed down. (Courtesy of the Department of War.)

"Not like our other accession from Spain," Hamilton commented. "I mean the Philippines; you certainly couldn't call the Filipinos peaceful, it seems to me that they come just about as wild as they make them."

"Wild? You do not know the half!" said the excitable little editor, who, despite the frequency of his gestures and the volubility of his explanations was busily working with diagrams the while. "You know there was a census in Porto Rico in 1899?"

"I didn't until this morning," the boy answered "but as I see that most of these tables are compared with that year it is evident that there must have been."

"There was a census," the editor went on, after a pause during which he had been working over a column of figures, "and my uncle was a supervisor. Mr. Gatten—you know him?"

"Only by name," Hamilton replied.

"He was in the Porto Rico census, too. Then in 1903 he went to assist in the census of the Philippines. It was done by the War Department, because the fighting was hardly over. You think the census difficult? You should hear my uncle! The Dattos were not all stopped fighting, because just as soon as the Philippine Commission thought it safe, the census began."

"Did any one get killed by hostile natives?" asked Hamilton, scenting a story.

"Several wounded, one badly, but no one killed. But"—and he waggled a finger warningly—"there were plenty of places where the census was only estimated! The blowpipe and the poison arrow are most dangerous. Even with the soldiers taking the census and going with other census men, it was very risky among the uncivilized tribes."

"They are really wild?" said Hamilton.

"I think the wildest people in the world, the most savage, are in those jungles. My uncle had to go to the haunts of the Pygmies."

"Pygmies!" exclaimed Hamilton in surprise. "I didn't know that the Stars and Stripes floated over Pygmy tribes! I thought they were only in Africa!"

"The Negritos are pygmies," answered the editor, "seldom over four feet ten inches for the man and the woman two or three inches shorter; they use their toes like fingers, they wear only a loin-cloth, their hair is fuzzy like a black bush, and they seldom use fire, even for cooking."

"How do they live?" asked Hamilton. "We have got used to thinking of the Red Indians as a part of the United States races, but the Pygmies seem outlandish. Have they huts or do they live in caves, or how?"

"Nothing!" was the answer. "A few have rough huts, but most of them wander in the forests."

"But where do they sleep?"

"On the ground."

"I should think they would be afraid of wild beasts," the boy remarked.

"There are very few in the Philippines," was the reply.

"How about snakes, then?" queried the lad.

"They have to take chances on snakes. But you know a snake will scarcely ever strike unless alarmed or attacked. No snake will bite a sleeping man. Wild animals only attack for food, and man is left alone as much as possible."

"Haven't they pythons there? And a python could easily strangle and swallow a man."

"He could, but he doesn't," the Porto Rican pointed out; "rabbits are more his size, or a young fawn. The Negritos are safe enough, as far as that goes."

"What do they live on?"

"Fish, mostly, together with roots and berries; and they can get all they want with bow and arrow, or with a stone. They can throw a stone as straight as you could shoot a bullet."

"We ought to import some of them for baseball pitchers," suggested Hamilton with a grin. "But it really must have been an awful job enumerating them. And when it comes to poisoned arrows!—No thank you, I'd rather stick to old Kentucky. Are there many of them?"

"No," was the reply, "the Negrito is dying out, just as the aboriginal tribes all over the world are doing. There are only about twenty-three thousand of the Pygmies left now."

"But there are more natives than that in the Philippines?" queried the boy.

"Hundreds of thousands. You see there are really three different types of savages in the Philippines, according to the census reports. The aboriginal tribes are the Negritos, perhaps as close to primitive man as any people on earth; those are the ones I have been telling you about, and they are a race all to themselves, as different from the rest of the Filipinos as the negro is from the white man. The true Filipinos are Malays."

"Even the head-hunters?"

"Certainly. There are Filipinos of two grades,—apparently of two periods of migration. The first came and settled the islands away a long time back, driving the Pygmies to the forests, and occupying the coasts themselves. These tribes, the Igorots, the Ilongots, the Bilans, and so forth, are of the same general type as the head-hunters of Borneo, and some,—like the Ilongots—to this day carry out the savage custom that 'no young man can be accepted in marriage until he has presented his bride with a human head.'"

"That is certainly savage," Hamilton agreed; "one never thinks that sort of thing can be going on still, and certainly not under the American flag!"

"It is, though," the Porto Rican replied. "The third group," he continued, "the Moros and so forth, are all Mohammedans, and they seem to have come to the islands after the semi-civilization of the Malay archipelago and its submission to Mohammedanism. The Moros are haughty and assume the air of conquerors. As the Igorots drove the Negritos to the forest and thence to the wild interior, so the Moros drove the Igorots. They are largely pure Malay, warlike and cruel, but shrewd and capable of culture. They assume an over-lordship over all other tribes and their Dattos can generally enforce it."

"It seems strange," the boy said, "to think of going among those savages and asking them the same questions that United States citizens were asked, writing the answers on the same kind of schedules, and counting these ferocious head-hunters on a tabulating machine."

"Of course," the editor reminded him, "the Philippine census last time was taken by the War Department, although the Bureau is even now considering what will be the best way to attack the problem should it have to take the next Philippine census, as it probably will. But while it was primitive, the work wasn't so very different. They were able to use advance schedules, for example."

The boy stared, and his informant laughed outright.

"They were a little different," he explained, "and it was during the enumeration of the Igorots and similar tribes. It was soon found that they could count up to ten but no further. A certain number of them could grasp the idea of ten groups of ten. So a bundle of sticks was sent to each village and each man was made to cut notches in these sticks up to ten to show how many children, or pigs, or chickens he had. In some of the villages so my uncle told me, the supervisor had a branding iron made with which he had branded on the tally sticks the figure of a pig, or a house, or a chicken or whatever it might be."

"That is about as far back, I should think, as any one could go, in the way of census-taking," the boy said. "I thought some of my up-country negro farmers were barbaric—especially when I came across some voodooism, but now I see I didn't know what barbarism meant."

"There's just as much savagery—of a kind—right in the heart of civilization," said the Porto Rican. "The slums of a great city are little less dangerous than a Philippine jungle, and you will do well to remember it."

"Why should I remember it especially?" asked Hamilton in surprise.

"Mr. Burns, who has been made an Inspector, told me the other day that he expected to start soon for some of the larger cities, where reports of census frauds had been made, and that he thought he would take you along, if the Director was willing."

"You mean the Mr. Burns I was with in New Haven?"

"Yes, he seems to want to have you as his assistant in that work."

"That would be just splendid," said Hamilton, his eyes shining, "but how about the Porto Rican report, Mr. Alavero?"

"I think I can manage it," the other replied, endeavoring to suppress a smile, "and the chapter that you were working on is nearly done, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir," the boy answered, "I can finish it in a couple of days."

"That will be in plenty of time," the editor assured him. "I don't think Mr. Burns intends to start until some time next week."

Before many days had passed Hamilton found the correctness of the Porto Rican's information, for as he was busily engaged in compiling a big tabulation on the proportion of breadwinners per age and sex for one of the provinces of the island, his friend the special agent of manufactures, under whom he had been at New Haven, strolled into the office.

"Why, Mr. Burns," the boy said delightedly, jumping up and shaking hands, "I haven't seen you for ever so long."

"I haven't been in Washington more than twenty-two per cent of the time," was the reply "and I'm going away on the eleven-fifty next Tuesday evening. Do you want to come along?"

"But—"

"The Director said, if you wanted to come, I could take you."

"Where are we going, Mr. Burns?"

"New York."

"What for?"

"Seems to me, Alavero," said the Inspector, turning to the Porto Rican, "that you've been teaching this lad to ask questions. Out of the four remarks he has made since I came in, two have been questions. Fifty per cent is a high average. Well, I'll tell you," he added, turning to the boy, "it's just this: there are always some cities that aren't satisfied with the census. I believe of the cities of over thirty thousand inhabitants at this census there has been something like nine, decimal-eight-one per cent protests, and the most necessary of these the Bureau investigates. Perhaps ten or a dozen in the entire country get a recount. The Bureau doesn't officially recognize some of them but sends an inspector to look over the ground, and see if everything was done right. That's what we're going to do in New York."

"All right," said Hamilton briefly.

"You'll be on that train?"

"Yes, Mr. Burns," the boy answered. "Eleven-fifty P.M., Tuesday."

The opportunity was one which Hamilton had been coveting, for he felt that if he only had a chance to get at the city methods he would have covered almost the entire ground of the field-work of the Decennial Census, and while he was sorry to leave his Porto Rican friend, still the novelty appealed to him greatly, and in spite of his former chief's mathematical conversation, Hamilton was genuinely fond of him.

"I've been wondering, Mr. Burns," the boy said, as they stood in the great concourse of the Union Station at Washington, "whether there would not be a very large number of protests about census figures,—people always seem to have such an exaggerated idea of the size of their own towns."

"There is to some extent," Burns replied. "I think something like a hundred places filed protests in this last census."

"Then I read something, too, about census frauds," Hamilton said, "soon after the taking of the census, in which it was suggested that some enumerators—who were paid per capita—had bolstered up the figures in order to get more out of it."

"There was a little of that," the Inspector said, "but by far the greatest amount of fraud was due to the desire on the part of the inhabitants of a town or city to make the place appear larger and more important. Tacoma, Washington, was the most flagrant example of this, why, they padded 32,527 names there, and even when the Census had made a recount they tried to repeat the same performance, complaining of the results and demanding a second recount."

"Was this granted?"

"It was," the Inspector replied, "largely in order that the Census Bureau itself might have an opportunity to check the correctness of its methods. The second recount was performed by expert statisticians and with extreme care."

"And how did it come out?" the boy asked.

"It substantiated the first recount in every way. It was, indeed, a wonderful object lesson in showing how small is the margin of error in the United States Census."

"But was there really much fraud among the enumerators and supervisors, Mr. Burns?"

"With perhaps one exception, no criticism could be made of the supervisors, but you can't have 70,000 enumerators, chosen for temporary work, and expect perfection! There was quite a little over-counting, caused by entering hotel transients as having permanent residences, by numbering citizens both at business and home addresses, and the constant difficulty of the floating population. Deliberate frauds were very few; where trouble was found it was usually discovered to have been due to the unauthorized activity of committees of boards of trade or other commercial organizations, giving lists of names all ready to be copied on the enumerator's schedule, which the latter did not take the time and trouble to verify."

"Then do you think the net result of the census is to make it seem that there are more people in the country than really are here?"

"No," the Inspector replied confidently, "the total figures are an understatement, probably of about one per cent, maybe a little less, but certainly not much more."

"I think that's mighty close," Hamilton said. "But do towns never wish to have small numbers announced?"

"There was only one case, so far as I know," the other replied, "in which a Business Men's Association wrote and demanded a recount on the ground that the figures were too big. The reason was a dispute about raising city salaries when a certain population mark was reached.

"And now, Noble," he continued, moving on toward the train platform, "we want to look into the question of statistics in New York carefully. Personally I believe the work has been as well done as possible, and I know the Director is satisfied, but one or two little matters have come up, which want looking into."

Being on a midnight train, Hamilton had no chance for further talk with the Inspector; but it was quite a home-coming when, after passing through the great tunnels under the Hudson River, he found himself next morning among the skyscrapers of New York again.

"I suppose every one feels the same way about his own town," Hamilton said, "but it always seems to me that you feel the bigness of things more in New York than anywhere. In Washington there always seems lots of time to do everything you want, but New York is just made up of hustle. You've got to know what you want in this city and you've got to do it in a hurry, before some one else gets there first."

"New York certainly is hurried and restless; I can't say I like the noise and the skyscrapers," replied Burns.

"But it's great the way those buildings tower up," the boy exclaimed enthusiastically, "the low houses and poky ways of older and smaller cities look as though they were made for dwarfs, after living in the New York streets."

"Yet there are taller buildings, in other places, even in Europe," the statistician remarked.

"Spires!" answered the boy, "propped up by buttresses and flying buttresses and all the rest of it so as to keep them from falling. Look at those," he added, pointing at the skyscrapers before him, "they're not afraid to stand by themselves; they mean something, they have a use, while a spire just sticks straight up, pointing at nothing and being of no service unless it is to hang bells in a belfry. I don't care what people say about those crazy old tumble-down buildings of the Middle Ages, they may be beautiful and all that, but they're useless nowadays. The New York skyscraper is the greatest example of architecture in the world because it best does what it was built to do."

"You are enthusiastic, Noble," said his friend.

"I'm a New Yorker all the way through," the lad continued, "and I want to feel that I'm right in the whirl of things, where there is so much to do that you can't crowd it into a day, where the fun is at the same speed as the work. No backwaters for me, I want to be right out in the center. I don't say that I'm going to win, but I want to be a game sport and try my strength with the rest of the crowd in the current, sink or swim. It's all right to say that the heart of the nation is Washington, and the backbone is the farm, but its nerve center is here,—right here in New York. America's the wonder of the world, all right, but all there is to it is capital plus brains, and New York is the furnace that melts them down into that quickness and grip on things we call the American spirit. Millions from every race of the world come here, and the Statue of Liberty is the first symbol, and the skyscrapers of lower New York the first reality they see of the Land of Promise."

"How about the inside of these great shells of structure?"

"No such office buildings in the world," the boy answered enthusiastically. "The salt winds from over three thousand miles of ocean blow around them; in their steel walls there are lots of windows; lightning speed elevators make the top floor easier to get at than the second story of a dark, old-fashioned staircase building; and I've heard that the marble mosaic entrances of the larger of them put the Italian palaces to shame. I don't know Europe, but I do know New York, and I believe, Mr. Burns, if you knew it as I do, you'd be as proud of it too."

The Inspector looked at the boy quietly.

"You're wrong," he said soberly, "in thinking that I don't know New York. To-morrow morning you do a little work in a section of the city in which you have probably never been, and I think we'll hear less tall talk. If you could count the tens of thousands of families who live in rooms with nothing but court windows; if you could find out in how many thousand families children are toiling under sweatshop conditions till far into the night; if you were to ask the tuberculosis district nurses what conditions they find, you might then do a little thinking on your own account. It's only right you should be proud of New York, but you'd better see both sides before you are sure of yourself. Now, I suppose you're going home?"

"Yes, sir," said Hamilton, a little taken aback by his friend's rebuke.

"Call at my hotel early to-morrow morning and I'll start you on a 'Seeing New York' trip of a new kind." And turning off sharply, the Inspector swung himself aboard a passing cross-town car.

Nine o'clock the next morning found Hamilton in one of the worst districts he had ever seen. Thronged as it was, the boy was sufficiently conscious of his difference from the people he met to feel uncomfortable. He had one of the schedules that had been filled out during the enumeration of the city, and the Inspector had bidden him verify certain portions of it which were either confusing or slightly incorrect. This was to be done in a dozen or so districts, and if the information was found to be adequate, showing that the enumerators' work had been faithfully done, there would be no need for further inspection.

The home manufacture of ostrich feathers first gave Hamilton a clear insight into poverty. Four or five rooms each occupied by a family of several persons he entered in one tenement, and in each he found three or four people working over ostrich plumes, working nervously at high speed, afraid to stop, even for a moment. He noted conditions carefully, and was amazed to find that each of the little strands was wired—he had always supposed that plumes grew upon the ostrich the way that they are sold.

In one such family dejection seemed to have reached its lowest ebb. The window looked out on a court,—a court that was never cleaned and where all manner of rubbish was thrown. Although it was morning and a brilliant, sunshiny day, the light within was so dim that it was hard to work by; yet with characteristic shiftlessness the window had not been washed for months and diminished still further the little light there was; a mattress in the opposite corner from a shaky cooking gas-burner showed that this room was the entire home.

TAKING THE CENSUS IN A CITY. Enumerator at a doorway, entering in his portfolio the details of a household.

"Where is your husband?" asked the boy, noting on the schedule a man's name as head of the family.

"In hospital—perhaps dead. See!"

The woman pointed to a telegram which had fallen to the floor. Hamilton picked it up. It read:

"John Sobieski worse. Come at once," and was signed with the name of one of the large hospitals.

"Did you go?" asked the boy.

The woman shook her head.

"Two hours lost, if I go. No good. Two hours' work means twenty-four cents. What's the use?"

"What's the matter with him?"

"Consumption. I die soon, next year, perhaps. All the children sick."

The boy looked around at 'all the children.' There were five of them in that room, and all—even the youngest, a baby four years old—were knotting the feathers on the plume. The baby could hardly do it, but he was learning.

"Many hands make light work," said Hamilton as cheerfully as he could. "With so many little workers you ought to get along finely."

"Yes," the woman answered listlessly, "we get along. Some days we make as much as a dollar!"

"Each of you?"

"Do we look so rich? One dollar for everybody. But that is only sometimes, when I am not too sick. We can get a little more than five dollar the week, by working all the time."

The boy hastily asked the remaining questions on the schedule, found everything correctly reported and relieving his conscience by giving a little help out of his own pocket, he left for the next place.

On the floor below was a family working on fur, every one of them with hacking coughs caused by tiny particles of fur in the lungs.

"We work or we starve," was again the unanswerable explanation.

In the house next door, embroidering rich cloaks, Hamilton found a family of which several of the members had a bad infectious skin disease. Chancing to meet a health inspector soon afterwards he told him about this family and gave him their address.

"I can stop it, as far as this family is concerned," the health officer said, "and I suppose I ought to. But you know what it means, I suppose?"

"What?" asked the boy.

"It means, if I take their work away, they will starve to death in a couple of weeks."

"And if you don't?"

"If I don't, they'll go on spreading disease. Oh, I'll have to put a stop to it, of course, but tell me what is going to happen to the family."

"They ought to go to a hospital," Hamilton said.

The health officer shook his head.

"They are not hospital cases," he said. "None of them need more medical attention than they can get in a dispensary, and every hospital to which they applied would treat them in an Out-Patient department. They would have to take in more work, or die."

"But where would they get the work?"

"Any of these sweatshop jobbers will give it to them. It makes no difference to the middlemen where the work is done or out of what dens it comes, as long as it is done cheap."

"And is all clothing open to the same risk?" asked the boy.

The health inspector shook his head.

"Cheap clothing is not," he said, "because even the cheapest kind of labor is more expensive than machinery, and machine-made clothes are clean. But costly dresses which need hand embroidery are sent to sweatshops to be done. Not all, of course, but enough of them to keep thousands of women and children working day and night the year round. The more elaborate the gown, the longer is it likely to have been in a tenement that the future wearer would not even allow her dog to enter."

From house to house Hamilton went, finding misery at every step, with the single consolation that the schedule showed in almost every case that the son or the daughter who was working had moved out of the slums, or that the family had progressed sufficiently to find better quarters. Everywhere the children from these fearful homes seemed to have been dowered with promise, and as Burns had suggested, the sole comfort and hope for the future lay in the fact that the New York slum is a one-generation slum.

It was growing toward noon when Hamilton finished the short list that the Inspector had given him in that poorest section, and he was glad when he was able to leave the pressure of the poverty behind him. His next district was a section of the Italian quarter, and Hamilton knew that while he would find poverty of a certain kind there, there was enough of the community spirit among the Italians to prevent such conditions as he had witnessed and enough frugality among them to enable them to make the best of all they had.

Feeling that it was time for lunch, the boy hunted around a while for some restaurant that looked as though it would serve a meal that would not be too distasteful. After a little search he found a small place that seemed to be just the thing. The sign board was in Italian and the list of dishes pasted on the windows was in Italian, but Hamilton's Spanish enabled him to make out what the phrases meant, and he went in. At a table not far from the door, a man was sitting with his back to the entrance. He did not hear the lad's step until Hamilton was just behind him, then, with an Italian cry, he turned upon its face the paper on which he had been writing, and jumped to his feet so quickly that the chair on which he had been sitting overturned, and he stumbled as he stepped back a pace or two. He glared threateningly at the boy, who apologized for startling him. But it was evident that the man did not understand a word of English.

Hearing the clatter the proprietor came out from an inner room, and seeing the Italian standing there, broke into a passionate torrent of speech, all utterly unintelligible to Hamilton.

"I hava told heem," he explained to the boy, "that I not wanta heem in this-a place at all."

"I shouldn't think you would," said Hamilton, "I don't like his looks. Can I have some dinner?" he added, laying on the table a book he had just taken from his pocket, for the boy when alone always read at his meals.

"Certainly, sair," and the proprietor rattled off a string of dishes from which the boy made a copious selection, for he was hungry.

But he noticed that the man who had been sitting at the table had not left the place but was furtively watching, a few steps away. He was an ugly-looking customer, and Hamilton, full of grit as he was, felt uneasy. Casting his eye down to where he had laid his book, he noticed the piece of paper sticking from beneath it, and noticed moreover, a heavy shadow as though there were a drawing on the other side. His pulse beat a little faster as an idea came into his mind, but he showed no sign until the proprietor returned to set the table.

"I think," he said, watching the stranger carefully as he spoke, "that gentleman left a paper behind him. Ask him."

The proprietor, looking much puzzled, put a question in Italian, to which was evidently returned a sharp denial.

Still watching him, Hamilton slowly reached out his hand for the paper which lay on the table, only half-hidden by the book, and turning it over laid it flat upon the white cloth.

It was the Black Hand.

FESTA IN THE ITALIAN QUARTER. Boys in Little Italy, New York, preparing for one of the many characteristic holidays. (Brown Bros.)

There was a moment's utter silence. The bright little restaurant had suddenly become charged with mystery, the slinking stranger seemed to have become in a moment allied to secret powers of evil, and the whole atmosphere seemed baneful in the sinister significance of that drawing on the table. A glance at the restaurant-keeper dispelled all question of complicity. His jaw had fallen, his face was ashen, his lips bluish.

The other saw his advantage in the terror the mere display had excited, and stepping forward, he reached out his hand to pick up the paper, saying in English:

"Mine!"

Before the Italian had time to grasp the sketch, Hamilton quietly took it and folded it in half.

"I wouldn't be so ready to claim it, if I were you," he said, knowing that the other might not understand the words but could tell the tone.

"What are you going to do?" queried the restaurant-keeper in a hoarse whisper. "They will kill-a me!"

Hamilton thought hard for a moment or two. In the first place the matter had nothing to do with the Census Bureau, and the boy felt that while he was on duty in that work and wearing the census badge he was not a private citizen. Again, it was not a crime to draw a hand on a piece of paper, and the space obviously left for the blackmail message had not been filled in, and thirdly he could not swear that he saw him draw the hand; he only saw the paper in the man's possession.

"Tell him," he said to the restaurant-keeper, "that I shall say nothing about it, that I am not a policeman, nor a spy; tell him that so far as I am concerned I do not know that he had anything to do with it, and return him the paper."

And bending forward, he reached out the paper to the Italian, who first snatched it eagerly, and then, having secured it, made a ceremonious bow. The proprietor of the restaurant translated the boy's words, and with a brief reply, which Hamilton rightly construed to be thanks, the stranger left the store. No sooner was he gone than the restaurateur, with a word of apology, sank into the nearest chair, fairly exhausted with fright.

"I tell you, sair," he said, as soon as he could get his breath, "I had-a nothing at all to do with that-a man."

"It's pretty hard to know about these things," said Hamilton, who was somewhat unnerved himself, "but I don't believe you had. Anyway, there's no harm done. I've always heard about the Black Hand society, but I didn't expect to run across it first thing, that way."

"There is no Black-a Hand society," the Italian said, "at least I do not think there is."

"How do you mean there's no Black Hand?" asked Hamilton a little indignantly, "haven't I just seen it?"

The Italian shook his head.

"What were you so scared about, then?" queried the boy impatiently.

"Mafia," said the other, his lips just shaping the syllables.

"You mean that the Mafia use the Black Hand?"

The Italian nodded.

"And that it is the sign of the Mafia?"

"No," said the restaurant proprietor. "It is this-a way. When the Mafia was all-a broken up in-a the Sicily, the chiefs come to America. But the people are so far away it is difficult-a to speak-a to them all. One day one of the Mafia leaders write a letter threatening to kill. His—what you call it—nickname was 'Il Mano Nera'—"

"That means 'The Black Hand,' doesn't it?" queried the boy.

The Italian nodded.

"He sign at the bottom with a Black Hand because the man-a to whom he write, once was member of the Mafia. The police see the letter, a newspaper print-a big long story about Italian society which have the Black-a Hand for its sign, and saying that much recent murders was done. Everybody become-a frightened, and the Mafia and the Camorra right away both begin-a to use Black Hand. So you see when I say there is no Black-a Hand society, no chief, no place-a to meet, no meetings, no plan-a to share money, no oath, it is quite true, but if I say there is a society which used the Black-a Hand that is true, too. But all I want-a to do is to be let alone. Now, I will get you your dinner, sair."

Hamilton felt distinctly uncomfortable in being left alone, not feeling at all sure that the man who had been there before would not suddenly dash in upon him unawares and stab him in the back with a stiletto to make sure of his not talking, nor that the restaurant-keeper might not put some poison in his coffee. Take it all in all, it was the most nerve-racking meal he had ever eaten.

Chatting with the Inspector that evening over his Black Hand experiences he found that his chief took a very serious view of the question.

"If we were receiving immigrants from the north of Italy," he said, "it would be an entirely different matter, but all the Italians who are coming in now are from the 'toe' and the 'heel' of Italy, and from Sicily. You see, the north of Italy are really Celts, like the French and Irish, being descended from the Lombards, but the Sicilians and Calabrians are a mixture of the old pirates, the Moors, and the degenerated Latin races that were left when the Roman Empire fell to pieces. The endeavor to break up the Mafia sent all the leaders of that nefarious Sicilian society here, and now the attack upon the Neapolitan Camorra lands another criminal group. Italy has sent us a larger proportion of criminals than any other country, and under our present laws, if they have been three years here, they cannot be deported. The Vincenzo Abadasso case was a good example of the folly of that rule."

"Who was he?" asked Hamilton.

"He was an Italian immigrant who had been arrested twenty-seven times and convicted twenty-five and who came over here a couple of years ago. Within a few months of his arrival he was arrested here and sentenced to three years' imprisonment And now, although he is a professed criminal, they won't be able to deport him, because when his prison term is up, he will have been in the United States three years."

"I suppose there are a lot of Italians coming over now?" said Hamilton questioningly.

"A little over three weeks ago," was the reply, "as I heard from a friend in the Immigration Bureau, there was a funeral in a small village near Naples and not enough able-bodied civilians could be found in the place to carry the casket. All of them were in America. There are scores of towns in southern Italy where all the work—of every kind—is done now by the women, because the men have emigrated."

"What do you think about this Black Hand business?"

"I think your friend the restaurant-keeper was nearly right, only that it is being used by all sorts of crooks as well, who have no connection with either the Mafia or the Camorra. Mark you, I think those two secret societies are apt to be much misrepresented, just as the Jesuits were during the Middle Ages and the Freemasons were at other periods. The Camorra was once simply the Tammany Hall of Naples. But when, as happened last year, there were six hundred and fourteen Black Hand outrages in two States in four months it is idle to say that it does not exist in America. The Camorrist trials over the Cuocolo murders at Viterbo, perhaps the most sensational in the world since the Dreyfus case, have shown its power to be more dangerous than any one could for a moment have imagined. And the danger lies here—there are more Camorrists in New York than in Naples!"

For a moment the boy looked at the Inspector, astounded.

"You mean—" he began, and stopped.

"I mean that the worst elements of the two worst societies in Europe are concentrating in New York, and that unless rigorous measures are taken to keep them down, America will harbor graver dangers than any it has yet known. Russian nihilism, Polish anarchism, German socialism may join hands with the Sicilian Mafia and the Neapolitan Camorra to institute a criminal organization such as the world has never seen before. There are enough ignorant immigrants to yield to a wave of fear, and the Black Hand thrives and grows on terror. But, wisely held in check until they learn, these very Sicilians and Neapolitans bring much that is of value to the making of an American people."

"Oh, there couldn't be any real danger!" Hamilton exclaimed. "The spirit of American institutions would prevent such a happening; that could only be in some old-world city like Naples. The Camorra comes down from the Middle Ages, anyway."

The Inspector shook his head.

"I hope so," he said, "and I only trust you may be right," and he turned the subject to the actual work in hand.

It so chanced that the very next day Hamilton had an opportunity of seeing, in a mild way, how truly the Inspector had spoken with regard to the alienizing of the crowds in the streets of New York. He had been working steadily several hours, and early in the afternoon he noticed a great deal of shouting in the streets. Being curious, and noticing that numbers of women were hurrying past, gesticulating violently, Hamilton followed, until almost before he was aware, the crowd grew so dense as to engulf him, and he was carried along, whether he would or no, up the street. Some of the women were crying, some shrieking, and all wore a furtive, strained expression as though in great distress.

Although there was a great deal of shouting, not a word was in a language familiar to Hamilton, and although he questioned every one around him he could find no one that understood his questions. All that he could gather was from some one in the front of the crowd who kept on crying out in English at irregular intervals:

"Our children, we want our children!"

Even if the boy had desired to break through the crowd to return to his work he could not have done so, and he really did not wish to,—he was too much interested in following the purposes of the throng. Finally the people stopped, but the boy was so far back that he could see nothing of what was going on at the head of the crowd. Being determined, however, Hamilton elbowed his way by main force and reached the woman who was still crying:

"Our children, we want our children!"

Hamilton spoke to her, but the woman paid no heed. Finally, seeing that she would not listen, he shouted at her as harshly as he could. Then she turned and tried to answer his questions.

"What's all the row about?" he asked.

"They rob us. Steal our children. Make them walk far away, never see our children any more. Oh, my Mario, oh, my Petronilla. Oh, our children, we want our children!"

Further information the boy could not get. He worked his way clear to the front of the mob and saw the police gathering on all sides. Breaking through the front rank he stepped up to the nearest policeman, who merely shifted his grip on his night stick.

"That's quite a mob," he said in a conversational tone.

"It is that, sorr," said the policeman, recognizing immediately that the boy was not one of the rioters.

"I'm a census officer," the boy continued, "and I was doing some inspection work for the census when I got caught in the crowd. What's the matter with them?"

"'Tis a bunch of dummies they are," was the reply; "'tis thinkin' they are that the schools are goin' to steal their children. As if any one would be wantin' their brats. The most of us has enough of our own to keep."

"But why should the school want to steal their children? Do you mean that they don't want them to go to school?"

"'Tis not that, sorr," the Irishman answered, "but 'tis due to some 'fire drill' business. The little ones are taught in the school that when a bell rings—'tis the fire bell I'm m'anin'—they sh'd all march out dacintly and in order. 'Tis a good idea, that same, an' I'm favorin' it. But it's hard to make the children see it, so that they have to drill them often."

"That all seems right enough," Hamilton answered.

"Ye would think so, sorr," continued the policeman "But most of these mothers come from countries on the other side where they make them soldiers whether they want to be or not, an' this drillin' business scares the old folks 'most to death."

"But if it continues and nothing happens, I don't see why they should go on being scared. You would think the children had grown used to it."

"The children! They're not makin' any trouble, it's all the parents."

"Then what started it?"

"There was some street corner lecturer here the day before yisterday, tryin' to teach the people that children were the cause of poverty an' that the only way to prevent poverty was to get rid of the children, either by havin' fewer or by shippin' off the existin' surplus."

"It's silly for them to heed a man like that!"

"It's worse than silly, sorr," the policeman said. "But even then I don't believe there would have been trouble. But yisterday, some rich lady, plannin' to give the children a picnic this afternoon and a treat, told them they were all goin' out to the country and that they must tell their mothers they wouldn't be home until late."

"What about that?" asked the boy. "I should think they would be glad that the children should have some pleasure. From all I've seen recently of the way people live in this neighborhood, I don't believe the children have any too much good times."

"An' so they should be glad, sorr, but they won't see it that way. They know the children have been drilled for weeks an' weeks; they know a man on the street corner said the children ought to be shipped away; an' the next day they are told that the children are goin' to be taken into the country, an' they don't believe the children'll ever come back."

"Surely they can't be as silly as all that! And what do you suppose they want to do?"

"They don't know what they want," the policeman answered, "but it's a bad business when a crowd gathers. Look there now!"

Hamilton looked where the man was pointing. On the outskirts of the crowd the boy noted a number of half-grown toughs, hoodlums, and trouble-makers generally. The cries were increasing, and the boy could see that these men were doing all they could to stir up the rest of the crowd.

"Where they come from, I don't know," the police officer said, "but any time that there's a little trouble, they'll make it as big as they can."

"But the whole thing's so absurd," the boy said. "What do they think they're going to do,—raid the school?" He laughed.

The policeman turned on him quickly.

"'Tis absurd, as ye say, sorr," he said rebukingly "but there's many a good man been hurt with less cause than this. That crowd's growin' by thousands. Do you slip away, sorr, I'm afraid there's goin' to be trouble."

"Not much," Hamilton answered, "now I'm in this far, I'm going to stay and see the fun out."

"Well then, sorr," advised the policeman, "ye'd better slip through the school gates. Show your census badge, and the other men at the gate will let ye through."

Thanking him, Hamilton walked across the narrow stretch of road between the foremost ranks of the crowd and the little group of policemen gathered in front of the school entrance. As he did so, a bottle came whizzing at his head with deadly aim. Fortunately he had been keeping his head partly turned curiously toward the crowd, and he saw the missile in time to dodge. It missed him and went hurtling on, just passing between two policemen and smashing on the iron bars of the railing.

"You nearly got hit that time," said one of the policemen, as Hamilton showed his badge and was let through. "How did you get in with them?"

"Just doing my work," the boy answered, "and got carried right along. I was curious at first,—then when I wanted to get out I found I couldn't. I think," he added, a little nervously, for the flying jagged bottle had startled him not a little, "that's the first time I've been in front of a mob."

"I wish it was the last I'm likely to be," was the reply, "especially a crowd of women like that. Men you know what to do with."

"What do you suppose they'll do?" asked the boy. "Try to rush the school?"

"They did once not far from here," the policeman answered, "it was a school on the East Side, where nearly all the children were Jewish, and in order to make it easier for the poorer children the school authorities had opened a sort of restaurant where the kids could get lunch for three cents. The story got abroad that the children were getting ham and pork, and the whole section rose in arms. We tried to disperse them and couldn't. There was no way of reasoning with them, there was nothing they could do, but they just hung around."

"What for?"

"Waiting a chance to burn the school down, every one seemed to think. They did make one rush toward the end of the afternoon, and several people were wounded. One of our men was badly stabbed, but he got over it. Watch now," he added, in a sharp voice. "There's something doing!"

The crowd hushed a moment, and a man's voice could be heard, but whether pacifying the women or inflaming them, Hamilton could not make out. The next moment answered him. Without any apparent preparation, the whole face of the crowd suddenly seemed to burst, the end closed in, and in a second one of the wildest hordes Hamilton had ever seen was at the school gates. There was a brief struggle and nightsticks were drawn. The crowd rolled back, then surged on, more angrily than before. But the bluecoats stood firm, and when the crowd rolled back the second time a number showed broken heads.

"Son," called the police lieutenant, "you scamper along, and tell the principal to hurry up with letting out the school. I sent him one message now this means business."

Hamilton turned and ran for all he was worth toward the building, but just as he reached there, he saw the children marching in regular order out of the rear door, and he came back immediately to report. As he did so he found that the crowd was getting ready to make a third attempt to attack the police, when, turning the corner, sauntering down the narrow lane between the crowd and the police, came an Italian boy, about fourteen years old, with half a dozen other ragged boys at his heels. On seeing him, the lieutenant turned to Hamilton.

"That's Caesar," he said, with a sigh of relief. "I've known him for the past year or two, and he'll settle all this trouble."

The boy looked at the police lieutenant with surprise. The police force had had trouble enough, and what could a boy do? He voiced his query.

"His father's a 'Man of Silence,'" was the reply, "and Caesar himself knows all there is to know. You'll see."

Arriving at the center of the crowd, just by the school gate, the boy turned, and speaking to the nearest officer, said, in English, without a trace of foreign accent, shrugging his shoulders:

"Some of them won't ever learn!"

For a moment he scanned the mob, called the names of two or three men on the outskirts, and Hamilton could see them wince as this fourteen-year-old lad named them; then he commenced a speech, which seemed,—so far as Hamilton could tell—to be ridiculing them for their fears.

The crowd relaxed, and for a moment Hamilton thought the whole trouble was over; but suddenly a man sprang to the front of the rioters, and gesticulating wildly, answered the boy in what seemed to be a threatening tone. The young Italian lad heard him through patiently, then almost without raising his voice, uttered one crisp sentence. The man turned white to the lips and slunk away.

"Ask him," said Hamilton to a policeman, "what he said?"

"I only asked him," the Italian said, "if he wanted me to find out his name—so that you would know it if you wanted to arrest him of course," he added, as an afterthought.

The policeman looked at him and pulled the boy's ear, in fun.

"Av I knew as much about some things as you do," he said, "they'd make me chief. Maybe, though," he added, "I wouldn't hold it long. But what about this, Caesar, is it all over?"

The Italian nodded.

"See," he said, "they all go!"

It was as the boy said; Hamilton could see that little by little the crowd was dispersing and that the members of the boyish gang were going all through the groups, evidently explaining that the trouble was all over.

"Ye see what we're up against," the policeman said to Hamilton. "Here's a slip of a lad that c'n just make a crowd do what he says because his father is a leader in the Mafia. There's never any one gives credit enough to the force for keepin peace, between all these foreigners and the Chinks; this ain't an American city, it's a racial nightmare."

"Do the Chinese give much trouble, then?"

"Not such a great deal usually, but they do once in a while. There's bloody murder in Chinatown going on now, or going to begin mighty soon. Three were killed yesterday and the word was given out at Headquarters this morning that the Tongs were out."

Back to Index Next