TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY                  209

CHAPTER XXI
OLD   IDEAS   REGARDING   ITALIANS

INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE OF ITALIAN—The
American of Italian extraction has sprung from a people
that are unfortunately too little known. The French
have a proverb which when translated means "To un¬
derstand is to excuse." If not only the Italian but the
dozens of other racial groups were better understood
perhaps less of what is really condemnable would be
found.

Fortunately the older idea that a large proportion of
the Italians who come to our shores are registered
members of a Black Hand or a Camorra society, is
being rapidly if not altogether dispelled to-day. Also
universally rejected, to-day, is the concept that if an
Italian does not secure his living in this surreptitious
manner he is a beggar or an organ-grinder or some
other semi-parasitic creature. There was a time when
the more important task in interpreting foreigners (and
this holds true of all nationalities) was to explain away
traditional fallacies and leave to some future generation
the task of intelligent constructive interpretation. In
this day however, the task is to point out the nature and
background of the Americans of different racial stocks
that are with us, and show what are the positive aspects
of real worth and value that their natures offer.

In the case of the racial type under our observation
the great physical enterprises of our country, industrial
plants and public utilities are silent but eloquent monu¬
ments of their real worth. No better statement of the
fundamental steadiness and soberness of character of
these people is to be had than the statement of the late
Mayor Gaynor, who in speaking of the Italians said:
"Take the Italian whom all of us are so ready to condemn
as undesirable citizens — with all of them departed to¬
morrow this nation would come to an absolute stand¬
still." So much for the parents of the type we are study¬
ing and whom we have ruled out of this study as being