The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-07-16
SOUTHERN ITALIANS
Unjustified Preju d i c e Against Sicilians-Loyal-
 ty and Courage Despite Hard Conditions-Unfair to Call Them Superstitious
(CONTESSA LIST CIPRIANA.)

(CONTESSA LIST CIPRIANA.) Author of My Tuscan Childhood.") Often, when some native American tries to explain to me the status of Italians in the United States. I am told, "We do not usually see cultured Italians over here. We only get the lowest type. ignortant, uneducated, superstitious peasants from the South. Just Sicilians!'
 Hm! Just Sicilians! I take no offence though I do not agree in the least There are north ern Italians who. speaking from a re- gional point of view, will make you feel that the exceHency of our people increases with the native cold they our nation is only to be found near the Alps. Americans should realize that the boast of the northerner is not to be accepted in condemnation of the southerner. For what happens within their own gates?
 The men from the north will tell you that the south is shiftless. that com nerce, learning and philanthropy flour ish in the colder regions, but the south erners say that to look for chivalry manners, that indefinable something that make up the real gentleman, you go south of the Mason and Dixon line, though even there things have deteri- orated nightly since the war. Easter HCIS utCldIG lIldI pcOpIS III lliG NCoS speak vile English. The latter assert that you might just as well bury your self in the old country as to live in Boston or Philadelphia All agree that the American who makes himself known abroad is your worst type.
 But all this is enumerated by loyal insistence that no country is equal to the United States, and by an unwill- ingness to admit that any land excells this realm in anything. He waits for you to give him praise. He is silent and difident. He neither brags nor tells you how deeply you wound him when you attack his ideals. Yet, what cannot these people, crowded together under impossible conditions in New York not boast of? More than that, they are loyal to the country that gives them a place among the chosen races of the world.
 I was visiting poor Calabrese fam fly when I met a Sicilian 1aborer who interested me by the remarkable cor rectnees of his Italian. As a soldiei he had been stationed in several O cur large cities. He entered into re- markable discussion of the industrial conditions of both countries.
 "But how 6o you like this country" I finally asked. for he had carefully avoided making any complaint.
 He pulled himself up, looked at me for a momant in silence and then, dropping suddenly into the touching III6uldSNdI lTOIIS O1 HIS OWn OldISCl, he exclaimed:
 Sister, do you want me to answer thee before God? I do not like this country and I do not like the people. It has been a hard country for me. But I earn the bread eat from them and as long as I eat their bread l shall say nothing against them. When I can stand it no longer, I shall go back to my own land and curse them from there.'
  acteriStic of the Silicians who perhaps suffer more than any other people in New York from an unjustified popular prejudice, which, classes them whole sale with criminals and blackhanders They are different and not easy to approach in a country where they are constantly exposed to fraud and crim- inal greed, but once they have recog- l nized their allegiance. they will suf- fer and die with you. It is in the Italian army and navy. when during | national catastrophes the men from one region hasten to succor those of another. that the unSwerving heroiSm | of our men proved itself, and never | never have our southerners been known | to hold back at the moment of dan ger.
 Loyalty and courage are, you may | say, barbaric traits and do not show i that they, the Silicians particularly, | are not unculttured, ignorant. super stitious race. But what is the heri- tage of these people? First the mag | nificent culture of the Magma Graecia. | Has that, after more than two thous- | and years entirely disappeared? No indeed. The unwisely despised dialects l of the peasants from the mountains | of southern Italy still preserve in their | folksongs and ceremonies words and rites which bring us back to a period | which we may say have surpassed | in scientific knowledge, but not in inspired Tasso and Ariosto, are still l the delight of these people, They are | the fair measure of their spiritual development.
 It is not by a knowledge of reading | and writing that the culture of the | lower classes can be fairly measured. | Go through Mott street and see the | young Italian boys pouring over the account of the latest murder story. and l then condemn as ignorant and uncul- l tured the father who would prefer to | have his children listen to a canto | from a Carlovingian epic or from Tas- | sos Jerusalem delivered. School edu- 1 cation is one thing. culture another | it is a sacred task not to let the form | CT destroy the latter.
 The southern Italian has preserved 1 the love mediaval literature and with | it the simplicity of medieval creeds. l Have we a right to discard these be- | liefs as ignorant. low. superstitious? |
 
 far as to show depths of possibilities | in the power of mind over matter? | Take well known popular belief in the | evil eye. Why should such belief l prove ignorant superstition in the Sic ilians when a million and a half Chris | tian Scientists boldly advance the same i theory under the name of animal mag-I netism? Why not condemn an Amer | ican who believes in the Emanuel | faithhealing movement when you do | the peasant who has proved to his | own satisfaction the efficacy of vows and nine days prayer. Call it auto | suggestion, hypnotism, whatever you like, it is not a question of con- | verting Americans but of having these | people protected in beliefs which mod l ern thought proves them, to be fully l entitled.
 The man or woman who has worked | with them never needs to be told of | the sterling qualities of the southern | Italians. They have virtuous women | and it is not their wives and sisters | who are arraigned in the nolice courts | It is the younger generation of Amer i icanized girls that is found in the chil- l dren's courts, for New York has no | spot where as in Italy, young and old | can get fresh air and innocent recre- | ation together Their simple customs and frugal lives have given them un- der proper conditions, incredible en- |