178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



month in the vicinity of some prosperous, quiet, and orderly little 

 inland town, where the justice of the peace and the constable 

 are farmers in the field or keepers of the country " store/' or the 

 village shoemaker and carpenter respectively what happens ? 

 What, indeed, mast happen ? The "dago" will not resume work 

 the day after his pay-day, which comes monthly. (Did it come 

 weekly, he would not work at all, as will presently appear.) He 

 takes his wages to the nearest village or community in which 

 spirits, or what is called spirits, is sold. If it is not given him, 

 he fights, is arrested, and locked up ; if it is given him, he also 

 fights, is arrested, and locked up. In either case he will be taken 

 by the constable before the justice, and a little experience will 

 convince these officials that the only safety for their community 

 is to "fine" the "dago" what money he may happen to have in his 

 pocket, for, until his money is gone, he will not return to his work. 

 This programme is repeated month by month, until that section 

 of the railroad is finished and the " dago " is moved to another, 

 where another adjacent village must learn, by experience, how to 

 protect itself precisely as did the last one. Local criminal laws 

 seem, therefore, incompetent to deal with this "dago." He has 

 apparently nothing to lose and from any standpoint except his 

 own, apparently something even to gain by the most comfortless 

 prison that American ingenuity can devise. 



Although the argument from design has made great strides 

 since the days of Dr. Paley's watch, there yet remains much in 

 nature for science to explain by utilizing it. The constrictive 

 force of the African python, for example, the aggravative energy 

 of the New Jersey mosquito, or the tremulous force of the young 

 ladies' Browning or Ibsen Club, for example, remain as yet to 

 puzzle us ; and possibly, on the whole, the argument may be stated 

 as in that condition of compromise in which it appeared to the 

 starving tramp who discovered a New England swamp full of 

 whortleberries and rattlesnakes. Design had evidently placed the 

 whortleberries there to save his life, but chance had dropped in 

 the utterly purposeless rattlers. A somewhat corresponding mixt- 

 ure of good and evil appears to confront us in the very large im- 

 portation lately of this curious people. It is to the eternal credit 

 of King Victor Emanuel that he, first in history, utilized that 

 class of his subjects which has been known from time immemo- 

 rial as the lazzaroni. He put this entirely unattractive person, 

 who till then had naught to do but accommodate himself to the 

 weather, to work removing rock debris on the Mont Cenis Tun- 

 nel, and since he was, to that extent, a successful railroad man, 

 the royal example has been followed over here, and, it can not be 

 denied, with very considerable advantage. The dago class, by lib- 

 erating a class of workmen of, say, one grade higher, has actually 



