But mere mediaevalism would be comparatively unimportant did it not supply the principal element favorable to the growth of the Mala Vita, apprehended with so much dread by many of the citizens of the United States.
Now, what are the phases of the Mala Vita--the Camorra, the Black Hand, the Mafia--which are to-day observable in the United States and which may reasonably be anticipated in the future?
In the first place, it may be safely said that of the Camorra in its historic sense--the Camorra of the ritual, of the "Capo in Testa" and "Capo in Trino," highly organized with a self-perpetuating body of officers acting under a supreme head--there is no trace.

Indeed, as has already been explained, this phase of the Camorra, save in the prisons, is practically over, even in Naples.

But of the Mala Vita there is evidence enough.
Every large city, where people exist under unwholesome conditions, has some such phenomenon.

In Palermo we have the traditional Mafia--a state of mind, if you will, ineradicable and all-pervasive.

Naples festers with the Camorra as with a venereal disease, its whole body politic infected with it, so that its very breath is foul and its moral eyesight astigmatized.