In 1908, there were forty-four bomb outrages reported in New York City.

There were seventy arrests and nine convictions.

During the present year (1911) there have been about sixty bomb cases, but there have been none since September 8, since Detective Carrao captured Rizzi, a picciott', in the act of lighting a bomb in the hallway of a tenement house.
This case of Rizzi is an enlightening one for the student of social conditions in New York, for Rizzi was no Orsini, not even a Guy Fawks, nor yet was he an outlaw in his own name.

He was simply a picciott' (pronounced "pish-ot") who did what he was told in order that some other man who did know why might carry out a threat to blow up somebody who had refused to be blackmailed.

It is practically impossible to get inside the complicated emotions and motives that lead a man to become an understudy in dynamiting.