THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1912. THE "BLACK HAND."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10712, 6 November 1912, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1912. THE "BLACK HAND."

It is stated that the Black Hand Society has demanded from Mr J. D. .Rockefeller a heavy aura of money, failing which the Oil King's son and grandchildren axe to be put.to death. Mr Rockefeller evidently regards the threat as a serious one, and his estate in the Pocantico Hills is now guarded by -18 armed negroes and a number of Burns' detectives. Several deputy sheriffs are also on the spot. It ia understood that the letter to Mr Rockefeller gives him until SeptemJ"ber 12th to pay the money. This , threat is the climax to a veritable J "Black Hand" warfare which has broken loose upon the multi-million-, aire's estate on the Pocantico Hills. .This warfare has been waged by discharged labourers against men now occupying their positions, It was only on Sunday that Giußoppi Russo, a young Rockefeller labourer, was found unconscious in his garden, a bullet hole in hiss abdomen and another wound in his liver, and wajj rushed, in a critical condition to Fordham Hospital, New York. Russo insisted that he had shot himself, but the circumstances of the shooting and earlier incidents do not support that statement. Most of the other Italian labourers an the estate are terrorstricken and fear they will bo mur- j clered at their work. One day last week nine labourers were held up and robbed by four men when returning from work on the Rockefeller estate. I One of the quartette has been arrest- ! od and remanded. The "Black Hand" ! 1 i,s a handy name for a brand of crime peculiar to Italian criminals. United States officers say the n-mio of the American "Black Hand'* -emanated from Chicago about 12 years ago, when one of the first of many mysterious murders in the Italian, quarter remained unsolved. The victim has reQeirefl a training tJiat, tlea,tli JTQJilsl'

Follow his failure to contribute a specified sum of money. Tho letter was embellished with a crude drawing representing a fist clutching a dagger. The list and dagger <jvivo f .hc 11at>•,c "Black Hand." ,So successful are the operations of the New York branch of the "Black Hand" organisation that the gang are repnteß $o extort on an average '£20,000 per annum from their victims. With a view to resisting these attempts at blackmail the people of New York and other American cities four years ago formed a society called the "White Hand," to "id. the r">]ir*e in capturing, suspects. This institution oonsists very largely of Italians, who observe just the same secrecy in their methods as the men they seek to bring to justice. They fraternise with their compatriots who belong to the "Black Hand," learn their secrets, and secure their arrest.