The Padrone System
The New York-New Jersey Committee of the North American Civic League for Immigrants reports that: "The condition of Greek boys and young men in such occupations as pushcart peddling, shoe-shining parlors and the flower trade is one of servitude and peonage. It has been found that many boys apparently from fourteen to eighteen years of age arrive here alone, stating that they are eighteen years old, but in reality less than this, and that they are going to relatives. They have been found working in the shoe-shining parlors seven days a week from 7 A.M. to 9 P.M. and living with the 'boss' in groups varying from five to twenty-five under unsanitary conditions, overcrowding and irregularity of meals wholly undesirable for young boys. They are isolated from learning English or from American contact, and receive for their work from $7 to $15 a month and board and lodging. The majority of the flower peddlers have been unable to obtain permits, with the result that the boys who work for them are arrested for violating the law. Boys who have been in the country from three months to a year state they have been arrested several times—their first experience in this country—and are already hardened so that they think nothing of paying fines."[67]
The bootblack business is the chief industry to which the Greek padrone system is applied. The United States Immigration Commission found[68] that boys employed as bootblacks live in extremely unwholesome quarters. Wherever the room is large enough, several beds are gathered together with three and sometimes four boys sleeping in each bed. In some places the boys merely roll themselves up in blankets and sleep on the floor. The bootblacking stands are opened for business about 6 o'clock in the morning, consequently the boys are obliged to rise about an hour earlier, and wherever their sleeping quarters are located at considerable distance from the stands, they have to get up as early as 4.30. Arrived at the stands, they remain working until 9.30 or 10 at night in cities, and on Saturday and Sunday nights the closing hour is usually later. The boys eat their lunch in the rear of the establishment, this meal consisting generally of bread and olives or cheese. Supper is eaten after the boys reach "home," and after having eaten it they retire without removing their clothes. Even after their excessively long work day, two of the boys are required to wash the dirty rags used for polishing the shoes daily so they can be used the next day.
These boys are compelled to work every day in the year without vacation. The Immigration Commission found that they are under constant espionage, as at every stand the padrone places relatives who both work for him and act as spies on the other boys. Their employer instructs them to make false statements to questions asked by outsiders relative to their ages or conditions of work; many padrones also censor the letters written by the boys to their parents or others and examine all incoming mail, so as to forestall any efforts made by outsiders to induce the boys to leave for other places.
The majority of them cannot read or write their own language, and are unable to secure any education in this country because of their long work hours. According to the Immigration Commission their mental development is perceptibly arrested by the physical fatigue they suffer as a result of their long-sustained work without recreation. They receive no good advice, nor do they hear anything that would tend to elevate them morally. The Commission does not hesitate to brand these conditions as deplorable; it declares that the ravages on the constitutions of these boys laboring in shoe-shining establishments under this system are appalling. It attributes these effects to the following causes: long hours, close confinement to their work in poorly ventilated places, unsanitary living conditions, unhealthful manner of sleeping, excessive stooping required by their work, inadequate nourishment due to the "economy" of the padrones who furnish the food, the microbe-laden dust from shoes, the inhaling of injurious chemicals from the polish they use, the filthy condition of their bodies resulting from their failure to bathe and the lack of proper clothing for the winter season.
The Greek Consul General at Chicago, himself a physician, in a letter to the Immigration Inspector of that city under date of November 16, 1910, declared that as a result of his experience in examining and treating boy bootblacks he was convinced that all boys under eighteen years of age who labor for a few years in shoe-shining establishments, develop serious chronic stomachic and hepatic troubles which predispose them to pulmonary disease; he further declared that because of the conditions under which they work the majority of them ultimately contract tuberculosis, and that in his opinion it would be more humane and infinitely better for young Greeks to be denied admission into the United States than to be permitted to land if they are intended for such employment. Similar statements are made by other Greek physicians of Chicago.
The importation of Greek boys for use as bootblacks in the United States started about 1895, when the Greeks began to secure their monopoly of the industry by taking it away from the Italians and the Negroes, confining it, however, to stands or booths. Most of the early padrones have become financially independent. Their success attracted other Greeks to this industry, and in a short time almost every American city with a population of more than 10,000 had bootblack stands operated by them. Thus the traffic in Greek boys began to flourish.
The Bureau of Immigration helped to have a number of padrones indicted and convicted for offenses against the conspiracy statute and the Immigration Act, and these prosecutions made the importers very careful as to their manner of procedure. They now bring the boys here through the instrumentality of relatives in Greece in such a way that the padrones are almost beyond the reach of our criminal statutes.
In some cases it has been found that on leaving Greece for this country the boys are told to report to a saloon keeper in Chicago or in some other western city, hence they do not know their final destination. The saloon keeper has his instructions from the padrones and acts as their distributing agent. Padrones who operate in places distant from ports of entry easily avoid detection in this way.
In most cases these padrones derive an income from each boy of from $100 to as high as $500 a year. The Commission explains this as follows: The wages paid by the padrones now to Greek boys in shoe-shining establishments range from $80 to $250 per year, the average wages being from $120 to $180 per year. The boys are bound by agreement to turn their tips over to their padrones: in most cases as soon as the tipping patron has departed the boy deposits his tip in the register, while in other places tips are put into a separate box to which the padrone holds the key. In smaller cities and even in the poorest locations each boy's tips may exceed the sum of 50 cents per day, while in large cities they average higher. The Greek padrone, therefore, receives in return from tips alone nearly double the amount of wages paid. By deducting the wages and the annual boarding expenses for each boy—an expenditure seldom exceeding the sum of $40 per year—there is still a sum left to the padrone to pay him for the privilege of allowing the boy to work in his place. In other words, from the total amount of tips—money that belongs to the boy by right—the padrone is enabled to pay the boy's annual wages and still have a respectable sum left, all this independently of the legitimate profits of his business.
Relatives of the padrones in Greece often pay the steamship passage of boys with the understanding that they are to go to the United States and serve the padrone for one year to reimburse him for the passage money advanced. A mortgage is placed on the property of the boys' father as security, purporting that the father is to receive in cash an amount equal to the wages commonly paid to Greek bootblacks for one year in the United States, but as a matter of fact a steamship ticket and $12 or $15 in money are all that is given. The cash is to serve as "show money" to help secure admission to this country past the immigration officers at the ports of entry. Advertising is systematically carried on throughout all the provinces of Greece with a view to exciting the interest of the parents so that they will send their boys to the United States, and no efforts are spared in letting it become known that there is a great demand here for boy labor at the bootblack stands. The padrones themselves even go to Greece every two or three years, and while there manage to become godfathers to the children of many families; this relationship gives them great influence, and through it they are able to secure many boys for their service.
Concerning the prevention of these abuses, the report says: "In the investigations conducted by the Bureau of Immigration many conferences were held with United States attorneys in various jurisdictions with the view of instituting proceedings against padrones, if possible, under the peonage statutes. The attorneys generally agreed that under the evidence submitted to them those laboring in shoe-shining establishments are peons, but as the elements of indebtedness and physical compulsion to work out the indebtedness are missing, peonage laws cannot apply.
"Our immigration laws as now on the statute books provide specifically for the exclusion of boys under sixteen years of age only when not accompanied by one or both of their parents. This provision cannot apply to those boys that come in company with their parents, nor to those who have their parents in the United States, nor to such as successfully deceive immigration officers by posing as the sons of immigrants in whose charge they come. If held for special inspection at the ports of entry, these aliens can only be excluded if it appears that they are destined to an occupation unsuited to their tender years. In the absence of any such evidence, the boards of inquiry generally admit. Once landed, it becomes a hard matter to trace them and almost impossible to secure evidence in the majority of cases, for the boys understand that they will be punished by deportation. This knowledge makes them persistent in withholding any information as to the manner of their entry into the United States."[69]
Quite recently a young Greek bootblack who was working at a stand in an Indianapolis office building confessed to a truant officer that he was twelve years old, whereupon the chief truant officer of the city went to the place, but on his arrival the boy had changed his mind and declared that he was fourteen years old, and every one connected with the stand supported the statement. Nevertheless the chief truant officer proceeded with the case and found that the boy had been in this country only about six months, his parents being still in Greece. An older brother had a position as a railroad porter but did not stay with the little fellow even on the few occasions he was in the city. The boy lived at the home of the proprietor of the stand, whose relationship to him was a combination of employer and guardian. This man operated four stands in the city, and his dozen or more other employees all lived at the same place. The chief truant officer charged the man with having worked the boy from 7 A.M. to 9 P.M. seven days in the week, which was admitted before the Juvenile Court by the defendant, who also volunteered the information that the boy worked until 11 P.M. on holidays and on Saturdays. Of course the boy was being kept out of school.
In its issue of August 12, 1911, the Survey published a letter from a correspondent concerning a case of peonage among bootblacks in the city of Rochester, N.Y. This particular case was of a pale, thin, under-sized Greek lad who worked at a large stand in a local office building. He explained that he worked every day in the week from 7 A.M. to 9 P.M., including Sundays, and that on Saturdays the hours were lengthened to 11 P.M., adding that he had not been absent from his stand one day in four years except at one time when he was sick in the hospital.
A letter which was written by a Greek in Syracuse, N.Y., on May 4, 1911, to the editor of the Syracuse Post-Standard was printed in the same magazine.[70] This letter recites the wrongs of the bootblacks and is reproduced below because of its value as one of the rare protests which come from the victims of the system:—
"Before I came to this country from Greece, I heard that this country is free, but I don't think so. It is free for the Americans, not for the shoe shiners. In this city are too many shoe shiners' stands, and the boys which work there—they work fifteen hours a day, and Sunday, and almost eighteen on Saturdays. They make only from $12 to $18 a month and board, but we don't have any good board neither, but our patrons give us bread, tea and a piece of cheese for dinner, supper, but no breakfast. We don't have any time to go to the church, not in school, and without them we won't be good citizens. They won't let us read newspapers, because they are afraid if we learn something we will quit, but we can't quit because we can't speak English, and we can't find another job. Now I don't mean the boys working in the barber shops. They make $10 to $18 a week, and they don't work as hard as we do. We wish to work as they do. We want the public and Mr. Mayor to cut the hours from fifteen to ten, not Sundays, because we want time for school, and weekly work, not monthly. I think I wrote enough."