In Greater New York, and in its New Jersey purlieus which are so closely connected that they pulse with the life of the great city, there are 412 Italian banks with charters to do banking business and fully as many more that operate without charters. Many of these are combination businesses, money exchanges, steamship-ticket offices and banks, groceries and banks, saloons and banks, and often only the patrons are aware that there is a banking business at all.
Furthermore the banking business is conducted on a very different basis from that usual in American banks of the various grades. Every employer of Italian labor in New York city knows that if he wishes to get a gang of men quickly to go to a job of work he need only telephone to an Italian bank. It will be found to be a very effective employment bureau. I have known specific instances where two large corporations, one commercial and the other industrial, being suddenly in need of labor, sent to Italian banks and got gangs of men. In the one instance the commercial corporation agreed to pay the bank $7.20 per week per man, and the men received from the bank $5 per week each. In another the industrial corporation paid $1.50 per day, and the men got $1.10. Three banks were concerned in the two cases. I learned of the low wage from the men, and in answer to my questions they told me that they were under the control of the bank. So I made inquiry of the two corporations and ascertained the above facts.
It is unwise and unjust to say that all of the little Italian banks are conducted on these lines or indulge in the following practices. There are many which are conducted by honorable, trustworthy men; but the greater number are the arbiters of the welfare of the Italian laborer in this country. They “bureauize” him privately, as the Italian government is endeavoring and failing to do officially. The poverty-pinched Italian peasant who is minded to come to America, earn a few hundred dollars and return can go to a money-lender at home and deliver himself into his hands. His fare will be lent to him, with other necessary money, at a usurious rate, frequently with no security save that the peasant, often unable to read or write and densely ignorant of what awaits him, is consigned to the Italian bank in America of which the money lender is a correspondent. When he reaches Ellis Island he is met by his “cousin,” the bank’s representative, and is duly discharged to him in New York or shipped to him by rail. If he has any money of his own, he deposits it in the bank; the bank lends him more money if he needs it; the bank finds his place to sleep and eat; the bank sees that he has a doctor if he needs one; and in a day or two the ignorant peasant with others of his kind is despatched to work in the Subway, steve on the docks, excavate for new buildings, delve in the mines, or whatever the work may be, fulfilling the agreement which the bank has made to deliver labor. This is an evasion of the letter of the contract alien labor law and a flagrant violation of its spirit.
The bank, furthermore, is usually owned entirely or at least controlled by one man. It is the laborer’s address for his mail from home. It writes his letters for him if he is unable to write. It forwards his savings home, minus a percentage. It holds his passport and any other valuable papers and in every way makes itself so essential to him that it has him entirely in its control. Often he realizes that it does this for from five to thirty per cent of his wages; more often he never knows how much short of his full due he is getting. Worst of all are the naturalization frauds, the wholesale political mal-franchisements and increase of temporary immigration. In the last-named matter the banker rarely fails to urge the immigrant to return to Italy after he has saved two or three hundred dollars, because he will sell the immigrant his ticket home, clear the scores, realize his profits and be able to fill the place of the departing man with one who is “greener” and yet more ignorant. When the Italian has been here a year or two he begins to be difficult for the banker to handle, unless he be of that number who are born to be driven and sold like cattle.
As I have said there are many very worthy men engaged in banking and agency businesses among Italians, but there is a notable number who are born thieves and swindlers and have records at home which prevent their enjoyment of the balmy air of Italy for even one brief day. This matter is not overlooked at home. A joke in one of the Roman comic papers printed not long ago attests that.
A cashiered army officer is pictured as meeting a defaulting office-holder just emerging from a term in prison. This is the dialogue:
Army Officer.—“What is the game now? An honest life?”
Late Office-holder.—“No, I think I shall open an emigrant bank in New York.”
Army Officer.—“Indeed! I had thought of that myself.”