Child Labor in City Streets

by Edward Nicholas Clopper

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.