It goes without saying that all of these operations, which involve bringing immigrants into the country under agreement to labor, are in direct violation of law. The contract labor clause of the immigration law, if strictly interpreted and enforced, would exclude practically every immigrant who had the slightest assurance of employment awaiting him. In fact, however, as has been shown above (page 154), the courts have so interpreted the act as to include under contract laborers only those who have a definite contract, or those who come in response to a specific offer or promise of employment.[[246]] This kind of a promise or offer is relatively rare. Nothing so definite is required to induce unskilled laborers to emigrate. Broad and general assurances of employment awaiting them are sufficient. The wide discrepancy between the letter and the interpretation of the law is unfortunate. This section of the law is the one upon which immigrants are coached more thoroughly than on any other, and in addition to the large number of immigrants who violate the most lenient interpretation, there must be many others whom the courts would not hold guilty, who nevertheless believe themselves so and suffer a corresponding degradation of character. A third element in the situation, which complicates it still further, is the interpretation practically placed on the law by the immigration authorities, which is apparently more strict than that of the courts. The whole matter of contract labor needs to be thoroughly reconsidered.
In addition to the activities of labor agents and employers, state boards do a good deal to encourage immigration, sometimes keeping within the spirit of the law, and sometimes exceeding it.
Another member of this same nefarious family is the peonage system. For a general description of the system the reader is referred to Professor Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, chapter on Labor. It has been judicially defined in the following words: “Peonage is a status or condition of compulsory service based upon the indebtedness of the peon to the master. The basic fact is indebtedness.”[[247]] The customary or typical case is where a laborer receives advances of some sort from his employer, and then leaves his service before the terms of his engagement have been fulfilled, certainly before he has repaid his employer for the advances. His employer then procures his arrest, either under a charge of obtaining money under false pretenses, or under the labor statutes of the various states. The employer makes a new agreement with the laborer, that if he will return to his employment, and work out the balance of his indebtedness, the criminal procedure will be dropped.
This might seem, on the face of it, a thoroughly just proceeding. The trouble is that the employer has every advantage. The laborer is ignorant, and very often the conditions under which he is to work are grossly misrepresented to him. Lack of forethought, moreover, is one of the chief characteristics of ignorant and unintelligent men. The money or goods advanced to them occupy a very disproportionate place in their minds, compared to the work which they agree to perform in the future. The employer, on the other hand, knows all about the conditions, and just how much he can afford to pay, and is able to give himself the best of the bargain by a broad margin.
The Immigration Commission made a thorough investigation of this subject, and found evidences of peonage in every state in the Union, except Oklahoma and Connecticut. In the south, where peonage is supposed to be most rampant, it was discovered that most of the peons were supplied by labor agents in New York City, who seriously misrepresented the conditions under which they were to work, and in many cases sent out men wholly unfitted for the work which they were to do. In the south, however, in spite of the existence of many cases, it appears that the vigorous prosecutions, and the willingness of juries to convict, have pretty well broken up the tendency toward peonage in connection with aliens.
In the west and northwest, cases of technical peonage were found in the shoe-shining industry, and in some lumber and railroad camps. But there have been practically no attempts at prosecution for peonage in these states.
The most surprising fact established by the Commission in this respect is that probably the most complete system of peonage in the whole country has existed, not in the south, but in Maine. Here the employers of labor in the lumber camps have been obliged to secure their labor mostly from other states and in the main from immigrants. Boston is the great labor market for this industry. The immigrants are given very misleading accounts of the conditions of their labor, and are engaged to work for their employers for a specified time. They are then taken into the forests, sometimes having to walk sixty or seventy miles to their place of labor, and kept in the forest all winter.
When they learn the extent to which they have been deceived, many of them are inclined to run away. However, in February, 1907, a law was passed making it a criminal offense for a person to “enter into an agreement to labor for any lumbering operation or in driving logs and in consideration thereof receive any advances of goods, money, or transportation, and unreasonably and with intent to defraud, fail to enter into said employment as agreed and labor a sufficient length of time to reimburse his employer for said advances and expenses.” The general interpretation of the courts has been to ignore the provision about intent to defraud, or at least to put the burden of proof on the defendant, though it is not specifically provided in the law that failure or refusal to fulfill the terms of the contract shall be prima facie evidence of an intent to defraud, as is the case in the contract labor law of Minnesota and other states. Employers in other branches of industry have sought to secure the same protection, but in vain, so that this law is iniquitous, not only from the point of view of peonage, but also because it is class legislation. A considerable amount of peonage has resulted from this law in Maine.[[248]]
The basis of all the evils which have just been discussed has been seen to lie in the ignorance and helplessness of the newly arrived immigrant. Knowing nothing of the language of the country, or of its methods of doing business, and having no connections with the industrial system of the country, he is forced to rely on some one who can supply these factors. Most naturally he turns to some one of his fellow-countrymen who has been in this country longer. From that time on, sometimes for many years, his career is dominated by the older immigrant to a remarkable degree. Out of this connection has grown up a peculiar set of institutions, commonly known as immigrant banks, which have the power for great good or evil to the immigrant, according to the character of the men who have them in charge. The origin and nature of these banks is as follows:
The foremost ambition of the average immigrant is the saving of money. The purposes of this saving are many—to guarantee his own future prosperity, to ease the lot of friends and relatives at home, to pay off mortgages and other debts, and, perhaps the most important of all, to provide the means whereby friends and relatives on the other side may join him in the new world. The prepaid ticket is the final end of much of the saving of aliens. These accumulations naturally come in small amounts. Out of a month’s earnings, the immigrant may save $10 or $15 or even as high as $30. The living conditions of many of the immigrants make it unsafe for them to try to keep this money in their lodgings; they are unfamiliar with, and distrustful of, American banks. The disposition of their savings which seems to them the wisest and safest is to intrust them to a fellow-countryman who is familiar with the ways of the country and has some means of keeping them safe. This individual may be the padrone or boss, the lodging-house keeper, a saloon keeper or grocer, or the steamship agent from whom the immigrant expects eventually to purchase the prepaid ticket. In time, immigrants in these positions get into the habit of receiving small sums from their fellow-countrymen for safe keeping or on deposit against some future purchase. As these amounts accumulate, they become of considerable value to the holder, who may deposit them in a regular savings bank at interest, to his own profit, or may invest them in his business, or may make other speculative investments with them. To attract such deposits, and increase their amount, he adds the term “bank” to the name of his business, so that he now becomes a “Grocer and Banker,” a “Ticket Agent and Banker,” etc. This adds a dignity to his position and increases the confidence of the people in his integrity.