WAGES PAID ITALIAN AND OTHER LABORERS ENGAGED IN SURFACE AND BUILDING EXCAVATION, TUNNEL BUILDING, AND DEEP FOUNDATION WORK IN NEW YORK CITY, 1906. Union scale, Italian excavators, $1.75 per day of 9 hours. Italian and Austrian freight handlers, New York depots, $1.90 per day of 10 hours, with time and a half for overtime and Sunday work. In another part of this article it is shown that, according to the report of the bureau of industrial statistics of Pennsylvania for 1905, more than 43 per cent of the anthracite mine workers of that State who reported their nationality were Slavs, Hungarians, and Italians. A very large number of these have stepped out of the ranks of unskilled laborers and have become miners, and, excluding Italians, about 50 per cent of the inside mine workers are Slavs. The statisticians of the Anthracite Coal Commission, after a minute examination of the coal companies' books, showed that for 1901-2 the average earnings of contract coal miners working at tonnage or car rates were, for five of the principal companies, $2.41, $2.47, $2.48,$2.36 and $2.57 per day, respectively. The award of the commission added 10 per cent to these earnings, and the operation of the sliding scale increased this still further for each year. The average increase for 1903, on the basis of the sliding scale, was 3 per cent, 4.3 per cent for 1904, 4 per cent for 1905, 5 per cent for 1906, and 6 per cent for the month of January, 1907. According to the report of the bureau of industrial statistics for 1905 in the bituminous coal and coke regions of Pennsylvania the Slavs, Hungarians, and Italians are over 51 per cent of all mine. workers reporting their nationality. The total number in 1905 was 153,141. THE PADRONE COMMISSARY SYSTEM. The act of Congress of July 4, 1864, has often been charged with being responsible for the introduction of the padrone system into the United States. It was entitled "An act to encourage immigration." It provided among other things that immigrants while abroad might make contracts pledging the wages of their labor for a term not exceeding twelve months, to repay the expenses of their immigration, which should be valid in law and might be enforced in the courts of this country; that no such immigrant should be compulsively enrolled for military service during the existing insurrection (the civil war) unless he declared his intention to become a citizen. On account of the industrial depression beginning in 1893, the Secretary of the Treasury, on June 13, 1894, appointed an "immigration investigating commission," to inquire into the effect of the laws, and especially to investigate and report, among other things: "Whether the padrone system exists in this country; and if so, to what extent and among what classes of immigrants, and what measures can be taken under existing laws to break it up and protect American laborers against its evil effect upon wages." On October 7, 1895, the commission reported on "The Padrone System," saying: "The act of 1864 for the encouragement of immigration, which gave contractors, manufacturers, and employers power to contract with and import laborers from Europe to take the places of American workmen, is partially responsible for the beginnings of this system. It was only natural that during a period of practically unrestricted immigration purely commercial motives should have the fullest play and that human beings should thereby be victimized. The Italians were the first to be exploited in large numbers by the contractors." "There is little doubt that a similar padrone system exists among Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians," was the opinion expressed by the commission, and that the subject "demands a far more thorough investigation than the commission has yet been able to make." The statement of the immigration commission's report of 1895 has often been reprinted, namely, that the immigration act of 1864 was followed by the dispatch of agents to Italy to secure Italian cheap labor through the padrone. The tables following give statistics of immigration for the years following the passage of the law of 1864. The first table shows that during the five years 1864 to 1868, when the law was in force permitting such contract laborers to come in, only 5,740 Italian immigrants of all ages and both sexes came into the United States in a total of 1,289,323 immigrants, averaging less than one-half of 1 per cent of the immigrants of all nationalities. ITALIAN, SLAVIC, AND TOTAL IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES DURING THE LIFE OF THE ACT OF CONGRESS AUTHORIZING THE HIRING OF LABORERS IN EUROPE UNDER CONTRACT, 1864 TO 1868. [Compiled from Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration for the year ended June 30, 1905, page 38.] The law was repealed in 1868, and for fourteen years after, or until 1882, there was no United States law governing immigration, and not until 1885 was there any law prohibiting contract labor. During the seventeen years following 1868 the total, the Italian, and the Slavic immigration are shown in the following table: ITALIAN, SLAVIC, AND TOTAL IMMIGRATION, 1869 TO 1885. [Compiled from Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration for the year ended June 30, 1905, pages 38 to 40.] This table shows that in the period when contract laborers were brought in without let or hindrance, during the twenty-two years from 1864 to 1885, in a total immigration of 7,817,168 only 175,389 Italians, or 2.2 per cent, took advantage of the inducements offered, and the Slavs constituted only 4.7 per cent of the total immigrants. The Italian padrone, boss, or middleman developed in the United States after 1885, when the Italians began coming in largely in creased numbers. He did not follow any similar occupation in Italy, since the conditions of living, of wages, and of employment in that country were such that employment agencies of this character could not exist. He was shrewder, cleverer, and more unscrupulous than his fellows. He improved on the systems of swindling he found, creating the American padrone system, and perfecting it by establishing intimate relationship through agents, friends, and correspondence in Italy and this country with Italian laborers coming and returning. What the padrone system was in the years preceding 1895 is told in the report of the immigration investigating commission under date of October 7, 1895. At page 26 it says: A contractor who had a large enterprise on hand, and desired to secure labor therefor at the lowest possible price, appealed to an Italian banker. The banker, through agents in Italy, engaged the necessary number of laborers and brought them here on prepaid tickets, from each of which he received a commission. On landing, the men were taken in hand by his agent, distributed among boarding houses under his control, and charged extortionate rates for board. When the banker finally assigned them to their work, he collected a commission for so doing, both from them and the contractor. While employed they were forced to live together in shanties owned or hired by his agent, to pay exorbitant rents, and to buy all their provisions from this agent at enormous prices. All money sent home by them was transmitted through the banker, and for this service a large fee was charged in addition to the rate of exchange. When they were ready to return to Italy the banker secured another profit on the return tickets. In a word, from the time these migratory laborers were engaged in Italy till they returned thither, they were under the control of the banker and a constant source of profit to him. The commission has knowledge that within five years padroni having from 500 to 600 people employed on sewers and waterworks deducted from their wages 10 and 15 cents a day for procuring them the employment, and practiced on them most of the impositions already noted. Actual dishonesty on the part of the banker, though less frequent than extortion, was not uncommon. Commissions were charged for securing work when no work was secured. Men were turned away without cause, that more commissions might be collected from new men. Payment was refused for the last few days' work on a job. Fees were charged for sending to Italy money which really landed in the bankers' pockets. Only last year [1894], in fact, not less than $100,000 was actually stolen from Italian workingmen by half a dozen bankers in New York, Boston, and Newark. The report states that "even after the passage of the contract labor law" of 1885 the importation of Italian labor continued, and that circulars were sent throughout the State of Wisconsin in 1886 by an Italian company in New York advertising gangs of men for grading, mining, street cleaning, snow shoveling, breaking stone, repairing washouts, and laying ties and water and gas mains at figures that would repay inquiry. "Contractors will find," boasted these circulars, "that the authority of this company over the men it furnishes is of special advantage in all dealings it may have with them." The report continues: The recent more rigid enforcement of the contract labor laws and the cooperation of the Italian Government have done much toward breaking up so much of the padrone system as has to do with the direct importation of labor under contract. The bankers interested even claim that the padrone system no longer exists, that the recent industrial depression has shut off the possibility of employment, and that so many cheap laborers have already been imported that it is useless to bring more. There is doubtless some truth in this claim. Nevertheless, it is on the whole, misleading. It must be borne in mind that a demand for higher wages comes even from Italian workmen, after they have been in this country for a time, and that on this account a plentiful supply of the cheapest labor can be kept up only by frequent importations. The claim is further misleading, in that it ignores the shifting about by the padroni of the large bodies of Italian workmen already here. The Italian laborer comes now, not under direct contract perhaps, but with the knowledge that he need only go to the Italian quarter in the port of his arrival to get work, as his countrymen have done before him. Once in this quarter, he falls under the influence of the padrone, and thereafter is at his disposition. The padroni still manipulate immigrant labor very much as they please, and it is thus still possible for a contractor to secure within a few hours any number of Italian laborers, skilled or unskilled, at wages 33 to 50 per cent below the American standard. This is an injury as serious, perhaps even more serious, to the latter than direct importation because of the greater ease and quickness with which their labor can be supplanted. The report cites a number of instances of overcharging and excessive fees by Italian padrones, and of cases where Italians paid fees and fares and were victimized by padrones, no work resulting. The most common form of abuses by padrones was to take commissions ranging from $1 to $6, promising work, then neither furnish work nor refund the money. Another was to secure the railroad tickets to take the men to their places of work and make them pay an extra price for them. They sent laborers home after a few days' work without reason and employed new gangs for the sake of new commissions. Besides the commissions, they exacted a sort of weekly or monthly tax during the whole time of work. The laborers were forced to lodge in dirty shanties, and those who refused were made to pay for lodgings in them just the same. The men were obliged to buy all provisions from the boarding houses connected with the work, and every week the quantity of food was determined, the |