The padrone is a Greek who has been in this country for some time, and knows the ways of the land. He decides to engage in the boot-blacking trade, and to secure his necessary helpers contracts for a number of boys from his native land to come over and work for him for a certain length of time, for a specified sum. The arrangement is sometimes made with the boys, sometimes with the parents, but almost always with the parents’ consent. When these boys arrive, they are taken to a room or set of rooms, which the padrone has engaged and which thenceforth are their “home.” They are at once put to work in the shop of the boss, and kept at work continuously thereafter, with practically no time off which they can call their own, except the meager allowance made for sleep. The hours are long—twelve, fourteen, or even more hours per day. The boss furnishes board and lodging, and pays a small sum in cash, perhaps $200 per year. The rooms are frightfully overcrowded, miserably ventilated, and wholly unhygienic. The boys do their own cooking, usually in relays of two, and the noon meal is eaten hurriedly in a room in the rear of the shop. The boys are prevented from attending night school, and are forbidden to talk to patrons. In every way the padrone tries to discourage their acquiring knowledge of American ways, for the system rests on ignorance. In a majority of cases the padrone takes all the tips given to the boys, and the boys excuse him on the grounds that wages are high and expenses great. It is obvious that the boys are wholly at the mercy of their boss, a mercy the quality of which is sadly strained. And when a boy does manage to get a grasp of the English language, and acquire a little independence, instead of turning traitor to the system, he sets up as a padrone himself. All investigators, and a number of the better class of Greeks in this country, agree that this system is a disgrace to the Greek race, or to any other race that practices it.[243]