The _padroni_ are often very severe, and treat the children just like slaves. If they do not bring home a sufficient sum they are cruelly beaten and ill-treated, kept without food or nourishment, and sent hungry to bed. Very often these poor children do not get home from their weary rounds until past midnight, and they are often found utterly worn out, and fast asleep under an archway or upon a doorstep. They are wretchedly lodged, huddled together, four or five sleeping in a bed when they have one to sleep in at all; and being private houses, their lodgings are not in any way open to inspection or improvement. The traffic is most lucrative, and the gains the _padroni_ make out of these children are very large--so much so indeed, that after a few years they are able to retire to Italy and to live as country gentlemen afterwards. Sometimes a child will bring home as much as 10_s._ or more a day; and as often one _padrone_ has as many as fifty children under his care, spread about in companies in London and in the country under the supervision of his confederates, it will be seen that the total amount of a number of small sums accumulating daily must be very large. Of course sometimes the children bring home very little, and sometimes nothing at all; but the penalty in this case is to be beaten and kept without food, so fear stimulates their efforts, and they do not often return quite empty-handed. The effects of this evil system upon its victims is necessarily very bad. They do not go to school, they become very idle, and begin early to drink, smoke, and take all kinds of vices. They grow up immoral, illiterate, vicious, and low; a degraded class, exercising a most undesirable influence among the surrounding population. The girls especially all go to the bad, because they are sent into low drinking-shops, public-houses, and similar places. When they grow up, they all become beggars and vagrants by profession, and always remain so, for they have learned no other trade, and many can neither read nor write. Some remain in England, but many go over to Italy, and bring over children themselves. Sometimes, when they are seventeen or eighteen years old, they run away from the _padrone_ and set up on their own account.