National Reports
WYANT, JUDY WEITZMAN, WILLIAM K. Jr.
National Reports Atlanta: Joseph R. Fiszman. Boston: Courtney R. Sheldon. Chicago: Albert N. Votaw. Dallas: Bicknell Eubanks. Minneapolis: Sam Romer. New Orleans: Stephen Ryan. Richmond: Lawrence...
...A shortage of teachers and school facilities, which existed before the new influx, also takes its toll here as it does with all children...
...Louis Post-Dispatch, which is friendly to organized labor, preceded court action...
...What is more, the May or and several municipal officials are now visiting Puerto Rico...
...since then, the Federal investigation has gained momentum...
...Since the end of World War II, when cut-rate air travel was made available, they have been arriving in the city at the rate of 50,000 a year, and their sudden influx has resulted in many difficulties...
...Testimony against some defendants has, in fact, followed closely the pattern laid down in stories written by reporter Carl Baldwin since 1951...
...According to information compiled by the Census Bureau and Columbia University, almost all of them are literate...
...that some agents had acquired an interest in contracting concerns...
...His case involved three shakedowns, or attempted shakedowns, of contractors, and a jury found him guilty after only two hours' deliberation...
...Richmond: Lawrence King...
...The rest is about evenly split between children and women of working age, many of whom have jobs...
...And a greater proportion of Puerto Rican women are of child-bearing age than in any other group...
...he is in a world where plenty of money is being made, and he knows it...
...In addition, the newcomers are staggering New York's public-school system, for Puerto Rican women have more children than those of any other origin in the city on the same economic, level...
...They have a Spanish cultural background...
...San Francisco: Frank Mankiewicz...
...Louis: William Wyant Jr...
...Since their migration is a family one and they could easily become a stable metropolitan group, they could make up New York's tax loss to outlying areas...
...that some had profited illegally from placement of insurance under welfare plans, and that union demands had driven business concerns from the city...
...Initial bids were rejected...
...they are subject to all the terms of opprobrium that second-or third-generation Americans can think up for them...
...The organization, which estimates that it has contact with approximately 40,000 Puerto Rican New Yorkers during the year, has a two-fold program...
...Louis business agent for the AFL Building Laborers and Hodcarriers Union...
...They also provide English classes, and many have hired Spanish-speaking personnel to acquaint new arrivals with the rudiments of New York's labor system...
...It instructs these groups as to how they can best aid the migrants and helps them put out many valuable publications...
...Judge Moore sentenced him to 12 years in prison and fined him $8,000...
...33 of the total were indicted under the Federal anti-racketeering law...
...As Clarence Senior, chief of the Migration Division in New York (also a sociology professor at Columbia University), points out: "This is probably the first time that the government of an area from which people were migrating has taken such an interest in the welfare of the migrants and in the communities in which they live...
...Disclosures in the St...
...But the important thing to note is that the number of Puerto Ricans arriving in New York each year just about equals the city's loss of salaried workers to the suburbs...
...Before they can be assimilated, however, the local citizenry and public groups will have to help the Puerto Ricans solve their problems...
...Getting contractors to talk about shakedown attempts, successful or unsuccessful, was not easy for obvious reasons...
...That was last January...
...per cent left jobs to come here (the majority having been employed continuously for two years before migrating) : they tend to be semi-skilled, but onefifth are skilled...
...large families—in some cases several families—are forced to live in small, run-down apartments...
...An able and vigorous prosecutor, Max H. Goldschein, special Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department's trial division, is in charge...
...First to be tried was Paul H. Hulahan, a St...
...Few contractors would bid on the job, and those who did padded their estimates to meet unpredictable costs...
...Mayor Wagner recently noted its importance and appointed new members to carry on its activities...
...It was in that year that the Air Force's $24,818,000 construction program at Scott Base, across the river near Belleville, Illinois, was endangered...
...Several agencies have already taken constructive measures to improve this situation...
...First, it helps Puerto Ricans find employment, stresses the importance of educational advancement, and urges participation in community organizations...
...This is particularly true because Puerto Ricans make up the first really large group to seek acceptance here since passage of the 1924 immigration laws...
...The second part of its program is directed at schools, settlement houses, churches, unions and other social agencies...
...Perhaps the most far-reaching and significant program in operation here, however, is the one run by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Department of Labor...
...he moves, often, in a plushy hotel atmosphere far removed from the hod, the hoist and the trowel...
...It charged that union business agents sent their best workers to certain contractors, their poorest to others...
...At present, however, their median earnings are identical with the city's non-white population—approximately 70 per cent of the white wage...
...He must deal with high-powered, high-salaried executives...
...The time has come to put a stop to it, and we are going to start right now...
...Reheating the Melting Pot By Judy Weitzman New York New York City's population now includes an estimated half million first- and second-generation Puerto Ricans...
...Louis The Federal grand jury here recently reported to United States District Judge George H. Moore that a few union leaders hold "a great concentration of power," and that the handling of union funds has been characterized by inadequate control and loose accounting...
...Contrary to popular belief, the Puerto Ricans who come here were not misfits or drifters on their native island...
...40 per cent of New York's Puerto Rican population comprises men of working age...
...Four grand juries have indicted 38 union men, or former union men, in eastern Missouri and southern Illinois...
...Many of these children —though the number is less than one might expect—hear nothing but Spanish at home and have difficulty adjusting to school...
...In sentencing Hulahan, Judge Moore called him a menace to society and declared that citizens would sleep better knowing that he was under lock and key...
...One might wonder what the late Samuel Gompers would think of a saying current here among the cynical: that a labor baron has not really made the grade until he can hand a headwaiter $5 without looking embarrassed...
...The unions, for example, are investigating cases where Puerto Ricans have unknowingly worked in substandard conditions and at illegal pay scales...
...Louis...
...Recent indictments have involved influential union leader-politicians of both major parties as well as small fry...
...But their situation is not unique...
...Grand Jury Probes Missouri Labor By William K. Wyant Jr...
...it is safe to assume that they will one day be merely another of the many groups that inhabit this country's largest metropolis...
...many do not speak English...
...If power tends to corrupt, then the union business agent who can tie up a multi-million-dollar project is subject to a very corrupting influence indeed...
...The evidence which gradually came out, however, documented a charge that labor racketeers' hold on key building unions and some major contractors was a threat to expansion of St...
...Indictment is not tantamount to conviction, and all the charges have not been proven to date, but to a liberal observer it seems clear that Lord Acton's observation about power applies to labor people as well as to captains, kings and statesmen...
...During Mayor Impellitteri's administration, too...
...the city established a Committee on Puerto Rican Affairs...
...If the Puerto Rican is allowed to become an integral part of the city, if he is given an opportunity to compete for better jobs and improve his living conditions, he will be an asset rather than a liability to New York...
...approximately 20 per cent are non-white and therefore have to suffer added hardships...
...The grand jury's report was part of an extremely unflattering picture of high-level union activity which has been given the public by Federal court action since last summer...
...There are men and women," the Judge said, "who tremble at the very thought of what this man and men like him have been doing in this community, and they have been doing it for some time...
Vol. 37 • June 1954 • No. 26
