Home     Photo Gallery     Classroom     Documents
TOLAN COMMITTEE ON INTERNAL MIGRATION

Publishing Information

TESTIMONY OF FLORENTINO IRIZARRY, NEW YORK, N.Y.

TESTIMONY OF FLORENTINO IRIZARRY, NEW YORK, N.Y.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you give your name to the reporter?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Florentino Irizarry.
The CHAIRMAN. Where do you live?
Mr. IRIZARRY. 1576 Lexington Ave
The CHAIRMAN. How old are you?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Thirty-seven years old.
The CHAIRMAN. Are you married?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Married.
The CHAIRMAN. How long have you been in this country?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Twenty-one years.
The CHAIRMAN. You came straight from Puerto Rico?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Straight from Puerto Rico.

REASONS FOR MIGRATION FROM PUERTO RICO

The CHAIRMAN. Well, tell us about when you came here, what did you do?
Mr. IRIZARRY. In 1919 I was Pretty near 17 years old and I had finished my public-school education in a small town in the center of the island, and I don't know how I got the notion that I wanted to further my education. It had come to a standstill there with the eighth grade, so I decided--I said that I don't know where I got the notion but I got it--so that I decided to work over there, save some money and buy my way to New York City, which I did, and I landed here in May of 1919.
Mr. PARSONS. What did you work at to make that money?
Mr. IRIZARRY. I worked there in a general store, as a clerk.
Mr. PARSONS. What were your wages there?
Mr. IRIZARRY. My wages there were $8 a month, working 11 hours a day.
Mr. PARSONS. Anything furnished you in the way of food?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Meals, of course.
Mr. PARSONS. No home or house rent?
Mr. IRIZARRY. No lodging of any sort.
The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead.

WORK HISTORY IN NEW YORK

Mr. IRIZARRY. When I came to New York City I found myself in a strange environment. That is to say, I had realized that I had a language handicap in the first place, my education of the eighth grade being just enough to give me a notion about common ordinary words, but not sufficient to carry on a conversation with anybody.
Since my notion in coming here was primarily to further my education I began to cast around for a suitable school, but I could not find it, and then my notion of school disappeared for awhile and I got a job as a porter and general utility man in a hotel here.
That employment I kept from 1919 to 1921.
In 1921 we had a depression here and I was laid off my job.
I took the opportunity then to go back to the island and see my folks, and investigate conditions there, and I stayed there for about 7 months and I tried to get some sort of a job.
In the meantime, here, I had studied through a correspondence school, and I thought I would be able to be a teacher in a school down there in a small town, but I failed. Therefore, 7 months afterward, I again came to New York City, and again I became a hotel porter in a different hotel. I worked there until 1924.
Then, in 1926, I found my way to high school, from which I graduated in 1930.
In the meantime, finding that my hotel work conflicted with my education, I decided to save some money and go in a business of my own. Accordingly I opened up a small grocery store of my own and stayed there, in the meantime furthering my education.
The CHAIRMAN. Where was that grocery store?
Mr. IRIZARRY. It was at 209 East One Hundred and Second Street, New York City.
Then I stayed in business, on and on; that is to say, I established myself twice, and between 1924 and 1935 I worked in grocery stores either at my own business or as somebody else's clerk. My own store I lost through robbery-I had two consecutive robberies in 1 week, and that put me out of business.
Mr. PARSONS. Right there, how much did you lose in each of those robberies? Was it the stock of goods, or cash?
Mr. IRIZARRY. I went into that business primarily to get $500 in order to go through law school, and it seemed to me that if I could double up that money I could not only go through law school but have some funds left. I put up the store and everything went well, but then one night a policeman came to my house and told me that the store had been broken into and when I went there my total stock of $625 of Spanish oils and a species of chocolate of export trade had been cleared away.
Then, well, I tried to get along just as I could and 2 days later--the first robbery was in front of the store--and then 2 days later they broke through the back of the store and they cleaned away something like some additional $225 in beans, rice, and other goods of the trade.
Mr. PARSONS. Most of your trade came out of Puerto Rican people?

RELIEF RECORD

Mr. IRIZARRY. Puerto Rican people; yes. So that put an end to my legal career and me out of business, too, and then, because times were very bad, I could not get any credit to continue so I decided to give up in desperation, and after that-well, after that I had to go into relief. I had already completed something like 90 points of college work, but in spite of this preparation I could not get anything else but pick and shovel work, and I worked 2 1/2 years as a laborer, that is, 1 year first on relief and afterward they put me as a laborer and there I worked for 2 1/2 years.
Mr. PARSONS. On W. P. A.?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Yes. After 2 1/2 years I began to get sick and tired of the job and I began to cast around and use some pressure and finally I was put in as a teacher of English for the foreign-born, and there I worked for 2 years, until August of 1939, when I was let go on account of the 18-month law.
The CHAIRMAN. Who did you use the pressure on?
Mr. IRIZARRY. To be exact, I was in college and I had been doing very well, but my professors noticed that I was not doing so well after working 2 years as a laborer. I was absent too many times and my work was bad and my marks were worse, so one day my Latin professor asked me, "What is the matter with you? Look, you have a splendid record, and here all of a sudden you are sinking down," and so well, then I told him the story of how I had to go out and work and travel to school 2 1/2 hours, and I was not getting sufficient food and things like that so he gave me a letter, and he went to the Spanish Department to get another letter of recommendation.
In all, I got about four letters of recommendation, so I came down to the W. P. A. offices, and in a week's time I found myself a teacher. I had the educational qualifications, however.
Mr. SPARKMAN. May I interject there? It was not so much pressure that you used, it was simply calling to their attention the fact that you were qualified?
Mr. IRIZARRY. I should not say "pressure"; what I mean to say is that when I went there and asked for a job, although they were employing people as teachers, with only high school and 2 years of undergraduate work at that time, then a man interviewed me who said he could not give me a class unless I had a degree.
Now, I did not report that to some responsible agency because somehow or other I was out of contact with the workaday world. When a man does what I did--for 15 years I have known nothing but books, books, and odd jobs, in order to support myself.
Naturally, when a man in my position is confronted with a practical problem he is a failure, and that is what happened to me.
Well, when I was told that I could not get a clerk's or a teacher's job, I asked for a W. P. A. laboring job, so that when I said I used pressure, I meant that I had to resort to something other than my own personal qualifications and my ability. So it is my belief that I sit here as a representative of the Puerto Rican who came here in the early wave of 1919, and probably not so much to get away from Puerto Rico as to satisfy a longing for educational opportunities. At the age of 16--my father had a piece of land--and I had not worked in my life, and did not know what life was like, but I was more of the visionary, of the dreamer type. And so I came here, because first of all knowledge in itself was seductive to my mind and there was lurking in my mind the idea that, if a man was hardworking and willing and capable, somehow or other there must be a way for him in life, either in Puerto Rico or New York City.
Well, so you see, that lurked in my mind; but primarily I came here to seek an education and to work, but I did not come here because I was bad off over there. Then I had no consciousness of what being well-off in life meant. And I came here to work for the first time in my life.
The CHAIRMAN. What are you doing now?
Mr. IRIZARRY. I am not doing anything, that is, since I left W. P. A. I have been trying to establish a private teaching business; that is to say, teaching both English to the foreign-born and Spanish to the Americans, but I have not been able to make anything out of it.
The CHAIRMAN. How long have you been unemployed?
Mr. IRIZARRY. One year.

REASONS FOR PUERTO RICAN MIGRATION

The CHAIRMAN. Can you tell in a few brief words what causes the Puerto Ricans to migrate to this country?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Well, that problem will have to be subdivided in three divisions.
The CHAIRMAN. Don't subdivide it too much.
Mr. IRIZARRY. All right. Of course it would be an injustice to say that the Puerto Rican comes here for anything but the fundamental problem that has caused man to migrate throughout the ages. We come here because Puerto Rico does not afford the opportunities for working and developing a fuller life such as a man conceives he is born for.
We have 29 high schools in Puerto Rico, teaching us what the larger and fuller life means in European civilization; that is, we have a concept of what life should be, and then we find that it is not that. We want work and can't get it. We find that the small island is in the hands of two or three centralized corporations, whose only ideal in life seems to be profit, regardless of human welfare, and we are confronted with the problem that we either get away from the island or we starve there--or well, yes, practically starve. In the great majority of cases, we get out or starve.
Now, the Puerto Rican is naturally a lover of his own native land and I am quite sure in my contacts here with the Puerto Rican element, and my own personal experience, we know that we create a problem here in New York City. For example, we know that through language handicaps, through race, through different cultural traditions, we are not an assimilable element, and we know that as conditions are today we are distinctly a problem for the city, and for its welfare organizations.
We know that in many cases we are looked down upon, we know too that in many more cases we are not wanted, and we know, too, that we have a piece of land of our own that we love, you see, and we prefer to stay here rather than go there; and why? Because we are responding to the elemental urges of human nature; that is, food, primarily, and then of course all the other corollaries of human life.
Take the problem, for example, of education.
Now, in Puerto Rico education is free and it is not. It is true that we have 29 high schools in the island but if a student finishes public school and then he wants to get a high school education, well, in the first place, he has to pay for his books, and secondly the number admitted is very limited because they have not the facilities, so that the whole problem boils down to this: That unless one belongs to the middle class of people, to the people who have anything, any standing in life, you are not going to get your high school education.
And as for college opportunities, well they are nonexistent. That is to say, we have a university and a college but of course those are paying institutions and are only for the "toppers," but take a man like me--today I have a B. A., completed in 1939 in the College of the City of New York, and I am now working for my master's, and now that could not have been done in Puerto Rico, and well, you see, then, why I am here.
Mr. OSMERS. May I ask you, what do you live on at the present time?
Mr. IRIZARRY. At the present time, I am conducting classes, private classes in both Spanish and English.
Mr. OSMERS. What income does that give you?
Mr. IRIZARRY. It is variable. When I started a year ago I was fortunate enough to get it up to 19 people, that is $1 a week each, and now it has dwindled down to about six.
Mr. OSMERS. Can you live on $6 a week in New York?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Well, I should not say that I am living on that now. You see, I have been working up to a year ago, and I have been trying very hard to get away from the home relief and W. P. A., but it seems to me it will be practically impossible.
Mr. OSMERS. Do you receive home relief today?
Mr. IRIZARRY. I do not, but I think that I shall have to apply very soon.
Mr. OSMERS. Do you have savings laid aside that you use to augment your $6 a week?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Well, that was practically negligible. Those were exhausted long ago.
Mr. OSMERS. I am still trying to find out how you can live in New York on $6 a week?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Well, it seems incredible but that is the actual thing.
Mr. OSMERS. You are living on $6 a week?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Yes.
Mr. OSMERS. Tell me what is the general condition among the Puerto Rican people in the city of New York, and what you know of them today, in the United States?

PRESENT ECONOMIC CONDITION OF PUERTO RICANS IN NEW YORK

Mr. IRIZARRY. The condition of the Puerto Ricans in the city of New York today? You mean economically?
Economically, it is absolutely desperate. That is to say, most of us are living off relief and W. P. A., and as long as we have that we are going to eat, but when that is taken away from us, we don't know where the next meal is coming from. Now, of course I said we are living, you see, and when I said "desperate" it means that none of us, or rather, a limited number of us, have any jobs in private industry, a very limited number; and the rest of the people are just being taken care of by the city, and as far as that goes, that is all the means of a livelihood that we have. That is, this applies to the great majority.
Mr. OSMERS. You said that there are very few of them that are employed in private industry?
Mr. IRIZARRY. I said, yes; relatively speaking, that is right.

LACK OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING

Mr. OSMERS. Now, tell me, are the Puerto Ricans who are in New York City today? who are on relief trained, or prepared, or educated to perform any kind of labor other than that of the most menial kind?
Mr. IRIZARRY. No, I should say that they are not. They are not prepared. You see one of our handicaps is precisely that, lack of vocational training.
Mr. OSMERS. That is what I wanted to point out and to get into the record.
Mr. IRIZARRY. Very decidedly, that is our handicap.
Mr. OSMERS. Is the city of New York, or the Federal Government, or the State department of New York State making available to the unemployed Puerto Ricans in New York any opportunities for vocational training
Mr. IRIZARRY. No, I should say not. As a matter of fact, I was a teacher in the W. P. A.
In the past 4 or 5 years the Federal Government has been making a decided effort to rehabilitate precisely that type of family. But it was my experience that these schools were concentrated in the better class of neighborhoods, and to my astonishment, these schools were not to be found, for example, in the Harlem section where the Puerto Rican population is centered. As far as I understand, all they will worry about is the problem of language. All of their worry was whether the Puerto Rican spoke English or not, but apparently the vocational training did not make any difference.
Mr. OSMERS. Would you say that the W. P. A. school program as it is established here was of no use to the pupils of those schools as a means to assist them to make a living?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Decidedly not.
Mr. OSMERS. They are of no use?
Mr. IRIZARRY. No use at all.
Mr. OSMERS. I see. It has been my impression that these schools concentrate mainly upon the teaching of cultural subjects.
Mr. IRIZARRY. Well, I would say--I would not say that.
Mr. OSMERS, You would not say that?
Mr. IRIZARRY. No; of course, the emphasis was placed there because it partook so much of the nature of Americanization; the emphasis was in English classes but they had a good slice of vocational training too, because in the schools where I taught there were definite programs calculated to rehabilitate people and make them useful in industry, so I would not say that it was one-sided.

UNADVISABLE TO RETURN PUERTO RICANS TO ISLAND

Mr. OSMERS. Now, in your opinion, would you say that a majority of those Puerto Ricans residing in New York City, would you say they were better or here or would you say that they were better off in Puerto Rico?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Better off here, in the long run. The fact is that they are here precisely because they think so, and in the long run they will be better off here.
Mr. OSMERS. I was going to ask this question: Would the Federal Government or the government of the city of New York be wise in providing transportation for these people to go back to Puerto Rico if they wanted to?
Mr. IRIZARRY. It would not be acceptable, as conditions are over there, it would not be acceptable. You could not get them to go, not unless in very abnormal cases. Now, for example, a person finds himself without a job and no family to take care of him, and then he has not established his residence here; therefore he would not want to stay.
Mr. OSMERS. I am referring to those who are residents of the State of New York.
Mr. IRIZARRY. Normally they would not.
Mr. OSMERS. In the last 10 years, could you tell me in terms of percentage how much of your time during the last 10 years has been spent as a recipient of public assistance of one form or another?
Mr. IRIZARRY. The last 10 years? Exactly 5 years
Mr. OSMERS. In other words, half of the last 10 years of your life you have existed through public assistance of one form or another?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Exactly.
Mr. CURTIS. Just one question. If general economic conditions would so improve, and industry was opened up, would your people have any difficulty in getting along?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Here in New York City?
Mr. CURTIS. Here in the United States.
Mr. IRIZARRY. They would not have any difficulty.
Mr. CURTIS. So your lot is along with millions of other Americans?
Mr. IRIZARRY. We are victims of the economic crisis, that is all, you see.
Mr. OSMERS Would you say that because of the economic conditions that have prevailed over the last 10 years, that there is a feeling among either the Puerto Rican population or the general population that is on relief in this city, that our form of government is inadequate?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Your form of government here?
Mr. OSMERS. In the United States?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Oh, no. All Puerto Ricans that have any consciousness of civil responsibilities are quite agreed that your form of government is the best to be had in the world, all over. However, they have not the same reaction as to the form of government in Puerto Rico.
Mr. OSMERS. They have not?
Mr. IRIZARRY. No.
Mr. PARSONS. You made mention that you had no local relief in Puerto Rico. Now, if New York City, and the State, should eliminate all relief here, would you be better or in New York City or in Puerto Rico?
Mr. IRIZARRY. That would be New York City's problem. We would not be better off here, no.
Mr. PARSONS. You would be better off in the island if the relief contribution was the same in both places, that is, none.
Mr. IRIZARRY. No; but your question implies more than what it says; because you say I told you before that we are living here off relief. Now, if that is taken off, you are starving us, and then there is no problem, we just die.
Mr. OSMERS. You made a statement in reply, first, that you would probably be better off in the island. You inferred that?
Mr. IRIZARRY. No. I made no comparison whatever between the status here and there but if you send us back we starve over there and if you take us out of relief here, we starve over here, and then the cases are not very different.

FAILURE OF W.P.A. TO PROVIDE VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS FOR PUERTO RICANS

Mr. OSMERS You were a teacher in W. P. A., you said?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Yes.
Mr. OSMERS. You were teaching English and Spanish?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Just English to the foreign-born, although my specialization is Spanish.
Mr. OSMERS. Do you think that you aided the classes that you taught?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Oh, definitely so. I did a splendid job.
Mr. OSMERS. I understood you to say that the W. P. A. schools you did not think had aided or assisted in any way in rehabilitating people here.
Mr. IRIZARRY. You see, but I was not teaching my own people. I was teaching German refugees. The gentleman over there asked me what effect did the vocational program of W. P. A. have on the people of my kind, and I said none whatsoever, because no schools had been provided for them.
Mr. OSMERS. When you say no schools had been provided for them, none had been provided near them, that they could go to?
Mr. IRIZARRY. Yes; and especially vocational schools. I told you that there were language schools, and there still are.
Mr. OSMERS. Because I have a considerable number of Puerto Ricans who come across the Hudson River every day over to my district in New Jersey, and receive very well-paid employment there.
Mr. IRIZARRY. Yes. As a matter of fact, I had a little problem myself, because, being known in my neighborhood as a teacher in W. P. A., people got curious about certain facilities that they had, such as, for example, dressmaking, cooking classes, and various other programs in vocational training, and now these housewives wanted to know where the schools were. You see, they were interested, and when I had to tell them that they had to travel and pay fare, say, approximately 3 miles to go to the school, they were discouraged right there, and that shows that there were no schools in the immediate neighborhood.
In one school where I taught in Brooklyn I had a personal experience. It seemed to me that the whole question of vocational training in W. P. A. was being influenced by political pressure.
For example, I met the president of the Parent-Teachers' Association in Brooklyn, and this lady told me, "Oh, we had to fight so hard to get you people to come here because all of the schools are being given to New York City and there is nothing for us in Brooklyn." Well, now, if that is not significant, you see--
Mr. OSMERS. Are you trying to imply, or do you care to make the statement, that because there were stronger political influences in other sections of the city than the section where the Puerto Ricans are domiciled, that that is the reason that they did not get schools there?
Mr. IRIZARRY. I should think so.
Mr. 0SMERS. You want to make that statement?
Mr. IRIZARRY. I would make that statement because that opened my eyes to the necessities of my own neighborhood and gave me the answer to a certain question that had been lurking in my mind.
The CHAIRMAN. You never took public speaking, did you?
Mr. IRIZARRY. I took several courses in public speaking.
The CHAIRMAN. I think with this national campaign on you can get some pretty good recommendations from this committee as to your ability.
Mr. IRIZARRY. Is that all, gentlemen?
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

(Whereupon the witness was excused.)