Montreal's King of Italian Labour : A Case Study of Padronism

The author describes the activities of the Montreal "padrone," Antonio Cordasco, who served as an intermediary between business and Italian immigrant labour at the turn of the twentieth century. The author notes that neither the federal government and nor big business objected to the padrone system, even if it was dishonest and corrupt, as it suited the federal immigration policy to make use of Italian labour but to prevent it from turning into permenant immigration. The author claims that the migrant labourers, looking for means to make money and then return to their homeland, were happy with the padrone as long as he supplied the jobs promised to them. the author argues that Cordasco's position was destroyed in the end, not by the Canadian government's concern for the migrant labourers that he exploited, but by the an economic upheaval that resulted in hundreds of labourers caught in Montreal without work or the means to return to their homeland.

Labour / Le Travail

Vol. 4

57-84

1979

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