It would be interesting to know the number of street musicians to be
found in New York. Judging from outward appearances, it must be their
most profitable field, for one cannot walk two blocks in any part of the
city without hearing one or more musical instruments in full blast. A
few are good and in perfect tone, but the majority emit only the most
horrible discords.
Prominent among the street musicians are the organ grinders, who in
former days monopolized the business. They are mostly Italians, though
one sees among them Germans, Frenchmen, Swiss, and even Englishmen and
Irishmen. Against these people there seems to be an especial, and a not
very reasonable prejudice. A lady, eminent for her good deeds among the
poor of the Five Points, once said, "There is no reason why an organ
grinder should be regarded as an altogether discreditable member of the
community; his vocation is better than that of begging, and he certainly
works hard enough for the pennies thrown to him, lugging his big box
around the city from morning until night." To this good word for the
organ grinder it may be added that he is generally an inoffensive person,
who attends closely to his business during the day, and rarely ever falls
into the hands of the police. Furthermore, however much grown people
with musical tastes may be annoyed, the organ grinders furnish an immense
amount of amusement and pleasure to the children; and in some of the more
wretched sections provide all the music that the little ones ever hear.
Very few of them own their organs. There are several firms in the city
who manufacture or import hand organs, and from these the majority of the
grinders rent their instruments. The rent varies from two to twenty
dollars per month, the last sum being paid for the French flute organs,
which are the best. The owners of the instruments generally manage to
inspire the grinders with a profound terror of them, so that few
instruments are carried off unlawfully, and, after all, the organ
grinders are more unfortunate than dishonest.
Organ grinding in New York was once a very profitable business, and even
now pays well in some instances. Some of the grinding fraternity have
made money. One of these was Francisco Ferrari, who came to this city
ten years ago. He invested the money he brought with him in a hand organ
and a monkey, and in about five years made money enough to return to
Italy and purchase a small farm. He was not content in his native land,
however, and soon returned to New York with his family and resumed his
old trade. He is said to be worth about twenty thousand dollars.
At present, in fair weather, a man with a good flute organ can generally
make from two to five dollars a day. Those who have the best and
sweetest toned instruments seek the better neighborhoods, where they are
always sure of an audience of children whose parents pay well. Some of
these musicians earn as much as ten and fifteen dollars in a single day.
In bad weather, however, they are forced to be idle, as a good organ
cannot be exposed to the weather at such times without being injured.
A monkey is a great advantage to the grinder, as the animal, if clever,
is sure to draw out a host of pennies from the crowd which never fails to
gather around it. The monkey is generally the property of the grinder.
It is his pet, and it is interesting to see the amount of affection which
exists between the two. If the grinder is a married man, or has a
daughter or sister, she generally accompanies him in his rounds.
Sometimes girls and women make regular business engagements of this kind
with the grinders, and receive for their services in beating the
tambourine, or soliciting money from the bystanders, a certain fixed
proportion of the earnings of the day.
If the organ grinder be successful in his business, he has every
opportunity for saving his money. Apart from the rent of his organ, his
expenses are slight. Few, however, save very much, as but few are able
to earn the large sums we have mentioned. The grinders pay from five to
eight dollars per month for their rooms, and they and their families live
principally upon macaroni. They use but a single room for all purposes,
and, no matter how many are to be provided with sleeping accommodations,
manage to get along in some way. As a general rule, they are better off
here than they were in their own country, for poverty has been their lot
in both. Their wants are simple, and they can live comfortably on an
amazingly small sum. The better class of Italians keep their apartments
as neat as possible. Children of a genial clime, they are fond of
warmth, and the temperature of their rooms stands at a stage which would
suffocate an American. They are very exclusive, and herd by themselves
in a section of the Five Points. Baxter and Park and the adjoining
streets are taken up to a great extent with Italians.
This is the life of the fortunate members of the class. There are many,
however, who are not so lucky. These are the owners or renters of the
majority of the street organs, the vile, discordant instruments which set
all of one's nerves a tingling. They earn comparatively little, and are
not tolerated by the irate householders whose tastes they offend. The
police treat them with but small consideration. The poor wretches are
nearly always in want, and soon full into vagrancy, and some into vice
and crime. Some of them are worthless vagabonds, and nearly all the
Italians accused of crime in the city are included in their number. One
of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats
himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the
crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a
music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for
pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to
the charitable. At night a flickering tallow dip sheds a dismal glare
around. The man's head is tied up in a piece of white muslin, his eyes
are closed, and his face and posture are expressive of the most intense
misery. He turns the crank slowly, and the organ groans and moans in the
most ludicrously mournful manner. At one side of the queer instrument
sits a woman with a babe at her breast, on the other side sits a little
boy, and a second boy squats on the ground in front. Not a sound is
uttered by any of the group, who are arranged with genuine skill. Their
whole attitude is expressive of the most fearful misery. The groans of
the organ cannot fail to attract attention, and there are few
kind-hearted persons who can resist the sight. Their pennies and
ten-cent stamps are showered into the tin box, which is never allowed to
contain more than two or three pennies. The man is an Italian, and is
said by the police to be a worthless vagabond. Yet he is one of the most
successful musicians of his class in the city.
The arrangements of a street organ being entirely automatic, any one who
can turn a crank can manage one of these instruments. Another class of
street musicians are required to possess a certain amount of musical
skill in order to be successful. These are the strolling harpers and
violinists. Like the organ grinders, they are Italians. Very few of
them earn much money, and the majority live in want and misery.
Some of these strollers are men, or half-grown youths, and are excellent
performers. The best of them frequent Broadway, Wall and Broad streets,
and the up-town neighborhoods. At night they haunt the localities of the
hotels. They constitute one of the pleasantest features of the street,
for their music is good and well worth listening to. They generally reap
a harvest of pennies and fractional currency. They form the aristocratic
portion of the street minstrel class, and are the envy of their less
fortunate rivals.
The vast majority of the strolling harpers and violinists are children;
generally boys below the age of sixteen. They are chiefly Italians,
though a few Swiss, French and Germans are to be found among them. They
are commonly to be found in the streets in pairs; but sometimes three
work together, and again only one is to be found. There are several
hundreds of these children on the streets. Dirty, wan, shrunken,
monkey-faced little creatures they are. Between them and other children
lies a deep gulf, across which they gaze wistfully at the sports and joys
that may not be theirs. All day long, and late into the night, they must
ply their dreary trade.
Although natives of the land of song, they have little or no musical
talent, as a class, and the majority of them are furnished with harps and
violins from which not even Orpheus himself could bring harmony. Not a
few of the little ones endeavor to make up in dancing what they lack in
musical skill. They work energetically at their instruments, but they do
no more than produce the vilest discord. At the best, their music is
worthless, and their voices have a cracked, harsh, monotonous sound; but
the sound of them is also very sad, and often brings a penny into the
outstretched hand.
At all hours of the day, and until late at night you may hear their music
along the street, and listen to their sad young voices going up to the
ear that is always open to them. They are half clothed, half fed, and
their filthiness is painful to behold. They sleep in fair weather under
a door-step or in some passage way or cellar, or in a box or hogshead on
the street, and in the winter huddle together in the cold and darkness of
their sleeping places, for we cannot call them homes, and long for the
morning to come. The cold weather is very hard upon them, they love the
warm sunshine, and during the season of ice and snow are in a constant
state of semi-torpor. You see them on the street, in their thin, ragged
garments, so much overpowered by the cold that they can scarcely strike
or utter a note. Sometimes a kind-hearted saloon-keeper will permit them
to warm themselves at his stove for a moment or two. These are the
bright periods in their dark lives, for as a general rule they are forced
to remain on the street from early morning until late at night.
A recent writer, well informed on the subject, says: "It is a cruelty to
encourage these children with a gift of money, for instead of such gifts
inuring to their benefit, they are extracted for the support of cruel and
selfish parents and taskmasters." This is true, but the gift is a
benefit to the child, nevertheless. These children have parents or
relatives engaged in the same business, who require them to bring in a
certain sum of money at the end of the day, and if they do not make up
the amount they are received with blows and curses, and are refused the
meagre suppers of which they are so much in need, or are turned into the
streets to pass the night. The poor little wretches come crowding into
the Five Points from nine o'clock until midnight, staggering under their
heavy harps, those who have not made up the required sum sobbing bitterly
in anticipation of the treatment in store for them. Give them a penny or
two, should they ask it, reader. You will not miss it. It will go to
the brutal parent or taskmaster, it is true, but it will give the little
monkey-faced minstrel a supper, and save him from a beating. It is more
to them than to you, and it will do you no harm for the recording angel
to write opposite the follies and sins of your life, that you cast one
gleam of sunshine into the heart of one of these children.
A number of Italian gentlemen resident in New York have generously
devoted themselves to the task of bettering the lot of these little ones,
and many of those who formerly lived on the streets are now in attendance
upon the Italian schools of the city. Yet great is the suffering amongst
those who have not been reached by these efforts. Only one or two years
ago there were several wretches living in the city who carried on a
regular business of importing children from Tuscany and Naples, and
putting them on the streets here as beggars, musicians, and thieves.
They half starved the little creatures, and forced them to steal as well
as beg, and converted the girls into outcasts at the earliest possible
age. The newspapers at length obtained information respecting these
practices, and by exposing them, drew the attention of the civil
authorities to them. One of the scoundrels, named Antonelli, was
arrested, tried, and sentenced to the penitentiary, and the infamous
business was broken up. The police authorities are possessed of
information which justifies them in asserting that some Italian children
fare quite as badly at the hands of their own parents. There have been
several instances where Italian fathers have made a practice of hiring
out their daughters for purposes of prostitution, while they were yet
mere children.
As a rule, the future of these little folks is very sad. The Italian and
the Mission schools in the Five Points and similar sections of the city
are doing much for them, but the vast majority are growing up in
ignorance. Without education, with an early and constant familiarity
with want, misery, brutality and crime, the little minstrels rarely "come
to any good." The girls grow up to lives of sin and shame, and many
fortunately die young. The boys too often become thieves, vagrants, and
assassins. Everybody condemns them. They are forced onward in their sad
career by all the machinery of modern civilization, and they are helpless
to ward off their ruin.
During one of the heavy snows of a recent winter, a child harper trudged
wearily down the Fifth avenue, on his way to the Five Points, where he
was to pass the night. It was intensely cold, and the little fellow's
strength was so exhausted by fatigue and the bleak night wind that he
staggered under the weight of his harp. At length he sat down on the
steps of a splendid mansion to rest himself. The house was brilliantly
lighted, and he looked around timidly as he seated himself, expecting the
usual command to move off. No one noticed him, however, and he leaned
wearily against the balustrade, and gazed at the handsome windows through
which the rich, warm light streamed out into the wintry air. As he sat
there, strains of exquisite music, and the sounds of dancing, floated out
into the night. The little fellow clasped his hands in ecstasy and
listened. He had never heard such melody, and it made his heart ache to
think how poor and mean was his own minstrelsy compared with that with
which his ears were now ravished. The wind blew fierce and keen down the
grand street, whirling the snow about in blinding clouds, but the boy
neither saw nor heard the strife of the elements. He heard only the
exquisite melody that came floating out to him from the warm, luxurious
mansion, and which grew sweeter and richer every moment. The cold, hard
street became more and more indistinct to him, and he sat very still with
his hands clasped and his eyes closed.
The ball ended towards the small hours of the morning, and the clatter of
carriages dashing up to the door of the mansion gave the signal to the
guests that it was time to depart. No one had seen the odd-looking
bundle that lay on the street steps, half buried in the snow, and which
might have lain there until the morning had not some one stumbled over it
in descending to the carriages. With a half curse, one of the men
stooped down to examine the strange object, and found that the bundle of
rags and filth contained the unconscious form of a child. The harp,
which lay beside him, told his story. He was one of the little outcasts
of the streets. Scorning to handle such an object, the man touched him
with his foot to arouse him, thinking he had fallen asleep. Alas! it was
the eternal sleep.