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The Immigrant. The Puerto Rican migrant is neither Puerto Rico's scum, nor its ignorant, nor its shiftless, as he is often pictured. The average immigrant is better educated (six years of school) than the island's average, Columbia found, and almost all of them left jobs in Puerto Rico. Nor is he a peasant. Most come from the island's two biggest cities, San Juan and Ponce.
With a prodigious birth rate and a declining death rate, Puerto Rico's one-crop sugar economy cannot keep pace with its population, which is increasing at a rate unequaled anywhere else in the world. The average Puerto Rican earned only $14 a week. In New York, he could confidently expect to double his wages. Some dreamed of their children becoming doctors, lawyers, nurses. In the bucket seats of a DC-3, passage was only $40.
The migration, unlike any other in history, numbered more women than men. Many came ahead of their husbands. They arrived clutching the address of relatives, moved in with them until they found jobs and an apartment, then sent for husband and children. Often, parents, brothers & sisters followed. In New York City, it was easy for the Puerto Rican woman to find a job. Garment factories valued their skilled needlework; housewives sought them as domestics.
The City's Lessons. The big city taught the Puerto Ricans more evil than they brought with them. Few arrived with any fluency in English. Though Puerto Rican blood carries racial strains from white through Indian to Negro, most considered themselves white. In New York, they found that two-thirds of them were considered colored, in a land where color makes a great deal of difference. Older Italian immigrants, their unwilling neighbors, resented the fact that "people who could not even speak English" had all the rights of citizenship. Negroes found them competing for rooms and jobs, and there were fights because Negro girls went out with Puerto Rican boys. Puerto Ricans learned what it is to be the object of prejudice, often met discrimination. "The poorest they have in the store is good enough for the Puerto Ricans," is a common observation in the Barrio.
Men Behind the Scenes. Shouted at by bus drivers, buffeted in subways, battered by a strange language, the Puerto Rican is shy and afraid. He learns tracks through the urban jungle, never ventures far from them for fear of getting lost. Apartments are found only after a search of months and the newcomers must pay an average $600 for the furniture to fit out three cramped, scabrous rooms, renting for $25 a month.