ITALY: Boy for Hire

Most days of the year the dusty market place in Benevento, 30 miles northeast of Naples, is crowded with hawkers vending cloth and shoes and fortunes. But on two days of the year (Aug. 15 and Sept. 8), the main commodity in Benevento’s market is children.

From time immemorial it has been the custom, on those days, for the poor people of Benevento to hire out their sons, twelve years and up, to farmers seeking cheap labor. The children are brought to the Piazza del Duomo, where they wait while their parents bargain. The farmers take a look at the boys, sometimes test a muscle, go back to bargaining. For a promising boy they will pay the parents 6,000 lire (about $10) and a few bushels of wheat for a year’s work. When the bargain is struck, the boy goes off to the farm. His family may visit him.

Lately, there has been a lot of criticism of Benevento’s child market. A picture of Luigi Esposito, one of the boys for hire this year, especially touched Italian newspaper readers (see cut). The Ministry of Labor has investigated the Benevento market. But, said local Police Chief Martini: “This market has nothing to do with slavery. It is a time-accepted form of hiring farm labor for lower work, such as stable cleaning and goat watching.”