The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-03-13
FORTUNES MADE
 BY SHINING SHOES BOekbIackS Are Glad to Pay
 High Rentals SPACE IN BIG BUILDINGS Is Coveted By Man Who Is ReIegatine Nickel shine' To Oblivion.
 Basis For Recent
 Lease.
 
SPACE IN BIG BUILDINGS

From the New York Post.
 New York bootblack once said that the shining of shoes was as much an art as the painting of pictures. He looked upon his work as a profession and con duoted 1t accordingly. He studied the proper way to apply elbow grease as well as blacking, developed shine that lasted three days, made a reputation, friends, and fortune, finally retiring to devote his whole time to the manufacture of leather dressings.
 Before that man came from Italy the bootbacking industry was in the hands of men and boys, who shouldered their kits and did much the same sort of work that is done by the youngsters of today In City Hall park. Of course, there were chairs in buildings, but the average oper- ator caked boots with backing and rubbed on a shine that rubbed of within couple of hours.
 But the young Italian was to change all this. He, too, carried his outfit until he accumulated some capital. Then he blos- somed out as the proprietor of several chairs in the arcade of big office build ing, through which thousands of persons passed daily. He had taken the precau- tion to establish himself Tn building whose tenants he had Visited every day. They knew him and his work, and their patronage was maintained. He did his best to please them and taught his boys all the tricks he had learned. He devel- oped new Tangled shines and polishes; in fact, made the industry a science" in one sense.
 He had imitators to be sure, and some did not hesitate to couple his name with their own, but his reputation as boot black grew apace, and his patrons de- manded stations in other parts of the town. He catered to their wants and they made him wealthy. He was really the pioneer of bootblacking as it is practiced now, and each year sees an expansion of the business, with keener competition among the Italian capitalists engaged in it. They are, by the way, actual capital ists, for it takes much money to swing the business.
 A Large Rental.
 An indication of this was the recent rental by Joseph P. Day of space in the Hudson Terminal buildings to a boothlac1 company, which was organized for the purpose and will be the only American concern in the business in New York, Italians having monopolized the shining of shoes for a good many years The company took 4SO square feet in the main corridor of the Fulton building, near the elevators, and HOO square feet in the Cort- landt, and agreed to pay A24.000 for a Ie- riod of 12 years, or s10 100 0 year.
 This sum may seem laIS Sc one, but t is not out of proportion to charges for space for bootblack chairs in other large buildings down town. Ths basis on which the value of the privilege was estimated affords a suggestion of the heavy returns from bootblacking. First of all, the com pany realized that the Terminal buildings were the largest office structures in the world, and would have a permanent pop ulation of Il, ,0O0 Its officers also conclud- ed that each tenant would have an aver age of at least one visitor every day. The visitors, however, were not taken into consideration In the scheme of first profits, for the company estimated that 1t could pay dividend If 1t succeeded in shining the shoes Of per cent of the tenants of the building. Patronage of visitors to the tenants and the hundreds of transents passing through the building every hour would, of course, make handsome addi- tion to the profits.
 Tenant Patrons.
 Not less than 10 per cent of the popu- lation of such buildings as the Empire, Equitable, Schermerhorn, Broad Exchange and Produce Exchange patronze the bootblack chairs In them. Heavy rentals are paid in each of these structures, and there is much competition among the boss bootblacks when they hear that one of the buildings has space to offer In the corridor.
 In the Equitable the bootblack stall rents for a yearly sum which ranges be- tween 5000 and 5000, while in the Elm pire the rentals is said to approach nearly $70OO. The population of the latter is large, and, moreover, the building has an arcade leading to the elevated. Through this passage way walk thousands of per sons, many of whom stop for shine or to have their hats cleaned. An arcade is, of course, a much more valuable stand than place which has no continuous flow of people.
 Privileges In office buildings are not the only ones of value. Take, for instance the ferryboats and ferry houses and rall- road terminals. The Italian firm which has the exclusive right to shine shoes on the municipal ferry boats running to Staten Island pays $500 month to the city, or s72o0 year. Proportionate sums
 
 Erie, Lackawanna and other boats. On the municipal ferry to South Brooklyn the privilege costs $900 year, although the volume of traffic is comparatively small when compared with other lines. One Reason for Growth. One reason why the business has grown so large is to be found in the fact that fewer persons shine their own shoes, The man of the present generation may own a polishing outfit, but the chances are against his using 1t regularly. He Is like ly to argue that he will expend less time and no energy if he puts himself in the hands of the bootblack in his building, Certainly the work will be better done than he could do 1t at home, and 1t costs only a nickel or & dime-an insignifican mt sum.
 But these coins are the ones that fill the bootblack's till. Years ago, before he had weaned the New Yorker from his own brushes, the bootblack rarely, if ever. charged more than cents for shine. But after he had made his daily services indispensable he invented new kinds of polishes and charged 10 cents for them. Today 50 out of every 100 shines cost 10 cents and probably the nickel polish will wholly depart from the high class "par-