Page:1883 Annual Report of the German Society of the City of New York.djvu/63

Rh CASTLE GARDEN.

The precarious circumstances of the Emigrant Commission, already alluded to in our last report, have experienced no material change for the better during the past year, and it is urgently to be wished that the present interregnum may give place to a permanent organization. The law passed by the last Legislature and approved by the Governor abolishes the Commission, consisting of six State Commissioners, the Mayor of the City of New York, and the Presidents of the German and Irish Societies ex officio, and appoints in its place a salaried Commissioner, with whom the above-named Presidents are associated, but, as hitherto, without a vote in the appointment and removal of officials employed in Castle Garden and on Ward's Island. Unfortunately the Governor, who has to appoint this Commissioner, and the Senate, which has to confirm the nomination, could not agree upon a suitable person, and the law, which, if the right man be chosen for the responsible position, has great advantages, did not go into effect.

While the emigrants formerly had a claim on the assistance of the Commission for the first five years after their arrival, they now. by a new law. recive it only for the first year: the pecuniary assistance formerly given to needy families who, in expectation of employment, have established their simple household, is granted only in exceptional cases, and even admission to the hospital and the insane asylum is denied when the one short year has expired. By these compulsory retrenchments it became possible to cover the current expenses with the comparatively small sum of fifty cents head-money for every newly arrived emigrant, even when the heavy emigration of the two previous years decreased considerably during the past year.

There are at present before Congress several new bills, the object of which is to make the protection of emigrants an affair of the Federal government, but it is to be feared that they will share the fate of their predecessors, and miscarry through the indifference of many influential representatives, and the open opposition of others.

The differences of opinion existing among the Commissioners