Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/364

 of a "statute adult" reduced from fourteen to twelve years; a distinction was made between the upper and lower passenger deck; increase of space was allowed to passengers; mail steamers were exempted under special rules; the dietary scale improved; the amount of detention-money increased; and the emigrant runners placed under more efficient control.

One chief provision of the Passengers' Act required that an abstract thereof and of the Orders in Council should be posted up in each emigrant ship. The Emigration Commissioners, in their report of 1857, give an opinion that the Act has worked satisfactorily; that the changes introduced have tended, materially, to add to the comfort and promote the health of emigrants, the returns of mortality in ships to the United States attesting the same result. On the other hand, the reduction in the number a ship might carry, and the increase in the dietary, necessarily added to the expenses of the passage, and, to a certain extent, diminished for a time the amount of emigration. Further, the Commissioners stated that the runners, at the ports of departure, have been brought more effectually under control, so as to prevent many of the abuses formerly prevalent.

In the United States, also, and especially at New York, efforts have been made to stop the frauds heretofore committed by this class on emigrants.