Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/120

106 were applied for and granted as to both offices; but, after an injurious interruption of more than two weeks, the injunction against the Canal Street office was dissolved. Before the other case could be brought to trial, the cholera made its appearance in the city, and the almost vacant Franklin Street office was taken possession of by the Board of Health as a cholera hospital. Towards the close of the year an opportunity occurred of hiring on lease a large and unoccupied building in Anthony Street now Worth opposite the hospital grounds, a few doors west of Broadway, erected and formerly used as a church edifice, a location where little or no danger could be apprehended to the neighborhood. Here the Commissioners remained till the spring of 1858, when all their offices were removed to Castle Garden.

It is not the purpose of this essay to give a detailed account of all the proceedings of the Board within the last twenty-three years; but its design is to point out only that part of their history which has at present a direct bearing on the protection of the emigrant. To this end we shall first describe Castle Garden and the offices connected with it, and next the institutions on Ward's Island. This chapter will be confined to Castle Garden.

The Commissioners were not long in discovering that the benevolent intentions of the law creating their Board could not be realized as long as they had not the absolute control of the emigrant, and as long as they were thus prevented from protecting him against the frauds practised on him by forwarders, boarding-house keepers, agents, and runners. They therefore, in the first year of their existence, applied to the Legislature for an act authorizing them to lease a dock or pier, where all the emigrant should be landed; where no outsiders would be allowed to enter without permission of the Commissioners; and where the emigrants could be cautioned and admonished against all the wiles of those who lay waiting for him on his arrival. The law of April 11, 1848, authorized the Commissioners to purchase or to lease such a pier or dock, and by virtue of this act, on May 8, 1848, they leased from the Common Council, for a term of five years, the large and commodious pier at the foot of Hubert Street Street, at an annual rent of $3,000.