Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/232

204 MEMORIAL.

THE present respectful address to the august Governments of those European states from which a regular annual emigration takes place purposes to invoke their powerful assistance in the philanthropic work of protecting emigrants landing upon these shores, for which the memorializing Commission was constituted by a law passed by the Legislature of the State of New York, in the year 1847.

This law creates a fund by the payment of $1 50 a head (since raised to $2 50), in lieu of special bonds for the support of persons likely to become a public charge, on all passengers landing at the port of New York, such fund to be applied for the relief of immigrants who should become unable to support themselves within the first five years after landing, by sickness, want of employment, or other causes, and to be administered by a board of Commissioners of Emigration, consisting of six Commissioners appointed by the Governor of the State, of the Mayors of the cities of New York and Brooklyn, and of the Presidents of the Irish and German Societies of the city of New York.

Under this law the memorialists have erected extensive hospitals and houses of refuge, and disbursed vast sums of money for temporary relief, during a period of eight years, securing the immigrant against distress, and the State at large against the charge of a great number of paupers, by healing the sick, sheltering the houseless, and finding employment for thousands of people able to earn their living, but unable to find employment for themselves, by means of extensive and well organized intelligence offices, where labor is provided without charge to the seeker.

But the efforts of the Commissioners of Emigration have not been limited to the work of relief alone. Their attention has also, from the beginning of their activity, been directed towards the prevention of suffering among immigrants, and they have from time to time suggested the passage of laws by the Legislature for the protection of immigrants against systematic fraud, to which they were exposed, from persons profiting by their ignorance of the condition of things in this country, or of its laws or language, and subjecting them to heavy losses of money or property, thereby reducing them to a condition calling for relief.

The most fruitful source of misery among immigrants has ever been the lawless action of a numerous class of people engaged directly or indirectly in the business of forwarding immigrants landing at this port to their destination in the interior. The schemes resorted to by this class for practising fraud and extortion upon the newly arrived immigrant beggar the liveliest imagination, and a variety of remedies for this evil, tried by this Commission and various benevolent societies, invariably called forth renewed efforts of invention on the part of the offenders, which again baffled the intentions and exertions of the friend of the immigrant for his protection.

The growing evil has finally led to the adoption of means for a radical cure, by placing the landing of the entire immigration under the direct supervision of the Commissioners of Emigration. A law was passed by the