Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/234

206 Desperate efforts are being made by the runners and their backers to break down this beneficent institution. No calumny is left untried in order to excite public opinion against it. But all this has proved of no avail, for the immense benefit which the immigrant derives from the protection afforded him by this institution is too clearly demonstrable to admit of a doubt in any observing and unbiassed mind.

The clamorers finding themselves unable to prove the Emigrant Landing Depot at Castle Garden a nuisance, endangering the health and prosperity of the city, and equally unable to make their usual iniquitous profits out of the emigrants protected by its walls, have resorted to a means which threatens in a measure to paralyze the beneficial action of this institution, by circumventing its protective operation.

The means alluded to is the system of contracting with emigrants in Europe for their inland passage from New York to their places of destination in the interior of the United States or in Canada. This system has been lately revived to a considerable extent. Runners and forwarding agents of this city, finding their occupation gone by the establishment of the Emigrant Landing Depot of Castle Garden, have removed to European ports, and even inland towns, or have there revived or established agencies for booking passengers to places in the interior previous to their leaving the European ports, or even their inland homes, and for receiving part or the whole of the price of such inland tickets in advance.

It is self-evident that these agencies, carried on at considerable expense, are not content to charge a legitimate commission on the net prices of tickets merely. Overcharges on the personal tickets are the rule, pretty generally varying from 25 to 50 per cent. above the established rates of transportation companies, and very often being fully double the proper charge; whilst full and unlimited facilities are left open for the consignees in this country, their runners and baggagemen, to defraud the passenger on the charges for his baggage after he arrives here. False representations, amounting almost to coercion, are not unfrequently resorted to, in order to induce emigrants to contract for inland passage before leaving Europe. Assertions of the most absurd description are made to the emigrant, such for instance as that it would be impossible to travel inland unless on tickets issued by the agent making the assertion, and such assertions are conveyed in such language, and with such a show of apparently corroborative evidence, as to inspire confidence, and to mislead the inexperienced emigrant. Some of these agencies, more especially in England, have gone so far as to represent themselves as agents for the Commissioners of Emigration, and have grossly defrauded passengers under the shelter of the name of the memorialists, thus endeavoring indirectly to shake public faith in the Commissioners of Emigration.

The effect of this system is calculated to destroy the protection which Castle Garden throws around the immigrant, for the passenger landing with a contract in his pocket, on which he has made payment, in part or in full, at once leaves Castle Garden for the city, to find the consignee who is to fulfil the contract made in Europe. He thus passes by the institution planned and arranged by the Legislature of the State for his protection, and falls into the very hands