Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/85

Rh them were none the less exorbitant, as will more fully appear from the following list:

In addition to the payment of the above prices to the agents of the railroad monopoly, the emigrants had to pay freight on their luggage from New York to Albany, and cartage from steamboat to railroad depot, and then cartage at Buffalo, from railroad to steamboat, and their freight on their baggage across the lakes, collected by one of these same contracting agents, located at Buffalo, although the prices charged for tickets include luggage fees.

All the above charges were, so to speak, legitimate, and, although yielding a very handsome profit to the forwarding-houses, they were not so exorbitant as to take more than a few dollars out of the pockets of the emigrants. The profits realized, however, by exacting these fares went exclusively into the pockets of the New York houses, for the emigrants on landing were cheated into the belief that it was to their interest to buy at once their tickets to their respective destinations (by which operation the runner secured to himself two or three dollars more). But the New York houses were not so cruel as to injure the interests of their Albany and Buffalo friends and correspondents. The emigrant was their common victim, whom they would despoil so long as he had anything left. The New York forwarders therefore, after having made their share out of him, handed the emigrant over to their friends West, with the expectation that he still had something out of which he could be defrauded.

When the passenger paid his fare in New York, it was the general rule to say nothing to him about the extra luggage.