Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/87

Rh Benjamin D. Quigg, being duly sworn, says "that he is deputy sergeant-at-arms of the House of the Assembly. Some few days since he went, by direction of the Committee, to investigate frauds upon emigrants, to the office of H. D. Smethurst, Pier 122, Albany, who is engaged in forwarding emigrants, to serve a subpoena on said Smethurst and others, and saw a man weighing luggage. After he left the office, I stepped on the scales, and weighed myself, and weighed 163½ pounds by them. I then went to the store of Corning, Horner & Co., and was weighed upon their scales, and weighed 142½ pounds. I weighed a young man who was with me at the time on both scales, and found the same relative difference to exist."

"A few days ago," deposes Josiah Clarke, of Albany, in November, 1847, "I was weighed on H. D. Smethurst's scales, at his office, 122 Pier, Albany, and weighed more than 200 pounds. I had been weighed a week before, and weighed 169 pounds."

"I have frequently attended," testifies David Neligan, the above-named agent of the Commissioners of Emigration, "to the weighing of luggage at the office of Smethurst, and on his boats; have detected and prevented frauds in the weight; in one instance, I saw a lot of luggage weighed and marked at 700 pounds at the above office; I thought the weight most extraordinary for so small a lot, and went to Mr. Roach, who, I believe, was a partner of Smethurst, and asked him to come and weigh a lot of baggage, not telling him that I knew the weight at which it had been set down; he came forward, and weighed it at 500 pounds. I saw on one occasion an emigrant pay, at that office, $16 for 400 pounds to Detroit, and on another $59 freight on 1,600 pounds to Milwaukee; have on many occasions known emigrants pay from $2 50 to $6 for 100 pounds to Milwaukee and Chicago, and in one instance, when the man objected to the price, he was told that most of it went to the Government."

"A lot of eighty-six Hollanders lay here waiting," writes an anonymous Buffalo philanthropist, on July 18, 1847, to the Mayor of Albany, "that had paid in Troy over $1,150 for fare, $680 for passage, and $433 for luggage. We weighed the luggage, and the overweight, at a fair price, will not come to $75. Shipped by P. O'Hern, New York, Emery Mathews, Troy."