Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/91

Rh me that Lind and his family were in the Rochester Almshouse, and requested me to get the money back from Smethurst. This Smethurst refused to do, but he sent an order to his agent at Rochester to forward Lind immediately. I know nothing further of this case.

"I deem it unnecessary to increase this list, although I could do so to a much greater extent."

One of the most impudent frauds which are recorded in the Report of the Committee is that one perpetrated by two German runners, by the name of Pfaff and Schmidt, on two of their countrymen, a certain Christian Duensing and Wm. Heuer, both passengers per ship Minna from Bremen, and natives of Hanover. Each of them had a family, consisting of himself, wife, and four children, making in all four and one-half full passengers, and each paid in New York the sum of forty dollars and fifty cents for the transportation of himself and family and luggage to Chicago. On arriving at Albany, Pfaff snatched the tickets and receipts from them, saying, "These are papers which you should have delivered before, for they belong to me;" and Schmidt made Duensing as well as Heuer pay ninety dollars in addition to their fare, and forty-seven dollars for extra luggage. On this occasion, Schmidt said: "You must not imagine we can carry you so cheap; great deal of this money is to go to the government of the canal, which has laid out upwards of eighteen millions of dollars;" he said, if he took a cent more than was due, "may his wife and children become blind; you must take me for an honest man, for I am your countryman—I also am German."

3. Relative to the Treatment of the Emigrants on the Way.—It was extremely cruel and brutal. While they had room enough on the large Hudson River steamers, they were crowded like beasts in the canal-boats, and were frequently compelled to pay their passage over again, or to be thrown overboard by the captain. Says the notorious Smethurst, in his examination on November 15, 1847:

"The year before last, Captain Jacobs took a lot of Germans from Roach & Co., of this city, bound to Buffalo, received his