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188 brokers, runners, boarding-house keepers, commission agents, sellers of 'bogus' tickets, and others; and from their number and audacity they appeared to set all law and authority at defiance. To such an extent had their daring depredations been carried, that the Legislature, in 1846, appointed a Select Committee to investigate their practices. But, in their first annual report, the Commissioners are compelled to acknowledge how little was the practical good resulting from the inquiry and its consequent disclosures; for they say—'It is a matter of almost daily observation by persons in the employ of the Commissioners, that the frauds exposed in the Report of the Select Committee, appointed last year to examine frauds upon emigrants, continued to be practised with as much boldness and frequency as ever. A regular and systematic course of deception and fraud is continually in operation, whereby the emigrant is deprived of a large portion of the means intended to aid him in procuring a home in the country of his adoption.'

To do the Legislature justice, it freely passed laws to guard the poor alien from 'those enemies of the emigrant'—agents, runners, forwarders, and brokers, and also invested the Commissioners with considerable powers; but the best intentions of the Legislature, and the most earnest exertions of the Commissioners, were baffled by unexpected obstacles; and it was not until after having encountered difficulties and borne with disappointments which would have daunted benevolence less courageous than theirs, that, in the year 1855, the Commissioners succeeded in securing the grand object of their persistent efforts; namely, the possession of an official landing-place for all the emigrants arriving at the port of New York. They were from the first fully alive to the importance of obtaining this landing place; and in their second Report they express their regret that, being unable to obtain the use of a pier for this purpose, and consequently being unable