« Previous page | Start of chapter | Book contents | Next page »
CHAPTER X....continued
So long as the Commissioners were unable to obtain the compulsory landing-place for all emigrants arriving at New York, the runners, and brokers, and ticket-sellers, and money-changers, had everything their own way; and terrible were the consequences of their practical immunity. Swarming about the wharves, which they literally infested, all--the emigrant passenger, his luggage, his money, his very future--was at their mercy. The stranger knew nothing of the value of exchange, nor how many dollars he should receive for his gold; but his new-found friend did, and gave him just as much as he could not venture to withhold from him. Then there were the tickets for the inland journey to be purchased, and the new-found friend with the green necktie and the genuine brogue could procure these for him on terms the most advantageous: indeed, it was fortunate for the emigrant that he fell into the hands of 'an honest man at any rate'--'for, Lord bless us! there are so many rogues to be met with now-a-days.'
An instance of ready reckoning, most favourable to the ingenious arithmetician, is recorded in the evidence taken in 1847. Pat had but a poor chance against such a master of finance. The writer says, `I was in a boarding-house in Cherry Street; a man came up to pay his bill, which the landlord made out 18 dollars. "Why," says the man, "did not you agree to board me for sixpence a meal, and threepence for a bed?" "Yes," says the landlord, "and that makes just 75 cents per day; you have been here eight days, and that makes just 18 dollars." At three-quarters of a dollar per day, the bill should have been six dollars: so the ready reckoner made twelve dollars by his genius for multiplication.
Among the most fruitful means of fraud was the sale of tickets. These tickets were of various kinds--tickets sold at exorbitant prices, but good for the journey; tickets which carried the passenger only a portion of his journey, though sold for the entire route; and tickets utterly worthless, issued by companies that had long before been bankrupt, or by companies that existed only in imagination. These latter are called 'bogus' tickets; and these were sold in Europe as well as in America--in village and country town, as in city and in seaport; and not rarely were they palmed off on the confiding passenger, as `a great bargain,' by a sympathising, good-natured fellow-passenger, who, by the merest luck, had bought them cheap from a family he knew at home, that had 'changed their minds, and wouldn't cross over, being afeard of the say.'
In 1848 the Commissioners of Emigration issued a circular, in which these passages occur:--
As may be supposed, there are many people engaged in the business of forwarding these emigrants, and the individuals or companies thus engaged employ a host of clerks or servants, called 'runners' who try to meet the new-comer on board the ship that brings him or immediately after he puts his foot on shore, for the purpose of carrying him to the forwarding offices for which they respectively act. The tricks resorted to, in order to forestall a competitor and secure the emigrant, would be amusing, if they were not at the cost of the inexperienced and unexpecting stranger; and it is but too true that an enormous sum of money is annually lost to the emigrants by the wiles and false statements of the emigrant runners, many of them originally from their own country, and speaking their native language.
Of late the field of operations of these 'emigrant runners' is no longer confined to this city; it extends to Europe. .... They generally call themselves agents of some transportation, or forwarding bureau, and endeavour to impress the emigrant who intends going farther than New York with the belief that it is for his benefit, and in the highest degree desirable, to secure his passage hence to the place of his destination, before he leaves Europe. .... He is told that, unless he does so, he runs great risk of being detained, or having to pay exorbitant prices. .............
Instances have come to the knowledge of the Commissioners, where the difference amounted to three dollars a person. But this is not all. The cases are by no means rare in which the tickets prove entirely worthless. They bear the name of offices which never existed, and then, of course, are nowhere respected; or, the offices whose names they bear will be found shut up, and are not likely ever to re-open: or the emigrants are directed to parties refusing to acknowledge the agent who issued the tickets, and in all these cases the emigrant loses the money paid for them.
A profitable fraud is not to be suppressed without much difficulty; and even in 1857--nine years after--we find the iniquity of the bogus ticket in active operation. In a letter addressed to the Secretary of State, the Commissioners assert that the chief operators in this system of fraud have not only opened offices in the several seaports where emigrants usually embark, but have also established agencies in towns in the interior of those countries, and in the very villages whence families are likely to emigrate. Excluding Hamburg and Bremen from their observations, the Commissioners add that 'very many of those from other ports are first defrauded of their means by being induced to purchase tickets for railroad and water travel in this country, at high prices, which, when presented here, are found to be either quite worthless, or to carry the holders to some point in the interior far short of their destination, where they are left destitute.' Mr. Marcy, in reply, states that he has addressed a circular letter to the diplomatic and consular agents of the United States in those countries of Europe from which emigrants chiefly proceed, and instructed them to bring the subject to the notice of the Governments to which they were accredited, or of the authorities of the place where they reside, and to ask for the adoption of such measures 'as may be required by the claims of humanity and the comity of nations.'
What a gauntlet the helpless emigrant had to run before he was fairly on the road to his land of promise! Many were strong enough to break through, or fortunate enough to slip through, this net-work of fraud; but it may well be doubted if, for some years at least, those so strong or so fortunate were the greater number. It is lamentably true, that many, many thousands had their wings so effectually clipped--nay, so utterly plucked were they by the patriotic gentlemen with the green neckties, or the ladies with the green ribands, that they could not get beyond New York, into which, though perhaps altogether unsuited to the life of a city, the miserable victims of heartless fraud and pitiless robbery sank down to a lot of hardship, it might be of degradation and of ruin. It is heartrending to think of the tremendous consequences of these systematic villanies, and to reflect how thousands of people were thus fatally arrested on their way to places specially suited to their industry, and where, most probably, after the usual probationary hard work, they would have established themselves in comfort and independence. Better for many of them, old and young, the high-spirited boy and the innocent girl, that they had become the prey of the sharks of the deep, than that they had fallen into the clutches of the sharks of the land.*
At length, in 1855, the Commissioners succeeded in establishing Castle Garden as the landing-place for all emigrants arriving at New York; and among other benefits which, in their Report of that year, they enumerate as resulting from the possession of this grand convenience, they include 'the dispersion of a band of outlaws, attracted to this port by plunder, from all parts of the earth.' The 'outlaws' were perhaps not so effectually dispersed as the Commissioners fondly imagined them to be; for so persistent were the attacks upon the system established at Castle Garden--attacks made generally through the public press--that the Grand Jury of the County of New York was formally appealed to. Nominally investigating certain charges made against the employés of the railway companies doing business in Castle Garden, the Grand Inquest really enquired into the entire system; and the result of that timely investigation was of the utmost consequence, in strengthening the hands of the Commissioners, and confounding their interested maligners.
On inquiry (they said) into the causes of certain published attacks on the Emigrant Landing Depot, the Grand Inquest have become satisfied that they emanate, in the first instance, from the very interested parties against whose depredations Castle Garden affords protection to the emigrant, and who are chiefly runners in the employ of booking-agents, boarding-house keepers, and others, who have lost custom by the establishment of a central depot, where the railway companies have their own business done by their own clerks, without the intervention of passage-brokers, &c.
This class has thrown great difficulties in the way of the proper development of affairs in Castle Garden, by constituting a noisy crowd outside the gates, whose behaviour is utterly lawless, and endangers the personal safety, not only of the passengers who have to leave the Castle Garden to transact business in the city, but also the employés of the Landing Depôt, and of individual Commissioners of Emigration, who are continually insulted in the public grounds surrounding the depôt, and have been obliged to carry loaded fire-arms in self-defence against the violence which has frequently been offered to them.
The Grand Inquest, after administering some hard hits to the local authorities, for the culpable remissness of the police in preventing the disorders which they describe, thus conclude:--
Having become satisfied that the Emigrant Landing Depot, in all its operations, is a blessing, not only to emigrants, but to the community at large, they would feel remiss in the performance of a sacred duty if they failed to recommend this important philanthropic establishment to the fostering care of the municipal authorities; and they had dismissed the complaints preferred against certain employers of the Castle Garden, satisfied that they are not sustained by law, and have their origin in a design to disturb, rather than to further, the good work for which the establishment has been called into life by an Act of Legislature of April 1855.
This triumphant vindication of an institution which is to none more important than to the Irish who seek a home in America, bears the signature--'Howell Hoppock, Foreman of Grand Jury.'
With a full knowledge of the evils with which the Commissioners of Emigration had to contend, we shall be better able to appreciate the leading features of the system pursued at Castle Garden, and how far it realises the intentions of its benevolent founders.
The emigrant ship † drops her anchor in the North River, or upper part of the Bay, where she is compelled to await the arrival of the steamer and barge belonging to the Commissioners, by which passengers and their baggage are landed at the wharf of Castle Garden; which to the alien is the Gate of the New World--the portal through which he reaches the free soil of America. Passengers and their baggage are under the protection of the Commissioners from the moment they are thus transferred to their charge; and though the brood of cheats and harpies may grind their teeth with rage as they remember the time when they were the first to board the emigrant ship, and, as a matter of undisputed right, take possession of her freight, living and inanimate, they know that their anger is unavailing, for that their day of license has passed. No sooner is the ship's arrival notified at Castle Garden, than the officer on duty obtains at the proper office a list of the passengers for whom letters, or remittances, or instructions, have been received by the Commissioners from friends who expected their arrival by that vessel. The officer boards the ship in his steamer; and the first thing he does on reaching her deck is to read aloud to the expectant hundreds, by whom he is quickly surrounded, the names of the passengers on his list, and announce that letters, or news, or money, await them at Castle Garden. Cheering to the heart of the anxious or desponding emigrant--probably a wife who has come out to her husband, or a child in search of a parent--is this joyful proclamation, it sounds so full of welcome to the new home.‡ Too many, perhaps, feel their isolation or their disappointment the more poignantly from there being no word of love, no sign of welcome to hail their arrival.
The passengers are transferred to the steamer, and their baggage to the barge, and landed at Castle Garden, where their names and destinations are entered in a book kept for that purpose. In the large building at the disposal of the Commissioners the emigrants may obtain the luxury of a thorough ablution, and the comfort of the first meal on solid land; and those who have brought out money with them, or for whom their friends have sent remittances in anticipation of their arrival, and who desire to push on--North, South, or West--may at once start on their journey. They can change their money for the currency of the country, and purchase railway tickets to any part of the United States or Canada, and do so without going outside the building, or risking the loss of its salutary protection, They and their baggage are conveyed to the railway depot, from which they start on their inland journey, fortunate indeed in not having a single feather plucked from their wing by watchful harpy.
Of many important and valuable departments of this Landing Depot, those for the exchange of money and the sale of railway or steamboat tickets are not the least important or valuable. In the exchange department various nationalities are represented; and for a small percentage, sufficient to remunerate the broker without oppressing the emigrant, English and Irish, Germans, French, Swedes, Danes, and others, may procure reliable money--not flash notes--for their gold and silver and paper currency. The exchange brokers admitted to do business in Castle Garden are men of respectability; but were they inclined to take advantage of the simplicity of the emigrant, their prompt expulsion would be the certain result. Here then, in a most essential matter, is complete protection afforded to the inexperienced and the helpless.
The sale of railway tickets, the fruitful source of robbery and actual ruin in former days, is entrusted to responsible railway agents, over whom the Commissioners, as in duty bound, maintain a watchful control, necessary rather to prevent delay and inconvenience to the emigrant than to protect him against positive fraud. It is the interest of the railway companies represented in this bureau to fulfil their engagements with honesty and liberality; as if they fail to do so, the Commissioners have sufficient power to bring them to their senses.¶ Of bogus tickets there need be no apprehension now, as in former times, when they were sold at home in the seaport town, and even in the country village; on board-ship during the voyage, or on the wharves and in the streets of New York. The mere loss of the purchase-money did not by any means represent the infamy of the fraud or the magnitude of the evil. Not only was the individual or the family effectually plundered, but, being deprived of the means of transport, they could not get beyond the precincts of the city in which they first set foot, and thus all hopes of a future of profitable industry were lost to them for ever. The sale of railroad tickets in Castle Garden is therefore a protection of the very first importance to the emigrant.
« Previous page | Start of chapter | Book contents | Next page »
NOTES:-
* The following, from the statement of Mr. Vere Foster, to which reference has already been made, represents the state of things existing in 1850, and while exhibiting the terrible injury inflicted on the inexperienced and defenceless emigrant, affords a conclusive testimony in favour of an official landing-place, where passengers arriving at New York could be protected from those who regarded them as their lawful prey: --
`3rd December.-- A few of the passengers were taken ashore to the hospital at Staten Island, and we arrived alongside the quay at New York this afternoon. The 900 passengers dispersed as usual among the various fleecing houses, to be partially or entirely disabled for pursuing their travels into the interior in search of employment.'
† It will be seen from the follow ing passage from the Report of 1866--published in 1867--that steamers are fast driving emigrant sailing ships from the sea. Considering the shortness of the voyage, and the generally excellent nature of the accommodation in well-appointed steamers, such as are at present employed in the passenger trade, this is a revolution not to be regretted:--
'By comparison with former years it is shown that the number of steamers landing passengers at Castle Garden has increased from 22, bringing 5,111 passengers, in 1856, to 109, bringing 34,247 passengers, in 1860; to 95, bringing 21,110 passengers, in 1861; to 100, bringing 25,843 passengers, in 1862; to 170, bringing 63,981 passengers, in 1863; to 203, bringing 81,794 passengers, in 1864; to 220, bringing 116,579 passengers, in 1865; and to 341 steamers, bringing 160,653 passengers, in 1866.'
‡ A considerable sum, amounting to 107,000 dollars, was received in 1866, through various channels, in anticipation of the arrival of intending emigrants, and applied to their forwarding. The amount received at the Landing Depót was 57,359 dollars; at the office of the Irish Emigrant Society, 21,226 dollars; at the office of the German Society, 25,613l.; besides other sums, amounting to about 4,000 dollars.
¶ The Commissioners, in a memorial addressed to the Senate of the United States, in reference to a Bill before Congress, dated June 6, 1866, refer to causes of complaint brought before them through one of their officers. They say that, although they have recently discovered some irregularities in connection with railroad fares, of which they have reason to complain, they are assured and believe that all causes of complaint had been promptly removed. The Commissioners are right to compel those who avail themselves of the privilege of sale under their roof to act in the most loyal fairness to their clients; but, be the 'irregularities' what they may, they are but trifling indeed when contrasted with the abominable frauds--the flagitious robberies at both sides of the Atlantic--practised only a few years since, and practised with almost entire impunity.