etc. The runner
gets one dollar for everyone booked. 3. The next imposition is at
Albany; it is there the great fraud is perpetrated. If they find the
emigrant has plenty of money they make him pay the whole passage over
again,--repudiating all that was done at New York. 4. The next is the
luggage. It is falsely weighed, and the emigrant is often made to pay
five or six times more than the proper charge. "The emigrant," adds Mr.
Schoger, "now thinks himself out of his difficulty, but finds himself
greatly mistaken. The passengers are crowded like beasts into the canal
boat, and are frequently compelled to pay their passage over again, or
be thrown overboard by the captain."[299] The mates of the ships often
took the property of emigrants; their locks were picked and their chests
robbed; for none of which outrages was there the slightest redress.[300]

Before the legislature took any effective action in protecting the
emigrants who landed at New York, many philanthropic and benevolent
societies were formed for that purpose. Of those societies one Hiram
Huested gave the following testimony on oath: "I am sure, there is as
much iniquity amongst the emigrant societies as there is amongst the
runners."[301]

What with shipwrecks, what with deaths from famine, from fever, from
overcrowding; what with wholesale robbery, committed upon them at almost
every step of their journey, it is matter for great surprise indeed,
that even a remnant of the Famine-emigrants survived to locate
themselves in that far West, to which they fled in terror and dismay,
from their humble but loved and cherished homes, in the land of their
fathers. The Irish race get but little credit for industry or
perseverance; but in this they are most unjustly maligned, as many
testimonies already cited from friend and foe, clearly demonstrate. If
one more be wanting, I would point to a fact in the history of the
worn-out remnant of our Famine-emigrants, who had tenacity of life
enough to survive their endless hardships and journeyings. That fact
is, the large sums of money which, year after year, they sent to their
friends--every penny of which they earned by the sweat of their brow--by
their industry and perseverance.

Thus write the Commissioners of Emigration, in their thirty-first
General Report: "In 1870, as in former years, the amount sent home was
large, being L727,408 from North America, and L12,804 from Australia and
New Zealand. Of this sum there w