e greater
part of their cash possessions. When they arrive at the 'control
station' it is remarkable that most emigrants have cards with the
address of a certain steamship ticket agent, and the agent, on the other
hand, has a list of all the individuals who were smuggled across the
frontiers. When I asked one of these representatives how this was done,
he told me that he paid 'good commissions' to the runner on the other
side of the frontier for each case. When steamship companies and their
agents stop paying commissions to runners for emigrants referred to
them, individuals will only by their own initiative attempt to come to
the United States, and most of those considered undesirable will remain
at their native homes."[28]

[Sidenote: Law in Contempt]

Violations of law abound. Smuggling persons is regarded with much the
same moral leniency as smuggling goods. The law forbids importation of
persons under contract to work. In April last two Italian steamships
carried back to Europe more than 1,000 laborers, who had been brought
over in violation of the contract-labor laws. Commissioner Watchorn had
word from his special investigators abroad that the men had been
collected in the Balkan States to work for padrones in this country. So
back went the thousand Slavs; but it was a chance discovery. The men
admitted that the padrones had paid their passage and agreed to furnish
them work. They said the rosiest conditions had been painted before
their eyes, and they believed "big money" was to be made here. The
steamship companies had to bear the expense of taking them back, but the
padrones have not suffered any penalty, and will go on with their
unlawful work.

[Sidenote: How the Laborers are Engaged]

Mr. Brandenburg learned from an Italian woman that her husband had been
commissioned by a contractor in Pittsburg to go into the Italian
provinces of Austria and engage 200 good stonemasons, 200 good
carpenters, and an indefinite number of unskilled laborers. These people
were to be put in touch with sub-agents of lines sailing from Hamburg,
Fiume, and Bremen, and these agents were to be accountable for these
contract laborers being got safely into the United States. This woman
said many of her neighbors in Pittsburg had come into the country as
contract laborers and held the law in great contempt, as it was merely
a matter of being sufficiently instructed and prepared, and no official
at Boston or Ellis Island could tell