Chapter 229

) levying a tax of $1.50 each for the captain and cabin

passengers, and $1 each for steerage passengers, mates, sailors, and mariners, payable by the master of every vessel from a foreign port arriving at a New York port. The proceeds were to be used for the benefit of the marine hospital. This law was continued and reënacted, with slight changes in the amount of the tax, at frequent intervals during the next twenty-five years.[79] It was a real head tax, and may have had a slight restrictive influence upon immigration.

Much more important than this set of laws, however, was another group, specifically concerned with the immigration situation. The first[80] of these was the law of February 11, 1824, which required the master of every ship coming from any foreign country, or from any other state than New York, to report to the mayor in writing, within twenty-four hours after landing, the name, place of birth, last legal settlement, age, and occupation of all passengers, under a penalty of $75 for each person not reported, or reported falsely. The mayor might require a bond, not exceeding $300, for each passenger not a citizen of the United States, to indemnify the authorities of New York against any expense incurred in connection with such passengers, or their children born after landing, for the space of two years. Whenever any passenger, being a citizen of the United States, was deemed likely to become a public charge to the city, the master of the ship should at once remove him at his (the master’s) expense to his place of last settlement, or else defray all expenses incurred by the city. Non-citizens entering the city with the intention of residing there must within twenty-four hours report themselves to the mayor, giving their name, birthplace, etc., the time and place of landing, the name of the ship and commander, under penalty of $300.

This law remained in force for twenty-three years. On May 5, 1847, a more inclusive immigration law was passed of which the most important provisions were as follows:

SECTION 1. The shipmaster shall report the name, place of birth, last legal residence, age, and occupation of every person or passenger arriving in the ship, not being a citizen of the United States. The report shall further specify whether any of the passengers reported are lunatic, idiot, deaf and dumb, blind or infirm, and if so, whether they are accompanied by relatives likely to be able to support them. A report is to be made of those who have died on the voyage. Penalty for violation, $75.

SECTION 2. For each person reported, the sum of one dollar is to be paid by the master within three days after arrival.

SECTION 3. The commissioners of emigration shall go on board of arriving vessels and examine their passengers. If any of the defective classes mentioned in Section 1 are found, not members of emigrating families, and likely to become a public charge, a bond of $300 for five years shall be required, in place of the commutation fee of one dollar.

SECTION 4. Commissioners of emigration are appointed, to have charge of the business of immigration.

SECTION 14. The commissioners of emigration are made recipients and custodians of the marine hospital funds.

SECTION 16. The commissioners are given power to erect buildings for the handling of the immigration business.

SECTION 18. The act of February 11, 1824, is repealed.

Under this law a special body of officials took charge of the handling of immigrants for New York State, and a more systematic and effective method was introduced.

The foregoing law and the corresponding law of Massachusetts were both declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in January, 1849,[81] on the ground that the power to levy a head tax was conferred on Congress by Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution, being included in the “power to regulate commerce with foreign nations.”[82]

New York, however, at once (April 11, 1849) passed another law, even more stringent in its requirements than the foregoing one, but designed to avoid the constitutional difficulties. A bond of $300 was required for _all_ alien passengers, which might be commuted for the sum of $1.50. If any alien passengers are “lunatic, idiot, deaf, dumb, blind, or infirm persons not members of emigrating families,” or likely to become a public charge, or have been paupers in any other country, they are to be bonded in the sum of $500 for ten years, in addition to the commutation money. On such bonds the authorities were empowered to collect enough money to defray the expenses incurred in connection with the immigrants, not exceeding the amount of the bond.

By the act of July 11, 1851, the defective classes were added to by the inclusion of persons maimed, or above the age of sixty years, or under thirteen, widows having families, or women without husbands having families, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge. The bond of $500 for undesirables was retained, but the time limit was reduced to five years.

Practically all of the other states which received trans-Atlantic vessels had laws similar to the bonding law of New York, for their protection against pauper immigration. The Massachusetts law was much more severe than that of New York, and was believed to keep many immigrants away from that state. The Massachusetts law passed April 20, 1837, required shipmasters to deposit a bond of $1000 for ten years for each lunatic, idiot, maimed, aged, or infirm immigrant brought in, and for those incompetent to maintain themselves, or who have been paupers in any other country. For each other alien passenger the shipmaster was to pay the sum of $2.

In all of this legislation the states found themselves in the dilemma of wishing to frame laws which would keep out undesirable immigrants, and yet would not operate to discourage aliens of good quality. The desire for an increase of population by immigration, which was shared by practically all the states, and the fear of diverting the current from one state to another, led to a greater laxity in the attitude of each state than would probably have existed if each could have acted altogether independently. This made the state regulation of immigration most unsatisfactory.

It was inevitable, considering the immensity and suddenness of the immigration movement at this time, and the lack of experience in dealing with such a problem on the part of the American people, that grievous evils should arise. The immigrants, particularly the Irish, were a destitute and helpless lot, and fell an easy prey to the machinations of the host of exploiters which at once sprang up to take advantage of the newly presented opportunities. Countless devices were put in practice for separating the immigrant from whatever valuable goods he brought with him. New York, in particular, as the center of the traffic, swarmed with a host of runners, agents, and solicitors of every kind, who fleeced the newcomers without remorse or pity. These runners were themselves mostly earlier immigrants, who could more readily gain the confidence of the aliens. The handling and inspection of these aliens by the officials was also a weighty problem. It was in the hope of checking the operations of the runners, as well as to provide suitable arrangements for the examination of arriving immigrants, that the Board of Commissioners of Emigration of New York State was created by the act of 1847. This timely action undoubtedly prevented the various evils connected with this immense movement from going to the extremes that they otherwise would have reached, and that they did reach in certain respects in Canada.[83]

In 1855 commissioners leased an old fort at the foot of Manhattan Island, known as Castle Garden, to serve as an immigrant station. This did duty for many years and was considered one of the most interesting spots in the metropolis. It also proved of great service in restraining the operations of the immigrant runners.[84] It goes without saying that it was by no means successful in putting a permanent stop to them.

The bonding provision of the New York State law had one remarkable and unfortunate result. A class of brokers sprang up who took the responsibility of bonding the immigrants from the shipowners. It was obviously to their advantage to keep as many of the immigrants as possible from coming upon the public for support. To accomplish this, they established private hospitals and poorhouses on the outskirts of New York and Brooklyn, in which dependent aliens were placed. The effort to maintain them here at the least possible expense resulted in extreme neglect. A committee of the Board of Aldermen of New York City was appointed to look into this matter, in the year 1846. They found conditions which were almost unbelievable. In one apartment, fifty feet square, they discovered one hundred sick and dying immigrants lying on straw. In their midst were the bodies of two others who had died four or five days earlier, and had been left there. The worst kind of food was specially purchased for the consumption of these victims. The conditions unearthed by this investigation contributed to the sentiment which brought about the passage of the law of 1847.[85]

The chaotic state of the immigration situation, the inadequacy of state control, and the increasing obviousness of the resulting evils led to a growing demand for federal action on the matter. This feeling found expression in numerous petitions and memorials presented to Congress by state legislatures, city councils, and private citizens. These began to appear about 1835, with the rise of the Native American party. With the increased immigration of the latter forties, the demand became more insistent. The immediate and crying evil, which attracted the greatest attention, lay in the unspeakable shipping conditions which still existed.[86] In 1847 Mr. Rathbun stated on the floor of Congress that emigrants from abroad were frequently landed in the port of New York in such a diseased condition, due to overcrowding on the ships which brought them, that they were unable to walk. They were carried in carts direct to the almshouse, and sometimes died on the way.[87] In the same year, out of ninety thousand immigrants who embarked for Canada in British vessels, fifteen thousand died on the way. This exceeded even the suffering in vessels bound for the United States.[88] On the whole, conditions seem to have been the best on the German and American vessels.

In response to these conditions, and to the growing demand for a remedy, Congress on February 22, 1847, passed a law, superseding that of 1819, and designed to remedy the evils of overcrowding. The provisions about victualing the ships remained the same as before, but the new law provided for a certain allotment of superficial, or square feet of, deck space per passenger, and also limited the number of passengers in proportion to the tonnage of the ship. This law was not satisfactory, however, and was very soon superseded by the act of May 17, 1848, which remained in force until 1855. In 1849 the British government passed a law, designed to secure the same ends as the American laws. It was under the operation of these three laws that the great flood of Irish immigration crossed the Atlantic.

The American statutes required that the deck space, unoccupied by stores or goods, except passengers’ baggage, should average fourteen square feet for each passenger, man, woman, or child, excepting infants not one year old. If the space between decks was less than six feet, there must be sixteen square feet per passenger, and if less than five feet, twenty-two square feet (a significant commentary on the ship construction of the day). There were to be not more than two tiers of berths on any deck, and the berths were to be not less than six feet by one and one half feet in dimensions. The British statute set a limit of one passenger (exclusive of cabin) for every two tons registered tonnage, two children under fourteen years of age being counted as one, and children under one year not being counted.

Up to this time it had been customary on immigrant ships to require passengers to provide their own stores, but on account of the lack of intelligence and foresight on the part of the passengers, both the American and British statutes required ships to carry a certain amount and kind of provisions for each passenger, as follows:

──────────────┬────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────── │AMERICAN ACT│ BRITISH ACT ──────────────┼────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────── Water │60 gallons │52½ gallons Ship bread │15 pounds │50 pounds Wheat flour │10 pounds │20 pounds Oatmeal │10 pounds │60 pounds Rice │10 pounds │40 pounds Salt pork │10 pounds │22½ pounds Peas and beans│10 pounds │Potatoes may be substituted for meal or │ │ rice at the ratio of five pounds for one Potatoes │35 pounds │ „ ──────────────┴────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────

The passengers were still required to do their own cooking, and the American act provided for the building of cooking ranges for the use of steerage passengers, in proportion to the number carried.

Most of the Irish passengers were collected at Liverpool, though by 1847 there were also many direct sailings from Ireland. They were mainly booked through passenger brokers, who often imposed on them, but apparently not so much as might have been expected. There was a medical inspection at Liverpool, and emigrants were required to be certified against contagious diseases. The average length of the passage from Liverpool to New York in 1849 was about thirty-five days, and from London about forty-three and one half days. But voyages were often much prolonged. One ship, the _Speed_ (!), in 1848 had a passage of twelve weeks, with great ensuing hardship. The British act provided that if ships had to turn back, the passengers must be transshipped to another vessel, and in the meantime maintained at the master’s expense. This often resulted in hardship, instead of benefit, as ships sometimes kept on the voyage when they were not fitted to sail. In 1849 and 1850 some ships turned back after having been out seventy days. The British government tried to induce steamers to take steerage passengers by allowing them to provide provisions for only forty days, while sailing vessels had to provide for seventy. Very few immigrants, nevertheless, were carried on steam vessels during these years. The deaths on these voyages were mainly due to ship fever, a severe form of Irish typhus.[89]

Though the German immigrants at this time were at least as numerous as the Irish, they attracted much less attention. This was partly because they were less poverty-stricken, and partly because they mostly moved on to the west, and did not collect in the cities of the Atlantic seaboard. The Irish, in consequence of their native character, the circumstances which led to their coming, and the conditions of the voyage, were in a

## particularly helpless state when they arrived. They were the most

prominent victims of the runners, and made the largest showing in the hospitals and almshouses. In spite of the good accomplished by the state and federal statutes, an extreme amount of destitution and suffering persisted. The burden of foreign pauperism, in particular, increased tremendously. In 1850 more than half the paupers wholly or partially supported in the United States were of foreign birth. In the North Atlantic coastal states the proportion was much larger.[90]

These considerations, added to the preponderance of Roman Catholics among the Irish immigrants, led to a renewal of the anti-immigration agitation, which had been so vigorous ten years earlier. This time the movement took the form of a secret organization, started probably in New York City in 1850. This society grew rapidly. Its meetings were held in secret, and the purpose and even the name of the organization were so much of a mystery at first that the rank and file of the members, either from necessity or from choice, were in the habit of answering all questions regarding it by saying, “I don’t know.” Hence it came to be known as the “Know Nothing” party, and as such has come down to history.[91]

The organization did not long maintain its ultra-secret character. This had mostly disappeared by 1854, and the society openly indorsed candidates, and put forward candidates of its own. It is recorded that in 1855 the governors and legislatures in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, California, and Kentucky were Know Nothings, and that they had secured many offices in other states. By 1855 they began to mature plans for the presidential election. They adopted a platform calling for a change in the existing naturalization laws, for the repeal of the state laws allowing unnaturalized foreigners to vote, and the repeal by Congress of all acts making land grants to unnaturalized foreigners and allowing them to vote in the territories. In 1856 a national convention was held, and Millard Fillmore was nominated for president. The principles of the platform adopted were that Americans must rule America, that native-born citizens should be selected for all state, federal, and municipal government employment in preference to all others, that the naturalization law should be changed so as to require twenty-one years’ residence, and that a law should be passed excluding from the United States all paupers or persons convicted of crime. This party had its greatest strength in the thirty-fourth Congress, 1854–1856, and in the discussions of the period many severe charges were made against the immigrants.

But the Know Nothings were in the minority and consequently had little real influence on legislation. The immigration laws proposed by them were, as a rule, confined to the exclusion of foreign paupers and criminals, and none of these was passed.[92] The diversion of public interest from immigration affairs to the great questions of slavery, and the events preliminary to the Civil War, coupled with the decline in the volume of immigration after 1854, led to the natural decline and final break-up of the Know Nothing party.

The agitation of the period, however, particularly in regard to steerage conditions, had its effect on Congress, and in 1853 a select committee of the Senate was appointed to investigate the conditions of steerage immigration and, in particular, “the causes and the extent of the sickness and mortality prevailing on board the emigrant ships on the voyage to this country,” and to determine what legislation, if any, was necessary to secure better conditions. This committee reported on August 2, 1854, and on March 3, 1855, a bill was passed which, with slight modifications, governed the carriage of immigrants up to 1882. The design of this act was to improve steerage conditions, and “theoretically the law of 1855 provided for an increased air space, better ventilation, and improved accommodations in the way of berths, cooking facilities, the serving of food, free open deck space, and so forth. Although the evil of overcrowding, which had been attended with such disastrous results in former years, appears to have been especially aimed at by the makers of the law, the wording of the act was, unfortunately, such that the provisions relating to the number of passengers to be carried were inoperative, and there was practically no legal restraint in this regard, as far as the United States law was concerned, between 1855 and 1882.”[93]

Practically the only amendment to the steerage law from 1855 to 1882 was an act of 1860, designed to secure much-needed protection for female passengers from immoral conduct on the part of members of the crew. A fine of $1000 was imposed on any person employed on any ship of the United States who was found guilty of such conduct, and members of the crew were forbidden to visit parts of the ship assigned to immigrants, except under the direction or with the permission of the commanding officer.

It will be observed that, while the various state laws had a slightly restrictive effect, all of the federal acts of this period, designed as they were to secure better accommodations on the voyage, served as an encouragement, rather than a deterrent, to immigration. And, on the whole, in spite of the violent anti-immigrant agitation of the nativistic and Know Nothing movements and the dread of foreign paupers and criminals, the preponderance of public opinion in the United States was probably favorable to the immigrant as such. It must be remembered that during this entire period the United States was still distinctly a new country. There was an abundance of unoccupied land which might be secured on easy terms. There was a large westward movement of population from the Atlantic seaboard, and the growing manufactures and internal improvements created a large demand for labor. It was, as a whole, a decidedly thinly settled country. All of these things combined to give the immigrant every advantage in the mind of the native citizen.

Reviewing the third period, we see that it was a period of rapidly increasing immigration, responding to the expanding industry and exceptionally favorable agricultural situation in this country. The movement culminated in the enormous immigration of the late forties and early fifties. These were mainly Germans, who left their home primarily for political reasons, and took up farm lands in the west, and Irish, who emigrated because of economic disaster, and tended to linger in the eastern cities, or to go out into the construction camps. Both of these races were closely allied to the American people, and easily assimilated. At the beginning of the period, the attitude of the American people was almost wholly one of welcome, but with the increase of the current, bringing as it did enormous numbers of destitute and helpless aliens, there arose a distinct feeling of opposition to unregulated immigration, based primarily upon the dislike of foreign paupers and criminals, and aided by the undeniable practice of foreign countries of emptying their poorhouses, and even their jails, upon our shores. This feeling later came to be intensified by a strong antipathy to Roman Catholics and the restriction of immigration was made a party policy. Nevertheless, the opposition to immigration did not, during this period, attain sufficient strength to secure any important legislation. Many of the states had laws designed to indemnify the communities against expense on account of foreign paupers, which may have had a slight restrictive effect. But such federal legislation as there was, was directed to the improvement of the conditions of the voyage, and hence had an encouraging rather than a restrictive tendency. With the approach of the Civil War immigration fell off, and public attention was diverted to other matters.

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