The Immigrant Pays the Freight.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 6752, 5 February 1892, Page 3

The Immigrant Pays the Freight.

“ There Is great bidding nowadays for immigrant transportation,” said a railroad agent, “ I’ve been in freight moat of the time myself, but now I’m going in for Europeans. There’s money in them, because they don’t kno w anything and will do as they are told. They come here without the least idea of the place they are going to, or how to gat there, so they are legitimate game for the railroads. For instance, one of those savages from Russia lands in New York billeted for Hoboken. Ho doesn’t know Eng'ish and doesn’t know whether Eoboken is in Brazil or Labrador, so we could as well send him over the Northern Pacific to the other coast, and then back from San Francisco over the Union Pac.fio, as across the ferry. Of course, we don’t do that, but we send these people, say from here to Boston where we get the best offer for them, and thence to the West. It does not coat them any more, keeps them up a night longer, and makes them buy one or two meals, that’s all, and it gives us a commission which we are working for. A Western road pays so many dollars for each immigrant wo deliver to it, but nothing extra for the fleas we deliver with him. Of this sum wo have to pay from half to three-quarters to the steamship company that we stand in with and that gives him up to us, and wo live on the margin. Wo pay the steamship men $1.50 for giving us an immigrant to.carry to Chicago, for instance, and the price increases in a regular scale until it costs us $8 to get a heathen for Portland or San Francisco.. They have to be handled like cattle, and it’s unpleasant business on account of the way they smell and the things they have in their clothes.”