As already reported to you in a previous communication in reply to Bureau letter No. 36,810, dated Washington, April 14, 1903, I located Joseph Ellsner at Littai, Austria, and endeavored to get from him some information with reference to importation of laborers under contract into the United States. I succeeded in obtaining from Mr. Ellsner a copy of a letter addressed to him by some person from Chicago, asking for 200 able-bodied men to work on the railroad, which letter I mailed to you, together with my said report to the Department. I sent you the information that about 1,800 Croatians are being shipped monthly from Fiume to the United States. I endeavored to ascertain the purpose of this large number of emigrants, and found that quite a number of them, especially in the month of August of each year, were hired by several Austrian firms to be sent to Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Mississippi, to cut staves, and that some of these firms, owing to difficulties which they had in the United States with these men, who made trouble and threats against the contractors, abandoned this practice, and it is now largely controlled by the firm of Julius Kern & Co., at Vienna, through whose agency some 300 or 400 men are sent to the United States at certain intervals. I paid particular attention to this firm and employed the friendly services of Mr. A. Knoepfelmacher, a journalist, who called at the place of business of Mr. Kern under the pretext of writing an article upon the enterprising ability of an Austrian firm, such as Julius Kern & Co., in dealing so extensively with the United States. The interview was obtained, and incidentally Mr. Knoepfelmacher asked questions with reference to the sending of the contract laborers to the United States, and some information was given him, with the strict injunction, however, that no part of it should be made public. I received a letter from Mr. Knoepfelmacher which I annex hereto, together with a translation thereof, marked “Exhibit H,” which letter fairly expresses the contempt of these Europeans at our contract-labor laws and the ease with which they evade them. It was admitted by the firm of Julius Kern & Co. that as many as 1,500 laborers are sent to the United States under contract, each of whom is thoroughly instructed as to the manner in which questions should be answered when arriving in the United States. Subsequent to the receipt of the letter from Mr. Knoepfelmacher he accompanied me to the United States embassy at Vienna, and there, in the presence of Secretary Rives, repeated the statements contained in his letter. The information I thus received, together with the positive knowledge which I possessed that a great many contract laborers enter the United States annually, prompted me to pay particular attention to this subject, and I made various and frequent attempts, particularly at places and railroad stations where emigrants concentrate, to question and interview individuals or groups of emigrants, with a view of learning their destination or of affirming my belief that they were laborers under contract, destined for the United States. Not only did these interrogations confirm my suspicions, but I have become convinced that the importation of contract labor to the United States has assumed alarming proportions of which the Department cannot form an adequate idea. I base this conviction not only upon my experience at the various places where emigrants concentrate, but upon observations made and collected in numerous villages which I reached by special conveyance, and in a large number of which I found that almost the entire male population, able to work, was absent, and upon close inquiry I learned that the men were all in the United States, having gone there under some contract of labor or other. This evil is largely contributed to by residents of the United States engaged in the steamship ticket and foreign exchange business, and not infrequently either connected with or publishing some newspaper in a foreign language. I took occasion to refer to this phase in one of my previous reports to the Department, containing information in point procured by me at the city of Laibach and from the Government at Vienna. I am convinced that Fares, at Marseille, also avails himself of many sources of this character in the pursuit of his nefarious business, as I was able to judge from the hundreds of letters I saw delivered to him, coming from the United States and bearing the heading of numerous steamship ticket agents and publishers of Syrian newspapers in this country. Another method which in my opinion is frequently resorted to to promote the importation of contract labor is as follows: A native of a certain village or town abroad, who had spent some time in the United States, will suddenly appear at said village, ostensibly on a visit, and within a short time thereafter he may be met on his return trip to the United States accompanied by groups of men whose number vary from ten to twenty-five, according to circumstances. I have observed such men purchasing a number of railroad tickets at Oderberg, on the Austro-Prussian border, for Bremen, and distribute them among the group of men that so accompanied him. I met the same man, who thus purchased the tickets at Oderberg, a few days later at Bremen, and upon my questioning him for the whereabouts of his friends I saw in his company at Oderberg he denied all knowledge of them; but I saw all of them in the immediate vicinity, and found that they had steamship tickets in their possession which were procured in the office of F. Missler. They were no longer in groups, and acted in a manner as though they had never seen the man who had led them, this being evidently part of their instructions and a matter of precaution. I could refer to hundreds of similar cases which I have encountered in my travels abroad. Most of these people so interrogated by me were in possession of addresses of persons residing in the United States, alleged to be friends or relatives, but which, to my best impression and belief, were frequently fictitious addresses, and the addressees absolutely unacquainted with the emigrants in question. Most of these addresses referred to persons residing inland, particularly in the States of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and rarely to people residing in New York city or other Atlantic seaports. Unfortunately, these emigrants are so thoroughly instructed and prepared, that it is exceedingly difficult and almost impossible to gain an admission from them after they depart from their respective homes.
Supplementing a previous report which I made to the Department concerning the prevalence of trachoma in various European countries, particularly Austria-Hungary, Russia, the Balkan States, and Italy, I respectfully state that so alarming and so widespread is this most dangerous and contagious disease that the governments of the various countries enumerated have adopted most heroic measures for its suppression. In Hungary this disease has assumed such proportions that the Government encounters great difficulties in some counties to muster the required quota of men for military service, trachomatic people belonging to the class which are rejected for the army. To combat and, if possible, to stamp out the disease, the Hungarian Government maintains a special medical corps, consisting of fifty physicians who constantly travel to and fro in certain respective districts to which they are assigned, it being the duty of every person to submit to an examination for such disease, and if found afflicted therewith to present himself or herself for gratuitous treatment twice a week until cured. Records of such trachomatic persons are kept, and they are subjected to constant surveillance in the manner that no person can leave his respective district for another before first submitting to a medical examination as above outlined; such person is provided with a book in which the physician of the district makes an entry that the bearer is either free from trachoma or afflicted thereby, and if he has undergone any treatment, the period of such treatment is entered; upon the arrival of such person in another district he or she must present himself or herself immediately to the physician of that district, and if afflicted with trachoma the treatment is systematically continued. Although this rule is strictly enforced, people intending to emigrate rarely observe it, and in order to be enabled to give the Department more definite information on this subject I accompanied Dr. Simon Buchwald, one of the physicians appointed by the Government of Hungary for the district of Lipto-Szt. Miklos, on one of his tours through the villages of his district, and was present at the examinations and treatment conducted by him. I succeeded in obtaining from Dr. Buchwald an extract of the official record of thirty-five persons of the age ranging from seventeen to forty-two years, who had left the district for the United States, and were afflicted with trachoma, had been treated by him, and at the time of their departure were not cured. Only four of these emigrants returned to their respective homes, having been refused at the medical examination, regularly held at the control stations of the North German-Lloyd and Hamburg-American lines, at the Austro-Prussian border, upon the ground of this very affliction. I annex the said extract hereto, marked “Exhibit I,” containing the names of these thirty-five persons, and having underlined thereon, with red pencil, the names of the four persons thus returned.
Of the countries enumerated, Hungary seems to have the disease under best control, although I can state, on reliable information, that there are at least 60,000 persons in the kingdom of Hungary suffering from trachoma. The worst conditions in this respect prevail in Russia, where at least thirty per cent of the army are afflicted with this dread disease, who, after their discharge from the army, spread the affliction in all parts of the empire.
Supplemental to my report heretofore submitted to the Department upon the subject of emigration to the United States of Roumanian Jews, I beg to reiterate that the forwarding of these people is conducted systematically and is invariably in charge of the Jewish Colonization Association. The method pursued in this instance is that representatives of the Jewish congregations in the various places through which these emigrants pass generally await them at the railroad stations and care for their safe transportation to the next station, where the same thing is repeated, until they reach Rotterdam, from which port they are sent to England for embarkation to the United States. I attach herewith copy of the usual letter sent by Doctor Lowenstein, the representative at Bucharest, Roumania, of the Jewish Colonization Association, addressed to the Jewish congregation at Budapest, together with a translation thereof, advising said congregation of the near approach of a group of such Jewish emigrants, attaching also hereto a copy of a list of names of such group of emigrants, marked “Exhibit J.”
With reference to prostitutes and women imported for the purpose of prostitution, I have made several reports to the Department, and, reiterating the same, I beg to report in addition as follows: In the cities of Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Lemberg, Krakow, and more particularly in Warsaw and Wilna, I learned that annually a number of women and men engaged in this nefarious business here in the United States pay visits to the places above enumerated and invariably a number of such immoral women follow them to the United States. In many instances these women are provided with American passports or citizen papers of their alleged husbands residing in the United States, and so widespread did I find this traffic in, and issuance of, American passports in Austria-Hungary, that I deemed it my duty to call the attention of the Hon. Bellamy Storer, United States ambassador and envoy plenipotentiary at Vienna, to the disgraceful practice, who again, on his part, instructed the United States consulates under his jurisdiction to be very careful hereafter before transmitting requests for passports for women intending to go to the United States to join their alleged husbands, and whose citizen papers are generally annexed to these requests.
I have the honor also to report that the Hon. Frank D. Chester, United States consul at Budapest, Hungary, informed me that there was quite a traffic in United States passports and citizen papers carried on at the city of Fiume, and that one of his attachés had some time ago made a special investigation and reported about it, I believe, to the State Department at Washington. In this latter instance, it is my opinion that the passports and citizen papers are used mostly for contract laborers, for the reason that, as I convinced myself during my travel through Switzerland, a similar traffic is carried on there for the use of contract laborers, who mostly come to Switzerland from the southern part of Austria, Croatia, and Dalmatia, the business of these countries, in the way of emigration, being done mostly by steamship agents located in Switzerland. There is no doubt that hundreds and hundreds of citizen papers are being sent from the United States to Europe annually for just these purposes.
Another practice which I observed during my trip is that most emigrants are in possession of cards of all kinds of boarding houses, emigrant agencies, and “Homes” of all nationalities and in all cities of the United States. I attach hereto one of said cards, of which thousands can be obtained daily, and mark it “Exhibit K.”
I have pointed out very frequently the fact that steamship companies are unable to ascertain the admissibility to the United States of emigrants who present themselves prior to their embarkation, except through the medical examination and the questions put to each of them, before the final ticket is issued. If the emigrant is not well enough instructed by those who originally sent him on his road, it happens that his inadmissibility is occasionally detected, as I have noticed at the offices of the Hamburg-American, Red Star, and Holland-American lines, at the ports of Hamburg, Antwerp, and Rotterdam respectively, but this is rarely the case. The emigrant is most thoroughly instructed when he reaches the offices of the steamship companies, having undergone perhaps two or more special courses of instruction at the hands of the so-called subagents; but should the answers of such emigrant, in spite of this instruction, be found faulty in certain respects, it would be idle to assume that the agencies would refuse to forward him; a striking example, illustrating this circumstance, may be found in an article of the Italian newspaper Il Dovere, published in the city of Bellinzona, Switzerland, bearing date June 23, 1903, a copy of which I annex hereto, marked “Exhibit L.” The article in question will be found on the second page of said exhibit, marked with blue pencil, which was sent from Chiasso under like date, relating the story of an Italian emigrant by the name of Marcaccio Vincenzo, who on May 2, 1903, sailed for New York on board the North-German Lloyd steamer Friedrich der Grosse, accompanied by a woman who had deserted her husband, in the same manner that said Vincenzo deserted his wife, and both of whom, upon their arrival at Ellis Island, were duly deported.
The article further states that Vincenzo returned to Chiasso and went to the agency of Jauch & Pellegrini, where he had purchased the tickets for himself and the woman, and demanded the return of his money, which of course was refused. Vincenzo thereupon went to the authorities and made a sworn statement to the effect that at the time of purchasing the tickets mentioned he told the firm of Jauch & Pellegrini that the woman accompanying him was not his wife, and that he was then and there instructed by said firm that upon his arrival at New York he must state that the woman accompanying him was his wife. The case of this emigrant was disposed of in a very simple manner; he was sent across the border to Italy and sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment for deserting his wife and committing adultery. The woman in question was likewise sent to jail for eight months.
I was informed at Chiasso by the other steamship agents that they had reported this case to their respective companies, requesting that the agency be withdrawn from Jauch & Pellegrini, as occurrences of this kind had a tendency to harm them in their business, but that nothing was done by the steamship companies in this direction. I was also informed that the real owners of the firm of Jauch & Pellegrini are the notorious firm of Corecco & Brivio, at Bodio, Switzerland, who are the general agents of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, and to whom reference was made by Special Immigrant-Inspector Robert Watchorn, in his report of August, 1902—Corecco & Brivio are likewise the owners of La Svizzera Societa Anonima per l’Emigrazione, at Chiasso, representing the Beaver Line.