The methods used by these agents to encourage emigration are most ingenious and insidious. Every possible means is used to make the peasant dissatisfied with his present lot, and to impress him with the glories and joys of life in America. Many, perhaps the majority, of the agents are themselves returned immigrants, who give glittering accounts of their experiences in America, and display gold watches, diamond pins, and various other proofs of their prosperity. The methods of to-day are not quite so crude and bizarre as they used to be. The stories of the richness of America and the ease of life there which used to be current were so overdrawn as to undeceive any but the most ignorant and gullible. Immigrants have left for America expecting to be able to pick up unlimited dollars lying loose in the streets, and stories are told of steerage passengers who threw away the cooking utensils they had brought with them, as the vessel neared New York, supposing that they could get a new lot for nothing as soon as they landed. A better knowledge of actual conditions in America, which now prevails in most European countries, has precluded the continued circulation of such fictions as these. In fact, if there were not real advantages in the United States, and many cases of successful emigrants, the agents would not be able to operate successfully for an indefinite time. But as yet there does exist a sufficient difference between conditions in the new world and in the old to give them a basis of truth, which they may embellish as occasion demands. Many of these agents make a practice of advancing money to the emigrants to pay for their passage, taking a mortgage on their property for an amount far in advance of that actually furnished. These debts are met with a strange faithfulness by the immigrants, even when they have been woefully deceived and cheated. In Greece it is asserted that the agents work through the priests, and thus largely increase their influence.[[123]]
Immigration which is inspired by such stimulation as this is far from being so desirable as that which is natural and spontaneous. It follows no natural laws, and responds to no economic demand in this country. It is likely to be of injury rather than of benefit to the United States, and works untold injustice to the immigrants. It is regarded as pernicious by all fair-minded observers, and the United States government has made serious efforts to check it. This is the purpose of the clause in the immigration law limiting the nature of solicitation that may be done by transportation lines. The solicitation of immigration is no new thing. Hale, in his Letters on Irish Immigration, written in 1851–1852, said that competition between the different lines of packets and different shipping houses had made the means of emigration familiar in the remotest corners of Ireland, and that advertising was fully utilized. Professor Mayo-Smith in 1892 wrote that the Inman Steamship Company had 3500 agents in Europe and an equal number in the United States selling prepaid tickets. In Switzerland in 1885 there were 400 licensed emigration agents.[[124]] The laws passed since then have forced the agents to proceed more cautiously, and conceal their activities. They have not put a stop to their operations.
These emigration agents are by no means all accredited representatives of the steamship lines over which they send their recruits. There are, to be sure, plenty of official agents of the various transportation companies, who are openly acknowledged as such. The region around the harbor, in many of the Mediterranean seaports, is thronged with steamship ticket offices, often flying the American flag, and with emigration agencies, and the line between the two is frequently very difficult to draw. But the traveling agents, or “runners,” are often free lances as far as appearances go. It is very hard to establish any connection between them and any transportation company. Yet all who have investigated the subject are convinced that there is a close understanding and coöperation between the two, even if there is no official relation. It is contrary to human nature, when so much money is to be made by such canvassing, and there are plenty of people ready to do it, that the transportation companies should neglect the opportunity. On this subject the Immigration Commission says, “It does not appear that the steamship lines as a rule openly direct the operations of these agents, but the existence of the propaganda is a matter of common knowledge in the emigrant-furnishing countries, and, it is fair to assume, is acquiesced in, if not stimulated, by the steamship lines as well.”[[125]]
The Commissioner General of Immigration is much more emphatic in his statements. The report for 1909 contains the following passages (p. 112): “The promoter is usually a steamship ticket agent, employed on a commission basis, or a professional money lender, or a combination of the two.... He is employed by the steamship lines, large and small, without scruple, and to the enormous profit of such lines.... To say that the steamship lines are responsible, directly or indirectly, for this unnatural immigration is not the statement of a theory, but of a fact, and of a fact that sometimes becomes, indeed, if it is not always, a crying shame.... [Referring to Contract Labor Inspector John Gruenberg] He shows quite clearly that all of the steamship lines engaged in bringing aliens from Europe to this country have persistently and systematically violated the law, both in its letter and spirit, by making use of every possible means to encourage the peasants of Europe to purchase tickets over their lines to this country. They have issued circulars and advertisements, and made use of extensive correspondence, through their own agents in this country and in Europe.”
The law referred to is Section 7 of the Act of 1907, repeating in substance Section 4, Act of 1891 (p. 111). The ease and persistency with which this provision, carefully worded as it is, is violated, furnishes a striking example of the difficulty of passing statutes which shall be capable of enforcement, especially in foreign countries, to put a stop to practices which are universally conceded to be undesirable.
The second great source of stimulation to emigration is the labor agent. His operations are extensive and diversified, and always in direct violation of the contract labor law. That section of the immigration statutes, as previously pointed out, is so sweepingly drawn as to make any immigrant, not in the excepted classes, who has received the slightest intimation that there is work awaiting him in this country, a violator of the law. But the economic advantage to employers in this country of importing European labor under contract to perform services in the United States at much less than the market rate of wages, is so great, that, as in the previous case, human nature cannot resist the temptation, provided the chances of escaping detection are sufficiently good. And this part of the law, like that relating to advertising, is of such a nature as to make it susceptible of continued and extensive evasion by unscrupulous persons, possessed of such skill and craftiness as characterize the typical contract labor agent. While there is no way of estimating the extent of this practice, there is no doubt that only a very small proportion of the present immigration, from the Mediterranean countries at least, is innocent of the letter of the law, strictly interpreted. This is not to say that they are under actual contract to labor, but that their coming has been encouraged by some sort of intimation that there would be work awaiting them.
By a recent opinion of the Attorney-General, two essential points have been laid down in the construction of the contract labor laws, as follows:
“(1) That they ‘prohibit any offer or promise of employment which is of such a definite character that an acceptance thereof would constitute a contract.’
“(2) That the prohibition to encourage the immigration of an alien by a promise of employment is ‘directed against a promise which specially designates the particular job or work or employment for which the alien’s labor is desired.’”[[126]]
Even under this somewhat liberal interpretation of the laws, wholesale violations undoubtedly go on. In the words of the Immigration Commission, “In this way hundreds of immigrants are annually debarred at United States ports as contract laborers, while doubtless hundreds of thousands more are admitted who have practically definite assurances as to the place and nature of their employment in this country.”