IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES 93 



standing the provisions of the contract labor law, take a hand 

 in it also. But beyond and above this the central governments 

 of European countries, notably Hungary, enter into agree- 

 ments with steamship lines for the exclusive shipment of 

 their emigrants to the United States. Much of this is done 

 under cover of caring for the welfare and good treatment of 

 the emigrant whilst crossing the Atlantic. It is needless to 

 say that such contractual relations do not make for the sending 

 of the best class of emigrants. 



The immigrant having arrived in America, the solicitude of 

 the home government does not cease. That government ap- 

 points priests, clergymen of other denominations, attaches 

 of consular offices and of bankers and exchange offices to keep 

 a general supervision of the immigrant while in America and^ 

 to induce him in the end to return to his fatherland. This | 

 parental supervision often takes the form of preventing him', 

 in a thousand indirect ways from becoming a citizen of the 

 United States. At all times it exercises the pressure of | 

 national feeling, national custom, national song and language 

 to keep him as alien as possible to the country in which he 

 finds himself. He is to regard himself as a bird of passage 

 as far as possible. Where the call and prompting of religion 

 can produce efifect, it is used as an instrument to produce the 

 same result. In the case of a Russian mission here, the 

 inmates are always taught the words Amerikamkaya Rus 

 (American Russian-land) and to use the words "our Lord, 

 the Czar," thus directing them towards that empire as their ^ 

 over-lord. This indicates the agencies from without which) 

 take oversight of the immigrant and which do not work for/ 

 his good either in citizenship, morals or religion. - 



The worst form of espionage of the newly arrived immi- 

 grant is the sharper of his own nationality. He may be the 

 so-called banker or ticket agent (who is happily being weeded 

 out by severer laws), or the boarding-house keeper or labor 

 broker who is to procure him a job, and the darker form of 

 employment agency which makes it a business to prey upon 

 women newly arrived. They speak the language, they are 

 often of immediate practical service, and use every device to 

 ingratiate themselves into the good graces of the arriving 

 immigrant. Only the application of the law in full severity 

 can have a deterrent effect upon their activities. They have 



