the number of emigrants from Europe arriving in our country had
rapidly and surprisingly increased. The famine in Ireland had caused the
people of that island to migrate to ours in swarms like those which the
populous North poured from her frozen loins to overwhelm the Roman Empire.
In the ten years from 1845 to 1854 inclusive, more than a million and a
half of Irish emigrants left the United Kingdom. The emigration from
Germany had also prodigiously increased and promised to become still
larger. All these were exposed, and the Germans in a particular manner, on
account of their ignorance of our language, to the extortions of a knavish
class, called runners, and of the keepers of boarding-houses, who often
defrauded them of all that they possessed, and left them to charity. Most
of those who, after these extortions, had the means, made their way into
the interior and settled upon farms, but a large number remained to become
inmates of the almshouse, or to starve and sicken in crowded and
unwholesome rooms. Mr. Kapp, for some time a Commissioner of Emigration,
relates, in his interesting work on Emigration, an example of the manner
in which these poor creatures were cheated. An emigrant came to a
boarding-house keeper to pay his bill: "It is eighteen dollars," said the
landlord. "Why," said the emigrant, "did you not agree to board me for
sixpence a meal and threepence for a bed?" "Yes," was the answer, "and
that is just seventy-five cents a day; you have been here eight days, and
that makes just eighteen dollars."

These things had become a grievous scandal, and it was clear that
something must be done to protect the emigrant from pillage, and the
country from the burden of his support. The Act of May, 1847, was
therefore passed by the New York Legislature. It named six gentlemen of
the very highest character, Gulian C. Verplanck, James Boorman, Jacob
Harvey, Robert B. Minturn, William F. Havemeyer, and David C. Colden, who
were to form a Board of Commissioners of Emigration, charged with the
oversight and care of this vast influx of strangers from the Old World. To
these were added the Mayors of New York and Brooklyn, and the Presidents
of the German Society and the Irish Emigrant Society. Every master of a
vessel was, within twenty-four hours of his arrival, to give this Board a
list of his passengers, with a report of their origin, age, occupation,
condition, health and other particulars, and either give bonds to save