The Necessaries Of Life Are Abundant And Cheap, And, Aided
By A Free Education, He Has The Satisfaction Of A Well-Grounded Hope That
His Children Will Rise To Positions Of Respectability And Affluence, While
His Old Age Will Be Far Removed From The Pressure Of Want.
The knowledge
that each shilling saved may produce ten or twenty by judicious investment
is a constant stimulus to his industry.
Yet, from all that I have seen and heard, I should think that Canada West
offers a more advantageous field for emigrants. Equally free and
unburdened by taxation, with the same social and educational advantages,
with an increasing demand for labour of every kind, with a rich soil,
extraordinary facilities of communication, and a healthy climate,
pauperism is unknown; fluctuations in commercial affairs are comparatively
small, and, above all, the emigrant is not exposed to the loss of
everything which he possesses as soon as he lands.
An infamous class of swindlers, called "emigrant-runners," meet the poor
adventurer on his arrival at New York. They sell him second-class tickets
at the price of first-class, forged passes, and tickets to take him 1000
miles, which are only available at the outside for 200 or 300. If he holds
out against their extortions, he is beaten, abused, loses his luggage for
a time, or is transferred to the tender mercies of the boarding-house
keeper, who speedily deprives him of his hard-earned savings. These
runners retard the westward progress of the emigrant in every way; they
charge enormous rates for the removal of his luggage from the wharf; they
plunder him in railway-cars, in steamboats, in lodging-houses; and if
Providence saves him from sinking into drunkenness and despair, and he can
be no longer detained, they sell him a lot in some non-existent locality,
or send him off to the west in search of some pretended employment.
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