The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-04-07
Errors of Immigrants.

New YORK, March 23.-Few people are
aware of the sufferings of a large class of
the immigrants to this country. They
come with the idea that work and high
wages are obtainable for the asking; some
friends, who have been lucky in the new
country, have assured them of easy sue
cess, and selling their few belongings in
Ireland, Germany or elsewhere they come
full of hope, but almost penniless.
In some cases their friends meet them.
and perhaps find for the newcomers speedy
employment but such cases are the excep-
tions. As a rule the immigrant uses I'D
his scant cash In board and useless adver-
tising soon after his arrival, and then be-
gins the fight for existence, which is so
terrible in this great city that oftentimes
it ends in crime.
The Immigrant YEARLY examines the adj
vertlsements at the newspaper Offices in
the early morning; then he calls on the adj
vertisers one after another, to find, after
days and days of bitter disappointment
and want, that the positions offered were
mythical, and only published to entrap the
strangers into paying fee. This is the ex-
perience many have related to me. This
goes on till the man becomes disguised and
dlsheartened and his stock of money is
almost gone. He applies for work of any
kind-street cleaning, bod carrying or on
the river dumps-but he has no reference,
no political influence; he is told there is no
room for him, and in despair he spends his
last cent in rum, and is led into the COM
mission OF some act of dishonesty or crime.
Once the prison bars have closed on him
his self respect is gone, and from this class,
the unsuccessful immigrants, statistics
prove that the great bulk of our criminals
are drawn.
These are of course the most unfortunate
immigrants, but they form an appalling
percentage. Next to these come those who.
having received fair education. expect to
find clerkships open Immediately on land
ing. With few exceptions they are not
much more successful than the first class:
they fill the cheap lodging houses, and
work at anything and everything but at
what they hoped for to earn miserable
hvelihood-far worse off than they were in
their native country.
Then there is a better class-people who
were well to do in the old country, but
who met with financial reverses. The
United States seems to them to be coun-
try flowing with milk and honey" where
they can soon recover their lost fortunes.
They come bring their families, and what
Is the result? Seven-tenths of them
are now employed in mental employments,
their spirits broken by the disappointments
of their emigration, and their families
sunken far below their former social posi-
ton.
As matter of fact, 1 find that of all the
immigrants from Ireland and Germany,
nine-tenths of the successful ones were me-
chanics or skilled laborers when they ca me
or else farmers who had capital sufficient
to go west and purchase farms. In this es-
innate l do not include those immigrants
who had well to do relations already in the
country, or politically influential friends
They come here usually by invitatiog
from those friends, and are well taken care
Of l refer only to the friendless, and they
are the majority-the overwhelming ma
Jority-and among these the successful
ones do not number 20 per cent.
These figures are fearful record of our
immigrant class, but their sufferings in
the streets and slums of some eastern cities
are more fearful still.
ROB E. WALSH.