The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-07

upon the fact. His friends try to inter fere but are squelched. He seems tt think that the board doubts his being
 worth the increased wages, and he la bors with the honorable gentlemen. He
 produces documentary evidence, proves beyond doubt that he is to have the
 jobs, swears he's worth it, hears witt incredulity the verdict, Excluded ano
 is borne away, struggling and insisting
 that he can "eshplain it all
 Expensive jag" comments the ma I jor.
 ] jected Irishman.
 1 So it goes on, day after day month
 after month. The members of the board
 occupy front seats at continuous per
 formance, in which the tragic element is
 larger by far than the comic Even on
 Sunday the scenes and characters shift
 as usual and the board sits in judgment
 That seems rather like overdoing the matter, Surely even St. Peter on Sun day, locks rAe gates, puts on his best
 robe, and plays the harp in some Ely 1 sian field; and the board of special in- quiry deserves it's Sundays out There's
 a tradition that the immigrants who
 come before the board on Sunday find a
 particularly severe and disgruntled tr-
 bunal, and that on Sunday the major
 prefers Russian and Hungarian to Ital-
 ian. In Slavonic languages, one gets so much better a grip on the words The matrons in the detention depart
 ment have almost as trying a task as the board. In fact their work is even | fp, me a r1,or, cn1f- ly; and it is easier to see a man struck in the face by fate than to watch Wo- man stagger under the same blow. Mrs. Steeklin, who like the major is one of the immigration bureaus first inhab- itants, knows, perhaps, more of human nature, in the rough. than any other woman in New Yorw.
 Tt is almost all tragedy here,' she said to the Sun reporter. T try to take a common-sense view of everything, and know that what we are doing is right; but it wears on ones sympathies, all the same, One can only try to make things as easy as possible for the poor women, and help them in every way consistent with the law. I speak German and Ital- ian and I've picked up enough of the other languages to get along with them. after fashion. It means so much to woman in trouble to have the matron speak to her in her own language. Of course, We have interpreters, but wo- man naturally turns to a woman for sympathy, and l wish could talk eve- rything, as the major can.
 "The romance and the tragedy I've seen here would fill books, and some of the things haunt me. Ii is all in the days work. and we do hurry through with much of it mechanically; but even the officials who talk most grufffy have soft spots in their hearts especially for the women and children; and, in a case of real trouble, the men are as synpa- thetic as we women, only some of them seem to be a trifie ashamed of it."
 The final act of the deportation trage- dy is played at the sailing of the return steamer. Many of the emigrants, before leaving home, sold everything they owned, converted 1t all into money for the passage. No homes are waiting for them. Their money is gone. Their hopes are dead They are shut out from the new life of which they dreamed, and cannot even take Ap the old life where tucS lelt OIL Nlti H. ! Ht 1Niiiioi tSof-A ernment has a contract with the Ger man steamship companies, by which the latter are pledged to send all re- turned emigrants to their native places, Unfortunately all countries are not so provident and in many ports the de- ported emigrants are dumped upon for eign soil without money, and with no provision for reaching their old homes. which are, perhaps, across half of Eu- rope from the port.--New York Sun,