Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1914-02-26
IMMIGRANTS ARE
AT SHARKS MERCY
State Commission Exposes
Heartless Treatment by Cab
men and Porters.

Heartless swindling is practised by
cabmen, porters and runners on inn
migrants in New Jersey, according to
the Immigration Commission, which
made its report to Governor Fielder
yesterday. AS few of the steady
stream of aliens moving through the
railway terminals and steamship
docks speak English or fl<now any
thing about city ways, 1t is easy to
give them wrong change or take them
to the wrong place.
One cabman, for instance, charged
two immigrants $50 for taking them
from the Scandinavian line pier to the
Lackawanna station. A hotel porter
was i'm the habit of taking girls he
was supposed to be guiding to his
roorl for immoral purposes.
Immigrants who have paid with
their tickets for board and lodging
at one hotel are taken to another,
where they have to pay over again,
their tickets and baggage being with
held till they do; or they are kept
q day or so at some clearinghouse
on tho pretense that no train leaves
for Chicago or Milwaukee till the
next day.
Almost a score of employment
agencies were found to be willing to
send women to disorderly houses as
servants and TO procure transporting
girls for inmates. On the evidence
gathered by the commission during
sts investigations, one of these agents
has been sentenced to eighteen
months in the penitentiary. Many
agencies are being operated without
licenses and in bedrooms, saloons and
other places forbidden by law.
Immigrant farmhands are congest-
ing the industrial centres, while the
States farmers are crying out for aid.
Over II, 900 of the aliens who settled
In the State in 1911 were farm labor
ers, yet practically none of them got
out on the land. And in the mean
time the amount of land under cult
Walton WIS decreasing.
Much Money Goes Abroad.
Immigrants living in the State send
$10,000000 abroad each year, partly
because they do not know how to find
safe investments here for their saw
dngs. When they try to buy land
here they have nothing to go by but
the seductive advertisements printed
In their newspapers. which trick them
into buying what they take to. be a
truck patch near the markets, and
which turns out to be a remote scrub
oak lot.
AT least 100000 was lost by imrn-
grants in 1911 through the operations
of private bankers: the amount lost
through unauthorized bankers is not
known As the post offices and duly
authorized banks are not open on
Sundays and in the evenings, the only
times when the immigrant is not
working, one or more in each group
of aliens gets to acting as banker
for the others; he receives deposits,
transmits money, runs a postoffice
and steamship agency. and-often
runs away. The commission. acting
with the Banking Department, sue
ceeded in getting laws passed giving
the commissioner of banking addi-
tional powers of supervision and con-
troll
Foreign consuls in the State were
astounded to find that they had been
certifying to the legality of hundreds
of documents to be sent to Europe
which had not been legally executed,
because the notary public that made
them out had exceeded his powers.
Very many notaries were taking ac-
acknowledgements of deeds, expatria-
ton acts and powers of attorney
though the New Jersey law gives
them no such power. The British
Austria Hungary and italian CONSUL
etes no longer, accept such documents
as legal
Some notaries in the State make
out powers of attorney without the
slightest proof of the identity of the
person appearing before them some
will furnish witnesses, and even issue
such power by mail, An immigrant
who has inherited little property
In Europe sometimes finds, on try
41aer trx oil Ha% =
already; someone who has heard of
his good fortune has got a power of
attorney in his name from some COM
PLEASANT notary, sold the property
and poclleted the proceeds.
Need Educational Glasses.
In many communities no night
schools are provided for immigrants
who want to learn English. The re-