Page:Irish In America.djvu/218

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196
THE IRISH IN AMERICA.

induced to purchase tickets for railroad and water travel in this country, at high prices, which, when presented here, are found to be either quite worthless, or to carry the holders to some point in the interior far short of their destination, where they are left destitute/ Mr. Marcy, in reply, states that he has addressed a circular letter to the diplomatic and consular agents of the United States in those countries of Europe from which emigrants chiefly proceed, and instructed them to bring the subject to the notice of the Governments to which they were accredited, or of the authorities of the place where they reside, and to ask for the adoption of such measures as may be re quired by the claims of humanity and the comity of nations. What a gauntlet the helpless emigrant had to run before he was fairly on the road to his land of promise ! Many were strong enough to break through, or fortunate enough to slip through, this net-work of fraud ; but it may well be doubted if, for some years at least, those so strong or so fortunate were the greater number, It is lamentably true, that many, many thousands had their wings so effectually clipped nay, so utterly plucked were they by the patriotic gentlemen with the green neckties, or the ladies with the green ribands, that they could not get beyond New York, into which, though perhaps altogether unsuited to the life of a city, the miserable victims of heartless fraud and piti less robbery sank down to a lot of hardship, it .might be of degradation and of ruin. It is heart-rending to think of the tremendous consequences of these systematic villanies, and to reflect how thousands of people were thus fatally arrested on their way to places specially suited to their industry, and where, most probably, after the usual proba tionary hard work, they would have established themselves in comfort and independence. Better for many of them, old and young, the high-spirited boy and the innocent girl, that they had become the prey of the sharks of the deep,