thus engaged employ a host of clerks or servants, called ;< runners/ who try to meet the new-comer on board the ship that brings him, or imme diately after he puts his foot on shore, for the purpose of carrying him to the forwarding offices for which they respectively act. The tricks re sorted to, in order to forestall a competitor and secure the emigrant, would be amusing, if they were not at the cost of the inexperienced and unexpecting stranger ; and it is but too true that an enormous sum of money is annually lost to the emigrants by the wiles and false statements of the emigrant runners, many of them originally from their own country, and speaking their native language. Of late the field of operations of these " emigrant runners " is no longer confined to this city ; it extends to Europe They generally call themselves agents of some transportation, or forwarding bureau, and endeavour to impress the emigrant who intends going far ther than New York with the belief that it is for his benefit, and in the highest degree desirable, to secure his passage hence to the place of his destination, before he leaves Europe He is told that, unless he does so, he runs great risk of being detained, or having to pay exorbitant prices , , . . 1 Instances have come to the knowledge of the Commissioners, where the difference amounted to three dollars a person. But this is not all. The cases are by no means rare, in which the tickets prove entirely worth less. They bear the name of offices which never existed, and then, of course, are nowhere respected ; or, the offices whose names they bear will be found shut up, and are iiot likely ever to re-open : or the emi grants are directed to parties refusing to acknowledge the agent who issued the tickets, and in all these cases the emigrant loses the money paid for them. A profitable fraud is not to be suppressed without much difficulty ; and even in 1857 nine years after we find the iniquity of the bogus ticket in active operation. In a letter addressed to the Secretary of State, the Commissioners assert that the chief operators in this system of fraud have not only opened offices in the several seaports where emigrants usually embark, but have also established agen cies in towns in the interior of those countries, and in the very villages whence families are likely to emigrate. Excluding Hamburg and Bremen from their observations, the Commissioners add that very many of those from other ports are first defrauded of their means by being
