Of the way and means whereby immigrants in America are accommodated or attempt to get themselves through. -For which persons and classes immigration is advantageous and for which age and status it is not advantageous.

The laws which are advantageous to the German arrivals in the state of Pennsylvania I find rather useful and good; only it is a shame that they are not all obediently followed and that European ships' captains are not as subject to these laws as the Americans.

These are now very severely punished as soon as it is shown that they have not fulfilled the contracts they entered with their passengers or have allowed poor treatment of the same. However, the contracts may not be entered on board the ship, but rather on firm land and written and sealed by a court official, notary or also by a preacher, for only then do they have full validity.

When ships with passengers arrive in Pennsylvania they are stopped at an infirmary six miles from Philadelphia and examined by several doctors. If they find virulent diseases on the ship, they have to be quarantined. The dangerously ill are taken into the infirmary and cared for there at the cost of the captain. However, if there is no reason for quarantining, the ships enter the harbor of Philadelphia. Those passengers who have paid their passage before embarkment can go wherever they want to right after landing, also anyone may give them lodging and no official may hinder it. The innkeepers are also required to give lodging to each traveler and for those who cannot pay to do this without reimbursement at least for one night and in addition give them free eats and drink. Also no one needs a passport, even had he decided to travel through all the United States long and wide. From those passengers who have not paid their passage the captains receive their satisfaction through this, that an American takes them into his service and pays their passage.

The service contracts are made by a person specially authorized for that by the government (registrar), in the home of the one who commits himself to the person, for one dollar which the service agent exacts. A man located in Philadelphia is elected to this task, who is knowledgeable in the English and German language and whose obligation it is to mediate the interests of both parties according to the dictates of the law and of propriety, primarily, however. to represent those of the one to be bound. This happens too as a rule.

At the arrival of the ships this registrar receives from the interpreter of the German company, who has visited the same, a list of all passengers to be found on it with a note about the sex, age and the various abilities and qualifications.

The duration of servitude in the contracts is from two to four years according to the variation of passage, age, sex, health and ability. Four years for a complete passage is the utmost legal time span which is extended only in extraordinary cases, for example if families have too many small children, are of too great an age, weakness or have other disadvantages. Children over four years are bound if they are of the male sex to twenty-one years, if they are of the female sex, to eighteen. Children under that age pay nothing; they follow the parents and at the end of the time of service are free with them. Those bound for service receive dwelling, food and drink, clothes, free laundry according to express stipulations and children receive six weeks of school each year and at the end of the time of service two complete suits of clothes of which one has to be new. In addition the young men receive twenty-five to thirty dollars in cash at the end of their service time if their master does not teach them a trade during their years of service or have them taught. The girls, however, receive a complete bed, a chest of drawers, winder and spinning wheel, flax and wool and a milk-giving cow.

Many children born in America are also bound out in the way described. In Pennsylvania I found this all the time. If the children of those without means are four years old, they already start out to be bound out; everywhere there is also opportunity for it and often strong inquiry.

The laws provide in addition in favor of the redemptioners that no-one can be bound out outside of the state of Pennsylvania without his consent, that man and wife cannot without mutual consent be separated and children from their parents without the greatest emergency.

Except for these laws there are no others either in this state or in the remaining that directly favor immigration, nor does the government of the United States generally appear to take a special interest in it or, a few cases excepted, to be very inclined to induce it through concessions. It believes that it has encouraged it enough already through this, that it has opened the gates to it and has made it possible for each foreigner who wants to settle in the United States to become a property owner or to carry on any other favored business, also according to a previous declaration to receive full citizenship whereby he participates in all the rights and privileges of the constitution of this praiseworthy, fortunate land.

The United States have reached a point where their progressive power and greatness are no longer dependent on foreign immigration, for without the same the population doubles every twenty years. National pride already starts to adopt the general notion or opinion that one can now do without it. At the same time, however, foreigners are still welcome, and the lack of hands continues on and it would be painfully felt in many regions if all of a sudden all immigration would cease.

I doubt that the government shares this opinion and should not perceive what a beneficial influence the Europeans arriving there, especially the Germans, must constantly have on culture and industry. If it appeared previously to view them with indifferent eyes and no longer did anything for their encouragement, then this probably had totally different reasons.

The government of the United States in general does not mix into much that we consider an object of the most active concern of governments. It appears to be a state maxim to allow the freest latitude to all human activity without either restricting it or ordering or leading it, to precipitate nothing, to allow everything to come into being on its own and develop and mature according to its inner laws and the circumstances working on it from outside.

In addition, political considerations too can lie at the base of the government's refusal to encourage immigration through much favoritism, in part the fear of insulting the European states and governments and especially those of Germany which, although they do not hinder emigration, nevertheless are supposed to be disinclined to it, and of stirring their jealousy; in part, also the fear that from a too large and sudden immigration of Europeans with monarchial principles or at least various customs there would be disadvantageous consequences for the state because such varied elements do not bind themselves into a whole early enough, or that the mores and public attitude would be adversely affected.

In individual cases the government has unassumingly given German, Swiss, French and Irish societies or colonies that bought parcels of land on which to settle extremely advantageous considerations, showing thereby that it is not anxious about dealing in these matters.

Without sounding biased, one can expect essentially no greater favor to be bestowed than that which the European immigrants actually find there. Nothing more would be necessary from that source, even if the immigrants missed greater methodicity and co-ordination, if they had had more order established at their disembarkment, if the scattered families and single individuals that streamed haphazardly to the ports would have formed societies with competent leaders at their head, or if they had had the connections through which they could have obtained tracts of land on which to found colonies that would have served as a focal point ready to receive them immediately. Such is lacking above all to the Germans. Such societies did not exist at all heretofore. Individual private entrepreneurs and big landowners that take a large portion of the arrivals to themselves are too few in number there. The half of it is not regulated enough, too much subject to whim and chance.



In the United States there are now four German societies: the first in Philadelphia, the second in Lancaster, the third in New York and the fourth in Baltimore. Their exclusive aim heretofore was restricted simply to giving support to some of the most destitute and alleviating their misery upon landing and to provide mostly very half-hearted and almost always unproductive legal representation against encroachments and mistreatments. The society in New York accomplished only very little and afforded little opportunity, the one in Baltimore even less, and those in Philadelphia and Lancaster-even if their efforts from the time of their organization earned the praise and thanks of the Germans-did not have the necessary means, for they have too few funds to meet the great need. The undertakings of the English and Irish societies for their countrymen are more active towards the ends of colonization or other provision through support. counsel and employment which are worth much more than single small supports.

The lack of purposeful provision, leadership and planning, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean too showed itself very sensitively since people in south Germany emigrated in such extremely large numbers, especially though in the year 1817 in which 6000 people of every age and sex landed on nineteen ships in Philadelphia which the registers there show and witness.

Millions of people could find room, fortune and well-being in that blessed land. Each one who brings a little capital there or even without that, and wants to support himself with the work of his hands-not his head-as a farmer or tradesman and is no good-for-nothing, no drunk, gambler or other wastrel is sure to find it. The request for workers does not let up, but rather increases again now since the construction of so many canals and making so many rivers navigable requires so many thousand human hands in Pennsylvania. Yet with the unusually large number of German immigrants who landed in Philadelphia in the year 1817 for the most part in winter, the canals had to be discontinued for awhile; the sad condition in which these people found themselves harmed not a little their quick accretion. In addition they complained generally in Philadelphia about the greater immorality of those who arrived in the last several years and were pitted against them. Nevertheless a number are hired out daily by the registrar; but many of the same had to wait it out for a long time in great misery on the ships until their turn came; a portion of them had to be put up in the houses, the hospices got filled up, in which also some died. Several lived for a time from the generosity of the natives; the laws lost their authority; enthusiasm cooled; the means of support was not sufficient.

With this condition of things and the daily increasing need of these people in the month of December the German society found itself moved to assign one of their members to examine the condition of those on the ships and to give a report about it. Consequently the society handed over a petition to the Assembly of the state of Pennsylvania meeting in Harrisburg during the month in order to make possible that in part the old laws be renewed and enforced, in part new expedient regulations be made. It was further requested that a law be passed according to which the captains in the future would exercise responsibility for all passengers that they would bring in so that the burden would not fall to the state or especially to the city as had been the case previously. Such a regulation, however, would at least complicate and lessen all further immigration of the previous type, where it did not shut off access completely. Whether this bill passed I did not find out; but another did in which other stipulations in regard to care and order on the transport ships were laid down.

What is involved in the above described way of hiring oneself out is such that one would not be right at all to see slavery in it, for it is undergirded by a voluntary contract which sets a certain limit to the duration of servitude. But it does, however, cast a shadow on the German name and contributes not little towards making it disdainful because it is generally not free of abuses and infringements which present it in a negative light. The usual expression in the more southern states in not "bind as servants" but rather "buy and sell"; indeed one speaks there of property or white slaves. In Pennsylvania I never heard such an expression, but rather city and country people said: "this is my servant boy, or my servant girl." This method of hiring oneself out still remains, as long as other institutions are lacking, the only and surest way. Indeed with undertakings and colonizations at large it would not be completely dispensable because through these only a relatively small portion of tradesmen, at least in the beginning, would find accommodation, for which this latter class in fact for that reason would remain the most flexible. It is a big mistake of those young immigrants who pay their passage and still have some money in hand that they, undecided what they should take up, remain too long in the port cities and first use up their money before they seek an occupation. First they want to recuperate from the trip by sea and the hardships endured on it; but then the climate there causes a sluggishness and a lack of desire to travel so that they put this off so long until necessity forces them to it. When they finally do travel they are satisfied neither here nor there for they seek the Arcadian fields which they dreamt about in their fatherland and they do not find them and finally necessity forces them to hire themselves out and to become used to work whose taste they did not like in the beginning. Many of them in their inexperience are often relieved of their money by their own countrymen. Many of those young people who have to serve for their passage two or three years are better off and attain their goal sooner than the first mentioned, because during their term of service they have earned something and are then in a position after the same to start an independent occupation immediately. During their term of servitude they learn the language, customs, the various pointers in every occupation and gain the necessary knowledge of the territory and in case one is a farmer for cash or on credit he buys several acres of land on which he settles with the sure intention by means of industry and economy to see the worth of his property grow with each year. Almost all of those who arrived there as redemptioners ten or twelve years ago are now well-to-do and there are many examples known to me of people who settled there twenty or thirty years ago and are now capitalists. Every young man who understands agriculture finds, if he wants to, opportunity too in Pennsylvania to be accommodated as a day laborer and to earn a dollar daily in the summertime in addition to food and drink; the tradesman earns even more; for all hand work is paid well there. Even the spinner makes out very well, for to spin yarn appreciably more is paid there than is paid here for the yarn when it is sold. For this reason it is not at all astonishing that many people there within a short time become well-to-do and also rich, but many nevertheless come onto no green branch because they do not strive after it; for as a man exerts himself, so it goes for him.

The treatment of people during their time of service in Pennsylvania the neighboring western states where the population consists for the most part of Germans and where few blacks are is as a rule humane and good. If it were not, then the way is open to them to complain to the solicitor of the German society which seldom misses its mark. More frequent are the complaints from the side of the masters against their servants inasmuch as examples often occur that these seek to escape their servitude by running away.

It is very natural that more farm workers than tradesmen are sought, because almost all farmers' sons learn a trade; for almost every tradesmen, even in the country, with the exception of bakers, find good jobs up to now. Which class of the latter is to be favored, of which there are too many or too few is determined in no other way in that unusual land where all occupational industry is independent and free from all restriction by guilds or groups and also from any influence from the side of government and must therefore stand in the balance on its own, than by the greater or lesser demand. It becomes evident then that all professionals and tradesmen of the grander or simpler type whose products are directly usable and cannot be imported as manufactured wares stand in a preferred position and find opportunity for occupations and work easily. To them belong masons, carpenters, wagoners, joiners, coopers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, shoemakers, weavers, tailors, etc. By contrast, all those occupations which by their nature more or less approximate the fine arts or manufactures or whose products are more the object of luxury do not find their fortune so easily. Such things can be imported more cheaply in part from abroad with the size of remuneration for work.

Young people between fourteen and twenty years are sought after the most, with girls preferred. No one who is single and without family and over fifty years old should leave his fatherland if he has no means to start a better life in that land than that way of hiring himself out. In the case of persons of the female sex, if they are unmarried, the age of thirty years is already almost too high. Age is generally a big hindrance. Yet one hears that sometimes persons of seventy or even eighty years land there. This is the greatest foolishness and should thoroughly not be tolerated.

Of the German immigrants the largest portion always stayed in Pennsylvania chiefly because they found countrymen, acquaintances or also relatives there; then too on account of greater facility in regard to language. Many also went west to the states Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, along the Ohio to the Mississippi. Many came back again too and settled in Pennsylvania. Many hired out there who reported to their acquaintances in Pennsylvania assurance that it was going well for them there; there, especially in the state of Ohio, everything is in abundance, but there is a great lack of money; the day laborer there earns more than two bushels of wheat daily. This state is well the most fruitful in the union for in many places the earth yields from the planting of wheat more than a hundred-fold. The earth of the state of Ohio is almost everywhere undulating and soft as ash, they plow there almost everywhere without iron plowshares and drive with wagons whose wheels are not bound with iron. Blacksmiths do not find work there easily. Fish and wildlife are present there in great abundance, of the latter especially wild turkey and pheasant that exist in the forests in such large supply that one can kill them with clubs. But the natives there would rather eat pork, of which many a farmer there has a herd of 600 because they cost him no feed but rather get fat in the woods. Peaches grow there in such great abundance that they cannot use all of them to distill brandy and most of them are eaten by the pigs.

End of the First Part

Source: Edited by Bryan Wright