Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1881 — Stowaway Emigrants. [ARTICLE]

Stowaway Emigrants.

London Telegraph. Not very long ago I was standing on the quay ■ f a North country port wlien a cattle ship hauled alongside. Her decks v« ere full of horned beasts, and what with the bellowing of these animals, the hissing of steam, the shouts of the seamen and the whirring of a great steam-winch, the uproar was tolerably confusing. In the midst of the beast*—that is to say, bobbing and glowering among the stalls, with ashen faces and sandy hair, and picturesquely wild raiment, were some forty or fifty inen, women and children. “Who are those people?” I asked a byslander. “Emigrants,” was the answer. “Emigrants!” I exclaimed. “Surely these cattie ships don’t carry emigrants?” “Yes they do.” said the man. “And where do they sleep?” I inquired. “Among the cattle, in the forepeak, in the leescuppers, anywhere. There are more stowaways than emigrants. They pay a tri He for the passage. They bring no bedding; or, it they do. they never lays ’em. They lump together anyhow.” > “What are they?” I asked. “Germans, Danes, Norwegians, and tlw like,” he answered. “They’re bound to America. They’ll smuggle themselves over from Liverpool somehow, just as they’ve smuggled themselves across the North Sea. Money’s an object with them, I sp’ose, and they don’t mind how nasty life is, so long as it’s cheap.” From inquiries I afterward made I found that what had been told me was quite true. Hundreds of the poorest orders of Scandinavian emigrants are landed on our northeastern coast eveiy year by these cattle ships. Their sufferings during the voyage across the North Sea are not to be described. It is liteially a fact that they lie in the mire and filth of the decks, or are crowdeel without bedding, without accommodation of any kind below—masses of them, men, women and children, huddled together, battered down in darkness aud foul air in stormy weather, aud feeding one knows ot how nor on what.