"Into a house thus supplied, hunger and cold could not enter. And if to these articles is added what before he has felt able to purchase, abundance and comfort would be the inmates of his dwelling." As an incidental means of aid, the asso ciation has, in addition, made arrangements to loan old stoves to those who are unable to procure them; to give cast-off clothes and cold victuals, and depots for these things have been established in the several districts. But scarcely a tithe of the labors of the institution are designed to be expended in ministering to those who personally claim its charity. Each of its three hundred visitors, in carrying out the plan as originally framed, should continually visit and inquire into the condition of every poor person and family within his section during the winter months. The Executive Committee hold monthly meetings throughout the year. In the winter of 1847, the district committees and visitors held more than two hundred meetings of conference, and the visitors made to the central office more than three thousand monthly reports. The rules which guide this class of officers are: "To give what is least susceptible of abuse. To give even necessary articles in small quantities, in proportion to immediate need. To give assistance both in quantity and quality, inferior, except in case of sickness or old age, to what might be procured by labor. To give assistance at the right moment; and not to prolong it beyond the duration of the necessity which calls for it; but to extend, restrict and modify it with that necessity." The moral and higher aims of these officers should be, in the language of the Annual Report of 1846, "to minister to the moral necessities of the destitute, which are often the cause of every other, wherever his alms gain him access; and, as opportunity offers, to others beyond the cases relieved." This principle pervading the whole system, each visitor's circle of effort is compressed to a limit that will admit of his attention to those duties; and he consequently regards his work as incomplete, while the moral object is unattained. This beautiful feature of the system has already been productive of very salutary results. Where such improve ment is effected, it is uniformly followed by a corresponding change in the habits of families and individuals, which restores them to a permanent self-maintenance. There is a moral grandeur and interest in the enterprise, as thus contemplated, which should secure it a place in every bosom that expands with sympathetic benevolence. It indeed promises much, and great results might reasonably be expected. More than twenty-six thousand visits of sympathy and aid have been thus made the past year to the dwellings of the poor in New York city. The expenses of the institution have continually increased since its organization. In 1845-6 it relieved about 45,000 persons. The aggregate expenditure to date Similar orhas reached nearly $90,000. ganizations have been made in the cities of Brooklyn and Albany, and with corresponding success. This plan has in it the elements of great power. No system of the kind could be more simple, and combine the same subdivision of labor, with the same central power in the executive advice and control of this labor. Its defects, if it have such, are to be found in the difficulty of procuring visitors of sound judgment, faithful, constant and conscientious in the discharge of their duties. Could such men be induced to systematic and efficient action, not only in alms-giving, but in correcting the numerous economic derangements which so much abound with the poor, and in watching constantly and perseveringly their social and moral condition, it would be unequalled by any kindred institution existing in this country or in Europe. The Almshouse became a separate department of our municipal organization in 1831. Prior to that, the legal expenditures for the poor were a part of the general and miscellaneous expenses of the city. From the period of this distinct organization to the present, the claims on the department, as well as its facilities, have constantly increased. As will be seen by the following schedule, they have risen from one hundred and twenty-five to four hundred thousand dollars per annum. ratio of increase is not exact, but this may be accounted for in the necessity for a continued enlargement of the institutions under its control, and in the severity or mild The The gross expenses | Long Island Farms, in 1834, and now temporarily removed to Blackwell's Island, 134,819 24 139,484 45 124,852 96 135,374 26 178,095 65 205,506 63 279,999 02 245,747 35 278,000 00 249,958 00 238,000 00 These sums include salaries and all other expenses. The aggregate is $3,953,605 92, and up to the present date the total expense has probably reached the sum of nearly four millions of dollars. $125,021 66 will, ere long, have its permanent location on Randall's Island in nine beautiful and commodious buildings. This is one of the most important eleemosynary institutions of the city, the home of its poor children. They now number upwards of 1000, are here instructed in the elements of a good common school education, and trained to habits of temperance and industry. The Lunatic Asylum, Small Pox Hospital, Penitentiary and Hospital are all on Blackwell's Island; the Asylum and Hospital receive the insane and the contagiously diseased of the city, while the Penitentiary is more properly a House of Correction for all ages. The City Prison, located in Centre street, and called the Tombs, is appropriated to an older and more hardened class of offenders. During 1846, the average number supported in all these institutions was 4,689. On the 1st Jan., 1847, they contained upwards of 3,000, and in the inclement season, while large numbers were arriving from Germany and Ireland, the number at one period exceeded 7,000. The garrets and cellars, the chapel, and even the dead-house at Bellevue, were converted into sleeping apartments. These not sufficing, large shanties were erected for temporary use. The nett increase above the average supported in 1845, was in 1846, about one-fifth. The great and rapid increase from Jan. 1st, to May 1st, 1847, swelled this increase to at least onethird above that of 1846. The expense of the out-door department in 1846, was $46,064,50. From Jan. 1st, to March 1st, 1847, the cost of fuel alone distributed by this department reached the sum of $30,500, and the number of out-door poor relieved was 45,472. The expense of this branch, says the Commissioner, is annually increasing. (See Commissioner's Report, p. 388.) The number admitted to Bellevue Hospital in 1846, was 3,600. Of these 3,000 were foreigners, and 600 native born. The deaths were nearly 13 per cent. "The almost lifeless state of many of those received," says the resident physician, "bearing with them irremediable diseases, adds greatly to the mortality; they enter the wards of the Hospital, to live but a brief space." Consumption carries off great numbers. Their physical energy The institutions under the control of this department, are Bellevue Almshouse, Bellevue Hospital, the Nursery, Nursery Hospital, Lunatic Asylum, Small Pox Hospital, Penitentiary, Penitentiary Hospital, City Prison, Colored Home, Office of Chief of Police for expenses for detained prisoners, Harlaem House of Detention, Police Districts for lodging and temporary aid to poor in distress, and lastly, the out-door poor. This latter class is annually increasing in all parts of the metropolis. It embraces native and foreign poor, who have a permanent residence in the city, poor foreigners in transit through it, and requiring aid in transportation. We speak of the peculiar province and objects of these institutions, as they existed prior to the creation of the commission of emigration in 1847. That divided this province, and limited the objects. The great and swelling stream of foreign population, of which these took cognizance, is now thrown entirely upon the protec tion of this commission. Bellevue Almshouse was the receptacle for all foreign immigrants arriving destitute, who could not support themselves, or be supported by their friends. At no period in its history has it been so crowded as during the years 1846 and 1847. The number of paupers received in 1846, was 26,The Nursery, first established on 563. Duchy of Hesse Darmstadt, were landed in our city too destitute and enfeebled to go at large, without the hazard of becoming, at once, a public charge. The plan of their shipment was soon after developed by a correspondence between the Burgomaster of this parish, and the overseers of parishes in other Duchies, for the avowed purpose, on the part of the latter, of learning the expense and the method by which it was done, and with an intimation, that the same course would soon be adopted by every other parish which felt itself burdened with its paupers. The entire population of Grosszimern amounted to 4000 exhausted, they enter on ship-board to breathe a foul air, and to subsist on meagre food, till a fever is generated, which here soon carries them off. The condition in which the foreign pauper population came upon us at this period was most melancholy. We cannot well describe it without casting the strongest and deepest censure upon parties connected with their transportation. We designate no parties in particular. The facts existed-most stubborn facts, and they could not have existed as they did, without a censurable cause. Prior to the spring of 1847, our general and state laws were wholly inadequate to protect either the immigrant or the city. Large-674 of whom, chiefly paupers, embarked numbers were landed on the shores of neighboring states, and from thence found their way into the city to be supported at its expense; so great was the influx during the fall of 1846, and the winter of 1847; so destitute, emaciated, and diseased, were a large proportion of many cargoes; so like mere merchandise did some of them apparently come upon our shores, that our municipal authority could no longer resist public opinion, and were compelled to an investigation. But wherein was the criminality, when thousands were fleeing from starvation, and pressing in companies into our ships to reach a land of plenty? The scattered dregs of foreign poor-houses, liberated prisoners, large numbers of diseased and debauched, and some idiotic were landed, it is true, as received. If such came in American vessels, the owner and the master, we reply, knew the law, and still more, they understood the moral relations of their position, both to the immigrant and to their country; yet in view of this, there was adopted no systematic plan by which to separate the better from the morally prohibited class. The profits of transportation were allowed to more than balance every hazard of wrong. If this be a harsh, it is also a truthful picture. By whose plan do agents traverse the mountain-lands, and the bogs of Ireland, the destitute parishes of Germany, to make interest at every available point, even though this available point be the prison, the poor-house, or among the most degraded wherever found. Two cargoes, numbering in all upwards of six hundred immigrants, shipped late in the fall of 1846 from the parish of Grosszimern, in the for the United States at the expense of the parish. Besides this, each received $1.50 or $2.00, for his immediate necessities on arrival at New York--the whole cost amounting to $16,850. By this enterprise, says the correspondence, the parish saved a yearly expense of 2500 florins or $833.33. These were the identical paupers, which, added to the native poor of our city, compelled the Commissioner of the Almshouse to transform its work-house, its garrets, and even its dead-house into dormitories. Destitute as they were, the greater proportion were about to be transferred in different directions into the interior, that, if they came back upon the city for support, they might come singly, or in small numbers, and thus, with greater difficulty be identified and made chargeable to their shippers. The Commissioner, with praiseworthy firmness and energy, promptly transferred the entire body to the Almshouse, crowded already as it was. These shippers as promptly compromised the matter, by paying $5000 into the city treasury; thus virtually confessing their knowledge of the legal, if not of the moral nature of the transaction. The condition of embarkation and of transit has often heretofore been most melancholy for the immigrant. Stimulated by the love of gain and shielding their consciences under the cover of philanthropy, many shippers-we do not say all in transporting the almost naked poor, and sometimes even the very dregs of society from a land of famine, and a country in which they were generally oppressed, have oftentimes crowded them into their vessels without distinction or discrimina The city becomes the plaintiff. The issue is uncertain; for the case, if not clearly made out, is dismissed; if not dismissed, delayed; and in either case the city bears the burden of the costs. On 90,000 immigrants bonded in 1846, there was paid into the city treasury only $12,000; and the whole sum paid under bonds and for commutation amounted to but $22,000. Such was the state of things at the opening of 1847, when the Common Council of the city, by a Committee, represented to Congress the necessity of some legislation by that body for the protection of both immi age of a bill entitled, an Act to regulate the carriage of passengers in merchant vessels, approved March 22d, 1847. It requires a far better provision for their health and comfort than was ever before made. tion, so long as they could receive an equivalent for freight. Had we space, we could produce evidence of the wretchedness and horrors of some of these voyages, equalled by nothing, or transcended by nothing save in the African slave trade. Crowded together with no regard to sex, and with no proper sanitary care or medical advice, they breathe an atmosphere, which, under any circumstances, must generate the worst diseases. How many vessels come into our port, the one fourth, one fifth, or the sixth of their passengers having found a final home on the deep; with a like number, it may be, pros-grants and the city. It resulted in the passtrated by disease, when a small expense would have saved this suffering and mortaliity; and yet some of these owners are men of large experience in business, possessing a high order of intelligence, and enjoying in their own dwellings all the luxuries and refinements of life, which science or art can give. Is he not morally and deeply culpable who employs the highest skill, and spares no expense in the model of his ships, while his fellow beings die by scores in a single passage, because there is applied, neither science nor skill to the ventilation and the regimen of these ships? Is he not culpable who permits 300 passengers to be crowded into the steerage of one of these vessels with no suitable companion-way for egress to the deck, and with but one fire and one caboose for all their dietary, when the inevitable result must be disorder, personal filthiness, halfcooked food, and contagious fevers? In the fall of 1846, with the number of arrivals, all these evils were rapidly augmenting. But pauperism increased in a still greater ratio. The city enjoyed but a nominal protection. The increment of foreign population, was adding a most extraordinary sum to its expenses. The bonding system, by which, instead of a per capita tax, the shipper gave bonds to make good to the city, all expenses incurred on account of immigrants landed by his vessels, was carried on by proxy. His agent, in most cases, and not the ship owner himself, gave bonds. This agent could swear to his own solvency. His evidence was admissible and conclusive. By this process one individual is said, within a few years, to have given bonds to an amount exceeding one million of dollars. Sec. 1 provides :-That no vessel shall take more than one passenger to 14 superficial feet, if the voyage pass not within the tropics; if within them, she may take one for every twenty superficial feet, and if any on the lower or orlop deck, one for every thirty feet. Any master violating these provisions shall be fined fifty dollars, and may be imprisoned one year. 2d. If the number taken exceed this limit by twenty, the vessel shall be forfeited to the United States. 3d. If any vessel shall have more than two tiers of berths, or if these berths are not well constructed and at least six feet in length and eighteen inches in width, for every passenger carried in such vessel, a fine of five dollars shall be paid. 4th. The amount of all these penalties to be a lien on the vessel. This law had the effect at once to reduce the number taken in each vessel; it obliged shippers to charge higher rates for passage, and was in most cases the means of bringing into the country a better class of immigrants. The Common Council soon after deputed its Committee to the Legislature of the State, with the basis of an Act which has since become a law. It constituted an independent Commission of Emigration, and transferred the entire control of foreign immigrants from the Almshouse to this body. It provides, 1st. That for every immigrant passenger, arriving at the port of New York, one dollar shall be paid to the Chamberlain of the city, and one half said sum for the use of the Marine Hospital, where all the sick are provided for. 2d. Every Master of a vessel shall report under oath to the Mayor on his arrival, the name, place of birth, last legal residence, age and occupation of every immigrant passenger in his vessel, and he shall forfeit seventy-five dollars for every passenger in regard to whom such report is omitted or falsely made, and for refusal or neglect to pay such money, the owner or owners shall be subject to a penalty of three hundred dollars for each passenger. 3d. It constitutes a Commission of Emigration, consisting of the Mayors of New York and Brooklyn; President of the Irish and German Emigrant Societies, besides six responsible and disinterested citizens, these six to form three classes as to time, of two, four and six years, and all vacancies afterward to be filled by the Governor and Senate. 4th. The Act gives to said Commission full power to employ all necessary agency, to provide for the comfort and support of all sick or those likely to become a charge to the city out of this commutation fund; to require bonds from the shipper for all likely to become a permanent charge; to sue and to be sued. 5th. The Commission shall prescribe all rules by which indemnity for care of immigrants shall be claimed in any other part of the State. 6th. All penalties and forfeitures shall be a lien on the ships or vessels bringing immigrants. In accordance with this law, the Board of Commission was organized on the 8th of May, 1847. Robert Taylor, Esq., was appointed general agent, and Hon. Wm. F. Havemayer, Ex-Mayor, President. Its first duty was to furnish large accommodations for the destitute and sick. The Quarantine Hospitals were already entirely filled. Temporary use was therefore made of all the spare room in the Hospital and Almshouse belonging to the city. As the fever increased at Quarantine, the convalescent were removed to the Almshouse at Bellevue, till from fear of the contagion both in that institution and in the surrounding neighborhood, the Board of Health opposed further admittance. Notwithstanding they had erected a building at Quarantine, one story high and six hundred feet long, the sick so increased that the Marine Hospital, the City Hospital, and the Almshouse were entirely inadequate. They were compelled to lease the large building_formerly used as a nursery on Long Island Farms. These were furnished and a physician appointed, yet so greatly was the vicinity excited, that in a few days it was burnt to the ground. Dr. Wilson's private hospital at Bloomingdale, the New York Hospital, and two large government stores, within Quarantine enclosure, were now added to the apartments occupied, till the 12th of June, when further admission to the Almshouse was entirely refused. The outbuildings of the old Almshouse were now fitted up for temporary use, till boats and carriages could be procured for the use of the Board. "The state of things,' said the Commission. 'had now become truly appalling-the Health Officer stated that he could not receive any more into the Hospital; admittance could not be obtained for either sick or destitute in the Almshouse; the City Hospital and Dr. Wilson's Hospital were full, and the out-buildings of the old Almshouse were constantly occupied by the sick daily brought in, whilst cases of ship-fever appeared in many parts of the city. Owing to the excited state of the public mind, it became a subject of the utmost embarfound for the great number of persons to be rassment to know where any shelter could be immediately provided for. In this emergency the Commissioners fortunately obtained the use of a large unoccupied stone building on Ward's Island, in the East River, about six miles from the city. This building, originally intended for a factory, is one hundred and forty feet in length, forty feet wide and five stories high. On the 13th June, a steamboat was sent to it loaded with bedding, provisions, &c. and with the immigrants who remained unprovided for.'" As early as June 4th, the Staten Island ferry boats refused to carry patients to the Quarantine. The Board then chartered a boat and purchased carriages which are still kept for this special use. By the arrangement at Ward's Island and the extension at Quarantine, they are now able to meet all the demands upon them. During a part of the season so great was the demand for bedding and clothing for the sick, that upwards of 200 women were |