Voices in Time

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We carried in the steerage nearly a hundred passengers—a little world of poverty. And as we came to know individuals among them by sight—from looking down upon the deck where they took the air in the daytime, and cooked their food, and very often ate it too—we became curious to know their histories, with what expectations they had gone out to America, on what errands they were going home, and what their circumstances were. The information we got on these heads from the carpenter, who had charge of these people, was often of the strangest kind. Some of them had been in America but three days, some but three months, and some had gone out in the last voyage of that very ship in which they were now returning home. Others had sold their clothes to raise the passage money, and had hardly rags to cover them; others had no food and lived upon the charity of the rest; and one man, it was discovered nearly at the end of the voyage, not before—for he kept his secret close, and did not court compassion—had had no sustenance whatever but the bones and scraps of fat he took from the plates used in the after-cabin dinner, when they were put out to be washed.

The whole system of shipping and conveying these unfortunate persons is one that stands in need of thorough revision. If any class deserve to be protected and assisted by the government, it is that class who are banished from their native land in search of the bare means of subsistence. All that could be done for these poor people by the great compassion and humanity of the captain and officers was done, but they require much more. The law is bound, at least upon the English side, to see that too many of them are not put on board one ship, and that their accommodations are decent, not demoralising and profligate. It is bound too, in common humanity, to declare that no man shall be taken on board without his stock of provisions being previously inspected by some proper officer and pronounced moderately sufficient for his support upon the voyage. It is bound to provide, or to require that there be provided, a medical attendant; whereas in these ships there are none, though sickness of adults and death of children on the passage are matters of the very commonest occurrence. Above all, it is the duty of any government, be it monarchy or republic, to interpose and put an end to that system by which a firm of traders in emigrants purchase of the owners the whole ’tween-decks of a ship, and send on board as many wretched people as they can lay hold of—on any terms they can get—without the smallest reference to the conveniences of the steerage, the number of berths, the slightest separation of the sexes, or anything but their own immediate profit. Nor is even this the worst of the vicious system, for certain crimping agents of these houses—who have a percentage on all the passengers they inveigle—are constantly traveling about those districts where poverty and discontent are rife and tempting the credulous into more misery by holding out monstrous inducements to emigration which can never be realised.

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