Department of Immigration and Labor [pp. 357-364]

IMMIGRATION AND LABOR.
stock, etc., and a comfortable home, are provided, and one-third of the crop
is given, or if he wishes to purchase outright, he can pay for the lands by
his labor on terms and conditions which will leave him ample time to earn
his own sustenance. In fact so anxious are we to induce inmmigration, and
so thoroughly disheartened and disgusted with our attempts to imakle good
and useful laborers out of the freedmen, that we are prepared to tender cpportuni-ies to working men for an association of labor with capital such as
were never before presented in this or any other country. This condition
of things would have already operated to divert a large immigration, but
for the persistent misrepresentations of the European agents of the Western
States. This organized band of swindlers who sell greenbacks in Germany
at par for gold, who make the emigrants pay in coin for railroad tickets at
their paper value, and who manage to exploit in one way or another nearly
all the savings of their victims: these fellows represent the South as in a
condition of social anarchy, where life and property are equally unsafe
They assert that it is uniformly unhealthy, and that ninety per cent. of all
strangers and foreigners die either in passing through the acclimatizing
process, or from the heat of the sun, and that none but Africans can bear the
exposure in the field, or the vicissitudes of the climate. On this point
General WVagener says:
It is with pain and regret that I find that the agents of the Western
States, not content with advancing the claims of their respective communities to the favorable consideration of the European public, have deemed
proper to adopt a regular system of abuse and detraction of the South. Although irresponsible and unreliable persons, as they generally are, aiming
only to their individual profits and emoluments, their re-iterated assertions
in the public prints may, nevertheless, exercise an unfair influence, and not
only harm the communities that they exert themselves to traduce, but the
best interests of the emigrating European. I will not, however pay them i
back in their own coin, but simply, plainly and fairly indicate for the reflection of the immigrants themselves, such matters of information as may assist them in coming to a rational and correct conclusion.
Touching the accusation which a correspondent, writing from Bremen to
the REVIEW, tells us is freely made there by parties engaged in securing
emigrants for the West, that the South has ever been notorious for lawlessness and crime, General Wagener furnishes in the following table compiled
from the United States census of 1860, a complete and convincing refutation.
It will be seen by comparison that Texas, so generally traduced and villified,
furnished but one criminal out of 5,754 of her inhabitants, while "moral"
Massachusetts supplied one out of every 459 of her population. WVe annex
the table:
[Extract from the United States Cemsus of 1860.]
Criminals in prison June 1. 1860:
PoP. POP.
Mississippi....... 53 or 1 in 14,930 Texas,......... 105 or 1 in 5,754
North Carolina... 71 or 1 in 13,981 Arkansas........ 78 or 1 in 5,583
Georgia......... 111 or 1 in 9,525 Minnesota....... 32 or 1 in 5,376
Florida......... 15 or 1 in 9,342 Maryland,....... 116 or 1 in 5,116
Virginia......... 189 or 1 in 8,446 Indiana,....... 284 or 1 in 4,755
South Carolina,.. 88 or 1 in 7,996 Kentucky........ 232 or 1 in 4,550
Iowa,.......... 95 or 1 in 7,104 Alabama......... 226 or 1 in 4,266
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