SCANDAL AFLOAT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 306, 4 February 1910, Page 3

SCANDAL AFLOAT.

INCREDIBLE TALES OF EMIGRANT SHIRS. Details are to hand of the scandalous allegations made in a report laid before the American Senate by the Immigration Commission on the conditions of the Atlantic emigrant passenger traffic. The Commission transmit the report of their own special agents, giving their experiences' on board steamships when they posed as steerage passengers. Summing up one such trip, a woman agent of the Immigration Commission said: "During these twelve days in the steerage I lived in disorder andin surroundings that offended every sense. Only the fresh breeze from the sea overcame the sickening odors, the vile language oi the men, the screams of women defending themselves, and the crying of children, wretched because their surroundings irritated them beyond endurance. There was no s'ight before which the eye did not prefer to close." WOMEN INSULTED. The agents of the Immigration Commission say that on many steamships the male stewards and the members of the crew, as well as male steerage pascrowd into compartments set aside for women, and constantly pass through tlie passage-way of such compartments, so that no woman in the steerage "had a moment's privacy." In making free with women, states one woman agent, the men of the crew went a3 far as possible without exposing themselves to the danger of punishment. Several of the crew toid me that many of them marry girls from the steerage. Tlie report says of one voyage that not one young woman in the steerage escaped insult. The writer herself was no exception, and tells of repelling the advances on the part of members' of the crew and of stewards with blows in the offenders' faces. The manner, she says, in which sailors, stewards, firemen, and others mingled with the women passengers was' thoroughly revolting. Their language and the topics of their conversation were vile. Their comments about women made in their presence were coarse.

The shipping representative of the ■Daily Telegraph, who has for several \yeava met the chief Atlantic liners on their arrival in New York, states that such conditions as are reported musrt be entirely exceptional, or they could not have been concealed so long. So far as the big English liners are concerned, he is in a position to say that such charges' as are now published are absolutely baseless.', It is true that questionable characters travel in the steerage very often and make trouble, but there is always liberty to appeal to the captain, and immediately a remedy is. lorr-tt-C-oming. '■■■r?"XsMW