AN IRISH IMMIGRANT

The Loose Way in which Dominion Assisted Passages are Granted.

[...] Unfulfilled Promises as to Land Grants Made to Emigrants — Dominion Money Assists Emigration to the United States – Dominion Agents who Job in Real Estate and Railway tickets, &c.

[...] Your correspondent to-day met with a young Irish immigrant named James Boyle, 23 years of age, from Londonderry, Ireland. His experience as an immigrant is of the kind which may prove useful in showing the Government and the citizens of Canada the manner in which public servants and others interested in immigration treat those whom they invite to come to Canada and make home among us. He says: —

REQUIRING ABOUT CANADA.

“I walked into the ticket office of the steamship company, and told the clerk that I wanted to come to Canada. I asked him the rate, and he told me it was £6 6s., but he added that if I signed as a labourer I could get an ‘assisted ticket' to any part of Canada for £5. As I did not know what I was coming to Canada to do I signed as a labourer, and the first work I did when I got here was firing an engine for a boiler. I am now a lawyer's clerk, but I was willing and able to do anything. I was promised”

GOVERNMENT ASSISTED PASSAGE,

and the bills that were posted around the ticket office showed that emigrants to Canada are to receive 160 acres of land from the Dominion Government when they get here.” [...]

UNFILLED PROMISES.

"What about the 160 acres promised to those who come to canada?"

"Oh, I never saw that. The fact is that people in Ireland are getting so now that they will not believe the blackguards that promise these things."

"Did you make any attmpt to get the 160 acres?"

"Oh, yes; I went to see Mr. Ibbottson, the emigration agent, and asked him about it. He said it was all stuff about the 160 acres, and wanted me to buy farm from him."

"Oh, indeed! Is he a real estate agent as well as an emigration agent?"

"I do not know; but he had a number of farms for sale at any rate. He told me I would have to go to Mnitoba for my 160 acres, and that I would have to spend a good eal of money on my 160 acres before I could make anything out of it."

"That was very cheering for you as an emigrant, was it not?"

"Yes; but I did not want to go to Manitoba. He told me that he had a nice little farm that would be just the thing for me near the city."

TRICKS UPON EMIGRANTS.

"Do you think yours an extreme case or are other immigrants pestered in the manner you have been?"

"I believe that the whole of them have the same dodges tried on them, and that hundreds of them are run off daily to the United States by these clerks, who want to sell them tickets to Chicago and other places. What object they have of course I do not know." [...]