Free The Promised Land: Settling the West 1896-1914 by Pierre Berton

special fee for its use. Sometimes he would use the alarm clock to ask “the American Emperor” whether he would allow the prospective emigrant to enter his country. That, of course, involved another fee.
    One swindler dressed as a doctor invariably “failed” prospective emigrants for reasons of health but was happy to accept a bribe and pass them at a subagent’s suggestion. Another had a store full of clothing that he sold to peasants at inflated prices, claiming that they would not be allowed to wear their native dress on the other side of the water. At ports of departure, especially in Germany, scores were told they would have to wait for a boat and were deliberately held in boarding houses, hotels, and taverns where they were cheated for lodgings and food.
    In order to increase their commissions, the steamship agents peddled fantastic stories that were generally believed by their unworldly victims. One group from Bukovina arrived at Winnipeg’s immigration hall in May 1897 protesting bitterly that misrepresentations had been used to induce them to come over. They had been told that the “CrownPrincess of Austria” was in Montreal and would see that they were given free land with houses, cattle, and farm equipment. All they had to do was telegraph her if these promises went unfulfilled. Many of the newcomers, therefore, refused all offers of employment in Winnipeg and sat tight in the crowded hall. With five hundred more newcomers arriving, the police attempted to move them out, and a small riot ensued. Many of the newcomers flung themselves on the floor until they were dragged or carried off, the women “yelling, crying and shrieking” in the words of the long-suffering immigration commissioner, William McCreary, ex-mayor of Winnipeg, who narrowly escaped being felled by a boot flung at his head.
    McCreary, who had been working from six in the morning until nine at night, had managed to negotiate a special low rate on the railway to Yorkton, Assiniboia. In addition, he had arranged for fifty days’ work on the same line for those who were destitute. That did not suit the new arrivals, who were still intoxicated by the steamship agents’ promises and so refused to board the train. Some upset the baggage carts. Some, with their goods on their backs, started marching north. Others squatted on the street or seized vacant houses near the track. In the end they capitulated. McCreary supplied them with some sacks of flour and a few bushels of potatoes and finally settled them on homesteads in the vicinity of Saltcoats, Assiniboia, where, eventually, they forgot about the non-existent Austrian princess. It was exactly this kind of fraud and exploitation that Professor Oleskow had sought to avoid.
    If some immigrants were disillusioned and rebellious when they reached Canada, it was understandable. Apart from the false promises, there was the long journey across Europe from their home villages, then the stormy ocean voyage in the holds of immigrant ships, and finally the trek first by rail and then by ox cart to their prairie homesteads.
    The first stop in Europe, usually after a twenty-four-hour train journey, came at a control station between Galicia and Germany, where men, women, and children submitted to a medical examination before being allowed to proceed. These stations – there were thirteen – had been established as a result of the cholera epidemic in Hamburg in 1892. They were maintained by the steamship companies as the result of a compromise with the German authorities, who had blamed the epidemic on emigrants from Russia and originally wanted to seal off the border. Now, everybody entering Germany from Austria-Hungary or Russia en route to North America was subjected to a medical inspection.
    We have arrived at the control station at Myslowitz at the junction of the German, Austrian, and Russian borders. A uniformed official leads us from the Krakow train through a long hall to a desk behind which