Harvey, Robert B. Minturn, William F. Havemeyer, and David C. Colden, who
were to form a Board of Commissioners of Emigration, charged with the
oversight and care of this vast influx of strangers from the Old World. To
these were added the Mayors of New York and Brooklyn, and the Presidents
of the German Society and the Irish Emigrant Society. Every master of a
vessel was, within twenty-four hours of his arrival, to give this Board a
list of his passengers, with a report of their origin, age, occupation,
condition, health and other particulars, and either give bonds to save the
community from the cost of maintaining them in case they became paupers,
or pay for each of them the sum of two dollars and a half. The payment of
money has been preferred, and this has put into the hands of the
Commissioners a liberal revenue, faithfully applied to the advantage of
the emigrants.

Mr. Havemeyer was chosen President of the Board, but resigned the office
after a few months, and was succeeded in it by Mr. Verplanck, who held it
till the day of his death. Under the management of the Commissioners, the
Bureau of Emigration, becoming with almost every year more perfectly
adapted to its purpose, has grown to vast dimensions, till it is now like
one of the departments of government in a great empire. Whoever passes by
Ward's Island, where the tides of the East River and the Sound meet and
rush swiftly to and fro through their narrow channels, will have some idea
of what the Board has done as he sees the domes and spires of that great
cluster of buildings, forming a vast caravanserai in which the poorer
class of emigrants are temporarily lodged, before they can be sent into
the interior or find employment here. Here are barracks for the men, a
spacious building for the women and children, a nursery for children of a
tender age, Catholic and Protestant chapels, a dispensary, workshops, a
lunatic asylum, fever wards, surgical wards, storehouses, residences of
the physicians and other persons employed in the care of the place, and