Undercover Reporting

"The Steerage" - Eliza Putnam Heaton - The Times Union

"The words look up at me from a crumpled ticket which lies on my desk. On the reverse side I read in English, German, Swedish, French and Italian: "Keep this card to avoid detention at quarantine and on railroads in the United States." This small document was my passport from under the folds of the Union Jack tot he shelter of the Stars and Stripes. I have emigrated. Unlike most emigrants, I went from New York to Liverpool for the expressed purpose of emigrating. The desire was on me to cast in my lot with a shipload of human freight: to experience in my own person, the adventures, sad or merry, to test the treatment, good or bad, accorded those who leave home and country to lie down in the steerage, awake in Castle Garden and be whirled westward across the plains.

The Times Union  1888-10-20