The second great source of stimulation to emigration is the labor agent. His operations are extensive and diversified, and always in direct violation of the contract labor law. That section of the immigration statutes, as previously pointed out, is so sweepingly drawn as to make any immigrant, not in the excepted classes, who has received the slightest intimation that there is work awaiting him in this country, a violator of the law. But the economic advantage to employers in this country of importing European labor under contract to perform services in the United States at much less than the market rate of wages, is so great, that, as in the previous case, human nature cannot resist the temptation, provided the chances of escaping detection are sufficiently good. And this part of the law, like that relating to advertising, is of such a nature as to make it susceptible of continued and extensive evasion by unscrupulous persons, possessed of such skill and craftiness as characterize the typical contract labor agent. While there is no way of estimating the extent of this practice, there is no doubt that only a very small proportion of the present immigration, from the Mediterranean countries at least, is innocent of the letter of the law, strictly interpreted. This is not to say that they are under actual contract to labor, but that their coming has been encouraged by some sort of intimation that there would be work awaiting them. By a recent opinion of the Attorney-General, two essential points have been laid down in the construction of the contract labor laws, as follows: “(1) That they ‘prohibit any offer or promise of employment which is of such a definite character that an acceptance thereof would constitute a contract.’ “(2) That the prohibition to encourage the immigration of an alien by a promise of employment is ‘directed against a promise which specially designates the particular job or work or employment for which the alien’s labor is desired.’”[126] Even under this somewhat liberal interpretation of the laws, wholesale violations undoubtedly go on. In the words of the Immigration Commission, “In this way hundreds of immigrants are annually debarred at United States ports as contract laborers, while doubtless hundreds of thousands more are admitted who have practically definite assurances as to the place and nature of their employment in this country.” A fuller description of contract labor in general, and of that particular form of it which is known as the padrone system, will be given in another connection. The point to be emphasized here is that it operates as one of the great causes of our present immigration, and that it continues to exert a powerful, and probably increasing, influence, in spite of all the efforts of the legislators and officials of the United States to check it.