The most surprising fact established by the Commission in this respect is that probably the most complete system of peonage in the whole country has existed, not in the south, but in Maine. Here the employers of labor in the lumber camps have been obliged to secure their labor mostly from other states and in the main from immigrants. Boston is the great labor market for this industry. The immigrants are given very misleading accounts of the conditions of their labor, and are engaged to work for their employers for a specified time. They are then taken into the forests, sometimes having to walk sixty or seventy miles to their place of labor, and kept in the forest all winter. When they learn the extent to which they have been deceived, many of them are inclined to run away. However, in February, 1907, a law was passed making it a criminal offense for a person to “enter into an agreement to labor for any lumbering operation or in driving logs and in consideration thereof receive any advances of goods, money, or transportation, and unreasonably and with intent to defraud, fail to enter into said employment as agreed and labor a sufficient length of time to reimburse his employer for said advances and expenses.” The general interpretation of the courts has been to ignore the provision about intent to defraud, or at least to put the burden of proof on the defendant, though it is not specifically provided in the law that failure or refusal to fulfill the terms of the contract shall be _prima facie_ evidence of an intent to defraud, as is the case in the contract labor law of Minnesota and other states. Employers in other branches of industry have sought to secure the same protection, but in vain, so that this law is iniquitous, not only from the point of view of peonage, but also because it is class legislation. A considerable amount of peonage has resulted from this law in Maine.[248] The basis of all the evils which have just been discussed has been seen to lie in the ignorance and helplessness of the newly arrived immigrant. Knowing nothing of the language of the country, or of its methods of doing business, and having no connections with the industrial system of the country, he is forced to rely on some one who can supply these factors. Most naturally he turns to some one of his fellow-countrymen who has been in this country longer. From that time on, sometimes for many years, his career is dominated by the older immigrant to a remarkable degree. Out of this connection has grown up a peculiar set of institutions, commonly known as immigrant banks, which have the power for great good or evil to the immigrant, according to the character of the men who have them in charge. The origin and nature of these banks is as follows: