The chief evils of the system are the unsanitary conditions of labor, the long hours, the extensive employment of women and children, the difficulty of proper supervision, the low wages, and the complete subjection of the workers to the control of the boss. The contractor himself is often in a precarious financial situation, being himself a victim of the system. Like the foregoing institutions, it results from the ignorance and lack of connection of the workers. Its persistence and wide spread in this country are due to the constant accessions of low-grade workers, unassimilated to the conditions of the country, which immigration furnishes. These supply the raw material upon which the system feeds. By so doing they have blocked the efforts of the cities of the United States to control or abolish this evil.[254] There is another class of institutions which rests upon the helplessness of the newly arrived immigrant, which is, however, an alleviating, rather than an exploiting agency, and which belongs to the social rather than to the economic life. This is the immigrant home or aid society. These institutions are numerous in the seaport cities where immigrants arrive; there are said to be not less than sixteen in operation in New York City.[255] They are for the most part benevolent or philanthropic organizations (at least nominally), and many of them are under the control of some religious organization. Many of them work primarily with a single race or people. Their functions are looking after newly arrived immigrants who are not met by friends, and forwarding them to their destinations, furnishing them board and lodging while in the port of arrival, helping them to find work or to locate missing acquaintances, and in general safeguarding them while they are establishing a connection with some responsible party in this country.