The bonding provision of the New York State law had one remarkable and unfortunate result. A class of brokers sprang up who took the responsibility of bonding the immigrants from the shipowners. It was obviously to their advantage to keep as many of the immigrants as possible from coming upon the public for support. To accomplish this, they established private hospitals and poorhouses on the outskirts of New York and Brooklyn, in which dependent aliens were placed. The effort to maintain them here at the least possible expense resulted in extreme neglect. A committee of the Board of Aldermen of New York City was appointed to look into this matter, in the year 1846. They found conditions which were almost unbelievable. In one apartment, fifty feet square, they discovered one hundred sick and dying immigrants lying on straw. In their midst were the bodies of two others who had died four or five days earlier, and had been left there. The worst kind of food was specially purchased for the consumption of these victims. The conditions unearthed by this investigation contributed to the sentiment which brought about the passage of the law of 1847.[85] The chaotic state of the immigration situation, the inadequacy of state control, and the increasing obviousness of the resulting evils led to a growing demand for federal action on the matter. This feeling found expression in numerous petitions and memorials presented to Congress by state legislatures, city councils, and private citizens. These began to appear about 1835, with the rise of the Native American party. With the increased immigration of the latter forties, the demand became more insistent. The immediate and crying evil, which attracted the greatest attention, lay in the unspeakable shipping conditions which still existed.[86] In 1847 Mr. Rathbun stated on the floor of Congress that emigrants from abroad were frequently landed in the port of New York in such a diseased condition, due to overcrowding on the ships which brought them, that they were unable to walk. They were carried in carts direct to the almshouse, and sometimes died on the way.[87] In the same year, out of ninety thousand immigrants who embarked for Canada in British vessels, fifteen thousand died on the way. This exceeded even the suffering in vessels bound for the United States.[88] On the whole, conditions seem to have been the best on the German and American vessels.