The statement made in a previous paragraph, that the immigrant comes to America because he can—or believes he can—better his economic lot by so doing, suggested that great class of causes which we have called the artificial. The advantages of the economic life in the United States all too frequently exist, not in fact, but in the mind of the prospective emigrant. And this belief is equally potent in stirring up emigration, whether it is grounded on fact or not. There are hosts of immigrants passing through the portals of Ellis Island every year whose venture is based on a sad misconception. There are also countless numbers who would never have engaged in the undertaking had not the idea of doing so been forcibly and persistently instilled into their minds by some outside agency. In other words, a very large part of our present immigration is not spontaneous and due to natural causes, but is artificial and stimulated. This stimulation consists in creating the desire and determination to migrate, by inducing dissatisfaction with existing conditions as compared with what the new world has to offer. Its source is in some interested person or agency whose motive may, or may not, be selfish. There are three principal sources from which this stimulation or encouragement to immigration emanates—the transportation companies, the labor agents, and the previous immigrants. The motive of the first two is an economic and wholly selfish one; that of the latter may or may not be selfish. The carrying of immigrants from Europe to America is a very vast and lucrative business. The customary charge for steerage passage averages at least $30, and as the large immigrant ships carry 2000 or more steerage passengers there is a possibility of receiving as much as $60,000 from steerage passengers on a single voyage. It is, furthermore, a business which can be almost indefinitely expanded by vigorous pushing. A skillful agent can induce almost any number of the simple and credulous peasants of a backward European country to emigrate, who had scarcely had such an idea in their heads before. Consequently it pays the transportation companies to have an immense army of such agents, continually working over the field, and opening up new territory. The motive is not so much rivalry for a given amount of business between the different companies; a mutual agreement between different lines or groups of lines, dividing up the territory from which they shall draw their steerage passengers, practically precludes this.[122] It is rather the possibility of actually creating new business by energetic canvassing.