It is obvious that the activity of these agents may be of the most pernicious nature. The welfare of the immigrant, or the benefit of either country concerned, are of no concern to them. Their sole aim is to get business. So long as the immigrant has the wherewithal to pay his passage, it matters not to them where he got it, nor are they deterred by any doubts as to the fitness of the immigrant for American life, or of the probability of his success there. In fact, it is claimed that the steamship companies prefer a class of immigrants which is likely, eventually, to return to the old country, as this creates a traffic going the other way. The only checks to their operations are such as are imposed by their own scruples, and the possession of too many of these does not help a man to qualify for the position of agent. The methods used by these agents to encourage emigration are most ingenious and insidious. Every possible means is used to make the peasant dissatisfied with his present lot, and to impress him with the glories and joys of life in America. Many, perhaps the majority, of the agents are themselves returned immigrants, who give glittering accounts of their experiences in America, and display gold watches, diamond pins, and various other proofs of their prosperity. The methods of to-day are not quite so crude and bizarre as they used to be. The stories of the richness of America and the ease of life there which used to be current were so overdrawn as to undeceive any but the most ignorant and gullible. Immigrants have left for America expecting to be able to pick up unlimited dollars lying loose in the streets, and stories are told of steerage passengers who threw away the cooking utensils they had brought with them, as the vessel neared New York, supposing that they could get a new lot for nothing as soon as they landed. A better knowledge of actual conditions in America, which now prevails in most European countries, has precluded the continued circulation of such fictions as these. In fact, if there were not real advantages in the United States, and many cases of successful emigrants, the agents would not be able to operate successfully for an indefinite time. But as yet there does exist a sufficient difference between conditions in the new world and in the old to give them a basis of truth, which they may embellish as occasion demands. Many of these agents make a practice of advancing money to the emigrants to pay for their passage, taking a mortgage on their property for an amount far in advance of that actually furnished. These debts are met with a strange faithfulness by the immigrants, even when they have been woefully deceived and cheated. In Greece it is asserted that the agents work through the priests, and thus largely increase their influence.[123]