Mottet had just finished his term of enforced service in the Russian army, and had more than once been compelled to act in procedures against his own people, whom he said were driven about from pillar to post by the Russian authorities in a way that made America seem like a heaven to them; and when letters came from their relatives here, telling them of how free and easy life was, they were wild to escape from their surroundings, and many more would have followed his example but for the fact that officially circulated reports hinted of strange dangers and hardships which the immigrants must undergo. Before he entered the army he had been working for a farmer who paid him about $2.50 a week. The farmers through all that part of the country owned their own land, and their farms averaged in size from forty to fifty acres. Mortgages on these farms were increasing in number, and many of them were held by wealthy Jews in the towns. In the army Mottet averred his pay was forty-five cents per month, and his treatment was of the roughest sort. He was in fine physical condition, though, and looked forward to his work in this country with great eagerness. [Illustration: Mr. Broughton Brandenburg, as He Looked when He Passed through Ellis Island as an Immigrant] He pointed out to me a man, twenty years older than himself, heavily bearded, wearing the odd Russian cap, and with boots to his knees, whom he said had been cruelly treated by the Christians in his village, and had lost all his property through fire, as well as his wife and daughter. His only son was a conscript, and his father did not even know where he was, so he had borrowed enough money to come to America to begin life over again at the commencement of his old age.