The emigrant agent was really an agent for a shipping line. 17 shipping lines were represented in Sweden (at the height of the emigration). The shipping agent offered package tours: if you wanted to go from some remote place in let's say Småland to Chicago, the agent would sell you tickets covering the train to Göteborg, the ship (most often one of the Wilson tubs) to England (Grimsby or Hull depending on departure day), the train in England to either Liverpool or Southampton, the ship across the Atlantic and the train from New York to Chicago. Or you could opt for just the voyage across the Atlantic and arrange everything else yourself. Or any other combination of tickets you wanted.
Some people thought they were very clever and hoped to save money by buying the train fare to Göteborg themselves and arriving in Göteborg without any onward tickets - thinking they would shop around in Göteborg. In reality they were collared at the Göteborg railway station by some exceedingly stout men who made them an offer they couldn't refuse - these men were hired by the shipping agents for the express purpose of nabbing passengers without onward tickets.
It was very, very easy to find an agent. In fact, it was impossible to miss them. In the counties where the emigration was strongest, more or less every village had, if not a fullblown agent, someone who represented a shipping line. Yes, you could travel without an agent - but it was very difficult for you to do so if you knew no English and had perhaps not even travelled on a train prior to your emigration. Today millions of northern Europeans visit Spain, Italy or Greece; most go with an agent, since it's a hassle to book everything yourself in a foreign language - and you actually save money with an agency since they get great discounts on the hotels etc. Same thing in those days: yes, you paid a commission but you probably saved that same amount on the tickets - and above all, no hassle.
Now, I have no idea about the fares - but they could not have been too steep since most people went back and forth several times before they finally decided to stay - either in Sweden or in the US. Of the 1.3 million or so who emigrated, at least 200,000 returned for good.
The people who stayed put were families, especially if they emigrated before steam ships were the norm. From about the 1880's the majority of emigrants were single young men and women - and most of them hadn't really decided on emigrating for good. Most thought of their trip to America as not very different from serving as a farmhand two or three parishes away from home. They went home after maybe four years, just like they would spend a year at home when being in service in Sweden, and then some of them returned to America while others remained here. My own grandmother was one of those who returned; she had really just been curious about America since her cousin had settled there - she spent four years in the States and then decided it wasn't for her. Her brother on the other hand went over a couple of years later, and stayed (that branch of the family is still in the Chicago area).
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