The Truth About Ellis Island

 

Over the years, many people have made many comments and complaints about immigration to America during the Ellis Island era. Since there are public histories and public records on the facts, we’ll discuss how many of these were true and how many were lies that got good PR.

 

(The “How to be Your Own Detective” angle — I wrote two books about Ellis Island using public records like government papers and newspaper articles. I also interviewed those in the know and submitted my work for subject expert review to a left-leaning expert and a right leaning expert. Any one of you readers could have done likewise, as my sources were open records.)

 

TRUTH, LIE, OR URBAN LEGEND?

“We came to America packed in like sardines, in filthy quarters, with little food and with many sick people.”

That all too often was true until into the 1900s.

Steerage passengers were almost pure profit for steamship companies. Officers and employees of these companies sold cheap tickets to people, and fed them very little and provided them with very little in the way of sanitary facilities. They advertised all over Europe to lure poor people to buy tickets, and they were greedy enough to transport people who were sick, handicapped, or otherwise unfit to gain entry to America. They figured enough of these unfit people would somehow get by the inspectors and get into America.

American officials put laws with teeth in them into effect, and this pressure forced the steamship companies to do better. American officials started fining steamship companies for bringing in undesirables. They made steamship companies pay to feed, shelter, and provide medical treatment for aliens detained at Ellis Island or elsewhere in America, and they made steamship companies take rejected people back to Europe for free. They also quarantined ships in harbors and made steamship companies pay for related medical, feeding, lodging, and sanitation costs.

The more astute steamship company officials got the point. In the ports of Britain and Germany, the two greatest European maritime powers, there were fairly well-organized facilities for immigrants to clean themselves and undergo some medical screening. In some of the other countries, officials likewise upgraded their standards when they figured out America meant business.

Immigrants bound for America aboard the German ship “Patricia”

 

American immigration officials wanted to save American taxpayers from having to bear the burden of caring for and sending back people they didn’t want to admit to America. They also wanted to save would-be immigrants the expense and shattering experience of being turned back from America. So they made the standards known and prompted the steamship companies to follow them or lose money.

 

Irish girl and her dolly photobomb picture of this desirable Irish lass aboard the “Baltic.” The Colleen was one of about 1000 unaccompanied single young women aboard the British ship coming to New York in 1907. Word got out to the papers in New York about the precious cargo of Irish, Scottish, English and Scandinavian cuties aboard the vessel while it was still at sea. This resulted in a good-natured bachelor “riot” for the favor of these lovelies in the sidewalks of New York. Even Michigan government officials approached the young women, looking for Scandinavian farm girls to make Michigan warmer. “When you and I were young, Maggie ….”

“Immigration officials and agents were corrupt.”

Before Ellis Island opened in 1892, this was very true. In fact, the reason Congress federalized the immigration process was to cut down on the rampant corruption of state and local officials who had been processing immigrants.

Some corrupt employees continued in office. But when the incorruptible and cantankerous William Williams and his successors found them out, they became former employees and often became inmates of prisons.

Williams ordered railroad ticket agents to stop selling unsuspecting immigrants railroad tickets that would take them way out of their way to their destinations or face punishment. His successor Robert Watchorn had employees check on the levels of service railroad companies were giving immigrants. Based on what they found, Watchorn concluded the railroad company officials were cheating immigrants. Watchorn, himself an immigrant from Britain, filed a complaint against the railroad companies with the Interstate Commerce Commission to make them give immigrants better services or reduce their ticket prices. (1)

Unscrupulous vendors and agents could take advantage of immigrants who paid for services such as telegrams or train tickets or food for travel or baggage handling, and immigrants who exchanged their foreign money for American money. Williams and his successors tried to stomp down hard on this sort of corruption.

In one such case, Williams had a telegraph office employee jailed for short-changing a Czech immigrant by five dollars. In another case, Williams noted a money-changing contractor was turned out of Ellis Island because of his crookedness. Williams cancelled a vendor’s baggage handling contract in 1911 when his people discovered the vendor was cheating immigrants. Williams canned a food contractor who was not feeding immigrants properly. Williams punished or assisted in jailing many others who broke immigration laws for financial gain. Williams’ toughness and integrity set the standard for the men who followed him at Ellis Island. (2)

 

“They fed us swill at Ellis Island.”

This was probably true before William Williams took over.

Frank Martocci, the interpreter at Ellis Island, was probably the agent who admitted immigration commissioner-to-be Edward Corsi and his mother, stepfather, brother, and sisters when his family passed through Ellis Island to New York from Italy in 1907.

Close to a quarter-century later, when Italian immigrant Corsi became the head man at Ellis Island in 1931, Martocci was still on the job. Corsi asked the old interpreter to reminisce about the early days of his service.

One of the things Martocci said he remembered was food service workers slopping ladles of stewed prunes onto rye bread to dole out to the immigrants for several meals in a row. He said the quality and quantity of food served changed for the better when Williams became commissioner. (3)

Williams cancelled the contract of the food vendor in 1902, his first year at Ellis Island. He cancelled the contract of another food vendor not long after he returned to Ellis Island in 1909, the first year of his second term as commissioner. He determined the vendor was not feeding immigrants properly. (4)

Women and children eat at Ellis Island. Often the husbands came over first, and when they made enough money to bring their families, they did so. The families had to wait for their men or family friends to claim them. There was no welfare system; people had to make it without loafing.

 

The 1902 food service bid requests from the U.S. Immigration Service was the first dealing done for food by Williams. Williams noted the previous food service vendor collected $65,000 from the steamship companies for a year at 10 cents a meal for breakfast and “supper” (the evening meal), and 15 cents for “dinner” (the midday meal, which typically was the big meal for rural people). This meant the vendor served at least 433,000 meals to as many as 650,000 meals to detained immigrants during the previous year.

Since it was often the fault of shipping companies that many would-be immigrants were detained at Ellis Island for sickness and unfitness, American officials decided it was only right to fine the shipping companies and use the money they collected from these outfits to pay for the food and shelter they gave to aliens they detained. Shipping companies did not directly have to pay for meals served for those being detained until family, fiancé, or friends could come for them or send them money for transportation to their new homes.

Williams specified the winning food service vendor would have to provide immigrants bread for breakfast, beef or fish, soup, and potatoes for “dinner,” and bread and stewed prunes for “supper.” (The prune ladles still found use, even after Williams took over.) Coffee and tea, and milk and sugar were to be available.

Williams also allowed the food service vendor to sell bread, ham, cheese, bologna, smoked fish, bread, pies, donuts, fruit, milk, soft drinks, and beer to people leaving Ellis Island so they would have something to eat while they were taking train rides to their final destinations. (Later, puritanical feds would ban alcohol sales at immigration stations.) Williams allowed the vendor a 20 percent profit margin on food to go.

Henry Curran, the Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island from 1923 through 1926, said he tried to have the immigrants served some ethnic foods, but immigrants whose native dishes were not on the menu would complain. He said with a twinkle in his eye, “If I added spaghetti, the detained Italians sent me an engrossed testimonial and everyone else objected. If I put pierogi and Mazovian noodles on the table, the Poles were happy and the rest were disconsolate. Irish stew was no good for the English, and English marmalade was gunpowder to the Irish. The Scotch mistrusted both. The Welsh took what they could get. There was no pleasing anybody. I tried everything, then went back to United States fodder for all. They might as well get used now to the baked beans, assorted pies, and anonymous hash that would overwhelm them later on.” (5)

If the immigrants weren’t getting food their way, a 1908 food contract request for bid and four immigrant dining room menus from 1917 indicate they sure weren’t getting starvation fare.

The 1908 food service bid requests from the U.S. Immigration Service (made when Robert Watchorn was the chief at Ellis Island) specified the winning food service vendor would have to provide immigrants hot cereal and milk, hash or pork and beans, and bread and butter for breakfast. For “dinner” (the midday meal), the vendor would have to provide immigrants meat or fish, potatoes, vegetables, bread and butter, and soup. For “supper” (the evening meal), the vendor would have to provide stew, pork and beans, or hash, a fruit dessert or pie or pudding, and bread and butter. Coffee and tea, and milk and sugar were to be available. Kosher substitutes for pork were to be made available. This was a step up from the fare Williams was allowed to offer immigrants in 1902. On Williams’ recommendation, fines against steamship companies for violations increased, and this undoubtedly led to better food for detained immigrants.

The 1917 dining room menus (made when Frederic Howe was the chief at Ellis Island) showed for breakfast, immigrants got hot cereal, milk, bread and butter, and fruit. For “dinner,” immigrants got meat, vegetables, potatoes, bread and butter, and soup. For “supper,” immigrants got a one-pot entree such as stew or hash or meat and beans, bread and butter, and fruit. Coffee and tea, and milk and sugar were to be available. Food service people served milk and crackers to children between meals. Okay, so maybe the onset of World War One led to the cutoff of the breakfast ration of pork and beans. (Or was it complaints of gas?)

So what’s not to like? Do you and your children eat as heartily today? (6)

 

“Ellis Island was a filthy zoo where sadistic officials mistreated immigrants.”

After Theodore Roosevelt became president, this was basically untrue.

Imagine having to undergo processing with 5000 other people on a very hot or very cold day. Underpaid and overworked immigration officials and employees – many working 6 or 7 days a week — would be sorely tempted to lose their tempers, especially if crying children puked on them, or if greasy immigrants coming out of a two-week stretch in steerage tugged on their coats trying to get their attention, or if lice and other vermin hopped off of dirty foreigners and onto them.

Children’s shrieks, women’s crying, men’s arguing, and the constant pushing and pulling and ordering going on would make an unpleasant mark on anyone’s memory. So would being detained while waiting for loved ones to pick you up. Ellis Island was not a hotel, but a gateway.

By the early 1900s, immigrant groups in the cities made reasonably powerful blocs of voters. If they complained, there would be some vote-chasing politicians with no more morals than an ambulance-chasing lawyer looking to attack the workers at Ellis Island to endear themselves to these ethnic communities.

Journalists of a German-language paper in New York City started criticizing William Williams and his people for allegedly mistreating immigrants and deporting and excluding people cruelly. Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 appointed a commission to investigate the charges the Germanic newspeople made. The commissioners cleared Williams and his people and praised Williams for the job he did. (7)

Among immigrants, the British were the biggest complainers. A typical British bitcher was a minister named Sydney Bass who whined that he had to wait with other immigrants. This alleged disciple of Christ bitched because American immigration officials made him and other Englishmen and Englishwomen stay in the same area with unwashed immigrants from presumably less genteel lands.

Ellis Island on a  slow day

 

Bear in mind the British were colonial masters of the Indian subcontinent, much of Africa, portions of Southeast Asia, many places in the West Indies, and Ireland when Bass tried to come to America. The British also were among the leading commercial plunderers of China at this time. They also had a lot to say about the running of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In short, their tentacles stretched around the globe, which gave many of them a dangerous sense of ethnic and racial superiority, every bit as objectionable as the “love myself, hate my neighbor” attitude many of the Germans had.

“I objected to being placed there in such close proximity with the filthiest people of all nations, covered with dirt and vermin,” he complained in 1911. Besides showing a high amount of bigotry and persnicketyness for someone who was allegedly a follower of Jesus, Bass demonstrated a flair for dramatic exaggeration as well. He moaned, “I was peremptorily ordered back into the common room. There were 600 people in that little room, crowded together. It seemed to me the most like the black hole of Calcutta of anything that I have seen.”

The short but large-mouthed Bass complained about taller Italians in the room. “They were eating garlic, and you can imagine how offensive it was,” he whined. “It was very unpleasant. It made it difficult for me to breathe.” Were his delicate sensitivities to blame, or was it anti-Catholic bias – against the people in whose land the Pope lived and usually was a native of – on the part of this alleged man of God?

Maybe Bass was miffed at being labeled an undesirable. Bass had to stay overnight on Ellis Island, and a board of special inquiry declared he should be deported as being liable to be a public charge. Bass admitted complaining about the filthy foreigners he as an Englishman was cooped up with when he appeared before the board members. The immigration officials might have considered his attitude unworthy of a real minister of the Lord. Maybe they considered him a charlatan akin to many of today’s televangelists.

Evidently someone higher up than the agents at Ellis Island gave Bass a break, because six months later he was preaching in Pennsylvania. Maybe it was a catch and release situation for Bass.

Corrupt New York congressman William Sulzer fished Bass out of Pennsylvania and put the crabber in front of Congress in 1911 to make the above charges. Bass also complained the British gave him a clean bill of health before he emigrated. Because of his stay at Ellis Island, Bass carped, he couldn’t get such a clearance anytime soon. Bass produced a note from a local doctor saying he (Bass) couldn’t perform many of his functions as a minister for some time after he came to Pennsylvania because “I found him in a state of collapse.” (In other words, the Ellis Island people evidently got it right about Bass’ problems.) Bass also made the spurious charge that some young women being detained at Ellis Island were being denied religious services. This was a ridiculous lie, because priests, ministers, and rabbis routinely held religious services for the detained.

Williams wrote his boss a letter that refuted Bass’ fish story. He said Bass was a liar on all his charges and cited facts to support his charge. He said a Protestant minister on Ellis Island had checked on Bass at Ellis Island and Bass said he had received good treatment. He said Bass thanked his deputy Byron Uhl for his treatment. Williams also noted his agents detained Bass for physical deformities affecting his ability to earn an honest living. So, Williams concluded, Bass turned to earning money dishonestly by making up stories about Ellis Island so he could hit the lecture circuit. (Before radio and TV, traveling lecturers made good money as entertainers.) He noted Bass claimed he was not only a minister, but also a journalist, lecturer, and salesman. (All four occupations unfortunately hide many charlatans.) Williams closed his blast with, “I do not know what part of the Scriptures he read; but he failed to read, or reading it failed to heed, the commandment – “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” (8)

Sulzer, a Democrat, was likely angling for the ethnic vote in his 1912 campaign to become governor of New York when he made charges against Williams in 1911. Members of the U.S. House of Representatives investigated Williams, a Republican, for “atrocities, cruelties, and inhumanities” that were allegedly taking place on Ellis Island under his watch. Certain immigrant protection group officials, foreign-language newspaper publishers, and those who resented Williams for his bulldog attitude in upholding immigration laws as he interpreted them witnessed against Williams. One of the fishy witnesses Sulzer produced was Brother Bass.

English Mum and kiddos await Father. Photo by Augustus Sherman.

 

Williams, in writing, and in his verbal testimony before the congressmen, said Sulzer and the witnesses were lying about their key charges, and offered proof to back his counterattack. He noted he was not going to argue every detail with his detractors because they were caught lying on the gist of their most important accusations.

Sulzer in essence took back his complaints, and instead asked for more money for Ellis Island’s administration. Williams had proven to the congressmen’s satisfaction the charges Sulzer and others had lodged against him were false.

Sulzer would win the governor election later that year because the Republicans split into pro-William Howard Taft and pro-Theodore Roosevelt factions, each of whom ran candidates, splitting the anti-Sulzer vote. (His election as governor occurred in the same way as the election of Woodrow Wilson to the presidency that same year.) New York state assembly speaker Al Smith and other Democrats in Sulzer’s own party – with the help of Republican legislators – would impeach Sulzer in 1913 for violating the state’s Corrupt Practices Act. Sulzer had broken this law by diverting money donated to his campaign into his own pockets. A court made up of state senators and state judges tried Sulzer for the charge and removed him from office later in the year. (9)

There were many complaints from British immigrants about Ellis Island that were publicized. Every one of the complaints I reviewed revealed the Britishers’ bigotry and classism at having to share the facility with other nationalities. I used Sydney Bass’ complaint as an example of the tone of condescension typical of the British who complained.

Frederic Howe, the Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island during the World War One era, said, “The British gave the most trouble. When a British subject was detained, he rushed to the telephone to communicate with the consul-general in New York or the ambassador in Washington, protesting against the outrage. When ordered deported, he sizzled in his wrath over the indignities he was subjected to. All this was in effect a resentment that any nation should have the arrogance to interfere with a British subject in his movements. All Englishmen seemed to assume that they had the right to go anywhere they liked, and that any interference with this right was an affront to the whole British Empire.”

In 1922, politicians in Britain criticized the treatment of British immigrants at Ellis Island, and sniped at the sanitation and the food service as well. They were shocked – shocked! – that migrating Britons didn’t have separate eating, bathroom, and sleeping facilities and actually had to mingle with other foreigners while awaiting processing, admission, or deportation in America. (10)

The British had no right to talk. Dr. Alvah Doty, for many years the epidemic-tracking Health Officer of the Port of New York, blamed the British (and Moslems and peoples of the Indian subcontinent) for the spread of many epidemics. Doty said the British didn’t regulate sanitation in their colonial ports well enough, and didn’t do enough for public health in the Indian subcontinent (which they ruled as a colony). Moslems coming from British colonies in Asia and Africa (and from elsewhere) on pilgrimages to Arabia didn’t use proper sanitation. Many of them passed through the British-run Suez Canal or came to and from British colonial ports aboard filthy ships. These wandering Moslems, Doty said, carried the germs of epidemics far and wide. (11)

These British blowhards overlooked the fact their own countrymen and countrywomen had chosen to leave their country for ours.

Ohio congressman John Cable expressed the thoughts of many when he shot back, “I cannot understand how these particular people (British aliens) can travel from seven to 14 days in steerage accommodations on the steamships (British ships, by the way) and do so willingly, and then suddenly develop the most acute culture and sensibilities as soon as the Statue of Liberty comes into view.”

Congressman Cable said British officials should investigate the immigrant quarters at their own ports before critiquing American immigration stations. He added the admission of immigrants to America should be “for the benefit of America and not for Europe.” In the 1920s, it was not politically incorrect for American politicians to be proud of America and put America’s interests ahead of those of other nations.

James Davis, President Warren Harding’s Labor Secretary, was the Cabinet member responsible for immigration stations during this flap. Davis was himself an immigrant from Wales. He seemed much too worried about what politicians in his homeland thought. He leaned toward segregating British immigrants from other immigrants.

Ironically, William Williams had favored a kind of segregation of immigrants at Ellis Island … a segregation of immigrants by class. He noted the relatively few second class passengers detained for reasons other than disease might be held apart from the mass of steerage passengers so they might avoid exposure to the germs and vermin the poorer passengers were carrying. Even though Williams was a WASP of the bluest type, he would never have allowed the British such privileges as native Britisher Davis was contemplating granting them.

Ellis Island Commissioner Robert Watchorn, second from left, takes part in a hearing. Watchorn, a Teddy Roosevelt appointee like William Williams, was a native of England. He was kind but firm.

 

Davis invited British ambassador Auckland Geddes to inspect Ellis Island. Geddes did so late in 1922. Geddes saw that isolation of British immigrants from others could not happen at the small Ellis Island facility. So he said Americans should spread out the work of Ellis Island at several facilities. Geddes made this kibitz (which if carried out would cost Americans millions of dollars but the deadbeat British nothing) in a report made public in August 1923. (12)

Henry Curran, who Harding had just appointed as the Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island before he died in office in August 1923, blasted the British and those American officials who sucked up to them. Curran, during his three years as boss of Ellis Island, scuttled other attempts to show favoritism toward British immigrants and make it easier for aliens to avoid proper screening. Thanks to Curran’s vociferous efforts, segregation of nationalities on Ellis Island for the satisfaction of the British would not take place. (13)

Curran, a reform politician in New York City, an Army officer in World War One, and a man of letters, was more known for his puckish sense of humor than for bombast. When a noblewoman emigré from Russia made fantastic and well-publicized charges against Ellis Island in 1923, Curran used this gentler touch to debunk her complaints publicly.

Baroness Mara de Lillier Steinheil said she was imprisoned by the Communists during the Russian Civil War, and the Reds murdered her husband and brothers. But instead of being grateful for the chance of coming to America, she claimed conditions at the immigration station were in many ways worse than a Bolshevik prison.

Even though she said she had titled relatives all over Europe, Madame Mara chose to come to democratic America. (Maybe her blueblood kin didn’t like her act either.) Agents at Ellis Island detained her for three days and made her go before a board of special inquiry. The board members allowed her entry to America. Then she complained to the press.

Curran deflated the balloon of the boorish baroness by producing a letter from a Russian Orthodox priest who edited a Russian ethnic paper in Newark thanking him for helping the Russian refugees who underwent processing at Ellis Island. Curran added, with the tongue-in-cheek humor that was his style, “It is to be regretted that we can’t provide a kaiser’s suite for each immigrant.” (14)

Curran said the immigrants who complained the most while he was commissioner were the English. “They talked a good deal about their rights as British subjects. To many of them Americans were still “colonials” while the other nationalities were always “foreigners.” The English refused to sleep in the same room with “foreigners.” They sent delegations to me about it. One batch of detained English immigrants even objected to living in the same room with another batch of English, who had come in on a later ship. ‘They are English but they are newcomers,’ said the leader of the delegation. ‘We are the same as old inhabitants. We have been here for a whole week. Why do we have to associate with them?’ “(15)

Curran did improve the sleeping arrangements for detained immigrants. He said, “In several small rooms for the detention of special cases there were beds, but in the large rooms that served as dormitories there were no beds at all. There were bedbugs, but no beds. It took me two months to exterminate the bedbugs. It took me two years to exterminate the wire cages that served as beds and replace them with real beds. To do that I had to have an appropriation by Congress, and the argument and red tape that had to be gone through with in Washington were such that it seemed to me sometimes as though Washington were the one place in the world that was completely motionless. Finally I got a couple of congressmen to come up to Ellis Island and stretch out in the cages for a few minutes. Those congressmen were flaming missionaries for beds instead of cages.” (16)

What Curran referred to as cages were essentially wire grids held together with steel frames and steel rails and steel posts, stacked three high. Since the mechanics on Ellis Island tied these together head to foot, the end result looked like a series of giant rabbit hutches (minus the sides) instead of a series of three-bunk bunkbeds. Sleeping on a wire grid with only a blanket instead of a mattress would be uncomfortable, like sleeping directly on the lateral springs and wires of a military bed frame.

Several well-heeled immigrants singled out black workers at Ellis Island as being too forward. In this they shared the prejudice of most American whites of the time. Most Europeans had never seen a black person, and those who did had seen them in colonial servitude. (The prostitutes of France were exceptions. They cheerfully serviced black American servicemen during World War One.) They were surprised to see blacks in government service in the United States. They were surprised the black workers they ran into at Ellis Island could be as blunt and as unapologetic as white workers.

Without question, some employees at Ellis Island and other immigration stations were jerks or crooks or both. That’s true with all organizations. Individuals will remember injustices done to them. However, the archives of Ellis Island bristle with personnel paperwork proving Williams, Watchorn, and other commissioners in the 1900s suspended, fined, fired, and/or had jailed employees who were abusive, dishonest, or criminal. This means they cared about how their people were doing their jobs and treating immigrants.

Ludmilla Kuchar Foxlee, an immigrant from the present-day Czech Republic, was a YWCA social worker at Ellis Island. Although she is in the garb of her homeland while posing with Czech children, Ludmilla usually dressed smartly and dressed many peasant women from Europe in American fashions that American people donated. I used her diary in writing my book “Ellis Isand Scrapbook” and I found her and her husband’s probate papers for the folks of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, who let me use this picture.

 

Will researchers a hundred years from now checking on the discipline of civil servants today find as many disciplinary cases proportionately on the many government employees who loaf, lie, cheat, steal, commit negligent acts, are inefficient on their jobs, seize property wrongfully, commit sexual abuse, or shoot or burn people alive without cause or due process? Given the strength of government employee unions today and the poor quality of government officials in general today, I doubt it.

Ellis Island was not a hotel. It was a station designed for the protection of America as much as it was designed for the temporary quartering of immigrants until they could leave or be deported.

The conditions I described at Ellis Island were Spartan by our standards of today, but not by the standards of the late 1800s or early 1900s. People were harder back then. Almost all immigrants were peasants who lived in small cottages or city laborers who lived in slums. Most lived without electricity or indoor plumbing. Most raised their own food, and made their own wine or beer. Most slaughtered their own livestock.

Many European immigrants slept in fields, haystacks, and wagons on their way to the ports of departure. They then tolerated days to weeks in steerage, packed closely in the poorly-ventilated filthy holds of ships with less-than-outstanding food. Many immigrants were beaten and/or stolen from on their way to the immigrant ships, and many were mistreated by the ships’ crews or other steerage passengers on the way to America.

By comparison, the immigrants were fed and housed for free at Ellis Island, and they were guarded for their protection. They had access to shower and toilet facilities that were being cleaned constantly. Accommodations at Ellis Island were better than what a poorer person would have to endure while traveling in Europe, or traveling in steerage.

The immigrants would not dare to complain about their treatment at home. But since they were free in America, and moved on to a higher standard of living and political freedom than they knew at home, they could vent about Ellis Island without fear of jail.

 

“They changed my name at Ellis Island.”

This was an “urban legend” long before there was such a term. I have heard people make that excuse to me for their ancestors many times, and I have read this charge many other times. On the whole it is not true.

Some immigrants did walk out of Ellis Island with different legal names than they had when they left their villages in Europe because of clerks’ errors, clerks’ rudeness, clerks’ laziness, and clerks’ obtuseness … not only Ellis Island clerks, but clerks for the steamship companies and clerks at the ports where immigrants boarded ships for America.

However, these immigrants were not the norm. Starting with Theodore Roosevelt’s administration, there were enough interpreters at Ellis Island to get immigrants’ names straight. Many interpreters were themselves immigrants or children of immigrants. These agents would be naturally sympathetic to the immigrants and would be conscientious enough to record their names correctly.

Some immigrants undoubtedly got “name changes” because of ignorance … their own and the ignorance of local officials in their homelands. Before World War One, there was no literacy requirement for adult immigrants. Many people came here not knowing how to spell their own names. Civil servants in Europe were not as a whole known for their honesty or efficiency. So any papers from home an immigrant carried (except, perhaps, a baptism certificate or a marriage record from his or her parish) might have his or her name misspelled. So how were the agents at Ellis Island going to make sure every immigrant’s name was spelled correctly? They likely copied the immigrants’ names off the ships’ manifests and the tags they were wearing when they got off their ships. In other words, they were relying on papers the shipping companies’ clerks prepared and maybe they relied on papers some people carried with them.

But these two reasons only account for some of the immigrants. The sad truth about most immigrants whose “names were changed at Ellis Island” is that they did it themselves.

Some immigrants changed their names when they left their villages to avoid problems on their trips to the ports where they would board the ships. Europeans and Turks were much more brazen in their mistreatment of minorities in their own countries and nationals from other countries passing through their countries than they are now.

Some Jewish immigrants detained at Ellis Island. Jewish people have been more prone than most other folks from Europe to change their names for professional reasons.

 

Some immigrants changed their names for other rational, if less honorable, forms of deceit. These were criminals and other undesirables leaving their homelands. They needed to change their names to avoid detection.

Then there were the cowardly young men running from young women they impregnated. And there were the shamed young women who had to leave their villages because they conceived without the benefit of husbands. No doubt many of them felt they needed new names in their new country.

But most of the immigrants who left Ellis Island with names different than names they had at home simply wanted to fit in and avoid discrimination. They had heard enough about America and knew enough about human nature to figure out they would fit in better with Anglo-Saxon sounding names than with names ending in “ello” or “iani” or “vich” or “wicz” or “”witz” or “ski” or “sky” or “stein” or “berg” or “olsen” or “enko” or “poulos” or “anian.”

In the Ellis Island era, it was a common sight for heaps of peasant clothing from Europe to lie discarded at or near the immigration stations. Why? Many people who were already established in America met their relatives at the immigration station bearing changes of clothes so the newcomers could throw away their Old World garments on the spot. They didn’t want their loved ones being marked as foreign bumpkins because of their clothes. And they didn’t want the embarrassment of being seen in public with their “greenhorn” relatives.

It was also not too unusual for some immigrants to change religion to fit in. For example, many Scandinavians, going from countries where Lutheranism was the state-established religion, heard from their pastors the advice that they should become Episcopalians in America because the pastors thought that was the dominant or established religion in America, even though America as an independent nation has never had an established religion. Lutheranism in Europe was a religion whose leaders and adherents tended to submit to civil authorities. (17)

That sort of thing still happens today. In the wake of the American hostage crisis in Iran during the Carter administration – and the resulting anger toward Iranians by the American public – many natives of Iran who were living in the U.S. in the late 1970s and early 1980s petitioned the courts to Americanize their names. And even today, Hollywood is full of actors and actresses who Gentilicized their Jewish names for business purposes. So the mindset of wanting to sound “mainstream” to the American public on the part of these immigrants was understandable, if regrettable.

Years later, many of these people, ashamed of denying their heritage in order to get off to a good start in America, did what many people do. They blamed others for their own weakness. It’s easier to claim you were a victim of the authorities than to admit to being cowardly enough to want to fit in or avaricious enough to want to make it big that you willingly turned your back on your heritage.

If there was a scheme by Ellis Island officials to neuter immigrants of their ethnic names, there would be far fewer ethnic names in America today.

If these allegedly renamed foreigners didn’t like their new moniker, then why didn’t they file in court to have their names officially restored, properly used, and properly spelled? Under American law, they had that right! Ethnic societies could have helped them do so if they really wanted the help to right such an injustice, if it actually took place.

Bottom line? The people who processed immigrants at Ellis Island did much finer jobs than they were ever given credit for. Millions of people and their descendants owe these people gratitude for their basic decency and devotion to duty.

 

INSPECTION’S BOTTOM LINE

How tough on immigrants were the inspectors at Ellis Island and other American immigration stations?

U.S. immigration officials admitted 3,127,245 immigrants into the United States from 1892 through 1900, and excluded 22,515 aliens from entering the country. Of these, they kept out 15,070 on grounds they were “likely to become public charges,” 5792 manual laborers claiming they had contracts, 1309 mental or physical defectives, 89 “immoral classes” (prostitutes, pimps, and the like), 65 criminals, and 190 people for other reasons. They allowed 99.3% of all would-be immigrants into the country.

U.S. immigration officials admitted 8,795,386 immigrants into the United States from 1901 through 1910, and excluded 108,211 aliens from entering the country. Of these, they kept out 63,311 on grounds they were “likely to become public charges,” 12,991 manual laborers claiming they had contracts, 24,425 mental or physical defectives, 1277 “immoral classes” (prostitutes, pimps, and the like), 1681 criminals, 10 “anarchists or subversives,” and 4516 people for other reasons. They allowed 98.8% of all would-be immigrants into the country.

U.S. immigration officials admitted 5,735,811 immigrants into the United States from 1911 through 1920, and excluded 178,109 aliens from entering the country. Of these, they kept out 90,045 on grounds they were “likely to become public charges,” 15,417 manual laborers claiming they had contracts, 42,129 mental or physical defectives, 4824 “immoral classes” (prostitutes, pimps, and the like), 4353 criminals, 27 “anarchists or subversives,” 1904 stowaways, 5083 people 17 or older who were illiterate, and 14,327 people for other reasons. They allowed 97.0% of all would-be immigrants into the country.

Doctors, nurses, and other staffers of the Ellis Island Hospital. Certain loathsome diseases could be grounds for excluding an alien. People had to be physically able to work or the families had to be able to support them. No public charges allowed. Courtesy Ellis Island Immigration Museum.

 

From 1921 through 1924, the year of the big quota law, U.S. immigration officials admitted 2,344,599 immigrants and turned away 78,413 would-be immigrants. In other words, they allowed 96.8% of all would-be immigrants in those four years into the country.

Overall, immigration inspectors at Ellis Island and elsewhere barred 387,248 would-be immigrants for medical, mental, or legal reasons from 1892 through 1924. When compared to the 20,390,289 aliens the inspectors inspected, and the 20,003,041 immigrants the inspectors allowed to enter in these years, this means the inspectors kept only 1.9% of all would-be immigrants out of America. In other words, 98% of all would-be immigrants to America in that era got in.

These numbers show doctors and inspectors as a rule weren’t out to exclude people maliciously or obtusely. A majority of Americans would have been happier if they had rejected more people for medical, mental, or legal reasons. It appears the doctors and inspectors erred more on the side of leniency than on the side of firmness in deciding whether to allow immigrants into the country.

Paradoxically, Ellis Island inspectors were known for their firmness but barred a slightly lower percentage of immigrants than inspectors at other stations. Probably a lot of the questionable immigrants tried to avoid Ellis Island and sneak past inspectors elsewhere. But they were caught anyway.

Who did they keep out?

According to federal statistics from 1892 through 1924, inspectors at Ellis Island and elsewhere barred 196,208 would-be immigrants as paupers or people likely to become public charges. They refused entry to 38,630 people on grounds they were contract laborers. They barred 6 people as “coming in consequence of advertisement.”

They refused entry to 3690 people who were “assisted” in coming to America with money from foreign governments or private organizations. They did so to combat European governments who were dumping their misfits and unwanted on America. They sent back 10,043 people who “assisted” themselves in getting to America as stowaways.

They barred 6037 children younger than 16 coming in without a parent if no parent would call for them at Ellis Island or send them money for train tickets from New York to join them. (Before 1908, there was no restriction against taking in unaccompanied teenagers.)

They refused entry to 11,585 people 17 and older who could not read in their native language. (Before 1917, people who were illiterate could gain entry.) The literacy requirement took effect in 1917; but there were several exceptions. The biggest loophole allowed admission of illiterates if they were females immigrating with a husband or immediate family member who could read.

They barred 384 “idiots,” 518 “imbeciles,” 3215 “feeble-minded,” 2473 “insane persons,” 292 people diagnosed as “constitutional psychopathic inferiority,” and 258 people branded with a surgeon’s certificate there was something else wrong with them mentally that could keep them from earning a living. They also barred 416 epileptics. In all, they excluded 7556 aliens with a mental problem severe enough to make them threats to others or make them unable to earn livings.

Mother and infant care at Ellis Island. Alien women gave birth to 500 babies at Ellis Island. But there was no anchor baby bingo in the Ellis Island Era. No automatic citizenship for a child born on American soil to alien nationals. The child born on American soil took the alien status of his or or her father, which was as it should be.

 

They refused entry to 129 people with tuberculosis, 42,319 people with a “loathsome” or dangerous contagious disease, and 25,439 people marked with a surgeon’s certificate there was something else wrong with them physically that could keep them from earning a living. They also turned away 87 people for “chronic alcoholism.” In all, they excluded 67,974 aliens with a severe disease or a medical problem severe enough to make them threats to others or make them unable to earn livings.

They barred 44 anarchists. From 1917 through 1921, they barred 101 aliens from enemy nations. (America entered World War One in 1917, and Germany signed the armistice ending the war on November 11, 1918, but America was technically at a state of war against the Central Powers (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey) until 1921. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify the peace treaties Woodrow Wilson signed because they favored Britain and France over America, and they would allow globalist Woodrow Wilson to subject America’s sovereignty to the League of Nations, a pipe-dream multinational group he wanted to form that the rulers of the British Empire and France intended to dominate. The senators declared the end of the state of war with the Central Powers in 1921, after Wilson had to leave office.)

They barred 7363 criminals. They barred 4350 aliens (almost all females) coming to America to be prostitutes or for “immoral purposes,” 2771 procurers and pimps of females for “immoral purposes”, and 70 people “supported by the proceeds of prostitution.”

Poster for the 1913 silent film expose “Traffic in Souls.” Ellis Island agents were on the lookout for white slavers who preyed upon immigrant girls and young women for sex trafficking. Young Jewish females and young Italian females were the most preyed-upon of the immigrant females. Usually criminals of their own ethnicities targeted them. The actress in the poster being targeted looks like Molly Ringwald.

 

They excluded 1210 people for passport violations. They excluded another 2562 people from 1921 through 1924 for not having proper passports.

They excluded 6139 Chinese under the Chinese Exclusion Act. They excluded 140 people coming from other Asian countries America didn’t allow immigration from in the “Asiatic Barred Zone.” They barred 399 polygamists.

They barred 298 people as professional beggars, and barred 10 as vagrants. They barred 220 aliens trying to come back into America because they had been already deported within a year or less earlier.

They sent back, from 1921 through 1924, 14,457 people who “exceeded quota.” In other words, American officials decided there were enough people from these countries coming in as it was, and their “crime” was getting to America after officials had let in all of their countrymen and countrywomen they were going to let in for that month.

They barred 4992 people for “accompanying aliens.” These were usually aliens who were the guardians or protectors of rejected aliens, like infirm children. They had to go back with the rejected aliens because the rejected aliens needed their help. Also, such aliens and their charges had to go back even if the dependents were admissible but the guardian aliens were not.

They barred 689 people on “last proviso” of Section 23 of the 1917 immigration law or Section 17 of the 1924 immigration law. These were aliens who claimed residence in Canada or Mexico but hadn’t lived in one of those countries for at least two years before applying for admission to America. After the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, such aliens would be subject to quotas applying to the land of their birth anyway. (18)

* * * * * * *

An incredible fact about the Ellis Island process is that most people passed the medical and legal inspections and cleared the island in three to five hours.

Clerks at motor vehicle license bureaus, smog check stations, unemployment offices and other government agencies seem to need almost that much time to issue you a license, check your car, or do whatever else they have to do for your case!

On average, about 80% of the immigrants got through the screening process on Ellis Island in three to five hours. Officials detained perhaps as many as 20% of the immigrants for medical or legal reasons. Of this 20 percent, nine-tenths of them (or 18% of the overall total of immigrants coming through) were eventually able to enter the U.S. after their sicknesses cleared up or after immigration officials decided they wouldn’t pose any threat or be any burden to the citizens of the United States. Officials only had 2% of the sea of humanity flooding through Ellis Island and other U.S. immigration stations sent back to Europe or the Near East or elsewhere as undesirables.

Two percent was still close to 400,000 mostly decent people (well, not the criminals, subversives, pimps, or other sociopaths), heartbroken and abandoned, who had to go back to a way of life they were hoping to escape. Their personal hardships were no doubt overwhelming.

However, the vast majority of would-be immigrants got in. The agents at Ellis Island and other American immigration stations by and large tried to treat immigrants fairly, but tried to serve the interests of the American public first. In other words, they tried to keep out criminals, people liable to be objects of charity, those who carried dread diseases, and those whose contract-labor presence would undercut the wage structure of the American worker.

Despite their prejudices against immigrants of other ethnic groups and religions (or maybe because there were so many former immigrants working at Ellis Island and other immigration stations), the immigration agents still let in almost all of those seeking to come to America.

Christmas at Ellis island. There were Catholic masses, Orthodox Christian Divine Liturgies, Protestant services, and Jewish Hanukkah observances. Regardless of religion or lack thereof, each immigrant detained on Ellis Island during Christmastide got a present from the private charities who helped the immigrants. The ACLU and Hollywood wet their pants when this picture was revealed. Oh, the Christianity!

 

Most commissioners at Ellis Island were kindly men, and most of them were honorable men. Some of them were immigrants themselves. Many took huge cuts in salary to be Commissioner at Ellis Island. Many were disillusioned by their higher-ups. Most of these men were worthy commissioners because they were asked to do the job … most of them didn’t seek it. There was nowhere near the careerist mindset among major government officials then that there is now. Back then, many worthy men served as government leaders for a time then went back to the private sector.

In summary, the large majority of immigration agents and officials tried to protect the American public. And while they were at it, they tempered justice with mercy. And they did it on unexorbitant salaries. The aliens they processed by and large got a square deal like Teddy Roosevelt and other leaders of good will expected. Can the same be said of the attitude and the dedication and the competence of all too many government employees today?

 

One last note: The agents of Ellis Island and other immigration stations let in about 98% of the aliens who showed up. Under the Ellis Island rules about needing to be self-supporting, not being a daisy chainer, not being a criminal, not being a contract laborer, not being afflicted with some horrible ailment or mental defect, and not being a degenerate or someone unwilling or unable to assimilate and not hate Americans, most would-be immigrants today would not qualify for entry into America.

 

SHERLOCK JUSTICE

WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.

 

END NOTES

1. Information on Watchorn’s actions against railroad companies comes from the Historic Research Study, Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island National Monument, by Harlan D. Unrau, National Park Service, 1984 (pages 245-246).

2. Information on Williams having crooked employees punished and cancelling contracts comes from the Unrau study (pages 224, 257, 535).

3. Martocci’s comment about the prunes comes from Edward Corsi’s book In the Shadow of Liberty (pages 78-79).

4. Information on Williams firing the food vendors comes from the Unrau study (pages 257, 535).

5. Curran’s comedic comments on chow came from his book Pillar to Post (pages 291-292).

6. Information on the food service at Ellis Island comes from the Unrau study (pages 386, 866-869).

7. Information on the 1903 charges against Williams comes form the Unrau study (pages 229-230).

8. The complaints of Sydney Bass, the peewee preacher, come from pages 130-135 of the Hearings on House Resolution No. 166 Authorizing the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization to Investigate the Office of Immigration Commissioner at the Port of New York and Other Places. (This was the Congressional investigation of William Williams.) The investigation record started May 29, 1911. William’s comments were in a letter he wrote to Commissioner-General of Immigration Daniel Keefe dated 3/9/1911. This letter, like his other letters and many reports he wrote, are part of the collection of papers he donated to the New York Public Library.

9. Information on Williams’ fight against Sulzer comes from his Annual Report dated 10/10/1911 in his papers (New York City Public Library) and the Unrau study (pages 262-264). Information on Sulzer’s rise and fall comes from the Unrau study (pages 417-419), Al Smith’s book Up to Now (pages 123, 130-132) and Richard O’Connor’s book – a biography of Smith — The First Hurrah (page 76).

10. Frederic Howe’s quote comes from his book The Confessions of a Reformer (pages 257-258).

11. Information on the blowhard British politicians comes from the 12/7/1922 and 12/8/1922 issues of the New York Times. The source of Dr. Doty’s comments on the disease-carrying Moslems and the British who negligently allowed them to spread diseases around the globe comes from the New York Times issue of 10/4/1908 titled “How Plagues are Watched the World Around.” A reprint of this article came from Cathy Horn’s website “The Forgotten of Ellis Island.”

12. Cable’s quotes come from the 12/9/1922 New York Times. Information on the Geddes report and the flap between the British and Americans over Ellis Island in the 1920s comes from the Unrau study (pages 284-285, 563-570) and the 8/16/1923 New York Times. Davis’ comments come from the 12/17/1922 New York Times.

13. Sources of information on Curran’s attacks on the British when they complained about Ellis Island include New York Times articles of 7/31/1923, 8/18/1923, and 8/12/1925, an 8/18/1923 London Times article (reprinted on Sue Swiggum’s and Marj Kohli’s TheShipsList.com website), 8/27/1923 and 8/24/1925 Time Magazine articles, and Pillar to Post (pages 309-310).

14. Information on Curran’s handling of the Russian noblewoman comes from the 7/9/1923 and 7/10/1923 issues of the New York Times.

15. Curran’s comments on the English come from his book Pillar to Post (page 309).

16. Curran’s account of the “cages” comes from his book Pillar to Post (page 293).

17. Information on Scandinavian Lutherans whose pastors told them to convert to Episcopalianism in America comes from Oscar Handlin’s book The Uprooted (page 139).

18. Statistics on immigration come from the immigration tables of the Unrau study. I did some math to come up with totals.