WITHIN THE PORTALS OF THE NEW WORLD
When the inspection was finished, the great steamer got under way once
more, and in the glorious sunlight of mid-forenoon we steamed up between
South Brooklyn and Staten Island, with the shipping, the houses, and the
general contour of the harbor very plainly to be seen. On every hand
were exclamations among the immigrants over the oddity of wooden-built
houses, over the beauty of the Staten Island shore places; and when the
gigantic skyscrapers of lower Manhattan came into view, a strange
serrated line against the sky, the people who had been to America before
cried out in joyful tones and pointed. A low murmur of wonder was heard
from the newcomers. Nunzio Giunta, at my elbow, said:
“Antonio told the truth.”
Then there was a rush to port to see the Statue of Liberty, and when all
had seen it they stood with their eyes fixed for some minutes on the
great beacon whose significance is so much to them, standing within the
portals of the New World and proclaiming the liberty, justice, and
equality they had never known, proclaiming a life in which they have an
opportunity such as never could come to them elsewhere.
The majority of the immigrants aboard who had been over before had
landed previously at the Battery, and few knew Ellis Island to be the
immigrant station, so that comparatively little attention was paid to
it. Another odd thing was the effect the sight of the magnificence of
New York had on the people who were destined for Western and New England
points. More than one expressed a desire to remain in New York. If it be
considered that nine out of every ten immigrants are of rural birth, and
that the city is always most fascinating to country people, it can be
understood why immigrants are so prone to congregate in the cities aside
from the considerations of convenience to labor and opportunities for
small trading. I have found many Jews who went out of New York on their
first trip, and on their second stayed in the city, returning with their
entire families and with all plans made for a permanent residence in the
metropolis.
In what seemed a very short space of time we had steamed up the harbor,
up North River, and were being warped into the North German Lloyd piers
in Hoboken. There were only a few people down to meet friends of the
third-class, but the usual crowd awaited the first-cabin passengers.
Some of the Italians bore extra overcoats to give to the shivering
“greenhorns,” as they call them,—an American word which is current
throughout the south of Italy and in the Italian quarters of American
cities.
[Illustration: Part of the Author’s Party—All Eyes to the Statue of
Liberty]
What seemed to the eager immigrants an unreasonably long time of waiting
passed while the customs officers were looking after the first-class
passengers and they were leaving the ship. When the way was clear, word
was passed forward to get the immigrants ready to debark. First,
however, Boarding Inspector Vance held a little tribunal at the rail
forward on the hurricane deck, at which all persons who had citizens’
papers were to present them. I watched him carefully as he proceeded
with his task of picking out genuine citizens from the other sort and
allowing them to leave the ship at the docks; and if all officials are
as thorough and as careful as he, then is the law enforced to its limit,
and the many evasions of it which seem to exist are things no official
or set of officials can prevent operating on this side of the water.
Here, again, I could not help seeing that deceit, evasion, and trickery
were possible, inasmuch as the inspector can only take the papers on the
face of them, together with the immigrant’s own statement; and if the
gangs who smuggle aliens in on borrowed, transferred, or forged
citizens’ papers have been careful enough in preparing and coaching
their pupils, there is no way of apprehending the fraud at the port of
arrival, nor would there be at the port of embarkation; but _there would
be no chance for any such practices if the examinations were made in the
community of the immigrant’s residence_.
Those whose citizenship was doubted by the inspector, and who had their
families with them, were compelled to go to Ellis Island with them, or
allow the families to go through the process alone.
At last we were summoned to pass aft and ashore. One torrent of humanity
poured up each companion-way to the hurricane deck and aft, while a
third stream went through the main deck alley-way, all lugging the
preposterous bundles. The children, seeing sufficient excitement on foot
to incite them to cry, and being by this time very hungry, began to yell
with vigor. A frenzy seemed to possess some of the people as groups
became separated. If a gangway had been set to a rail-port forward,
there would have been little of the hullabaloo, but for a time it was
frightful.
The steerage stewards kept up their brutality to the last. One woman was
trying to get up the companion-way with a child in one arm, her deck
chair brought from home hung on the other, which also supported a large
bundle. She blocked the passage for a moment. One of the stewards
stationed by it reached up, dragged her down, tore the chair off her
arm, splitting her sleeve as he did so and scraping the skin off her
wrist, and in his rage he broke the chair into a dozen pieces. The woman
passed on sobbing, but cowed and without a threat.
As we passed down the gangway an official stood there with a mechanical
checker numbering the passengers, and uniformed dock watchmen directed
the human flood pouring off the ship where to set down the baggage to
await customs inspection.
The scene on the pier had something impressive in it, well worthy of a
painter of great human scenes. The huge enclosed place, scantily lighted
by a few apertures, and massive with great beams and girders, was piled
high in some places with freight, and over all the space from far up
near the land end, where a double rope was stretched to prevent
immigrants from escaping without inspection, down to the pier head,
where the big door was open to allow the immigrants to pass out and
aboard the barges waiting to convey them down the river again to Ellis
Island, was covered with immigrants, customs inspectors, special
Treasury detectives, Ellis Island officials, stevedores, ship’s people,
dock watchmen, and venders of apples, cakes, etc.
The dock employees were all German, some of them speaking very little
English, and none that I saw using Italian. While their plan of keeping
the immigrants in line in order to facilitate the inspection of baggage
was all very good and quite the proper thing, the brutal method in which
they enforced it was nothing short of reprehensible. The natural family
and neighborhood groups were separated, and a part of the baggage was
dumped in one place and a part in another. When the dock men had herded
the off-coming immigrants in a mass along the south side of the pier
with an overflow meeting forward of the gangway on the north, it was the
natural thing for the parties to begin to hunt for each other, and for
leaders of groups to endeavor to assemble the baggage. Women ran about
crying, seeking their children. Men with bunches of keys hurried hither
and thither searching for the trunks to match in order to open them for
customs inspection, and children fearsomely huddled in the heaps of
baggage, their dark eyes wide with alarm. The dock men exhorted the
people in German and English to remain where they were, and, when the
eager Italians did not understand, pushed them about, belabored them
with sticks, or seized them and thrust them forcibly back into the
places they were trying to leave.
One massive German speaking good English was endeavoring to prevent our
party from going to the spot where we saw our baggage, and where the
customs inspectors were already at work. Camela and Concetta were in
advance, Antonio was assembling the hand baggage, and my wife was
guarding the camera, inoperative here for lack of light, so that there
was no one with the party that understood German or English.
“Get back there, get back there!” he shouted in English.
“I must go unlock my trunks,” said Camela in Italian, understanding from
his gesture that she was called to a halt.
“I’ll knock the brains out of a few of you dirty —— — —— with this club.
G— —— your —— souls to —— any way. I’ll break your neck if you leave
that line again, —— —— ——,” etc.
So saying, he thrust his open palm into her face and forced her back. I
got up just in time to set him back on a fig-case and inform him that we
had stood for brutality on a foreign soil and on shipboard, but we were
through taking it mildly.
“Wot! I’ll fix you for buttin’ in, you —— dago!”
“Hold on, that fellow’s a Secret-Service man. He’s no dago. He speaks
too good English,” said another dock man who hurried up to the first
man, who had risen and was preparing to “do” me.
His manner changed.
“’Scuse me, mister, but ye see these —— would make anybody mad; they
ain’t got no sense at all, don’t mind what you tell ’em, and ’d run all
over Hoboken if you let ’em.”
I gave him a little good advice on how to treat well-meaning human
beings, and we passed on.
[Illustration: Croatians and Italians—Swedes Arriving—Loading the
Barges, New York]
In a few minutes we were having one more wrestling-match with the
baggage. By this time the customs men had passed our heap, and when I
did get an inspector and got it looked into, two trunks were held up for
customs charges on account of all the provender packed in them, and the
two musical instruments Antonio had bought in Naples were held.
Unfortunately the marks of the prices asked by the Neapolitan dealer
were still on them, and though Antonio had got them for just about one
third, the customs appraiser later set a duty on them that totaled more
than half the original cost. When we were through with the trunks, we
found that the inspectors had passed over a part of the hand baggage.
Two men standing by offered to mark it with chalk just as the inspectors
mark it to show it has been inspected, and I was about to allow them to
do it and then hand them over when my wife came up with the camera, and
they turned and hurried away, going aboard the ship. I think they were
either ship’s people, or part of the crew from some other boat at the
North German Lloyd piers.
While we were waiting to get an inspector, we had time to buy something
to eat from the fruit and cake venders. Though it was mid-October, five
cents each was asked for apples to be bought at any street corner in New
York for one cent, and ten cents a slice for a thick yellow cake that
was the worst mess of coloring-matter, adulterated flour, and soda, I
have ever set my teeth into. It was as heavy as a stone and equally
gritty. Even the Neapolitan boys would not eat it. On top of all this,
when we paid for it in Italian silver money, the venders allowed only
seventeen cents for a lire, when taking them at nineteen cents would
have been at a profit. Many baskets of such food at such prices were
sold to the immigrants that day, for we passed the remainder of the
morning and part of the afternoon on the dock, there being four ships
laden nearly as heavily as ours in ahead of us, and the barges run by
contractors to carry immigrants from the various docks to Ellis Island
had more than they could do. So we waited. Few of the people aboard had
eaten any breakfast, because it was rumored among them they would land
in time for breakfast, and they had been looking forward to a good meal
on shore.
I think it was about two o’clock when we were finally allowed to go
aboard the barges at the end of the pier. I observed two men following
my wife and myself and surveying us critically. At the gangplank they
stopped us and examined our bit of baggage very carefully.
“You may save yourself some inconvenience by telling us who you are,”
said the one man very courteously to me.
“Who are you?” I said in broken English, expecting the appearance of
some grafting game.
“I am a special customs inspector, and we spotted you two as queer. What
are you?”
“We are writers making a study of the immigration question. What did you
spot as queer?”
“We thought you were dagoes all right, but this lady is the first woman
I have ever seen in the steerage with such well-kept finger-nails, and
we were a little suspicious.”
In the work of hustling the immigrants aboard the barges the dock men
displayed great unnecessary roughness, sometimes shoving them violently,
prodding them with sticks, etc., and one young Apulian who paused to
look around for his father aroused the ire of the dock man nearest him,
who planted a by no means gentle kick in his fundamentals, observing,—
“Oh, get down there; you’re too damned slow!”
One barge with power and another without, if I remember correctly, were
lashed together, or there may have been a tug on the outer side of the
second craft. Antonio and Camela, with the larger portion of the party,
were hustled into the second barge, while my wife and I squeezed into
the second, little Ina with us. The great improvements in the way of
heating, seating, and hospital accommodation for the sick which
Commissioner William Williams and his assistant Allan Robinson were then
making were not yet in evidence in the barge on which we rode. We had
either to squat on the floor or sit on our baggage, already mashed and
crushed till the point of utter dissolution seemed not far away, so we
stood up.
Slowly we steamed down the river in mid-afternoon, and when we reached
the slip at Ellis Island we merely tied up, for there were many
barge-loads ahead of us, and we waited our turn to be unloaded and
examined.
As the second craft cast off and moved away, Ina saw her mother and
Antonio going with it, and the big tears came into her lovely eyes. She
watched them till they were gone from sight, and then turned away so
that neither my wife nor I could see her face. Every now and then her
sleeve would go up to her face, but she was very quiet. Soon she turned
around, and the signs of tears were gone, but in a moment she turned
away again. She was struggling bravely against her wish to cry.
“What is the matter, Ina?” said my wife at last, when the tears began to
roll faster. Ina forced a smile and said,—
“Oh, nothing truly, except the sun hurts my eyes.”
Waiting, waiting, waiting, without food and without water; or, if there
was water, we could not get to it on account of the crush of people.
Children cried, mothers strove to hush them, the musically inclined sang
or played, and then the sun went down while we waited and still waited.
My wife and one of the boys had walked into the space roped off around
the plank which had been put aboard. Just then some of the youngsters
who had been trying to steal off the forward end of the barge, boylike,
were chased back by the barge men, one of whom began rushing and pushing
the people in the open space back into the crowd—a very needless
procedure, as there was no reason why what room there was should not be
utilized.
“What are you doing, mate?” called one of the other men outside.
“Oh, I’m driving these animals back,” and he swore foully.
Just at that instant he caught my wife by the arm, menacing her and the
boy with a short bit of board he had in his hand.
“Take your dirty hands off me this instant,” said my wife, white with
anger. The fellow stepped back, amazed at her resentment and her
English.
“Meant no harm, lady,” he deprecated. “You’ve got to be rough with this
bunch. I get so sick handling these dirty bums coming over here to this
country, I’m going to get in trouble some time for rousting ’em, I
s’pose.”
“If that is so,” she answered, “you had better get another job, for you
are not fit to handle even wild animals, let alone kind-hearted,
sensitive people like these, who are not to be blamed if everything,
even your speech, is strange to them.”
[Illustration: Rushing Immigrants on Barges—Inspectors and Immigrants at
Ellis Island]