The growing complexity of the American economy would change all that. Within three years, Congress passed two landmark laws— the Interstate Commerce Act (1887) and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890)—which set the stage for the regulation of private business by the federal government. In many ways, the 1891 Immigration Act deserves to be mentioned with the other two landmark laws. Like those other two laws, the immigration bill was enacted to address what many considered to be a failure of the free market. Almost immediately, it created an immigration service larger in size and manpower than the Interstate Commerce Commission or the anti-trust division of the Justice Department and bestowed upon it greater powers.
Between 1875 and 1891, Congress had seized control of the immigration issue by passing sweeping laws banning the entry of most Chinese immigrants, defining classifications of undesirable immigrants, prohibiting the recruitment and contracting of immigrant laborers, and creating a system that would enforce these measures, with a centralized office in Washington overseen by congressional committees, and federal immigrant inspection stations at ports throughout the nation. The most important of these stations was at Ellis Island. The era of big government was dawning.
THE CONTRAST BETWEEN CASTLE GARDEN and Ellis Island is instruc
tive. Castle Garden was a state operation, created largely at the behest of immigrant aid societies, designed to protect and aid new arrivals to America. Ellis Island was a federal operation, created in response to the national uproar at perceived changes in the type and nature of immigration at the end of the nineteenth century. Its raison d’être was neither the protection of immigrants nor their complete exclusion, but rather their regulation so that only the fittest, ablest, and safest would be permitted to land.
Castle Garden has long since receded from the national memory. As the years passed, the old immigrant station evolved first into the city’s aquarium, then into neglect, and then into a historical reconstruction of the original fort. From here, modern tourists buy tickets for the ferry ride to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.
Over 8 million immigrants passed through Castle Garden between 1855 and 1890. Many of their descendants know little of its history, thinking their forebears entered at Ellis Island.
Despite the corruption that plagued Castle Garden, one historian has called it “not only a monumental work, but also a great human expression, which can be placed among the shining achievements of American history during the nineteenth century.”
Yet it is Ellis Island, not Castle Garden and its albeit imperfect history of benevolence and service, which takes center stage in the nation’s tale of immigration.
Part II
THE SIFTING BEGINS
Chapter 3
A Proper Sieve
That there is such a problem [immigration] no one doubts. It is in the air. It is in the conversation and the speculation of all parts of the country.
—New York World, 1892
A great system has been perfected on Ellis Island for sifting the grain from the chaff . . . not as a dam to keep out good and bad alike, but as a sieve fine enough in the mesh to keep out the diseased, the pauper, and the criminal while admitting the immigrant with two strong arms, a sound body and a stout heart.
—Dr. A. J. McLaughlin, 1903
AS SHE EXITED THE B A RGE JOHN E. MOORE , YOUNG ANNIE Moore tripped across the gangplank landing her ashore. One could forgive her nervous clumsiness. It was the first morning of 1892 and the fifteen-year-old from County Cork, Ireland, was being rushed from the gaily decorated barge to the new immigration station on Ellis Island.
Even though Washington officials had nixed the idea of a large celebration for the grand opening, the sound of bells and shrieking whistles could still be heard over the noise coming from the crowd of newsmen and government officials. Having spent twelve days at sea, Moore would have been startled by the reception and was likely a little anxious as officials ushered her into the building. Amid the confusion and commotion, she made sure not to lose sight of her two younger brothers: eleven-year-old Anthony and seven-year-old Phillip.
Annie Moore had no idea she would be entering history books as the first immigrant to arrive at Ellis Island. After a brief inspection, she was signed into the entry books by an official from the Treasury Department and given a ten-dollar gold piece by Colonel John Weber, the commissioner of Ellis Island. “Is this for me to keep, sir,” a blushing Annie asked Weber, embarrassed by all of the attention. She then thanked him, saying that it was the largest amount of money she had ever seen and she would keep it forever as a cherished memento of the occasion.
She was soon reunited with her father, Matt, who had sent for his children. Their destination was Monroe Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a neighborhood teeming with immigrants like the Moores and where, just a few blocks from the family’s apartment, a nineteen-year-old budding politician named Al Smith was beginning to make his way in the world.
How Annie became the first official immigrant at Ellis Island is unclear. One story claims that officials had rushed her ahead of a male Austrian immigrant. Another claimed that a fellow passenger named Mike Tierney, in a “spark of Celtic gallantry,” pulled the Austrian away from the gangplank by his collar, shouting “Ladies first,” and let young Annie pass.
Annie Moore’s story is an oft-told tale and ultimately it is impossible to know whether her selection as the first arrival at Ellis Island was pure luck or a conscious decision by officials. It would not be surprising if officials had picked Moore out early for special treatment. After all, one of the main purposes of Ellis Island was to reassure increasingly anxious Americans that public officials were on guard to sift out undesirable immigrants. It is hard to argue that Annie Moore and her rosy cheeks, with younger brothers in tow, wasn’t a reassuring image— although fifty years earlier, the arrival of County Cork’s surplus population would not have been looked upon with much approval.
But a look at the rest of her shipmates tells a more complicated story. Annie and her two brothers and four other Irish immigrants all embarked on the steamship Nevada at the port of Queenstown. When the seven Irish travelers got on the Nevada in late December 1891, the ship already had 117 passengers who had boarded in Liverpool. With 124 passengers, the Nevada made its way toward New York Harbor. Twenty of the passengers, including ten American citizens, traveled in cabin accommodations, while the rest settled for steerage.
Roughly one-third of the Nevada’s passengers hailed from northern Europe: twelve English, seven Irish, two German, two French, and fourteen Swedish. The vast majority of the passengers accompanying Annie Moore were Russian Jews, fleeing the increasingly oppressive measures of the czar. Seventy-seven men, women, and children—over 60 percent of the passengers—had made their way from Russia to England and were now taking their final journey to America. If Annie Moore’s prominence on that day was a bow to the old immigrants from a half-century earlier, the reality of most of the Nevada’s passengers was decidedly new immigrant.
Most of the travelers were in their twenties and thirties. The oldest was a fifty-year-old tailor from Russia, while the youngest was fourmonth-old Sara Abramowitz. Most would end up staying in New York, but some headed for Pennsylvania, Maryland, Minnesota, and even Wyoming. Most listed their professions as farmers and laborers, while others were skilled laborers like tinsmiths, bookmakers, machinists, and tailors.
When the Nevada entered New York Harbor, it did not head directly for the immigration station. The waters around the island were too shallow and its pier could not accommodate even the smallest transatlantic ship, meaning that ships would have to dock in Manhattan and unload their passengers. From there, immigrants would board smaller ferries, like the John E. Moore, which would take them to Ellis Island, where they would undergo the formal inspection process.
Not all of the passengers who sailed into New York Harbor alongside Annie Moore would end up at Ellis Island. The ship’s twenty cabin passengers could head dir
ectly to their destinations on the mainland, whether U.S. citizens or not. An inkling of the rationale for such differential treatment can be found on the ship’s manifest. Whereas steerage passengers listed their occupations with proper plebian titles like laborer or farmer, the twenty cabin passengers on the Nevada were marked down simply as “Gentleman” or “Lady,” signifying their more rarified social status.
As Annie Moore was entering the facility at Ellis Island, two more ships—the City of Paris and the Victoria—were waiting in the harbor. By noon, some 700 steerage passengers from all three ships were at Ellis Island. It is doubtful that immigration officials would have chosen any of the passengers from the Victoria as their celebrated first immigrant. Having just arrived from the ports of Palermo and Naples, 311 of the Victoria’s 313 steerage passengers hailed from southern Italy.
Colonel Weber noted that while officials processed 700 immigrants the first day, the new facilities could handle thousands more in a day. Most people assumed that such a capacity would never be reached. For now, even the New York World was pleased with the new facilities, noting that during the first day’s business, “everything worked like a charm . . . under the new conditions the comfort and safety of the immigrants will be all that can be desired.”
The immigrants who followed Annie Moore entered the immigrant depot—which was located closer to the ferry slip than its later brick replacement—and then headed up a double staircase to the second floor. Vigilant medical inspectors would watch them as they climbed the stairs, on the lookout for cripples and other invalids.
Once on the second floor, immigrants were herded into ten lines, each of which ended at the desk of a clerk whose job was to crossexamine the immigrants, verifying information from the ship’s manifest and making sure the immigrant did not fall into one of the categories for exclusion. On the second floor were places to buy railroad tickets, information bureaus, telegraph counters, money exchanges, and a lunch counter.
A reporter from Harper’s Weekly visiting Ellis Island in 1893 found it “suggestive of a prison in many of its aspects,” with uniformed guards keeping order. When inspectors questioned immigrants, the reporter found some to be “nervously defiant” while others looked frightened. Still others were “angry, and some stolid with indifference or stupidity.” The long-awaited opening of the federal inspection station did not end the debate over immigration. This five-acre scratch of land sticking out of New York Harbor would now become the focal point for everyone concerned with immigration.
Politicians, journalists, union leaders, and private citizens would now make their way to Ellis Island with their own agendas. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union soon complained about the alleged existence of saloons at Ellis Island. Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, wanted more inspectors to enforce the contract-labor law and visited Ellis Island to make his case to Colonel Weber. Immigration restrictionists went to Ellis Island to make sure the laws were properly enforced. Immigration defenders visited to make sure that newcomers were fairly treated.
“The existing immigration law was framed to sift incomers—to draw a dividing line between desirable and undesirable immigrants,” the superintendent of immigration said in his first annual report, adding that “it is not the serious intention of the Government to prohibit immigration, but from time to time to prohibit the people whom experience has demonstrated fail in some important direction in entering beneficially into American citizenship.”
From the moment Annie Moore stumbled from the gangplank onto Ellis Island, this kind of sifting of desirable and undesirable immigrants proved to be a matter of trial and error. The opening of Ellis Island raised more questions than it answered. How would a nation manage the inspection, regulation, and sometimes exclusion of immigrants on a daily basis? Were immigration laws too strict or too lenient? Should the government create more classes of excludable immigrants or should immigrant inspectors interpret the law in a more generous manner?
In 1875, the Supreme Court placed the control of immigration with the federal government. Now it would decide just how far that power could go. In 1889, three years before the opening of Ellis Island, the Court heard the case of a Chinese immigrant named Chae Chan Ping, who was denied reentry into the country. It dismissed Ping’s challenge to his exclusion, arguing that Congress had the power to make the rules that governed immigrant admissions and the courts should be deferential to that expression of democratic will. “The power of exclusion of foreigners being an incident of sovereignty belonging to the government of the United States as a part of those sovereign powers delegated by the Constitution,” wrote Justice Stephen Field, “the right to its exercise at any time . . . cannot be granted away or restrained on behalf of anyone.”
Three years later, just a little over two weeks after Annie Moore’s arrival at Ellis Island, the Supreme Court went further. Nishimura Ekiu was a twenty-five-year-old woman from Japan who landed in San Francisco in 1891. With $22 in her pocket, she claimed to be headed to meet her husband, who was already in the country. Immigration officials believed that she had not been honest in her answers and refused her permission to land. Under the 1891 Immigration Act, the Japanese immigrant was declared “likely to become a public charge.” Ekiu argued that the immigration officials in San Francisco had deprived her of due process in a court of law, but the Supreme Court ruled against her, arguing that Congress had entrusted upon officials the “sole and exclusive” right to exclude or admit aliens and immigrants had no recourse to the courts.
Although these two decisions related to events on the West Coast, they would deeply influence what went on at Ellis Island for the next sixty years. If an immigrant felt that officials had unfairly excluded her, the only recourse was up the administrative chain of command in the executive branch, not to the courts. This was called the plenary power doctrine that would dominate American immigration law for more than a century. Congress and the executive branch would have exclusive authority over immigration, and immigrants would be limited in their ability to challenge that authority in federal courts.
The implication was that immigrants who had not yet been approved to land had fewer constitutional rights. Admission to the United States was a privilege, not a right. A sovereign nation had a right to define its borders and decide who may or may not enter the country. “It is an accepted maxim of international law that every sovereign nation has the power,” the Court argued in the Ekiu decision, “to forbid the entrance of foreigners within its dominions, or to admit them only in such cases and upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe.” Congress could decide what kinds of immigrants could enter America, and the executive branch—represented by immigration stations like Ellis Island—had the right to execute those laws. Courts would have little say in the matter.
COLONEL JOHN B. WEBER never imagined that his life’s path would lead him to Ellis Island. A former Republican congressman from the Buffalo area, Weber had been appointed commissioner of immigration by President Benjamin Harrison, taking over duties the day after the official closing of Castle Garden in April 1890. As Weber admitted, it was a classic patronage appointment: “I took the business of immigration commissioner with as little knowledge of it as a man who never had seen an immigrant.”
Weber’s parents were immigrants from Alsace, loyal subjects of France at the time. Hearty peasants who were able to read and write, they separately arrived in upstate New York in the 1830s and married there. John Baptiste Weber’s name symbolized the controversial history of the Alsace. Though his last name was solidly German, his middle name attested to the French influence of the region.
Forged in the fire of the Civil War, Weber’s life resembled that of many Northerners at the time. At fourteen, he volunteered as the color bearer for the local militia. When war broke out a few years later, the eighteen-year-old volunteered for service. He survived the war without a scratch, despite having seen his share of combat, and made his way quickly through the
ranks, going from private to colonel before his twenty-first birthday. In 1864, he helped organize and lead the 89th United States Colored Infantry. At twenty-one, Weber left the army, returned home to New York, and prepared to take an active role in civic affairs.
He started a family and became a large landowner and a grocer. Like many of the Union soldiers who survived the killing fields of the Civil War, Weber’s postwar life was defined by membership in the local post of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Republican Party. Weber ran for Erie County sheriff in 1870, but narrowly lost to a Democrat named Grover Cleveland. Weber would later win the post in his second attempt, then go on to serve two terms in the House of Representatives.
In return for helping a fellow Civil War officer named Benjamin Harrison win the Republican presidential nomination in 1888, Weber was given the job of commissioner of immigration at the Port of New York, overseeing the construction of the new facilities at Ellis Island as well as the processing of immigrants at the Barge Office until Ellis Island was open. He was also given an additional task. In 1891, Treasury Secretary Charles Foster asked him to chair a five-man commission to travel to Europe and report on immigration. This was the first time the federal government sought to investigate the reasons why Europeans were emigrating to America.
The government wanted answers to very specific questions. Why were Europeans coming to the United States? Was immigration being “promoted or stimulated by steamship or other carrying companies or their agents for the resulting passenger business”? To what extent were “criminals, insane persons, idiots, and other defectives, paupers or persons likely to become a public charge, and persons afflicted with loathsome or dangerous contagious disease” encouraged to emigrate?
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