American Passage Page 18

  Clarence Darrow soon took up Turner’s case, joined by the poet Edgar Lee Masters. While the case made its way to the Supreme Court, Turner was released on bond in March 1904 after four and a half months in jail at Ellis Island. He continued on his lecture tour, speaking out in favor of the merits of a general strike, by which workers would grind the capitalist system to a halt and bring freedom to the oppressed.

  In May 1904, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Turner’s deportation. Perhaps sensing that his legal case was doomed, Turner beat the authorities to the punch and left the country of his own volition two weeks before the decision.

  Though Turner was technically never deported, his was the first case of an alien to be ordered deported from the United States because of his political beliefs. In upholding Turner’s arrest and eventual deportation, the Supreme Court once again validated the unique status of the administrative rules in place at Ellis Island. Darrow had turned to the First Amendment to defend his client, but the Court unanimously declared they were unable to understand how immigration law violated the First Amendment.

  Turner certainly had his right to speak abridged, but that was merely a function of his exclusion under immigration law. “To appeal to the Constitution is to concede that this is a land governed by that supreme law, and as under it the power to exclude has been determined to exist, those who are excluded cannot assert the rights in general obtaining in a land to which they do not belong as citizens or otherwise,” wrote the Court. In other words, since John Turner did not belong in the United States, the constitutional protections of personal freedoms did not apply to him. It was as if he had never entered America in the first place. As Emma Goldman would discover years later, the precedent of the Turner case would continue to reverberate at Ellis Island.

  There was another quirk to the Turner case: he was not an immigrant. Turner had merely come to the United States to lecture and then planned to return to his job in England. Ellis Island was no longer just regulating immigrants, but rather any alien headed to U.S. shores even for the shortest visit. Even a casual tourist could find himself stewing in detention at Ellis Island while authorities decided whether he fell into one of the categories for exclusion.

  When Turner’s case made it to the Supreme Court, the named defendant was William Williams. The two men are forever linked in legal history. The commissioner of Ellis Island was not just content to clean up the patronage mess at the immigration station. His real goal was a stricter enforcement of immigration laws that would keep undesirables like John Turner from entering the country. That goal would prove far more controversial than making sure inspectors spoke politely to immigrants.

  Chapter 8

  Fighting Back

  The fact is that a reformer can’t last in politics. He can make a show for a while, but he always comes down like a rocket. . . . He hasn’t been brought up in the difficult business of politics and he makes a mess of it every time.

  —George Washington Plunkitt, 1905

  GEORGE WASHINGT ON PLUNKITT LIVED JUST THREE LONG city blocks west and three short city blocks south of William Williams’s bachelor accommodations at the upper-crust University Club. But those six blocks were a gulf as wide as any ocean. Plunkitt, who served as a New York state senator while Williams was at Ellis Island, was the epitome of the Tammany Hall ward boss. Working-class Irish Catholics like Plunkitt entered politics as a profession looking for profit, not as a service to the public interest.

  Reformers like Williams had little respect for the Tammany bosses and the feeling was mutual. To Plunkitt, men like Williams were amateur dabblers with no real understanding of the messiness of democracy and a disdain for the average citizen. They put ideals and morals ahead of practicality. True to Plunkitt’s maxim, Williams would make a good show for a while, but would soon come down like a rocket.

  Theodore Roosevelt was a reformer too—at least he styled himself that way. He was equal parts zealotry and flexibility, a combination that served him well in public life. It was a style that even Plunkitt probably could appreciate.

  William Williams, on the other hand, was all zealotry and no flexibility. Starchy as the high, white collars favored by men of that era, Williams was convinced of his utter correctness in all matters and had little use for those who might differ with him. That Williams had done yeoman’s work in cleaning up Ellis Island made his attitude even more unfortunate.

  Having first moved swiftly to clean up the immigration service in New York, Williams proceeded to tackle what he felt was an even more vital part of his job: a rigid enforcement of the immigration laws.

  A year in office at Ellis Island confirmed Williams’s low opinion of America’s new immigrants. What he had seen in his first year on the job was “a particularly undesirable stream of immigration.” In response, Williams stepped up the exclusion of immigrants, keeping an especially close eye on those he considered paupers or likely to become public charges.

  Williams’s appointment elated members of the Immigration Restriction League (IRL). For the first time since Ellis Island opened, a true restrictionist and New England patrician was now guarding the gate. Williams kept in contact with members of the IRL, telling Prescott Hall he wanted even stricter exclusionary laws. In the meantime, he would work within the law to prevent undesirable immigrants from entering the country.

  Immigrants were on notice. Take the case of twelve-year-old Raffaele Borcelli, suffering from an advanced case of the scalp disease favus. When lawyers tried to intervene on behalf of the young boy, Williams bluntly informed them that America did not want “diseased people in this country and I intend that they shall not come.”

  Williams believed that the current laws were not going far enough. He told President Roosevelt that what was needed to “meet the real evils of the situation” was new legislation. In its absence, Williams was going to do his part to protect American civilization. In November 1902, he provided guidance for Ellis Island inspectors in interpreting the law: “Any inspector who passes an alien who may not be ‘clearly beyond a doubt’ entitled to land, violates his oath of office,” Williams informed his subordinates. “The purpose of the statute is to exclude undesirable aliens, not to invite aliens to come here. It casts upon them the burden of proving that they are entitled to admission.” He was going to take the broad and vague classifications for immigration exclusion and tighten them.

  Compare Williams’s 1902 edict with McSweeney’s interpretation of the same immigration law from three years earlier. “I have seen cases where an immigrant would fall within the letter of the law [of exclusion] and still in the opinion of the inspectors be a desirable immigrant,” McSweeney told the Industrial Commission on Immigration. Williams believed he was appointed to end just that kind of laxity. He had every reason to believe that the president who appointed him also believed in tightening the law.

  In his first Annual Message to Congress, Roosevelt allotted two long paragraphs to the immigration problem, calling the present system unsatisfactory. He went on to call for adding anarchists to the list of excludable categories, as well as some type of education or literacy test. Just as important, Roosevelt felt that all immigrants who were “below a certain standard of economic fitness to enter our industrial fields as competitors with American labor” should be excluded. Immigrants had to prove they could earn a living in America and had to have enough money to make a new life here.

  So it must have surprised Williams when he received two letters from Roosevelt informing him that reports had been filtering into the White House from the president’s German-American and Jewish friends in New York objecting to the treatment of immigrants at Ellis Island. They criticized what they called the “star chamber” quality of the boards of special inquiry, complaining that immigrants were deported before their relatives were notified of their landing, that immigrants were no longer allowed to have counsel during their exclusion hearings, and that Williams no longer allowed the issuance of bonds for those believed lik
ely to become a public charge.

  Roosevelt warned Williams that he needed to avoid the appearance of arbitrary harshness. While the president heartily approved of the exclusion of immigrants who “would tend to the physical or moral deterioration of our people,” such actions needed to be tempered with compassion. Sending an immigrant back home, Roosevelt understood, was “to inflict a punishment upon him only less severe than death itself.” Roosevelt asked Williams if he could include members of German, Jewish, and Italian immigrant societies in board of inquiry hearings.

  It was a mild scolding, but a scolding nonetheless. The letter opened a window into Roosevelt’s conflicted view of immigration. Good immigrants were welcome; bad immigrants need not apply. Yet above all, such sifting of immigrants had to be done with the utmost sensitivity and without regard for race, religion, or ethnicity.

  Williams at first responded with uncharacteristic deference. “I have carefully noted all that you say,” Williams wrote. “It will be my earnest endeavor at all times to execute the immigration laws rigidly, but fairly and without unnecessary friction and I think I can satisfy any reasonable person that I have never exhibited any anti-foreign feeling.” He informed the president that, as per his orders, he had invited some representatives from immigrant societies to lunch at Ellis Island.

  Williams then shot back with another letter to Roosevelt in a more characteristic style. “Any reliable person asserting that the immigrant is judged by ‘star chamber’ methods must be densely ignorant of the facts,” wrote an indignant Williams. While admitting the need to enforce the immigration laws without “friction,” he added snippily, “Of course, I do not call it lack of discretion in proper cases to show up thieves, dismiss missionaries for revenue, or expose fraudulent practices of steamship agents.”

  Williams continued a few days later even more unapologetically. While reassuring the president that he was consulting with philanthropic groups, immigrant aid societies, and social welfare agencies, he informed Roosevelt of just what he found in these talks. “Every intelligent person with whom I converse (whether engaged in charitable work or business) is of the opinion that altogether too many low-grade aliens are entering this country,” Williams wrote. He was not against immigration in general, nor did he oppose hearty immigrants ready to work, even if they were not highly intelligent. What he opposed was the minority of undesirable immigrants.

  By background and temperament more of a New Englander than a New Yorker, the Connecticut-born Williams shared many of the fears of the Immigration Restriction League. In contrast, Roosevelt’s background was tempered by his connections and friendships with New York City’s ethnic groups. For Roosevelt, it was a constant fight between his patrician side, which looked on some newcomers with dismay, and his pluralist side, which believed that it was character, not education or race or religion, that counted the most when judging individuals.

  A man like William Williams appealed to Roosevelt’s patrician side. For Williams, as for Roosevelt, the regulation of immigration was not just about preserving Anglo-Saxon culture; it was also about limiting the selfish interests of big business in the interest of the public good. With the immigration question, Williams argued, America was “confronted with problems of far greater importance than the immediate material development of the country.” Just as progressives argued that unrestricted laissez-faire damaged the social fabric, Williams argued that Americans could not “sacrifice our National ideals and character for mere pecuniary gain.”

  For many progressives, being critical of the excesses of capitalism meant not only criticizing the selfish greed of businessmen and the unfair competition of the trusts; it also meant regulating the tide of immigrants fueling industrial America. Being progressive meant being in favor of a strong national government to rein in private interest; it also meant, for Roosevelt, Williams, and many others, that “National ideals and character” existed.

  Williams ended his 1903 Annual Report by arguing that a “too rapid filling up of any country with foreign elements is sure to be at the expense of national character when such elements belong to the poorer classes in their own respective homes.” Although the words were published under Williams’s name and no doubt reflected his views, they were actually penned by Theodore Roosevelt, who added those words in his personal edits of the original text.

  Perhaps for that reason, Williams was not deterred by Roosevelt’s mild rebuke. Williams could proudly note that “the worst riff-raff of Europe” was kept out of America, yet more work was needed. Many of those who technically did not fall under the excludable categories of immigration law, in Williams’s opinion, were still undesirable.

  Over 857,000 immigrants arrived during Williams’s first year, of whom about 60 percent were Italians, Jews, and Slavs. These new immigrants were overwhelmingly male (including 89 percent of all Croatians and 81 percent of all Italians), overwhelmingly unskilled (including 96 percent of all Ruthenians and 89 percent of all Lithuanians), and mostly between the ages of fourteen and forty-five. Anywhere from one-third to one-half of these groups were illiterate, and, on average, they came with about $9 per person. They were mostly young, unskilled, illiterate males with little money but the necessary muscle and brawn to run the country’s mills, factories, and powerhouses and build the subways and skyscrapers. Hardly paupers, yet definitely not professionals, these new immigrants were raw labor pure and simple.

  In a 1906 book sympathetic to the plight of immigrants, Edward Steiner, an immigrant himself, described the lumpen masses from which new Americans would be created: “It is true that many criminals come, especially from Italy. Many weak, impoverished and poorly developed creatures come from among Polish and Russian Jews, but they are only the tares in the wheat. The stock as a whole is physically sound; it is crude, common peasant stock, not the dregs of society, but its basis.”

  Not everyone agreed. The poet Wallace Irwin took to the pages of a New York newspaper to express his thoughts at the rising tide of immigrants washing ashore in a poem entitled “Ellis Island’s Problems”:

  Down the greasy gang-plank See the motley pack

  Nothing in the pocketbook Tatters on the back

  Pauper, cripple, criminal

  Halt and blind and slow

  Has Uncle Sammy room enough To give ’em all a show?

  Crime, disease, and wretchedness Of a hundred lands

  All the world’s incompetence Dumped upon our hands.

  It was a sentiment with which William Williams would have agreed. In his 1903 Annual Report, Williams boldly estimated that at least two hundred thousand of the immigrants arriving that year “will be of no benefit to the country.” Had they all stayed home, he argued, nobody “would have missed them,” except of course the steamship companies that made money on their passage. Most of these immigrants came from “some of the most undesirable sources of population” of Italy, Austria, and Russia.

  It was a cold but not uncharacteristic sentiment, but Williams was unapologetic. He called it “sheer folly” to allow in so many immigrants when the nation was trying to fix the social and economic problems brought about by rapid industrialization and urbanization. Besides, he declared, “aliens have no inherent right whatever to come here,” asserting the right of sovereignty at the heart of American immigration law. Congress, acting upon the wishes of the people, had the right to determine who could and who could not enter America. Williams was an officer of the state, faithfully administering the wishes of the people, transmitted through Congress into law and executed by the Immigration Service. In such an arrangement, sentimentality was banished from the stage.

  Though immigrants did not have a legal right to come to the United States, once they entered the country, became citizens, and put down roots, they too joined the immigration debate. It is no surprise that immigrant groups, especially Jewish and German leaders, would voice their concerns. These were men of high character, as Roosevelt would say, leaders in their community striving toward soc
ial betterment. They were the right kind of immigrants. Of Leopold Deutschberger, though, Roosevelt would probably not go so far.

  A reporter for the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, the city’s Germanlanguage newspaper and one of the most influential of its kind in the country, Deutschberger covered the Ellis Island beat. Throughout Williams’s tenure at Ellis Island, the German-American journalist published numerous inflammatory articles about alleged abuses of immigrants, with titles such as “Men Weep,” “Disgrace to Country,” “Unrestricted Despotism,” “Barbarous Treatment of Immigrants,” and “No Pity.”

  To his supporters, such criticism was proof of Williams’s success. Keeping a close eye on affairs from Boston, Prescott Hall congratulated Williams “on the great tribute which the Staats-Zeitung is paying your administration. . . . I have never known the Staats-Zeitung to abuse anything as much as it has your administration, which of itself is the highest praise.” To Hall, if the paper was criticizing Williams, then he must be doing something right.

  Germans were the largest ethnic group in New York City and a political power in the Midwest. The number of German immigrants, however, had fallen off substantially in recent years. In the first two years of Williams’s administration, only about 93,000 German immigrants arrived through Ellis Island, less than 6 percent of all immigrants. Of those only 696 were excluded, or about 0.7 percent.

  Although Williams’s animus was largely directed against southern and eastern European immigrants, it was the German press and the German-American community that were most angered by his administration. When Williams banned a German missionary from Ellis Island, a woman from Washington, D.C., wrote him to complain. If he did not reconsider his actions, she warned, millions of GermanAmericans would condemn him. “Do look over the matter again or you have struck trouble,” she warned. With self-confidence bordering on arrogance, Williams responded: “I hasten to assure you that I am utterly indifferent to any unfavorable resolutions that may be passed upon me, or to any that may come to me, as a result of doing the right thing.”