Arrival of the Immigrant

Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.

From With Poor Immigrants To America, by Stephen Graham, 1914.

The day of the emigrants’ arrival in New York was the nearest earthly likeness to the final Day of Judgment, when we have to prove our fitness to enter Heaven. Our trial might well have been prefaced by a few edifying reminders from a priest.

It was the hardest day since leaving Europe and home. From 5 a.m., when we had breakfast, to three in the afternoon, when we landed at the Battery, we were driven in herds from one place to another, ranged into single files, passed in review before doctors, poked in the eyes by the eye-inspectors, cross-questioned by the pocket-inspectors, vice detectives, and blue-book compilers.

Nobody had slept the night before. Those who approached America for the first time stood on the open deck and stared at the lights of Long Island. Others packed their trunks. Lovers took long adieus and promised to write one another letters. There was a hum of talking in the cabins, a continual pattering of feet in the gangways, a splashing of water in the lavatories where cleanly emigrants were trying to wash their whole bodies at hand-basins.

At last the bell rang for breakfast: we made that meal before dawn. When it was finished we all went up on the forward deck to see what America looked like by morning light. A little after six we were all chased to the after-deck and made to file past two detectives and an officer. The detectives eyed us; the officer counted to see that no one was hiding.

At seven o’clock our boat lifted anchor and we glided up the still waters of the harbour. The whole prow was a black mass of passengers staring at the ferry-boats, the distant factories, and sky-scrapers. Every point of vantage was seized, and some scores of emigrants were clinging to the rigging. At length we came into sight of the green-grey statue of Liberty, far away and diminutive at first, but later on, a celestial figure in a blaze of sunlight. An American waved a starry flag in greeting, and some emigrants were disposed to cheer, some shed silent tears. Many, however, did not know what the statue was. I heard one Russian telling another that it was the tombstone of Columbus.

We carried our luggage out at eight, and in a pushing crowd prepared to disembark. At 8.30 we were quick-marched out of the ship to the Customs Wharf and there ranged in six or seven long lines. All the officials were running and hustling, shouting out, “Come on!” “Hurry!” “ Move along!” and clapping their hands. Our trunks were examined and chalk-marked on the run — no delving for diamonds — and then we were quick-marched further to a waiting ferry-boat. Here for the time being hustle ended. We waited three-quarters of an hour in the seatless ferry, and every one was anxiously speculating on the coming ordeal of medical and pocket examination.

At a quarter to ten we steamed for Ellis Island. We were then marched to another ferry-boat, and expected to be transported somewhere else, but this second vessel was simply a floating waiting-room. We were crushed and almost suffocated upon it. A hot sun beat upon its wooden roof; the windows in the sides were fixed; we could not move an inch from the places where we were awkwardly standing, for the boxes and baskets were so thick about our feet; babies kept crying sadly, and irritated emigrants swore at the sound of them. All were thinking — “Shall I get through?” “Have I enough money?” “Shall I pass the doctor?” and for a whole hour, in the heat and noise and discomfort, we were kept thinking thus.

At a quarter-past eleven we were released in detachments. Every twenty minutes each and every passenger picked up his luggage and tried to stampede through with the party, a lucky few would bolt past the officer in charge, and the rest would flood back with heart-broken desperate looks on their faces. Every time they failed to get included in the outgoing party the emigrants seemed to feel that they had lost their chance of a job, or that America was a failure, or their coming there a great mistake. At last, at a quarter-past twelve, it was my turn to rush out and find what Fate and America had in store for me.

Once more it was “Quick march!” and hurrying about with bags and baskets in our hands, we were put into lines. Then we slowly filed up to a doctor who turned our eyelids inside out with a metal instrument. Another doctor scanned faces and hands for skin diseases, and then we carried our ship-inspection cards to an official who stamped them. We passed into the vast hall of judgment, and were classified and put into lines again, this time according to our nationality. It was interesting to observe at the very threshold of the United States the mechanical obsession of the American people. This ranging and guiding and hurrying and sifting was like nothing so much as the screening of coal in a great breaker tower.

It is not good to be like a hurrying, bumping, wandering piece of coal being mechanically guided to the sacks of its type and size, but such is the lot of the immigrant at Ellis Island.

But we had now reached a point in the examination when we could rest. In our new lines we were marched into stalls, and were allowed to sit and look about us, and in comparative ease await the pleasure of officials.

The hall of judgment was crowned by two immense American flags. The centre, and indeed the great body of the hall, was filled with immigrants in their stalls, a long series of classified third-class men and women. The walls of the hall were booking-offices, bank counters, inspectors’ tables, stools of statisticians. Up above was a visitors’ gallery where journalists and the curious might promenade and talk about the melting-pot, and America, “the refuge of the oppressed.”

Down below, among the clerks’ offices, were exits; one gate led to Freedom and New York, another to quarantine, a third to the railway ferry, a fourth to the hospital and dining-room, to the place where unsuitable emigrants are imprisoned until there is a ship to take them back to their native land.

Somewhere also there was a place where marriages were solemnised. Engaged couples were there made man and wife before landing in New York. I was helping a girl who struggled with a huge basket, and a detective asked me if she were my sweetheart. If I could have said “Yes,” as like as not we’d have been married off before we landed. America is extremely solicitous about the welfare of women, especially of poor unmarried women who come to her shores. So many women fall into the clutches of evil directly they land in the New World. The authorities generally refuse to admit a poor friendless girl, though there is a great demand for female labour all over the United States, and it is easy to get a place and earn an honest living.

It was a pathetic sight to see the doubtful men and women pass into the chamber where examination is prolonged, pathetic also to see the Russians and Poles empty their purses, exhibiting to men with good clothes and lasting “jobs” all the money they had in the world.

At half-past two I gave particulars of myself and showed the coin I had, and was passed.

“Have you ever been arrested ?” asked the inspector.

Well, yes, I had. I was not disposed to lie. I had been arrested four or five times. In Russia you can’t escape that.

“For a crime involving moral turpitude?” he went on.

“No, no.”

“Have you got a job in America?” (This is a dangerous question; if you say ‘Yes’ you probably get sent back home; it is against American law to contract for foreign labour.)

I explained that I was a tramp.

This did not at all please the inspector. He would not accept that definition of my occupation, so he put me down as author.

“Are you an anarchist?”

“No.”

“Are you willing to live in subordination to the laws of the United States?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a polygamist?”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Do you believe a man may possess more than one wife at a time?”

“Certainly not.”

“Have you any friends in New York?”

“Acquaintances, yes.”

“Give me the address.”

I gave him an address.

“How much money have you got?” . . . “Show me, please!” . . . And so on. I was let go.

At three in the afternoon I stood in another ferryboat, and with a crowd of approved immigrants passed the City of New York. Success had melted most of us, and though we were terribly hungry, we had words and confidences for one another on that ferry-boat. We were ready to help one another to any extent in our power. That is what it feels like to have passed the Last Day and still believe in Heaven, to pass Ellis Island and still believe in America.

Graham, Stephen. With Poor Immigrants To America. MacMillan Company, 1914.

Stephen Graham

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