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 206odd 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.

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 207citizens 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 208last. 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 209all 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 210Italian, understanding from his gesture that she was called to a halt.

“I’ll knock the brains out of a few of you dirty —&mdas............