American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [101]
Keeping up a correspondence with the Boston restrictionists, Watchorn wrote Hall in 1906 to discuss a paper that William Williams had recently delivered. Watchorn was hurt that Hall remarked that it was a shame that Williams was no longer at Ellis Island, implying that a lax enforcement now existed there. Watchorn was eager to correct that impression, writing that he was in near complete agreement with Hall and Williams, and that it was his “unremitting endeavor to prevent the landing of any and all such persons” defined as mental or physical defectives. Hall responded by calling Watchorn an “exceptionally capable and energetic official.”
That was before Oscar Straus. Now Prescott Hall was not the only one unhappy. Judson Swift of the American Tract Society wrote to Roosevelt to complain that Watchorn, supposedly under orders from Straus, was hampering the efforts of missionaries at Ellis Island. Protestant missionaries looked upon the crush of immigrants streaming through the inspection station not so much as a fearful deluge as an evangelical opportunity. In his 1906 book entitled Aliens or Americans? Baptist minister Howard Grose called the new immigrants an opportunity for evangelists and asked: “Will we give the gospel to the heathen in America?” Some were truly ministering to the newcomers, while others were busy targeting Catholics and Jews with Protestant pamphlets written in their native language.
Jewish leaders complained of the situation to Watchorn, who ordered missionaries to stop proselytizing to Jewish immigrants. Rumors began to circulate among Protestant churches in New York that Watchorn had threatened to banish from Ellis Island anyone using the name of Jesus Christ. Although Swift insinuated that Straus’s Judaism was the cause of Watchorn’s actions, Straus himself was unaware, though not unsupportive, of what his subordinate had done.
Roosevelt had little sympathy for the criticism and dispatched his secretary, William Loeb, to deal with Swift. Speaking for the president, Loeb chastised Swift for bringing Straus’s religion into the matter, calling it “unwarranted slander” to which “missionaries of the Gospel should be most averse.” Loeb also noted that Watchorn, a devout Methodist himself, could hardly be antagonistic toward religion since his own brother was a Protestant minister.
At the same time that Swift was complaining about the treatment of Christian missionaries, New York police commissioner Theodore Bingham blasted Watchorn for failing to deport immigrants convicted of crimes, calling on the president to appoint a new commissioner dedicated to keeping the “bars up against the criminal class.”
Watchorn noted that in the preceding year, warrants for deportation had risen almost 50 percent. Still, Bingham would not relent and repeatedly stressed the connection between immigration and criminality. He furnished Watchorn and Straus with a list of Italian immigrants in New York with criminal records, baiting officials to deport them. Straus told Watchorn he was “ready to cooperate in ridding the country of the class that can be deported under the immigration laws.” Warrants soon arrived from Washington for their arrest.
Immigration restrictionists saw further proof of the nefarious influence of Oscar Straus in the case of the commissioner-general of immigration, Frank Sargent. Many people noticed a change in Sargent after he began to report to Oscar Straus. Public Health Service official Victor Safford recounted the tale of a hearing in Boston. When the doctors recommended sending home a Swedish girl with trachoma, Sargent replied: “If you exclude this alien and the case comes to Washington on appeal, backed by the political influence which the relatives evidently can command, I can assure you that your decision will be reversed and the alien admitted to the country.” Safford noted that by early 1908, Sargent had become “discouraged, sick, entirely dependent upon his official salary and wondering