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By Root 767 0

year that the new law was in effect, 870 immigrants were barred from the country under this new clause. By 1912, that number would grow to over 4,200. However, this did not satisfy Prescott Hall. He wrote to Robert Watchorn, commissioner of Ellis Island at the time, that only 34 percent of immigrants initially classified as having a poor physique were deported, while the rest were allowed to enter on bond or on appeal. Watchorn responded that most of those admitted were older parents coming to stay with their adult children already in the United States, and therefore “not prospective progenitors, for the most part.” There is, of course, something comical about the gaunt and sickly Prescott Hall complaining about the poor physiques of incoming immigrants.

When Williams took over in 1909, he focused more closely on the new law. He made a long list of ailments that might qualify an immigrant for exclusion. It included ankylosis (stiffness) of the joints; arteriosclerosis; chronic inflammation of lymph glands; hernia; goiter; lupus; and varicose veins. Even otherwise productive and healthy immigrants who were deaf or mute might be excluded under the new rules. All immigrants “not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to land” would be pulled aside for a hearing, but only those with ailments “in aggravated form,” to the extent they would affect their ability to earn a living, would find themselves excluded.

In his first annual report since returning to Ellis Island, Williams noted that many of the previous year’s detentions were due to “serious physical defects discovered by our surgeons,” placing these immigrants under what Williams termed the “excellent provision of the law of 1907.” Williams did not believe that these ailments were randomly assigned across the racial and ethnic spectrum. “Relatively few immigrants from Northern Europe are so held,” he wrote. “It is those coming from the other parts of Europe (particularly the southern and south-eastern parts) that constitute the great majority of the doubtful cases.”

The amount of work being done was astounding. In 1911, there were 70,829 board of special inquiry hearings. That came to almost two hundred hearings a day, seven days a week, twelve months a year. Ellis Island possessed a staff, not including medical officials who did not sit on the boards, of 523 workers, although that included many, such as watchmen and maintenance staff, who did not perform inspection duties.

Williams worried about the ability of his staff to carry out that work. “Some of these men will never understand the meaning of the phrase ‘likely to become a public charge’ or how to apply it,” he wrote to Daniel Keefe, the new commissioner-general of immigration. “The fact is we are executing here some of the most difficult laws in the world with much green material.” Ellis Island was running as many as eight board hearings at any one time, necessitating more than thirty officials to sit on those boards. “We have not 32 men here who are qualified to do good Board work,” Williams lamented.

To the thousands of immigrants who passed in front of those boards, like Wolf Konig, Williams’s strict enforcement of the law had real consequences. The seventeen-year-old arrived at Ellis Island alone and penniless in June 1912; doctors certified him as “afflicted with lack of physical and sexual development for age claimed which affects ability to earn a living.” Wolf was headed to his uncle, Nathan Waxman, in Chicago, who owned a stationary store and property worth $3,800. Nathan signed an affidavit that he would support Wolf so that he would not become a public charge.

Irving Lipsitch of HIAS took up the case. He argued that Wolf was sixteen years old and therefore not underdeveloped for his age. “We believe that he can improve himself and his development with the assistance of his relatives who are prepared to help him to get better nourishment and exercise,” Lipsitch told officials. “Being a young boy, and not accustomed to travel, it is quite natural that this first long journey should cause him to become