American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [125]
With the failure of Congress to do more than give lip service to their complaints, German groups did not give up the fight. At its annual convention in 1911, just a few months after the end of the congressional hearing, the National German-American Alliance lashed out against William Williams. Henry Weisman, president of the Brooklyn branch of the organization, called Williams’s interpretation of the law “arbitrary” and claimed that he excluded many desirable immigrants. The NGAA called for the removal of Williams. Weisman, a lifelong Republican, declared that if Taft did not remove Williams from office, he would never again vote for another Republican for president. A few months later, the Morgen Journal demanded: “Williams Must Go.” When that did not happen, the newspaper followed up with another editorial asking: “How Much Longer, Mr. Taft?”
Williams had his defenders. In the midst of the congressional hearing, Harper’s Weekly called Williams “a resolute, upright person, a terror to all scamps who try to plunder the immigrants, and a considerable terror to the steamship companies, who know him as a man not to be trifled with.” The editorial concluded that the “suggestion that he is brutal does not match with anything in his record or with his known character.”
Arthur von Briesen, president of the Legal Aid Society and chair of the committee that had looked into conditions at Ellis Island during Williams’s first term, wrote President Taft about his organization’s recent investigation. A member of the Legal Aid Society was sent to Ellis Island in 1911 to see if there had been any changes there since von Briesen’s 1903 report. He told Taft that the investigators “were filled with admiration at the manner in which the business was being conducted and the manner in which the immigrants were treated.” The facilities at Ellis Island were still too small and the detention quarters too cramped, causing great discomfort for detainees. However, von Briesen’s investigators absolved Williams of blame.
Williams’s most steadfast ally and friend turned out to be President Taft. “I want you to know that every day, as I think over the Government, I rejoice that I have a commissioner like you in the place you fill,” Taft wrote to Williams in November 1911. He then set out to dispense some advice to his fellow Yalie. “Now, brace up!” he wrote. “Life is not so infernally serious that we can not take an interval at time for enjoyment.” Taft thought his friend “too darn conscientious” and in working so hard to save the Republic from the evil influences of undesirable immigrants, “you are neglecting your own health, thus defeating the very objects you have in view by curtailing your usefulness in a short time through a break-down.”
In his own way, Taft was both bucking up the spirits of a friend and telling him to ease off a bit. Taft saw Williams as faithfully executing the nation’s immigration law, but he did not share his overall view of the world. Taft loved his country no less than Williams, but did not find that the procession of aliens streaming into the country marked the downfall of the Republic. “Don’t let each trouble weigh on you with its intrinsic weight,” advised the weighty president. For Williams there would be no letup. It was not in his makeup. He was, as Taft would later write jokingly, “a severe old bachelor.”
Williams continued with his work despite the criticism. While he was making headlines—and enemies—with his strict policies, he also displayed a more typical bureaucratic mentality. Williams wanted a bigger budget from Congress. “I have repeatedly asked for more money and Congress usually has given me only from one-third to one-half of what I asked,” he complained. This plaint became a staple of his yearly annual reports, with Williams ever concerned about Washington’s