American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [130]
William Williams, however, would move on to other things. In February 1914, the new reform mayor of New York City, John Purroy Mitchell, named Williams commissioner of Water Supply, Gas, and Electricity. After this stint in city government, he returned to the military at the age of fifty-five as a lieutenant colonel during World War I, stationed with the army’s procurement division in Washington.
After the war, Williams returned to his law practice in lower Manhattan, where he regularly went to work right up until his death in February 1947 at the age of eighty-four. He made few public remarks on immigration in the decades that preceded his death. We will never know if he lived long enough to temper his views about some of the “scum” who arrived at Ellis Island during his tenure.
T WO MONTHS BEFORE HIS 1910 visit to Ellis Island where he learned from the Thornton family a lesson in the perils of meddling in immigration cases, President Taft found himself dragged into the case of the Pocziwa family. Benjamin Pocziwa lived in Passaic, New Jersey, where he owned his own store. Earning $20 a week and having saved some $500, Benjamin was now able to bring over his wife, Mine; his six-yearold daughter, Anna; and his nine-year-old son, Lipe. All three arrived at Ellis Island in July 1910.
“This child is an imbecile and it is obvious to the layman that he is one,” declared William Williams, and young Lipe was ordered excluded by law. His mother, Anna, was also ordered excluded so as to accompany her son back to Russia. Officials with HIAS requested that the deportation be delayed so that the mother could find someone else to escort Lipe back.
Benjamin sought the legal help of Leonard Spitz, who also lived in Passaic and practiced law in Manhattan. Spitz filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of Lipe. He admitted that little Lipe was “not everything that one of his age should be; his appearance is dull,” but explained that the boy had been pampered by his mother and “not allowed by her to run around like the ordinary children of his age, she considering him very precious and always having fear for his welfare.”
Local newspapers took up the case of this shy and sheltered country boy frightened by his arrival in America. Spitz spoke about the case with Victor Mason, a businessman who had an office in the same building as Spitz. Mason happened to be a friend of Taft and would be visiting the president at his summer home in Beverly, Massachusetts, in early August. There, Mason explained the case to the president, who ordered that the child not be deported until Secretary Nagel returned to Washington from his extended vacation.
A few days later, Taft reversed himself. “The President has decided not to interfere in the matter of the deportation of Lipe Pocziwa,” read the telegram from Taft’s secretary, Charles Norton, to the Department of Commerce and Labor. Victor Mason again wrote the president asking him to reconsider his decision, and Taft dutifully changed his mind yet again. “Would the Department be embarrassed in any way if the request were sent down to hold up the deportation of Lipe Pocziwa and his sister and mother until Secretary Nagel’s return,” Norton again telegrammed Washington.
The Pocziwa family was neither rich nor famous, nor infamous, yet the president of the United States had become involved in their case. For immigration officials, however, Taft’s interference and vacillation must have been irritating. Acting secretary of Commerce and Labor Benjamin Cable wrote back to Norton that he would again stay the deportation until Nagel’s return, but warned that his boss would not return until sometime in mid-September; this would mean that the family would have to remain in detention at Ellis Island during the dog days of August.
When Nagel returned in September, he ordered that the mother and daughter be allowed to enter the country and rejoin Benjamin; however, young Lipe would have