American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [187]
What we do know is that less than two weeks after receiving Mrs. Robinson’s letter, immigration officials rescinded Juliette’s stay of deportation. Four days later, she was taken to Ellis Island for the third time in five years, and on December 3, 1921, she was deported back to Italy.
H ENRY H. CURRAN, THE new commissioner of Ellis Island, took office on July 1, 1923, the morning after the mad dash of steamers at midnight. A feisty and irreverent New York politician who had spent his adult life working in politics as an outnumbered Republican in a Democratic city, Curran had run for mayor in 1921, losing to his Democratic opponent by a margin of more than two to one. No wonder the reserved Calvin Coolidge found Curran “a little peppery.”
His new job at Ellis Island seemed only slightly less quixotic than his mayoral campaign. When first approached for the job, Curran responded: “My God, but . . . that stuff is all over.” He was correct that the best days of Ellis Island were behind it, but after witnessing the mad rush of steamships, Curran knew things were not entirely done.
Curran referred to Ellis Island as a “red-hot stove,” something with which his predecessors would have agreed. The facilities, operations, and morale at Ellis Island were at their lowest since the days of the McSweeney-Powderly feud two decades earlier. Part of the problem rested with the weak administrative talents of Fred Howe, but the larger problem had to do with the wartime use of Ellis Island. Detaining German sailors and IWW radicals and housing wounded doughboys had taxed the island’s infrastructure. With immigration at a near standstill, the workforce at Ellis Island was severely reduced in a cost-saving measure. Even after the war, the government showed little desire to spend more money on its operations.
“It was a poor place to be detained,” Curran thought to himself when he began work. The waters surrounding the island were thick with sewage. Rats and mice made the buildings their home, and bedbugs nested in the sleeping quarters of the detainees. Curran’s greatest reform was convincing Congress to appropriate money to replace the wire bunks, stacked three high with a stretch of canvas serving as a mattress, with real beds for the detainees.
There was little that Curran could do to silence the never-ending criticism of Ellis Island. In 1921, The Outlook magazine had called Ellis Island “one of the most efficient factories in the world for the production of hatred of America and American institutions.” Another magazine warned that the “hatred that Ellis Island breeds is spreading like a plague to increase the discontent which menaces our institutions and the Government itself.” Such criticism had been a constant since the facility opened, but by the early 1920s, the cries of one ethnic group in particular had reached a crescendo. While many ethnic and religious groups complained about poor treatment or exclusionary policies, British citizens had another grievance entirely.
Complaints by the British were not new. Back in 1903, a Protestant missionary working at Ellis Island told an investigative commission that the English had a reputation as proverbial “grumblers,” although the missionary noted that most of the complaints centered on British detainees being forced to sleep with blankets that had been used by non-British foreigners. One of Ellis Island’s most famous grumblers was the Reverend Sydney Herbert Bass, whose brief 1911 detainment made headlines.
Even Fred Howe noted that the British gave him the most trouble during the war years. When detained, an Englishman would rush to the telephone to complain to the British Embassy. When deported, “he sizzled in his wrath over the indignities he was subjected to.” English citizens were indignant