American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [241]
61 In 1875, the Supreme Court: Chae Chan Ping v. United States, 130 U.S. 581 (1889). See also, Hiroshi Motomura, “Immigration Law After a Century of Plenary Power: Phantom Constitutional Norms and Statutory Interpretation,” Yale Law Journal, December 1990.
61 Three years later: Nishimura Ekiu v. U.S., 142 U.S. 651 (1892); Hiroshi Motomura, Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 33–34; Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 110; “Developments in the Law: Immigration Policy and the Rights of Aliens,” Harvard Law Review, April 1983.
63 The government wanted: The following discussion is taken from “A Report of the Commissioners of Immigration Upon the Causes Which Incite Immigration to the United States,” 52nd Congress, 1st Session, Executive Document 235, January 1892. See also, John B. Weber, “Our National Dumping-Ground: A Study of Immigration,” NAR, April 1892.
64 There was an additional: John B. Weber, Autobiography of John B. Weber (Buffalo, NY: J.W. Clement Company, 1924), 105.
65 Weber noted that: A Harper’s Weekly editorial made the same point, asking, “Who else is there here to do the work which these immigrants are doing for us? We have on former occasions called attention to the important fact that the native American is becoming more and more disinclined to do hard work with his hands. . . . How many native Americans are willing to do the dirt work in railway or canal building or to dig coal or even to serve as farm hands?” HW, September 1, 1894.
65 Following his instructions: NYT, February 15, 1892; Mary Antin, From Plotzk to Boston (Boston: W. B. Clarke: 1899), 12.
66 The emigration of: Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers (New York: Schocken Books, 1976), 5–7.
66 The two Americans: Weber, Autobiography, 112–128.
67 By the 1890s: Howe, World of Our Fathers 21; Weber, Autobiography, 106.
CHAPTER FOUR: PERIL AT THE PORTALS
70 Weber was not resentful: NYT, January 31, February 2, 1891.
71 The Massilia had departed: The discussion of the Massilia case comes from “Immigration Investigation, Ellis Island, 1892,” 52nd Congress, 1st Session, House Reports, Vol. 12, No. 2090, Series 3053; “Annual Report of the Board of Health of the Health Department of the City of New York for the Year Ending December 31, 1892,” City Hall Library, New York City; and Howard Markel, Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
73 Often confused with: NYT, February 14, 1892.
74 Within two days: NYT, February 12, 1892.
74 Edson and his staff: NYT, February 13, 1892.
76 The actions of Edson: “Annual Report of the Board of Health of the Health Department of the City of New York for the Year Ending December 31, 1892,” 142, City Hall Library, New York City. Howard Markel overemphasizes the role of nativism in explaining the behavior of Edson and other city officials. He complains that the quarantine stigmatized immigrants and that “there was a huge price to pay in the form of violated civil liberties, cultural insensitivities, inadequate financial or physical resources devoted to their medical care.” In a more nuanced interpretation, Sherwin Nuland argues that city health officials “did what they believed to be the prudent thing, consistent with measures then current among their colleagues all over the world.” The city’s response, Nuland continued, mixed anti-immigrant sentiment with “an earnest desire to protect the people for whom they felt primarily responsible: the citizens of their city.” Sherwin B. Nuland, “Hate in the Time of Cholera,” New Republic, May 26, 1997. Markel also misreads an 1895 article by Edson entitled “The Microbe as a Social Leveler.” In it, Edson argued that because of contagious diseases, poor