American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [33]
Weber and Kempster released their report in January 1892 and concluded that individuals left Europe largely because of “superior conditions of living in the United States . . . and the general belief that the United States present [sic] better opportunities for rising to a higher level than are furnished at home.” Europeans mostly received these ideas not from the agents of steamship companies looking to drum up business, but from “the relatives or friends who have preceded and are established in the United States, and who, through letters and newspapers sent from this country, furnish such information.”
Many argued that new immigrants were assisted or involuntary immigrants brought here on contract by American businesses or enticed by agents of steamship companies. By their estimates, Weber and Kempster concluded that some 60 percent of immigrants did come to America with prepaid tickets. However, these were tickets largely bought by friends and relatives in America and sent to the potential immigrant in Europe. Weber and Kempster were describing chain migration, the process by which recent immigrants, through letters, newspaper clippings, and money, entice family and friends to join them in the New World.
Weber noted that the country needed these immigrants because Americans traditionally shun hard manual work. “When the foreigner came in, the native engineered the jobs, the former did the shoveling,” he argued. “The foreigner plows and sows, the native reaps; the one builds railroads, the other runs them and waters the stock; one digs canals, the other manages the boats; one burrows in the mines, the other sells the product.” Relying on the connection between immigration and free labor for the health of the economy, Weber asked: “Stop the stream, and where will the new material come from which with a little training and experience develops into useful domestic help?”
Weber concluded that “the evils of immigration are purely imaginary in some features, greatly exaggerated in others, and susceptible of nearly complete remedy by the amendment of existing laws.” He saw only the need for “rigid inspection at our ports,” to enforce the 1891 law. Of course, just what constituted rigid inspection would become a matter for debate for every immigration official at Ellis Island throughout its history.
Following his instructions from Harrison, Weber paid special attention to the plight of Jews. The situation in Russia was beginning to have repercussions for the United States. Mary Antin had already emigrated and wrote a memoir of her family’s journey from Russia to America. During those bleak times, she wrote, “America was in everybody’s mouth. Businessmen talked of it over their accounts . . . people who had relatives in the famous land went around reading their letters for the enlightenment of less fortunate folk . . . children played at emigrating . . . all talked of it, but scarcely anyone knew one true fact about this magic land.” The number of immigrants coming from Russia, the vast majority being Jewish, was increasing dramatically. From 1890 to 1891, the number increased from 41,000 to 73,000.
The emigration of Russian Jews was rooted in the turmoil of latenineteenth-century Russia. Many of the problems can be traced to 1881, when Czar Alexander II, who had inaugurated an era of relative liberalism in Russia, was assassinated by a group of revolutionaries. Jews bore the brunt of the anger of the Russian people and of the new czar, Alexander III, who pursued anti-Jewish policies with a vengeance. Life in the Pale of Settlement, where much of the Jewish population was forced to live, became harder. Jews who had left the Pale in decades past to earn their livings in cities were now being forced out. Petty harassments increased