American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [61]
Powderly’s decision revealed the weakness of the contract-labor law. By 1899, most employers were careful not to make any contracts for incoming immigrants, who themselves were careful not to tell immigration officials that they were arriving in the country to work on a specific job. Powderly admitted that the evidence in the case “was not such as would warrant a conviction in a criminal court.” Yet, believing deep in his heart that these men were violating the law, he ordered their exclusion anyway.
Such reasoning did not wash with Powderly’s boss, Treasury Secretary Lyman Gage, who overturned his decision and allowed the Croatians to proceed to Chicago. Suspicion without evidence, Gage argued, was not a sufficient reason to bar immigrants. Powderly, seemingly incapable of restraining his anger at the decision, told the German-language New Yorker Staats-Zeitung that Gage “has no sympathies for the [nativeborn] laborers.” He later complained about being misquoted, but the quote captures both Powderly’s anger and his perennial inability to bite his tongue.
Such impolitic behavior won Powderly few friends in the Treasury Department. Not only would Powderly battle his subordinates in New York, but he would also find himself fighting with his bosses in Washington. Powderly especially ran afoul of Horace Taylor, the assistant secretary of the Treasury, who took office in early 1899 and often referred to Powderly as “that labor crank.” Their mutual disregard for Powderly would lead McSweeney and Taylor to become close allies in the coming bureaucratic struggle.
The decision on the Croatian laborers fed Powderly’s suspicions— or paranoia—that his colleagues were uninterested in enforcing the contract-labor law. He seemed to have his opinions confirmed in April 1900 when Fitchie and McSweeney enacted a minor reform at the Barge Office. Since Congress passed the contract-labor law in 1885, a separate group of inspectors had existed who only dealt with suspected immigrant contract laborers. In the late 1890s, Fitchie and McSweeney, in the interest of efficiency, decided to merge the contract-labor inspectors with the regular inspectors into one inspector class. Assistant Secretary Taylor approved the plan without consulting Powderly, who bitterly opposed the idea. Though it appeared to be a rational bureaucratic reform, it had the effect of reducing the number of immigrant exclusions in New York based on contract-labor violations by almost 90 percent, according to Powderly.
Powderly was in an awkward position. He was a labor man opposed to cheap immigrant labor, yet he worked for a pro-business Republican administration. Even worse, he had also alienated many people in the labor movement. Recognizing this situation, he worked hard to stay in the good graces of McKinley, without whose support Powderly would have found himself out of a job.
Perhaps that insecurity led Powderly to ask for McSweeney’s help with the 1898 gubernatorial race in Connecticut. John Addison Porter, the personal secretary to McKinley, was running for the Republican nomination. Powderly wanted Fitchie to ask McSweeney to “run over and get some of his Democratic friends to get into the caucuses and help our friends out.” There is no evidence that McSweeney agreed to the request, and Porter failed in his bid to become governor.
Just a few months before Powderly made his request, New York senator Thomas C. Platt, the longtime Republican boss of the state, complained about the “extreme partisan conduct” of McSweeney. “Is there