American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [62]
Despite Platt’s urgings, McSweeney remained in office. Perhaps Fitchie recognized that the immigration service in New York could not run without McSweeney’s administrative talents. There is another possible explanation. When the bitterness between McSweeney and Powderly broke out into open warfare a few years later, Powderly would accuse McSweeney of delaying the stay of immigrants at Ellis Island “for the purpose of swelling the receipts of Mr. Hess who has the contract for providing food for immigrants at Ellis Island.” Charlie Hess also happened to be a loyal member of Senator Platt’s Republican machine. Powderly claimed that McSweeney told him: “I can rely upon Senator Platt to do the right thing by me.” So it is not beyond the realm of possibility that McSweeney had made his peace with Platt, a man more interested in patronage than partisanship.
The accusation that McSweeney was involved in unethical conduct was part of a larger problem at the Barge Office. While Ellis Island had put the buffer of New York Harbor between immigrants and those who prowled the waterfront looking to take advantage of greenhorns, the Barge Office provided no such luxury. McSweeney himself explained that all of the problems that had once existed at Castle Garden were reappearing at the Barge Office.
More complaints emerged about the Barge Office. Words like “listless,” “inexcusably insolent,” and “inefficient” were thrown about to describe the staff. Victor Safford spoke of one worker, a German immigrant with a bushy beard, whose sole duty seemed to be to march around with great pomp dressed in naval cap and double-breasted coat with brass buttons. The man was obviously a political appointee, and Safford could never figure out what the man did.
By the end of 1899, word reached Washington of serious problems at the Barge Office, prompting Secretary Gage to appoint a committee to investigate, led by John Rodgers, commissioner of immigration at Philadelphia, and Richard K. Campbell, from the Washington office. Rodgers and Campbell conducted two months of hearings in lower Manhattan in early 1900, collecting over two thousand pages of testimony.
Much as Powderly had found earlier, the Campbell-Rodgers report concluded that McSweeney was the real power at the Barge Office. It laid out in detail charges of cruelty, corruption, and the abuse of immigrants “of such a pronounced and inexcusable character.” The report concluded that McSweeney “countenanced extreme cruelty and impropriety in the methods of inspection in the registry division” and recommended the firing of a dozen employees at the Barge Office, including McSweeney.
One form of corruption occurred in the Boarding Division. When ships reached the docks, American citizens were separated out from immigrants and allowed to pass. Albert Wank, an assistant officer in the Boarding Division, reportedly took cash payoffs to let immigrants through, thereby avoiding inspection. A clerk for a French steamship line testified that it was common for immigrants to pay Wank $1 or $2 to get out of the inspection line. Those immigrants not paying the bribe would then often pass by Emil Auspitz, the gateman in charge of the entrance to the registry room. Auspitz was accused of treating immigrants roughly and using foul language.
The most serious charges were leveled against John Lederhilger, the chief of the Registry Division and one of McSweeney’s closest allies. “Mr. Lederhilger is insolent, overbearing, dictatorial and cruel to his subordinate officers,” Campbell and Rodgers concluded, “and is jealous and resentful in his bearing toward those over whom he cannot legitimately