American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [65]
I N MID-DECEMBER 1900, TWO and a half years after the fire that devastated the first immigration station at Ellis Island, new facilities were finally completed and open for business. On December 17, Fitchie, McSweeney, and their entire staff welcomed the first boatload of steerage immigrants to Ellis Island. The Kaiser Wilhelm II brought 654 immigrants, the first of 2,252 who would pass through Ellis Island that first day. There was no pomp and circumstance as there had been in January 1892; the only celebration was a good-luck horseshoe of flowers presented to Thomas Fitchie by his friends. The first immigrant off the boat was a young, laughing, red-headed Italian girl named Carmina di Simona, “so much inclined to rotundity that it was a question whether her greater dimension was length or breadth.” There was no Annie Moore treatment for Carmina, no ten-dollar gold piece or front-page articles. Americans may have been happy about the new facilities, but they seemed less inclined to celebrate the new immigrants.
Officials claimed that the new reception building could accommodate more than seven thousand immigrants in a single day. It was not designed in the neoclassical, white marble, Beaux Arts style then fashionable for public buildings. Instead, it was a steel-frame structure covered with red brick laid in Flemish bond with limestone trimmings. Four 100-foot, copper-covered, bulbous towers crowned each corner, giving the building a vaguely Byzantine feel. Massive arches with moldings of eagles and shields capped many of the windows. There were new offices, dining facilities, hearing rooms for the boards of special inquiry, shower rooms, and a roof deck for entertainment.
The centerpiece of the main building was the second-floor registry room. Measuring 200 feet by 100 feet and with a 56-foot ceiling, this large airy space was divided into narrow aisles by iron railings for immigrants to pass through on their way to the registry clerk holding the ship’s manifest. Unlike the previous shabby wooden quarters, all the new buildings were fireproof. Even secondary buildings like the hospital and the power plant exhibited a stolid dignity.
Ellis Island now consisted of an imposing set of structures that announced to immigrants the grandeur of their adopted country. Inspection would again be cloistered away from the hubbub, distractions, and immigrant sharks at the Barge Office in the Battery. “The crowd of foreigners who besiege the present quarters every day making life hideous with their quarrels or cursing the guards and gatemen in a babel of tongues will be a thing of the past,” rejoiced the Times.
Yet fancy new buildings did nothing to improve the quality of inspection, reduce corruption, stem the abuses of immigrants, or quell the increasingly vicious infighting between the McSweeney and Powderly camps. Washington had created Ellis Island and an immigration service to run it. However, those who worked in this infant bureaucracy were still mired in the political patronage that defined an older period of history. A stronger federal government was needed to deal with the problems of a modern industrial and urbanized society, but a more professional staff to run that government was also needed. Turnof-the-century Ellis Island embodied that clash between traditional political patronage and the more strenuous demands being placed on government to regulate an increasingly complex society.
Ensconced in Washington, Powderly received regular updates from Ellis Island officials loyal to him. One of them called McSweeney a “Dr. Jekell [sic] and Mr. Hyde character. . . . He is so bigoted, partisan, spiteful and malevolent. It is terrible.” Powderly himself referred to his nemesis as “McSwine.” His friends intercepted letters from McSweeney to his allies in the Treasury Department, which were dutifully copied and sent to Powderly.
Not to be outdone, McSweeney recruited Powderly’s confidential