American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [69]
L ESS THAN A MONTH after taking office, Roosevelt busied himself with affairs of state. As expected, the new president had his fingers in many pots. There was much to think about—appointments, bills, politics.
One area in particular focused Roosevelt’s mind: the Immigration Service. Through friends in New York, he was already aware of the situation at Ellis Island. Three weeks after taking office, he confided to his close friend Nicholas Murray Butler that he was “more anxious to get this office straight than almost any other.”
As a new boss entered the scene, people quickly calibrated how they would fare under the new order. For Mark Hanna, the brains behind the McKinley presidency and leader of the Republican establishment, the elevation of Roosevelt to the presidency was not good news. “That damned cowboy is president of the United States,” he is reported to have said in a not entirely positive tone. Other Republicans were not sure what to make of the notoriously unpredictable Roosevelt.
Similar thoughts ran through the minds of those who worked on immigration. For Powderly, the death of McKinley was a huge blow. McKinley had been his biggest—and, increasingly, his only—supporter, the object of Powderly’s near–hero worship. With Roosevelt, Powderly had no such relationship. While Roosevelt once applauded an antiimmigrant article Powderly had written, that was almost fifteen years earlier. Powderly feared that Roosevelt still remembered that he had supported Henry George in 1886, when both George and Roosevelt unsuccessfully sought the mayoralty of New York City.
Even with a new boss to impress, Powderly showed no sign of trimming his sails. Just as Roosevelt was settling into the White House, Powderly was trying to force the deportation of sixteen immigrants from Transylvania headed to Hubbard, Ohio. Charged with violating the contract-labor laws, the men had spent two weeks in detention at Ellis Island, but Powderly’s superiors at Treasury found no reason to detain them any further and released them over his strenuous objections. Powderly, no doubt, had all his fears confirmed once again that his bosses had little interest in protecting the American worker from cheap immigrant labor. Treasury Department officials had their belief confirmed that Powderly was insufferably stubborn and not a team player.
Edward McSweeney had more reasons to be optimistic about the new chief executive. Despite McSweeney’s background as a partisan Democrat, he had run for city office in 1897 on a reform ticket with Seth Low, which helped him ingratiate himself with a number of prominent New Yorkers who just happened to be good friends with Roosevelt. His new friends included soon to be president of Columbia University Nicholas Murray Butler and reformer Jacob Riis. When Senator Thomas Platt, New York State’s Republican boss, tried to get McKinley to replace McSweeney, his new friends sent a letter to Washington praising McSweeney. One of the signers was Theodore Roosevelt. Though he had never met McSweeney, Roosevelt signed the letter on the recommendation of Butler.
For Prescott Hall, Roosevelt’s elevation to the presidency must have seemed like a godsend. Although a New Yorker, the new president had strong ties to the Boston Brahmins. A Harvard graduate, Roosevelt was a close friend of Henry Cabot Lodge. The president’s first wife, Alice, hailed from Boston’s blue-blood Lee family.
Roosevelt’s views on immigration, at first glance, appeared in sync with those of Hall and his fellow restrictionists. The new president was already on record condemning unrestricted immigration