American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [70]
Yet immigrant defenders had reason to be optimistic as well. As New York police commissioner, Roosevelt had once assigned a group of Jewish policemen to protect an anti-Semitic German preacher in town to give a speech. His calls for immigration regulation were always coupled with strong denunciations of know-nothingism and pleas to treat immigrants with decency. Roosevelt himself was a mixture of Dutch, English, French, Welsh, German, and Scottish blood and possessed an optimism about America that somehow eluded many of his friends. “I am a firm believer that the future will somehow bring things right in the end of our land,” Roosevelt wrote the notoriously dour Brahmin historian Francis Parkman.
Whatever may have been his true beliefs, Roosevelt first had to clean up the mess in the immigration service. A month after taking office, he met with Powderly. Though Powderly was willing to resign his post, the president said he had no intention of removing him from office. Just after the meeting, Roosevelt wrote Butler that “our people have been united in telling me that Powderly was a good man.” Even more good news for Powderly was that Roosevelt told him that every “good man whom I have met who knows anything about that office has agreed in believing McSweeney to be corrupt.”
Powderly left the meeting confident that he would be retained and that perhaps he would triumph over his enemies both at Ellis Island and in the Treasury Department. Even when rumors leaked out in the coming months that Powderly might lose his job, the old labor man held on to the president’s personal reassurance like a life preserver. “From all I knew of Mr. Roosevelt that simple declaration was equivalent to another man’s oath,” Powderly later reminisced.
Whatever his feelings for Powderly, Roosevelt felt no sympathy for Thomas Fitchie, the nominal head of Ellis Island. Nicholas Murray Butler called Fitchie “an old man with weak will” and Roosevelt considered him “absolutely incompetent.” Though Roosevelt did not know Fitchie personally, he certainly knew his type. He had been battling the New York Republican machine, of which Fitchie was a proud member, his entire political career. Although not personally corrupt, Fitchie was a time server who squandered the power he was given.
As the months wore on, nothing was done. As late as April 1902, more than seven months after Roosevelt took office, Fitchie, McSweeney, and Powderly all remained in office. Why had Roosevelt procrastinated? First, contrary to his blustering image, Roosevelt was a deliberate politician. Second, Roosevelt had trouble finding someone to run Ellis Island. “As for Fitchie’s successor, all I want to do is to get the best possible man in the country,” Roosevelt wrote Butler, setting the bar a bit high.
There was still a third reason. Despite his personal reassurances to Powderly and his initial negative impression of McSweeney, Roosevelt still remained torn as to who was at fault in the running battles in the Immigration Service. Depending on whom he last spoke with, his opinion about the two men could change from week to week.
Even with the charges of abuse and corruption swirling around Ellis Island, McSweeney was highly regarded for his administrative skills— even by his enemies. No less a person than Terence Powderly noted that no one else “so thoroughly understands the immigration service at the Port of New York as Mr. McSweeney.” McSweeney devoted himself to learning Italian so as to better handle the waves of Italian immigrants. He had become a leading national authority on immigration issues, writing articles and giving talks to academic audiences. McSweeney was the “ablest man in the whole immigration service,” Butler confidently told Roosevelt.
“Nicholas Miraculous