American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [74]
Murray replaced McSweeney, but was not forced to take the civil service exam as required by law. The Civil Service Commission, no doubt influenced by the president, argued that the chaos at Ellis Island allowed for greater discretion of appointments. As soon as Murray took office, he was immediately put under normal civil service protections. An angry Powderly, in a letter to Robert Watchorn, clearly saw the irony of the situation: “Mark the consistency of dismissing me for writing a letter such as I wrote and then, in order to make room for a friend, he violates the civil service law himself by knocking it galley west and makes a place for a favorite.” On this issue, Murray’s view of civil service reform won the day, but Roosevelt’s ethical flexibility would soon clash with the reform sensibilities of his new Ellis Island commissioner.
T HEODORE ROOSEVELT HOPED WILLIAM Williams would reinvigorate Ellis Island, end the abusive treatment of immigrants, clean out the patronage dump, and strictly enforce the law. There would be no worries about meddling from Washington; Commissioner-General of Immigration Frank Sargent, who had replaced Powderly, was on the same page with his views of immigration, and the union man would prove exceedingly deferential to his underling, the wealthy Wall Street lawyer. William Williams wasted no time in getting to work, and not a minute too soon.
In 1902, more immigrants arrived than in any other year since 1881. More than 25,000 immigrants arrived in Williams’s first week on the job. The island’s sleeping quarters, which could accommodate as many 1,300 people, were bursting at the seams.
Williams let nothing escape his critical eye. In his first Annual Report, written just two months after he took the reins at Ellis Island, Williams talked about the lax enforcement and corrupt practices he found there. The inspection process was marked by a large degree of arbitrariness. Williams accused officials of placing “holds” on immigrants based not on an actual inspection, but rather on information on the ship’s manifest. “The fact that most of those marked were ablebodied people with large amounts of money are points not without interest,” Williams wrote, slyly implying a shakedown racket.
Angry at the sloppiness, corruption, and lack of professionalism among the Ellis Island staff, Williams continued to weed out workers who had given the place a bad name. By late September, he fired the accused serial groper John Lederhilger. By year’s end, all officials named in the Campbell-Rodgers report had been pushed out.
Others also felt Williams’s wrath. Emile Schamcham, a Syrian interpreter, was dismissed from his job for trying to get a date with an immigrant girl. While this woman was waiting at Ellis Island for a friend to meet her, Schamcham slipped her a note with the address of his boardinghouse. Another Williams target was a clerk named James Fraser, who had been away from his post for four straight days on an alcoholic bender—and apparently not for the first time. He told Williams he had contracted a disease during the Civil War that forced him to use alcohol as a stimulant. Under the new regime, such excuses would not be tolerated. Fraser was fired. Malingerers were no longer wanted and could no longer take cover under civil service rules or the protection of political patrons. When Senator Platt asked the new boss of Ellis Island to promote Samuel Samsom from gateman to inspector, Williams brusquely wrote back that Samsom “is not fitted either by temperament or training for a position much above that held by him now.”
Nor would the abusive treatment of immigrants be tolerated. Six weeks into his administration, Williams posted the following notice throughout the main building at Ellis Island:
Immigrants must be treated with