American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [88]
As a Harvard man, Roosevelt saw the problem clearly. “The trouble with Williams,” the president wrote his friend Gifford Pinchot, “has been that owing to his past associations and education he has found it difficult to get on with men of inferior education and social status.” In other words, Williams was an officious snob. Yet Roosevelt could not admit that his experiment in old-time patronage, while pleasing to Murray, not only stained Roosevelt’s reform image, but also made the job of reforming Ellis Island more difficult.
Apparently, Williams’s problems with his subordinates went beyond just Murray. On two different occasions, the Ellis Island workforce was on the verge of going out on strike. In cleaning out incompetent and abusive workers, Williams made enemies with his uncompromising personality. “They say he has his peculiarities and I presume he has,” Robert Watchorn said of Williams, but if “he hadn’t he would not be of much account.”
Roosevelt appeared more than willing to overlook those peculiarities, remarking that he didn’t “know anyone who could have done quite the work that he did.” Roosevelt lauded Williams as fearless, energetic, and pubic-spirited—all the qualities that Roosevelt so admired. At the same time, he admitted that his dear friend Murray was not exactly the most engaged employee on the federal payroll.
In December 1904, Williams’s patience finally ran out and he went to the White House to tell Roosevelt he could no longer work with Murray. Williams accused him of being “ignorant, inefficient, and wholly worthless” and said that he had played absolutely no part in helping to reform Ellis Island. Because Roosevelt held Williams in such high regard, he was willing to jettison Murray and keep Williams, although he hoped to place Murray in another government job.
But Williams did not just want Murray out as his assistant. He wanted his friend Allan Robinson, a fellow New York lawyer, named as his replacement. This Roosevelt could not abide. Frank Sargent informed the president that Robinson “possessed in even accentuated degrees the failings of Williams in dealing with other men.” If Williams and Robinson were both in charge, Sargent feared a full-scale mutiny among Ellis Island’s employees. Failing to get the assistant he wanted, Williams resigned in January 1905 and returned to his Wall Street law practice.
The Immigration Restriction League’s Robert DeC. Ward was saddened at the news of Williams’s departure. “It has been a source of constant satisfaction to me to feel that the gates at Ellis Island were so well guarded,” Ward wrote Williams. Madison Grant, another patrician restrictionist, also sent his regrets.
Some immigration defenders praised Williams on his departure. The Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants passed a resolution lauding Williams. While the editors of the Staats-Zeitung were no doubt rejoicing at the news, the American Hebrew was not. “He has transformed the internal affairs at Ellis Island to such an extent that visitors today will find very few of the evils complained of before he came,” the paper concluded. “His retirement will be a distinct loss to the immigrant department.”
In many ways, Williams personified George Washington Plunkitt’s reformer. He had made a great show of reforming Ellis Island and ferreting out corruption, but he had his difficulties managing both immigrants and employees. Williams also took Roosevelt’s division of immigrants of good character and bad character to extremes. Roosevelt could temper his concern about new immigrants with a positive view of American national character, the miracles of assimilation, and the benefits of good