American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [94]
Stoner was not happy with the decision and had to have the last word. “I doubt very much whether she will be in any different condition at the end of six months’ treatment than she is today,” the doctor said. In fact, he believed that her condition could worsen and any other diagnosis was sheer folly. Straus ignored Stoner’s speech and went on to the next case.
Schimen Coblenz was a forty-two-year-old butcher from Lithuania diagnosed with psoriasis, a skin condition. The disease was not particularly attractive, but in no way contagious. However, the law stated that immigrants could be deported for a “loathsome or dangerous contagious disease.” Watchorn ordered him deported because psoriasis was loathsome and would be problematic in his profession as a butcher. If Coblenz were a factory worker, Watchorn argued, the disease would not cause his exclusion.
The case hinged on whether the law required a disease to be both loathsome and contagious or whether an alien could be deported just for suffering from a loathsome disease. It was clear that the law read “or,” instead of “and,” meaning that a loathsome disease alone could certify an immigrant for exclusion. However, since loathsome was a subjective term, and not a medical one, it was at Straus’s discretion to decide the fate of immigrants diagnosed with such diseases. He was willing to read the law loosely and Coblenz was admitted. Unfortunately, Straus could only appear at Ellis Island on rare occasions. Most of his influence would have to be exerted from Washington. While working late at night on immigration appeals in the library of his enormous Italianate villa on the capital’s stately 16th Street on Meridian Hill, Straus came up with an idea. While his sympathies led him to find every means to allow an immigrant to stay in the country, Straus was also bound by the law. Though faithfully executing the law, he felt pangs of guilt for his role in excluding and deporting immigrants. He knew the devastation such decisions caused. Many immigrants had sold all of their possessions to come to America. Those excluded would return home broken in spirit, as well as financially ruined.
With this in mind, Straus sent a personal check for several hundred dollars to Watchorn, instructing him to dole out the money to unfortunate immigrants excluded at Ellis Island. Watchorn was to use his judgment in disbursing the funds. The only stipulations were that he was to disburse the funds without regard to “creed, country or race,” and that the source of the money should remain anonymous. The move speaks volumes of Straus’s humanity, as well as the heavy weight on his conscience caused by his work.
By 1907, it was clear that a perceptible shift in immigration policy had occurred. While the law remained the same, the tone of those in charge of enforcing the law had changed dramatically. Only someone like Theodore Roosevelt could have pulled off such a transformation. The shift was also reflected in the president’s own rhetoric. In most of his earlier Annual Messages to Congress, Roosevelt reiterated his support for the strict regulation of immigrants. In his December 1906 message, he abruptly changed course.
“Not only must we treat all nations fairly,” Roosevelt wrote, “but we must treat with justice and good will all immigrants who come here under the law. Whether they are Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether they come from England or Germany, Russia, Japan, or Italy, matters nothing.” It was a far cry from his first message, five years earlier, when he called for weeding out immigrants of “low moral tendency” and “unsavory reputation.”
While many worried that immigrants dragged down the standards of civilization and morality, Roosevelt now saw a different threat. “It is the sure mark of a low civilization, a low morality, to abuse or discriminate against or in any way humiliate such stranger who has come here lawfully and who