American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [99]
Cannon was a laissez-faire, pro-business Republican who opposed nearly every attempt by government to regulate private business. He was also adamantly anti-union, so it was natural for Cannon to support a steady stream of low-wage workers for which his business constituents clamored. He was also a member of the National Liberal Immigration League, which, in addition to German-American, Irish-American, and American Jewish groups, came out against the bill. Ultimately it was Cannon’s manipulation of the legislative process that won the day. In place of the literacy test, Cannon substituted the creation of a federal commission to investigate immigration.
The Immigration Act of 1907 was a victory for opponents of restriction in the sense that the literacy bill was defeated. In reality, the bill was much more complicated and restrictionists got far more than most people realized. The head tax on immigrants was raised to $4 per person, though some had wanted to raise it as high as $25. More importantly, Congress once again expanded the categories for exclusion. First, in addition to the insane and epileptics, feebleminded immigrants were now excludable. Second, Congress expanded the exclusion for prostitutes to include the “importation into the United States of any alien woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution, or for any other immoral purpose.” Lastly, any immigrant determined by doctors to be “mentally or physically defective,” and whose defect would “affect the ability of such alien to earn a living,” could be excluded. Loosely worded legislation opened up new grounds for debate over policies at Ellis Island. The key question boiled down to the definition of terms like “mental defective,” “immoral purpose,” “feebleminded,” or “ability to earn a living.”
As for the commission to investigate immigration, it combined two features of twentieth-century commissions. First, it would collect data and investigate various conditions throughout the country to give lawmakers better information. Second, it would allow short-term-minded politicians to postpone any further discussion of immigration, giving them cover on an increasingly sensitive issue.
President Roosevelt, who years earlier had criticized Grover Cleveland’s veto of the literacy test and who spoke earlier in his presidency in favor of one, was spared the agonizing decision of whether or not to veto such a bill. “When it came to a showdown,” Alabama congressman John Burnett said of Roosevelt’s behavior during the congressional fight, “the President was not to be seen, and his hand was not to be felt.”
Writing to Speaker Cannon, Roosevelt saw the commission as an opportunity to achieve restriction without jeopardizing his political capital. “I would want a Commission which would enable me . . . to put before the Congress a plan which would amount to a definite solution of this immigration business,” he told Cannon. He hoped this would occur after the 1908 election but before he left office. Roosevelt wanted legislation that would keep “out the unfit, physically, morally, or mentally.” These were words that came easily in private, but which the president was increasingly loath to speak publicly.
It would be four more years before this new commission would make its report to Congress. In the meantime, the focus of immigration left Washington and returned to the increasingly busy island in New York Harbor.
T HE DEFEAT OF THE literacy test showed the growing influence of immigration supporters, but also led to virulent attacks against Oscar Straus and Robert Watchorn. Not surprisingly, one of their sharpest critics was Prescott Hall, who complained that Straus was reversing half of the exclusion cases that reached his desk on appeal and that such behavior was