Authors: Vincent J. Cannato
Although much younger than Sica, sixteen-year-old Bartolomeo Stallone also faced exclusion. Arriving from Italy in September 1911, Stallone was headed for his brother’s home in St. Louis, where he would work as a barber. At Ellis Island, Dr. E. H. Mullan certified the young man as “afflicted with flat deformed chest, lack of muscular development (poor physique), which affects ability to earn a living.” Stallone appealed his case, but Augustus Sherman, acting in place of William Williams, reaffirmed the deportation order, noting that Stallone was “quite frail in appearance.”
When Stallone’s case landed on the desk of Secretary Nagel, he ordered that the immigrant be admitted on a $500 bond, most likely posted by his brother. After three weeks in detention at Ellis Island, Stallone was released. Two years later, Bartolomeo requested that the bond be canceled. He had to report to officials in St. Louis, who found that the young man was making $12 a week as a barber. Though he had no savings, he told officials: “I live well, dress well, and send money home to my father and mother in Italy, so I haven’t anything saved up.” Impressed by the now-eighteen-year-old, officials canceled the bond and declared him: “Physically fit for admission and that there is little or no likelihood that he will become a public charge.”
Williams himself was not completely hard-hearted in his application of the law. Jacob Duck, a twenty-one-year-old Turkish Jew, arrived in March 1910 headed to a cousin who owned a wholesale lace business on New York’s Lower East Side. Doctors certified Duck as lacking in physical development, and Williams agreed that “he does not present a very robust appearance.” On the other hand, Duck arrived with $47. Williams personally interviewed him and found him intelligent and unlikely to become a public charge. The commissioner agreed to admit Duck, even though he was “the type of immigrant that I care not to see come into this country.” It was a startling admission, both that Williams would put his personal prejudice against Jewish immigrants on an official document and that he still felt compelled to follow the law despite that prejudice.
Though Williams may have occasionally shown leniency, he found that his superiors in Washington often had a different interpretation of the law. In January 1912, Chaie Kaganowitz arrived at Ellis Island with her nine children, ranging in age from three to twenty. Williams declared that the forty-two-year-old Russian Jewish widow with poor eyesight and her youngest children were likely to become public charges. The older children were also ordered excluded for poor physical development. Williams was sitting in his office with Commissioner-General Keefe when he asked to see the family. Both Keefe and Williams agreed with the decision owing to “their extremely poor appearance.” The two older sons were carpenters, but Williams found them to be “frail appearing” and not very “robust.” Only the oldest daughter, a seamstress, made a favorable impression upon Williams and Keefe.
The family appealed its exclusion to Secretary Nagel. As confident as Williams and Keefe were that the Kaganowitzes were undesirable, Nagel thought them to be admissible. Apart from the mother’s poor eyesight, there was not a single medical certificate against any family member that would have classified any of them as excludable. All that officials had stated was that the Kaganowitz family looked poor and weak. Nagel was impressed that “every member of this family who is old enough to work does work.” What more was needed to prove that this family was self-supporting? he argued. “This evidence of a willingness and capacity to work is worth more than all the ordinary money tests that may be applied,” he concluded, in a direct slap at Williams’s beloved monetary test. After almost a month in detention at Ellis Island, the family was admitted, although the six youngest children were released on bond.
Meier Salamy Yacoub, a thirty-seven-year-old Syrian Jew, arrived at Ellis Island three days after the Kaganowitz family. Williams found him to be “an undersized man and his appearance is not good.” He ordered him excluded as likely to become a public charge. “The indications are that he has come here with the expectation of entering that non-producing class of peddlers of which there are now so many,” Williams wrote. For him, the pushcart peddlers who crowded the streets of the Lower East Side and other immigrant ghettos were a nuisance and the nation did not need any more of them. While Keefe agreed, Assistant Secretary Benjamin Cable, acting in place of Nagel for the day, overturned the decision and allowed Yacoub to land. “I do not see how this man is likely to become a public charge,” Cable wrote. Yacoub was allowed to leave Ellis Island after only five days there, leaving behind the Kaganowitzes as they awaited word on their fate.
Jewish groups were sensitive to charges that Jewish immigrants were being certified as having poor physiques, especially peddlers like Yacoub. Simon Wolf defended peddlers, calling them “the pioneer merchants of our country at one time,” adding that “there is no telling what a peddler might become in the course of time, or at least his children, as evidence of what a rail-splitter and a tailor had accomplished when they finally were located in the White House.” Wolf continued with his critique before the National Jewish Immigration Council. “If the immigration officials at the ports of entry and some of those in the Bureau had a little more imagination and a little more red blood percolating for the human species,” Wolf said, “there would not be so many likely to become public charges . . . which provoke a smile and not a tear—that is hernia and double hernia, diseases that never prevent a man from labor if properly cared for.”
A few months after Williams took office, the
New York Times
featured a story about complaints that the immigration law was being directed at Jews. “I found that Jews were being singled out among immigrants of other nationalities and the rule of physical development applied to them rigorously,” a reporter for a local Jewish paper told the
Times
. Assistant Commissioner Uhl admitted that for “some unknown reason there has lately been an unusual number of young men of the Jewish faith who were unable to come up to the physical requirement,” but denied that it was due to any discrimination.
Whether Uhl was being honest or not, it was not unusual to find arguments about the alleged physical weakness of Jews. “On the physical side the Hebrew are the polar opposites of our pioneer breed,” claimed social scientist Edward Ross. “Not only are they undersized and weakmuscled, but they shun bodily activity and are exceedingly sensitive to pain.” Besides fighting against these stereotypes, Jewish groups also argued that since many Jews were not headed for coal mines or steel mills, great physical strength was not always a necessity. Some, like Meier Yacoub, would become peddlers. Still others, like Solomon Meter, were tailors, a job that required delicate skill rather than physical brawn.
Meter was detained at Ellis Island when doctors certified him as suffering from “atrophy, partial paralysis, club foot, shortening and lameness of right lower extremity which affects ability to earn a living,” and therefore likely to become a public charge and ordered excluded.
Irving Lipsitch tried to intervene on behalf of Meter. He admitted that the diagnosis at first appeared damning, but went on to note that “if reduced to plain language,” it “simply means that the immigrant is slightly lame.” Lipsitch claimed that Meter was a good tailor and his was an occupation “which does not require him to make much use of his lower extremities, nor does it mean that he has to stand on his feet for any length of time.” Officials did not buy Litsitch’s argument and Meter was deported.
While HIAS continued to appeal immigrant cases, Max Kohler stepped up his criticism of immigration officials in harsh tones. In a well-publicized speech, he declared that America was “in the midst of a new ‘Know-Nothing Era’ and only a campaign of education can safeguard the best interests of the country and maintain the ‘open door’ to continued national prosperity.”
He noted that the exclusion rates of Jewish immigrants were increasing, although still less than 2 percent of all arrivals. More than two-thirds of Jewish exclusions were deemed likely to become a public charge. That number was roughly in keeping with overall rates for all groups, but to Kohler it was occurring because “of ever newer misconstructions of the law, furtively forced upon inspectors at Ellis Island, day by day, breaking down their judicial attitude and creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and anarchy and cowed timidity.” Kohler was not going to let Williams off the hook.
Not all Jewish leaders followed the adversarial lead of Kohler. Responding to Kohler’s speech, an editorial in the
Times
stated that it would have “been more effective if he had adopted a somewhat less controversial tone.” Others went even further. Nissim Behar, one of the leaders of the National Liberal Immigration League, defended Williams. “Nothing is gained by making absurd charges,” Behar warned. “No man could please everybody and do his full duty.”
Simon Wolf also defended Williams, saying he placed “no stock” in the accusations against him. He instead urged Jewish leaders to work more closely with immigration officials, rather than antagonize them. Irving Lipsitch, who had to deal on a daily basis with Williams, counseled against appealing every case of Jewish immigrants ordered deported. He worried that such an aggressive move might backfire. “I believe that if that were done,” he wrote, “we would lose the privilege.”
HIAS President Leon Sanders expressed the same fear, telling Kohler there was “much discontent” among officials in Washington with Jewish immigrant aid societies. “It has been hinted also that Jewish societies are making themselves obnoxious by calling upon the Department frequently and repeatedly for trivial matters,” wrote Sanders.
Secretary Nagel, who showed himself sympathetic to immigrant appeals, urged immigrant aid societies to work with, not against, government officials. “Your societies are, of course, carrying out your individual views,” he said in a speech before a Jewish group, “but you cannot expect me in my official capacity to accept anything that they say.” He pointed to Simon Wolf as a model for cooperation between government and immigrant advocates. “The way Mr. Wolf approaches us is calculated to get best results because he comes to us fairly, goodnaturedly, and when he is defeated he recognizes our point of view,” he lectured the audience. “This is the spirit in which you ought to come.” He also joked about Wolf ’s continual presence in Nagel’s office. “If we ever miss him,” Nagel said, “we think the world is going to stop.”
Jewish groups attempted a kind of détente with William Williams when they invited him to address the HIAS annual meeting in January 1910. Jacob Schiff led the applause for Williams, setting “the example of paying due respect to a government official by rising and the audience followed him,” the
American Hebrew
reported. In turn, Williams extended an olive branch to the crowd. He repeated his basic philosophy of immigration: whereas some Americans believed all immigrants should be let in and others believed few should be allowed to enter, “I agree with neither.” In a surprising turn, the blue-blood Williams told the crowd that he particularly disagreed “with the latter, especially when I see what promising citizens the Jewish immigrants make.”
The warm feelings did not last long. Following Williams to the podium was a rabbi who addressed the crowd in Yiddish and criticized the debarment of immigrants with poor physiques. “The strong man by his very strength may be a menace to the peace of the country,” the rabbi said, “but the man physically weak may be mentally strong and able to help build up the nation.” Williams “seemed to be under the impression that he was being criticized, which was not exactly the case,” according to the
American Hebrew
, and grew visibly angry. This cultural and linguistic misunderstanding seemed to have negated any of the initial good will.
After that, Williams’s relationship with the Jewish community continued to deteriorate. In his 1911 annual report, Williams spoke dismissively of new immigrants, singling out the crowded Italian and Jewish ghettos of lower Manhattan.
The new immigrants, unlike that of the earlier years, proceed in part from the poorer elements of the countries of southern and eastern Europe and from backward races with customs and institutions widely different from ours and without the capacity of assimilating with our people as did the early immigrants. Many of those coming from these sources have very low standards of living, possess filthy habits, and are of an ignorance which passes belief. Types of the classes referred to representing various alien races and nationalities may be observed in some of the tenement districts of Elizabeth, Orchard, Rivington, and East Houston Streets, New York City. In response, members of the “Citizens Committee of Orchard, Rivington, and East Houston Streets” fired off a letter to President Taft. They called Williams’s remarks “false,” “libelous,” and a “gratuitous insult” and maintained that “no public official should be permitted with impunity to malign a large and populous section of this great city.” Williams denied that he was targeting Jews, but was only stating “economic, industrial, and sociological facts which are open to the observation of anyone.” However, in a 1912 letter to Theodore Roosevelt, Williams complained that many Jews put “the interests of their race before those of their country.”
HIAS officials continued to lobby the government on behalf of Jewish immigrants. At Ellis Island, immigrants were too often reduced to words on a sheet of paper: transcripts of hearings, summaries of fact by officials, and medical inspection records. Immigrant aid societies were able to add the human element to this often two-dimensional bureaucratic story. Though immigrants were barred from having lawyers represent them at board of special inquiry hearings, men like Irving Lipsitch served as combination defense attorney and lobbyist.
While it was the job of William Williams and his inspectors to execute the law faithfully, immigrant aid societies became the immigrants’ advocates, tilting the scale in the immigrants’ favor when no one else would.