Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 273, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1914 — Emmigrants' Door to america [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Emmigrants' Door to america

//MNO New York” says a swingle ■ ing doon/in the more subI terranean regions of the great Ellis Island building. The laconic label conveys as little of the hopes and tragedies it ends as of the hopes and tragedies it begins, writes Frances A. Kellor, managing director oT the North American Civic League for Immigrants, in the New York Star. It is guarded by a youth in blue uniform, who, developing a slight interest in me after I had been standing off at one side of the door for several hours, nonchalantly explained, “This here is the most important job on the island—they only get past me if they’ve had ; . their slips marked O. K. for New York upstairs.” Here h.e deftly_extracted O. K. slips from the hands of three bewildered Poles whcl had reached him. Uncertain as to what was wanted, and tod overloaded with bundles to hand over anything, they had simply waited for him to take any action "that was to taken. He gave them a friendly shove toward the door, and by a vigorous pantomime tried to Instruct the third to conceal in an Inside pocket the money which he had been showing at the desk upstairs and which he still held unrolled in his hand. But the Pole had already shoved his bundle through the door; and realizing that this long corridor leading to the dock was the homestretch of his long adventure, he was now moving on too quickly to profit by advice or new ideas. Many Are Detained. This door into the New York world is at the bottom of a long staircase

down which may come only those immigrants discharged for New York city. Not even all those that are bound for New York cfty pass unchallenged through the swinging door. Those that are waiting for friends, or relatives go down the stairs, it is true, but their section of he stairs leads to a detention room, not to the swinging dopy. From where I stood I could see into the detention room, for a small part of the dividing Wall is made of iron screening. It was full of women and children, some of them lunching happily, others rising on the benches in nervous hope or fdfir at every new sight or sound. 'As the afternoon wore on and a denser line began to move more quickly down the stairs —there were several ships in that day bringing mixed crowds of Italians, Greeks, Hungarians and Russians —I followed the line through the' swinging door, down to the barren, cellarlike corridor, past the cagelike quarters of the waiting friends to the outbuilding adjoining the dock. The uneven line scuttled along resoundingly on the wooden floor until at the dock end It was halted In front of a high desk. Guide and Transfer Agency. The desk belongs to the Immigrant Guide and Transfer, established to deliver immigrants that need .and- desire guidance to any part of greater New York for sums ranging from 25 cents to |l. ♦ The investigation that preceded the organization of the Immigrant Guide and Transfer In* 1909 disclosed the presence of fifty or-sixty licensed and unlicensed porters, runners and cabmen at the -barge office. There was almost no check upon their operations. True, their licenses were revocable if they were convicted of abuses, but the several licenses for porters, runners and cabmen were issued by several different powers, and

if a man lost one sort of license he could promptly apply for another. Moreover there was no system for Identifying license holders, so that there was no practicable way of distinguishing between a licensed man and one that had merely rented an official cap for two dollars and bought an official badge for 50 cents. Men licensed only to carry baggage offered guide service and men that had never owned hacks pursued their various ways of dividing the immigrant from his money under a hackman’s license. It has been estimated-that more people have been robbed 4n one day in the little space between the barge office gate and the South Ferry subway or elevated than in any other' place of a similar size in the United States. Preyed on the Ignorant. '■ In the heyday.of the activities of unscrupulous porters and runners a stout little man about twenty4wo years old with dark burly hair and dark eyes took up his permanent camp near the fruit stand under the_ elevated stairs and followed groups, of immigrants to the ticket offices of the elevated road and toe subway. He displayed a porter's license and showed marvelous skill in getting immigrants away from the guides of philanthropic societies, grabbing their addresses out of their hands and taking general possession of them. In his palmy days he boasted that he “cleaned up SI,OOO a week." Naturally Christos Constantlnos, jrho gave a “guide” money, enough to get him a ticket to Chicago and was. put oh the subway and told to stay

there until he got to Chicago “tomorrow night,” showed himself stupid and dazed when the subway guard insisted that Christos must get off at Dyckman street. And Ivan Burif, who handed over his ?25 for ah official cap sold him by a runner who declared his father was “boss of the American government" and that the cap represented a life job for Ivan, was in a high state of excitement when he found himself not"oply without the job but also without his entire capital in America. Another run-ner,-after giving a Greek Immigrant a counterfeit |2O bill for sls in English money, piloted him around corners till he was confused, and then slipped away from him. On a busy day the Immigrant Guide and Transfer agent may arrange to deliver several hundred Immigrants. These are tagged at the desk with a yellow ticket pinned under the lapel so that they can be identified by the Immigrant and Transfer guides. Im- < migrants have been known to object tin this public tagging, and to meet this sufficiently human objection a rather less .obtrusive button is supplied to the sensitive. I saw that many of the line accepted the guide service with very evident relief, others phlegmatically as it enduring one more formality. These lest, perhaps, needed the service not. least. Often 1 marveled at the patient, able agent, at his careful questions and explanations, at his ready shifting from one language or dialect to another, or at his genius In deciphering some of the addresses that were spread before him. Sometimes they were written, sometimes printed, one-half In Lithuanian, perhaps, and the other half in a Lithuanianized English. I noticed that one man who could not himself read the address he carried maintained most loudly that he needed no assistance.

ELLIS ISLAND, NEW YORK