Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 289, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1920 — 15,000,000 FIGHTING TO EMIGRATE TO AMERICA [ARTICLE]

15,000,000 FIGHTING TO EMIGRATE TO AMERICA

New York, December 2.—Fifteen 1 million men, women and children of all social and economic ciaasificatiorW, gespresenting every nationality in Europe, are fighting for passage to the United States, according to reports submitted by seventeen trans-Atlantic steamship company representatives to Frederick A. Wallis, commissioner of immigration at Ellis Island. Every seaport city and town along the western and southern coasts of Europe, they said, was crowded with persons who, in their eagerness to leave for this country, have sold their homes and everything they possessed. Passport offices abroad were reported to be besieged by applicants. They also expressed the opinion that 5,000,000 Germans and Austrians were packed /up and ready , to sail as soon as the United States makes peace with their governi ments. Commissioner Wallis, who went to Washington today for a conference . with members of the house and sen- , ate immigration committees, said ; all records for immigration had i been broken recently. I “Eighty-seven per cent of immigrants enter the United States i through Ellis island,” he asserted, j “and there are 2,000 persons there > tonight who are shamefully crowd--1 ed. There is no use denying the fact that we have not enough room and they are still coming. “It would amaze one to know that on one particular day the Polish foreign office had 311,000 applications for passports. We are getting splendid men and women from Holland, ‘the Scandinavian countries and Czecho-Slovakia.”_ More immigrants are arriving from Poland than from any other country ,he said. Most of these people are Jewish. Commissioner Wallis said there we/e at least 1,000 persons at Ellis island who because of disease and other reasons would not be admitted. He added many immigrants arrived at the station showing the effects of malnutrition and that the hospital is always overcrowded.