Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 72, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1920 — MILLIONS FIGHT TO EMIGRATE [ARTICLE]

MILLIONS FIGHT TO EMIGRATE

To the United States—Ellis Island Is Filled. New York, Dec. 3. —Fifteen million men, women and children of all social and economic classifications, representing 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 officers abroad were reported to be besieged by applicants. They also expressed the opinion that five million Germans and Austrians were packed up and ready to sail as soon as the United States makes peace with their governments. Commissioner Wallis, who went to Washington for a conference with members of the house and senate immigration committees, said all records for immigration had been broken recently. “Eighty-seven per cent of immigrants enter the United States through Ellis Island,” he asserted, "and there are 2,000 persons there who are shamefully crowded. 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 that there were at least 1,000 persons at Ellis island who because of disease and other reasons would not be admitted. He added that many immigrants arrived at the station showing the effects of malnutrition and that the island hospital is always overcrowded.