Those whose citizenship was doubted by the inspector, and who had their families with them, were compelled to go to Ellis Island with them, or allow the families to go through the process alone.
At last we were summoned to pass aft and ashore. One torrent of humanity poured up each companion-way to the hurricane deck and aft, while a third stream went through the main deck alley-way, all lugging the preposterous bundles. The children, seeing sufficient excitement on foot to incite them to cry, and being by this time very hungry, began to yell with vigor. A frenzy seemed to possess some of the people as groups became separated. If a gangway had been set to a rail-port forward, there would have been little of the hullabaloo, but for a time it was frightful.
The steerage stewards kept up their brutality to the last. One woman was trying to get up the companion-way with a child in one arm, her deck chair brought from home hung on the other, which also supported a large bundle. She blocked the passage for a moment. One of the stewards stationed by it reached up, dragged her down, tore the chair off her arm, splitting her sleeve as he did so and scraping the skin off her wrist, and in his rage he broke the chair into a dozen pieces. The woman passed on sobbing, but cowed and without a threat.
As we passed down the gangway an official stood there with a mechanical checker numbering the passengers, and uniformed dock watchmen directed the human flood pouring off the ship where to set down the baggage to await customs inspection.
The scene on the pier had something impressive in it, well worthy of a painter of great human scenes. The huge enclosed place, scantily lighted by a few apertures, and massive with great beams and girders, was piled high in some places with freight, and over all the space from far up near the land end, where a double rope was stretched to prevent immigrants from escaping without inspection, down to the pier head, where the big door was open to allow the immigrants to pass out and aboard the barges waiting to convey them down the river again to Ellis Island, was covered with immigrants, customs inspectors, special Treasury detectives, Ellis Island officials, stevedores, ship’s people, dock watchmen, and venders of apples, cakes, etc.
The dock employees were all German, some of them speaking very little English, and none that I saw using Italian. While their plan of keeping the immigrants in line in order to facilitate the inspection of baggage was all very good and quite the proper thing, the brutal method in which they enforced it was nothing short of reprehensible. The natural family and neighborhood groups were separated, and a part of the baggage was dumped in one place and a part in another. When the dock men had herded the off-coming immigrants in a mass along the south side of the pier with an overflow meeting forward of the gangway on the north, it was the natural thing for the parties to begin to hunt for each other, and for leaders of groups to endeavor to assemble the baggage. Women ran about crying, seeking their children. Men with bunches of keys hurried hither and thither searching for the trunks to match in order to open them for customs inspection, and children fearsomely huddled in the heaps of baggage, their dark eyes wide with alarm. The dock men exhorted the people in German and English to remain where they were, and, when the eager Italians did not understand, pushed them about, belabored them with sticks, or seized them and thrust them forcibly back into the places they were trying to leave.
One massive German speaking good English was endeavoring to prevent our party from going to the spot where we saw our baggage, and where the customs inspectors were already at work. Camela and Concetta were in advance, Antonio was assembling the hand baggage, and my wife was guarding the camera, inoperative here for lack of light, so that there was no one with the party that understood German or English.
“Get back there, get back there!” he shouted in English.
“I must go unlock my trunks,” said Camela in Italian, understanding from his gesture that she was called to a halt.
“I’ll knock the brains out of a few of you dirty —— — —— with this club. G— —— your —— souls to —— any way. I’ll break your neck if you leave that line again, —— —— ——,” etc.