I think it was about two o’clock when we were finally allowed to go aboard the barges at the end of the pier. I observed two men following my wife and myself and surveying us critically. At the gangplank they stopped us and examined our bit of baggage very carefully.
“You may save yourself some inconvenience by telling us who you are,” said the one man very courteously to me.
“Who are you?” I said in broken English, expecting the appearance of some grafting game.
“I am a special customs inspector, and we spotted you two as queer. What are you?”
“We are writers making a study of the immigration question. What did you spot as queer?”
“We thought you were dagoes all right, but this lady is the first woman I have ever seen in the steerage with such well-kept finger-nails, and we were a little suspicious.”
In the work of hustling the immigrants aboard the barges the dock men displayed great unnecessary roughness, sometimes shoving them violently, prodding them with sticks, etc., and one young Apulian who paused to look around for his father aroused the ire of the dock man nearest him, who planted a by no means gentle kick in his fundamentals, observing,—
“Oh, get down there; you’re too damned slow!”
One barge with power and another without, if I remember correctly, were lashed together, or there may have been a tug on the outer side of the second craft. Antonio and Camela, with the larger portion of the party, were hustled into the second barge, while my wife and I squeezed into the second, little Ina with us. The great improvements in the way of heating, seating, and hospital accommodation for the sick which Commissioner William Williams and his assistant Allan Robinson were then making were not yet in evidence in the barge on which we rode. We had either to squat on the floor or sit on our baggage, already mashed and crushed till the point of utter dissolution seemed not far away, so we stood up.
Slowly we steamed down the river in mid-afternoon, and when we reached the slip at Ellis Island we merely tied up, for there were many barge-loads ahead of us, and we waited our turn to be unloaded and examined.