"Not a bit of it," answered the immigration official; "there's quite a sprinkling of first-class passengers as well. Why, during a period of three months recently, nearly three thousand cabin passengers were detained on the island here, and I suppose twenty per cent of them had come over in the first-class saloon."
"But why should any first-class passengers be stopped and shipped to Ellis Island?" queried the boy. "I don't understand. I thought Ellis Island was to keep out people who were paupers, or diseased, or were undesirable citizens!"
THE BIGGEST LINER IN THE WORLD COMING IN. Ocean steamship with thousands of immigrants on board entering New York harbor; the Statue of Liberty in the distance. (Brown Bros.)
"That's just exactly what it is for," the other replied, "but the United States government doesn't think that having money enough to pay for a first-class passage makes every man a desirable citizen! A first-class berth is no insurance against an incurable disease, for example, and there's nothing to prevent a criminal from coming over in the first cabin." He laughed. "Most of them do, I think," he said.
"It really never appealed to me just that way," the boy remarked; "I supposed always that first-class passengers went right through if they passed quarantine."
"That would mix things up," the older man said. "Why, in that case we should have all the mentally deficient, all the paupers, and all the freaks landing here in shoals. Any group of friends, or any government, for that matter, would find it cheap and easy to dump all the public charges of Europe on our shores for the price of a first-class ticket. Oh, no, that would never do. Once in a while, you hear passengers on the big liners complaining of the inquiries made before they land, but it's got to be done. You can see for yourself what would happen if we didn't."
"But if they bring plenty of money, they would not become public charges."
"No, and we can't exclude them on that ground. But money, for example, has nothing to do with crime or anarchism or things of that sort. I tell you, there's a big slice of our work done before ever a vessel reaches her dock at a New York pier. Of course, problems do come up nearly every day, such as circus freaks, for instance."
"You mean the living skeleton, the tattooed lady, the fat baby, the giant, and so forth?" asked Hamilton.