AT THE RAILROAD TICKET OFFICE,
ELLIS ISLAND
Ports of Entry
Scarcely any other three words form a phrase freighted with meaning so vital to our national life. Here is the convergence of streams of humanity flowing from the ends of the world. Through these gateways more than 33,000,000 aliens have come to our shores. Much that they have brought has been antagonistic to the spirit and purpose of our institutions, but their great contribution has been the world's wealth of physical strength, intellectual power, spiritual vigor, religious fervor and the incarnation of the yearning passion of the soul for liberty and life. It is our duty to recognize the value of their offering in terms of manhood and womanhood and not merely in terms of finance and business, and to so discharge the responsibility involved in opening our gates, as to help them to properly appreciate their privilege and opportunity, and to make possible the realization of their ideals.
Dr. Steiner says, "It is a big task, the biggest and most difficult and yet most rewarding task the Church has to face."
The Immigrant's Welcome
The Federal authorities endeavor to receive the immigrant with a genuinely humane welcome. Some of our ports have not buildings properly equipped for receiving and examining immigrants and caring for the detained. Occasionally there are rumors of instances of harsh treatment on the part of the Government. For some of these there is doubtless occasion, but one who has the opportunity to see the Ports of Entry service in all its phases through a series of months, will be convinced that honesty, carefulness and kindness characterize the method and manner of the Government officials and employees, and that nowhere else is the immigrant received more humanely and treated more kindly and courteously than at our Ports of Entry.
Dr. Frederic C. Howe, Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York, recently said, "Ellis Island is public property and those of us who are over there are public servants. We have made provisions at Ellis Island so that every man, woman or child in the United States can participate in its administration. We did that through inviting suggestions, criticisms, complaints. We believe the best curative of disease is sunlight, and the sunlight that we are aiming to turn on Ellis Island is the sunlight of as many human eyes as will turn themselves on that station with their suggestions or complaints. I invite you to come to Ellis Island, to see the station and to examine it, to meet your friends and to aid the six hundred men over there in the Government employ in making Ellis Island a place we all love."