Evening star., 1935-02-03
VIEWS AND REVIEWS


Corsi was brought to America
by his mother and STEP
father in 1907 when he was 10
years old. At that time of flood tide
in immigration the United States was
still the promised land" celebrated
by Mary Antin and others. Oppor-
tunities were still abundant, industry
wanted cheap labor, and the doors
were wide open. Edward Corsi was
one of those immigrants for whom
the promise was fulfilled. In 1881
President Hoover appointed him Com
missioner of Ellis Island. Though re-
appointed by President Roosevelt, he
resigned at the end of January, 1884,
to become director of relief in New
York City, under Mayor La Guardia.
With the almost complete cessation of
immigration, he felt that his work at
Ellis Island was over.
Mr.. Corsi's first job at Ellis Island
was to clean up the racketeering,
then recently brought to light through
the re-entry permit racket; his sec
ond was to humaniZe the system of
handling immigrants. Before telling
of his own work he gives something
Of the history Of Ellis Island and its
predecessor, Castle Garden, first fort,
then a place of amusement, then an
immigrant station, now the New York
aquarium. When he arrived as COM
missioner he found at the island
Martocci, an interpreter who had
been there when the Corsi family
entered, and from him heard many
stories of the early days when the
caravan of immigrants was long and
uninterrupted, and when there were
no such things as sanitation and
cleanliness. At one time $50 gypsies
landed from one steamer and made a
brilliant picture in their gorgeous
tribal costumes, but attention was dis
tracted from the gay costumes when
it was found that 48 of the children
had measles. They were sent to
Brooklyn hospital. Then gypsies
swarmed in from Long Island and New
Jersey to meet their immigrant friends
and relatives and the rumor was
started that the children who had
been taken away by the doctors had
been drowned A riot started among
the gypsies, those detained and those
from the outside, with fusillade of
shoes and other articles at hand. 1t
was checked by permitting the parents
of one child to 60 to the hospital and
see how the children were being cared
for.
In comparing past and present
problems at Ellis Island, Mr. Corsi
discusses informally and with compre-
hension Of the complicated questions
involved the changes in American i'm
migration policy. One reason why
the door was kept open so long was
the optimistic, sentimental attitude
of the average American that the
country had unlimited opportunities
for developments and that any hon
est man should be welcome to come
here and make a living. Another,
less idealiStic, was the desire of the
employing class for industrious and
cheap labor. 1t was primarily the
opposition Of American labor compe-
tition from this cheap labor which
brought about first the exclusion Of
Chinese laborers in 1884, and then
contract laborers in 1885. The lit
eracy test law was passed in 1917.
Since the two quota laws of 1921
and 1924, Ellis Island has dealt more
in deportations than receptions, and
the present depression with its mill
lions of unemployed and the burden
on private and public charity has
caused the cutting of even the legal
quotas. Last year We received a
total Of only 21,000. Eighty thousand
more left our shores than arrived
here" Some of the deportations have
had their comic aspect, as in the
case of a number of thrifty Scots who,
weary of depression America, became
anarchists in order to obtain free
transportation back to the Clyde, but
more of the implications were tragic.
Mr.. Corsi has the utmost sympathy
as every one must have, with the
tragedies caused by deportations un-
der the law, the separating Of fami-
lies, the return of people to lands
where they have no place and no
friends; but if pity for individual
cases were allowed to nullify law
for the general welfare, our already
heavy burden of care for defective
and dependent classes might well be-
come insuperable. Certainly it is
population that alien criminals, ply
sical and mental detectives, and va
grants who are public charges should
be allowed to remain in the country.
Perhaps our liberal policy continued
too long.
But the chief interest of Mr. Cor
sis book does not lie in its discus
sion of immigration law and policy.
Its concrete detail as record of
personal experience makes it a vital
social and human story. One of the
most interesting chapters is the ac-
count of the destructive fire at Ellis
Island in 1897, which resulted in the
erection of the present substantial
buildings. An episode of the fire
was the claim of the 81 immigrants,
there at the time, that in their burned
baggage was many times the amount
of money required for entry, SO that
IF reports of the contents of this
lost luggage could be believed, on
That tragic night a boatload OF MIL
lionaire immigrants were being lodged
on Ellis Island"
X X n X
WE JEWS. BY George E. Sokolsky.
New York: Doubleday, Doran &
Co.
HrTLERIsM has been responsible
for much pro-Semitic, as well
as anti-Semitic propaganda. Mr..
Sokolsky's book Is neither. Written
by Jew who is not ashamed of the
fact, yet Is not devoutly religious, it
is the best balanced book we have
seen on the subject, and we have
seen many. Mr.. Sokolsky's book on
the Sino-Japanese situation of recent
years, "The Tinder Box of Asia"
has shown that he has not the tenn
permanent of a fanatic or a propa-
gandist. He has a reasoning type of
mind, not one easily moved to SYM
pathy with one side or the other.
So in this calm, understanding inves-
tigation of the position of the Jew