"[1]
[Sidenote: The Ellis Island Inflow]
See the living stream pour into America through the raceway of Ellis
Island.[2] There is no such sight to be seen elsewhere on the planet.
Suppose for the moment that all the immigrants of 1905 came in by that
wide open way, as eight tenths of them actually did. If your station had
been by that gateway, where you could watch the human tide flowing
through, and if the stream had been steady, on every day of the 365 you
would have seen more than 2,800 living beings--men, women, and children,
of almost every conceivable condition except that of wealth or
eminence--pass from the examination "pens" into the liberty of American
opportunity. Since the stream was spasmodic, its numbers did reach as
high in a single day as 11,343.
[Sidenote: A Motley Procession]
Imagine an army of nearly 20,000 a week marching in upon an unprotected
country. At the head come the motley and strange-looking
migrants--largely refugee Jews--from the far Russian Empire and the
regions of Hungary and Roumania. At the daily rate of 2,800 it would
take this indescribable assortment more than 166 days to pass in single
file. Then the Italians would consume about eighty days more.
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