Reforming America: a Thematic Encyclopedia and Document Collection of the Progressive Era [2 Volumes] by Johnson Jeffrey A.; Johnson Jeffrey A.;

Author:Johnson, Jeffrey A.; Johnson, Jeffrey A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO, LLC

FURTHER READING

Burke, Flannery. From Greenwich Village to Taos: Primitivism and Place at Mabel Dodge Luhan’s. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008.

Hahn, Emily. Mabel: A Biography of Mabel Luhan Dodge. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

Palken Rudnick, Lois. Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987.

ELLIS ISLAND

* * *

Ellis Island is a small island in the Hudson River, just beyond the Statue of Liberty in the Port of New York, that served as the primary processing station for immigrants who arrived from Europe between 1892 and 1954. Americans viewed the processing station as a way to implement Progressive ideals of bureaucratic efficiency to handle unprecedented flows of immigrants and science to determine who could enter the United States. To the 12 million men, women, and children who transitioned through the center, Ellis Island represented the gateway to a better life.

Until the 1880s the United States had left regulation of immigration to the states. New York, for example, established Castle Garden as a processing station to deal with thousands of migrants who arrived from Europe in the port of New York City. Americans, by the 1880s, however, began to fear that the unregulated and ever increasing number of immigrants, especially the waves of poorer migrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, would turn the United States into a poor house. Progressive reformers in Congress decided that instead of states carrying the financial and social burden, the federal government should regulate immigration by interrogating and inspecting immigrants and categorizing them according to wealth, disease, and potential criminality. Government oversight thus would serve the public interest, limit corruption, and assure honest hard-working immigrants opportunity to prosper.

The 1891 Immigration Act established the first federal immigration inspection station on Ellis Island. It opened its doors on January 1, 1892. A fire in June 1897 destroyed the wooden buildings on the island and temporarily stopped processing there. Congress, appreciating the effectiveness and efficiency of the processing center during the previous five years, appropriated millions of dollars for rebuilding, and Ellis Island reopened on December 17, 1900. The busiest year for the center was 1907 when a record 1 million immigrants, or about 2,700 individuals per day, were processed that year.

Immigrants, who hoped to escape joblessness, poverty, conscription, religious persecution, and political oppression in Europe, viewed Ellis Island as the entryway into a country where they could start anew and create a better life for themselves, and especially for their children. At the same time, the processing center also created anxiety because inspectors could deny these hopes by refusing admission to the United States.

Although immigrants perceived the United States as a place of security and prosperity, not all Americans wanted foreigners to flood into the country. The nation needed healthy workers to create a more competitive economy during the Industrial Revolution but did not want unhealthy immigrants who could pass diseases to Americans or become a burden to the state. Some questioned whether the country, already struggling to address the serious social problems created through industrialization and urbanization, could absorb more people.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.