American Passage

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American Passage Page 57

by Vincent J. Cannato


  249 Goddard’s test did not go: Goddard, “The Binet Test in Relation to Immigration.”

  249 Goddard’s staff chose: Henry H. Goddard, “Mental Tests and the Immigrant,” Journal of Delinquency, September 1917. For some unknown reason, perhaps owing to his sloppiness as a researcher, Goddard claims to have tested “about 165 immigrants.” Other scholars have used that figure as well, but a count of the figures from Goddard’s own article comes up with 191: 54 Jews, 70 Italians, 45 Russians, and 22 Hungarians. Even the numbers on Goddard’s chart (252) don’t add up to 191, and there is an error of arithmetic in one of the columns.

  250 The results, wrote Goddard: Gelb, “Henry H. Goddard and the Immigrants, 1910–1917: The Studies and their Social Context”; Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 194–198.

  251 As for whether: Zenderland, Measuring Minds, 274.

  251 Even a nonscientist: The debate over Goddard’s legacy is contentious. On one side, Leon Kamin and Stephen Jay Gould have been harshly critical of Goddard’s work, methods, and intentions. On the other side, Franz Samelson, Leila Zenderland, and Steven Gelb have been more measured in their interpretations, placing the psychologist within the context of his times. Gelb’s description is the most helpful: “Goddard’s writings about Ellis Island immigrants, when placed in their proper context, do not provide evidence of the virulent type of racism with which his name has become associated. Goddard is more accurately described as a ‘decent’ man, pursuing questions and conclusions—in the name of disinterested ‘science’—that were, in fact, driven by the engines of an institutionalized, pernicious social ideology.” Gelb, “Henry H. Goddard and the Immigrants, 1910–1917: The Studies and Their Social Context.” For a harsher view of Goddard, see Leon Kamin, “The Science and Politics of IQ,” Social Research 41 (1974).

  251 The Survey, the nation’s leading: Survey, September 15, 1917.

  252 Goddard had been: C. P. Knight, “The Detection of the Mentally Defective Among Immigrants,” JAMA, January 11, 1913.

  252 For immigrants suffering: E. H. Mullan, “Mental Examination of Immigrants: Administration and Line Inspection at Ellis Island,” Public Health Reports, U.S. Public Health Service, May 18, 1917, 737, 746.

  253 Ellis Island doctors: Knight, “The Detection of the Mentally Defective Among Immigrants”; E. H. Mullan, “Mental Examination of Immigrants: Administration and Line Inspection at Ellis Island,” 738.

  253 Howard Knox: For background on Knox, see John T. E. Richardson, “Howard Andrew Knox and the Origins of Performance Testing on Ellis Island, 1912– 1916,” History of Psychology 6, no. 2 (May 2003); John T. E. Richardson, “A Physician with the Coast Artillery Corps: The Military Career of Dr. Howard Andrew Knox, Pioneer of Psychological Testing,” Coast Defense Journal 15, no. 4, November 2001.

  253 Knox shared many: Howard A. Knox, “The Moron and the Study of Alien Defectives,” JAMA, January 11, 1913.

  253 Knox was also sensitive: Howard A. Knox, “Psychogenetic Disorders: Cases Seen in Detained Immigrants,” Medical Record, July 12, 1913; Howard A. Knox, “The Difference Between Moronism and Ignorance,” NYM, September 20, 1913; E.K. Sprague, “Mental Examination of Immigrants,” Survey, January 17, 1914. “Does the Binet-Simon measuring scale of intelligence or its American modification . . . represent the average normal intelligence of practically the entire human race,” asked Ellis Island doctor Bernard Glueck. “Assuredly not. We are convinced of this both from experience with the immigrant and actual experimental investigation of the subject and were it considered necessary to adduce facts to prove the fallacy of such a contention, these could easily be gotten from the hundreds of case histories on file at Ellis Island.” Bernard Glueck, “The Mentally Defective Immigrant,” NYM, October 18, 1913. 254 Knox noted one case: Howard A. Knox, “Psychological Pitfalls,” NYM, March 14, 1914; Howard A. Knox, “Diagnostic Study of the Face,” NYM, June 14, 1913.

  254 Another Ellis Island doctor: Glueck, “The Mentally Defective Immigrant.” 255 Ignoring Goddard’s work: Knox, “The Moron and the Study of Alien Defectives.”

  255 The testing room: Howard A. Knox, “Measuring Human Intelligence,” Scientific American, January 19, 1915; Howard A. Knox, “Tests for Mental Defects,” Journal of Heredity 5 (1914).

  255 Once the conditions: Glueck, “The Mentally Defective Immigrant.” 256 This battery of questions: NYT, November 1, 7, 1912.

  256 The questions that: Howard A. Knox, “A Comparative Study of the Imaginative Powers in Mental Defectives,” Medical Record, April 25, 1914. 257 Immigrants were also: E. H. Mullan, “The Mentality of the Arriving Immigrant,” Public Health Bulletin 90 (October 1917): 118–124.

  257 Ellis Island doctors were increasingly bothered: Bernard Glueck, “The Mentally Defective Immigrant”; Zenderland, Measuring Minds, 276–277. 257 Howard Knox created: For examples of the various tests, see Howard A. Knox, “Mentally Defective Aliens: A Medical Problem,” Lancet-Clinic, May 1, 1915; Howard A. Knox, “A Scale Based on the Work at Ellis Island for Estimating Mental Defect,” JAMA, March 7, 1914; Mullan, “The Mentality of the Arriving Immigrant.” Mullan’s report contains detailed results from the whole array of tests used at Ellis Island on a sample of literate and illiterate immigrants in 1914. 258 These tests were about: Mullan, “The Mentality of the Arriving Immigrant,” 42–43; T. E. John, “Knox’s Cube Imitation Test: A Historical Overview and an Experimental Analysis,” Brain and Cognition 59 (2005).

  258 In 1913, the number of: NYT, September 16, 1913; Berth Boody, A Psychological Study of Immigrant Children at Ellis Island, reprint (New York: Arno Press, 1970), 65; Knox, “Mentally Defective Aliens: A Medical Problem,” 495. 259 Like others: Howard Knox, “Mental Defectives,” NYM, January 31, 1914.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: MORAL TURPITUDE 260 Dressed in a large green: Time, March 1, 1926; Edward Corsi, In the Shadow of Liberty (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 201–210.

  260 Vera’s problems began: Vera married for a third time in 1930 to seventy-fiveyear-old millionaire Sir Rowland Hodge. In 1934, she asked for a divorce. The Earl of Craven died in 1932 in France at the age of thirty-five.

  261 Immigration officials declared: Quoted in Black’s Law Dictionary, 7th ed. (St. Paul, MN: West Group, 1999), 1026.

  261 The term entered American: Jane Perry Clark, Deportation of Aliens from the United States to Europe (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 164, 171; Brian C. Harms, “Redefining ‘Crimes of Moral Turpitude’: A Proposal to Congress,” Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 15 (2001).

  263 Vera could now attend to: NYT, March 16, 1926.

  264 Angry at the reception: The Vera Cathcart story was prominent enough to warrant a mention in Frederick Lewis Allen’s popular history of the 1920s, where it was listed as a notable event of early 1926, along with Byrd’s flight over the North Pole and the disappearance of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s (New York: Perennial Classics, 1931; reissued 1990), 181.

  264 Women of all nationalities: Deirdre M. Moloney, “Women, Sexual Morality, and Economic Dependency in Early U.S. Deportation Policy,” Journal of Women’s History 18, no. 2 (Summer 2006). Moloney claims that the “enforcement of immigration policies concerning women’s sexuality differed according to their race and ethnicity.” She offers only anecdotal, but not statistical, evidence for the claim.

  264 Giulia Del Favero: Document No. 16129, Box 23, Entry 7, INS.

  265 Sometimes, though, those vultures: Campbell and Rodgers Report, June 2, 1900, to Secretary of the Treasury, Boxes 157–158, TVP.

  266 Immigration officials continued: File 52388-59, INS.

  266 A young Serbian woman : File 52388-77, INS.

  267 Young women who transgressed: File 53155-125, INS.

  268 Immigration officials also: Some scholars have seen the imposition of morality tests as specifically targeted against women. One historian, discussing the exclusion of a pregnant, unmarried woman named Dolan, argued that, “it was hi
ghly unlikely that the man who impregnated her would have been similarly excluded. Dolan’s story painfully illustrates how the incorporation of patriarchal heterosexual imperatives into immigration policy resulted in the exclusion of women who violated its order.” Of course, for practical reasons, had the father of the child entered alone, there would have been no way for inspectors to tell that he had fathered an illegitimate child. Had the father of the child entered with his pregnant girlfriend, however, both man and woman would have been excluded or forced to marry before entering the country. Eithne Luibheid, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 3–5.

  268 “I had approved exclusion”: Oscar Straus Diary, Box 22, OS.

  268 In another case: File 52279-14, INS.

  268 Sometimes women could use: File 53257-34, INS.

  270 Oftentimes, the moral turpitude: William M. Sullivan, “The Harassed Exile: General Cipriano Castro, 1908–1924,” Americas 33, no. 2 (October 1976); J. Fred Rippy and Clyde E. Hewitt, “Cipriano Castro: ‘Man Without a Country,’ ” American Historical Review 55, no. 1 (October 1949).

  270 In December 1912: NYT, December 31, 1912.

  271 He arrived on: New York Herald Tribune, August 18, 1942.

  271 At his hearing: File 53166-8, INS.

  271 Castro had a number: WP, January 3, 1913.

  272 One month after: Memorandum in the case of Cipriano Castro, January 30,

  1913, Folder 39, Box 59, CN.

  272 Meanwhile, New York Democrats: NYT, February 16, 1913.

  272 Castro returned to America: On Castro’s 1916 visit, see File 53166-8C, INS. 272 This time, however, officials: NYT, December 8, 1924.

  273 The solicitor of the Department: File 53371-25, INS.

  273 The case of Marya Kocik: File 53148-19, INS.

  274 Officials became: File 53986-67, INS.

  274 Eva Ranc provided officials: File 54050-228, INS.

  277 Eva Ranc’s case shows: Quoted in Francesco Cordasco and Thomas Monroe

  Pitkin, The White Slave Trade and the Immigrants: A Chapter in American Social History (Detroit: Blaine Ethridge Books, 1981), 26.

  277 There was a term for this: Outlook, November 6, 1909.

  277 The imagery implied: Jane Addams, “A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil,” McClure’s Magazine, November 1911.

  277 Reports began to filter: Edwin Sims, “The White Slave Trade,” Wo m a n’s Wo r l d, September 1908.

  278 Ellis Island inspector Marcus Braun: File 52484-1-F, 1-G, INS.

  278 French authorities complained: Letter from Marcus Braun to Commissioner General of Immigration, September 16, 1909, File 52484/1-F, INS.

  279 McSweeney focused on: Letter from Edward F. McSweeney to Terence V. Powderly, July 27, 1898, Box 125, Series 2, TVP.

  279 In 1908, the case: Mark Thomas Connelly, The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 114–115; U.S. v. Bitty, 208 U.S. 393 (1908).

  280 Former New York police commissioner: Gen. Theodore A. Bingham, The Girl That Disappears: The Real Fact About the White Slave Traffic (Boston: Richard G. Badger, Gorham Press, 1911), 15.

  280 He found that talent: George Kibbe Turner, “The Daughters of the Poor,” McClure’s Magazine, November 1909. For more on the Independent Benevolent Association, see Timothy J. Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790–1920 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 261–262.

  280 The fight against: Mara L. Keire, “The Vice Trust: A Reinterpretation of the White Slavery Scare in the United States, 1907–1917,” Journal of Social History 35, no. 1 (2001).

  280 Some, like Theodore Bingham: Quoted in Cordasco and Pitkin, 22. For more on Bingham, see James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto, NYPD: A City and its Police (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 141–142.

  281 Despite the increased: File 51777-303, INS.

  281 The 1911 Dillingham Commission: “Importing Women for Immoral Purposes: A Partial Report from the Immigration Commission on the Importation and Harboring of Women for Immoral Purposes,” 61st Congress, 2nd Session, Document No. 196, 1909, 68.

  282 On the other hand: “Importing Women for Immoral Purposes,” 58–59.

  282 Single French women: Edward J. Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight Against White Slavery, 1870–1939 (New York: Schocken Books, 1983), 166.

  282 The charge of: On the relationship between Jews and prostitution, see Lloyd Gartner, “Anglo-Jewry and the Jewish International Traffic in Prostitution, 1885– 1914,” AJS Review 7 (1982); Egal Feldman, “Prostitution, the Alien Woman and the Progressive Imagination, 1910–1915,” American Quarterly, Summer 1967; and Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice.

  282 The link between: Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, 156–157, 160. 283 Were most prostitutes: “Importing Women for Immoral Purposes,” 60; Ruth Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900–1918 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 1982), 139–140; Gilfoyle, City of Eros, 292. 283 Were large numbers: Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood, 118; Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, 156–157.

  283 The Dillingham Commission: “Importing Women for Immoral Purposes,” 51, 54–55.

  283 William Williams also believed: Letter from William Williams to Commissioner-General of Immigration, December 18, 1912, File 52809-7E, INS. 284 Williams was probably: Rosen, the Lost Sisterhood, 118, 133–134, 137. On the debate over whether white slavery was myth or reality, see Connelly, The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era, Chapter 6, and Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood, Chapter 7. Connelly argues that white slavery was largely a myth that scapegoated immigrants for the problems in American cities. Rosen argues that “a careful review of the evidence documents a real traffic in women, a historical fact and experience that must be integrated into the record.” Rosen writes that various contemporary investigations showed that “the sale of some women into sexual slavery is an inescapable fact of the American past.” Another historian agrees with Rosen. “Even a superficial sampling of contemporary evidence leaves no doubt that a white-slave traffic existed in the United States.” But while the prostitution business was a reality, “no nationally organized white slave syndicate existed.” Roy Lubove, “The Progressives and the Prostitute,” Historian, May 1962.

  284 The public may have: File 53155-144, INS.

  285 On June 9, 1914: File 53986-43, INS.

  286 The Supreme Court failed: “Redefining ‘Crimes of Moral Turpitude’: A Proposal to Congress.”

  286 The reach of: INS: I-94W Nonimmigrant Visa Waiver Arrival/Departure Form.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: WAR

  289 At a few minutes: On the Black Tom explosion, see Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America, 1914–1917 (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1989); Tracie Lynn Provost, “The Great Game: Imperial German Sabotage and Espionage against the United States, 1914–1917,” PhD dissertation, University of Toledo, 2003; NYT, July 31, August 1, 1916; NYW, July 31, August 1, 1916. Witcover called the Black Tom explosion “the centerpiece of one of the greatest and most cunning deceptions ever perpetrated on the United States by a foreign power.”

  290 On Manhattan’s Lower East Side: “Why Dveire Kept Her Head,” Jewish Immigration Bulletin, November 1916.

  291 The few barges: Survey, August 5, 1916. An explosion on the Jersey piers in 1911 also caused damage at Ellis Island. The cause of that explosion was either the careless handling of explosives being loaded onto ships at the Jersey pier or an explosion in a ship’s boiler, which set off ten thousand pounds of black powder. See Files 53173-26 and 53173-26B, NA and NYT, February 2, 1911. 292 The road to: Quoted in Witcover, Sabotage, 310–311.

  293 Any male over: “President’s Proclamation of a State of War, and Regulation Governing Alien Enemies,” NYT, April 7, 1917. For more on the implications of the detention of German alien enemies in World War I, see Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants Y
ou: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  294 The German officers: Frederic C. Howe, The Confessions of a Reformer (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967), 272.

  294 One exception was: NYT, June 20, 1917.

  295 Another detainee: File 54188-473E, INS.

  295 Not everyone felt: File 54188-468M, INS.

  295 Most were not: “Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration,” 1918, 14.

  296 Other cases were: File 54188-468H, INS.

  296 The militarization of: “U.S. Immigration Service Bulletin,” April 1, 1918, Folder 6, File 1133, IRL; Thomas Pitkin, Keepers of the Gate: A History of Ellis Island (New York: New York University Press, 1975), 120; NYT, September 23, 1918. 297 The man in charge: On Howe’s pre–Ellis Island career, see Kevin Mattson, Creating a Democratic Public: The Struggle for Urban Participatory Democracy During the Progressive Era (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998) and Howe, Confessions of a Reformer, 240–251.

  298 Howe sought to humanize: Howe, Confessions of a Reformer, 256–257; Survey, October 17, 1914; Outlook, October 21, 1914; Pitkin, Keepers of the Gate, 113– 114.

  298 “Aliens traveling in the cabin”: Memo from William Williams to Inspectors, Jan. 22, 1912, and Letter from William Williams to Commissioner-General of Immigration, Jan. 22, 1912, File 53438-15, INS.

  299 News of this inspection: File 53438-15, INS; NYS, January 22, 1912. 300 With Ellis Island overflowing: File 53139-13B, INS; Frederic C. Howe, “Turned Back in Time of War,” Survey, May 6, 1916.

  301 At Bennet’s urging: “Ellis Island Immigration Station, Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, 64th Congress, First Session, July 28, 1916.”

  301 One case that aroused: “Ellis Island Immigration Station, Hearings,” 54. 301 At the hearing: “Ellis Island Immigration Station, Hearings,” 53. 301 Not only was Howe: Howe, Confessions of a Reformer, 270–271.

 

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