A whole series of official procedures took place during the crossing. These were performed by the shipping companies, who were more or less responsible for the passengers they took aboard — they had to pay for their passengers’ living expenses on Ellis Island, and they were obliged to repatriate any emigrants who were turned away. The procedures included a medical examination (usually bungled), disinfections, vaccinations, and the establishment of a personal record for each emigrant that listed his name, country of origin, destination, means, judicial record, sponsor in the United States, and so forth.
On Ellis Island itself the examination procedures lasted at best from three to five hours. The arrivals first underwent a medical examination. Any doubtful case was detained and subjected to a much more thorough medical inspection; a number of contagious diseases, particularly trachoma, favus, and tuberculosis, meant automatic expulsion. Emigrants who emerged from this examination unscathed were then asked, after a waiting period of variable length, to appear at the legal desks. Behind each of these sat an inspector and an interpreter. (For many years Fiorello LaGuardia, before becoming mayor of New York, was an interpreter in Yiddish and Italian on Ellis Island.) The inspector had about two minutes in which to decide whether or not the emigrant had a right to enter the United Stales. He made his decision after asking a series of twenty-nine questions:
What is your name?
Where are you from?
Why have you come to the United Stales?
How old are you?
How much money do you have?
Where did you get this money?
Show it to me.
Who paid for your crossing?
Did you sign a contract in Europe for a job here?
Do you have any friends here?
Do you have any family here?
Is there anyone who can vouch for you?
What kind of work do you do?
Are you an anarchist?
— and so forth.
If the new arrival answered in a manner that was deemed satisfactory, the inspector would stamp his papers and let him leave, after wishing him “Welcome to America.” If there was any kind of problem, he wrote an “S.I.” on the arrival’s record. This stood for Special Inquiry, and after another waiting period the arrival would be summoned before a committee made up of three inspectors, who subjected the would-be immigrant to a far more detailed interrogation.
In 1917, overriding President Wilson’s veto, Congress passed the Literacy Act, which required immigrants to be able to read and write in their native language and also obliged them to take various intelligence tests. The system was already unfavorable to the new emigrants from eastern Europe, Russia, and Italy. (Those who arrived during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century had come from the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Holland, England, and Ireland). These new measures made the admission procedure even longer and, from one year to the next, much more difficult.
The majority of the inspectors did their work conscientiously and, with the help of their interpreters, did their best to obtain exact information from the new arrivals. A great many of them were of Irish origin and had little familiarity with the spelling and pronunciation of the names of central Europe, Russia, Greece, or Turkey. Furthermore, many emigrants hoped to acquire names that sounded American. Hence the innumerable incidents of name changes that occurred on Ellis Island. A man from Berlin became Berliner; another whose first name was Vladimir received Walter as his given name; a man whose first name was Adam became Mr. Adams; a Skyzertski was transformed into Sanders, a Goldenburg into Goldberg, and a Gold became Goldstein.