Color Days at Ellis Island
Fagin, Mary
March 31, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 573 COLOR DAYS AT ELLIS ISLAND By MARY FAGIN THE Registry Division. What tales, moods, colors, atmosphere! A tremendously large room surmounted by a noble...
...Unemotional is the immigrant of the cold regions...
...goose-stepping, between the rows of benches come the German men...
...Unrestrained, tempestuous voices...
...may prove a strange inquiry...
...Tall, colorless figures, poorly clothed, valises and grips in hand they slowly walk up the indicated aisles as if walking up an automatic stairway...
...The Jew frequently carries a doctor's certificate which either detains him or lands him in the hospital...
...Just a shadow...
...Dress and jewels of the conspicuous kind...
...Perhaps...
...On the benches waiting for their turn to be inspected, they cannot remain quiet...
...There is a graceful swing to the body crowned with a bundle...
...Tall, medium, small...
...A "square head" never thinks, like some immigrant of a more imaginative type, of flinging his luggage onto the end of the long bench and shooting it down, instead of carrying it all the way to the other end...
...But the hands are free...
...The women, especially the Czecho-Slovakian women, do not leave their native costume at some foreign port...
...oval, charming faces stealing glances at laughing teeth...
...Marching...
...Odd is the CzechoSlovakian woman's costume...
...or "Nothing...
...Like hot cakes," the inspectors have evolved a remark among themselves as applied to the registering and discharging of these blue-eyed people...
...Quiet and patient he seems as he stands at the desk answering questions asked by the inspector...
...But seldom are any of them detained...
...And, perhaps, this heaviness is caused by the immigrant's defensive attitude...
...a laughing and crying day...
...tears making lips salty...
...A remote, beautiful dome...
...is lost on him...
...No, sir," might be the answer...
...Perhaps all this quietness, indifference, patience, "lightness" is but a part of his resentment...
...But "Have you landing money...
...I was never sick," pleads the Jew, "please, tell me what does it mean...
...Unlike the Italian, the Scandinavian does not understand the language of gesticulation...
...Slowly they come...
...a feminine head can always support it...
...On a Scandinavian day, on a greyish-light day the Registry Division is calm and peaceful and undisturbed—and slightly dull...
...A Scandinavian day...
...Some exquisite women's faces, a profusion of old trinkets, jests, and carelessness, and good health, and music...
...A mixed day...
...A tremendously large room surmounted by a noble dome...
...Thoroughly prepared comes the Scandinavian, and his inspection is a simple task...
...The fingers form themselves into fanciful clusters, closing and opening eloquently...
...He understands questions put to him by the inspectors by means of gestures, often going through preliminary inspection without the aid of an interpreter...
...And carry the certificate this Jew must...
...a laughing and crying day...
...The Registry Division is light on a British day...
...is quite another matter...
...or "I haven't any...
...Women's faces oval-shaped, dark, arresting...
...Alert and obedient...
...To those who merge with the Italian immigrants the room has subtle meaning...
...On an Italian day the Registry Division is one black mass...
...The Americans...
...How old are you...
...A German Day:—Then still another light day...
...The Registry Division is alive with color on such a day...
...He remains a shadow of gloom in some corner of the Registry room...
...My father," "my uncle," "my sister...
...he must be spoken to in his own tongue...
...A light day with a difference...
...Almost always mourning somebody, relatives, near or remote...
...There is a noiseless loudness about the Slavs that makes them charming...
...Have you money...
...They run up the indicated aisles rapidly, as if the weight of their luggage were a matter of no consequence...
...Lu-i-gi" or "An-to-ni-o" sing through the Registry room, each vowel stressed and drawn out...
...quivering lips ask...
...A greyish-light day...
...A calm people...
...It is more than calling a name...
...Tears, anxiety...
...A Scandinavian Day:—Another light day...
...after a light day...
...He comes clean, intelligent, healthy...
...The women, too, carry heavy loads, carry them in a picturesque way...
...There were: An Italian Day:—A quick, dark, noisy people...
...names that are chanted—a naively musical people...
...there were colorful days...
...Many tales the wandering Jew has, and lighter he feels when he is given a chance to unburden himself to someone...
...A grayish-white dome which has looked long upon a red brick floor, long tan walls that are nearly all windows, a little raised platform harboring a piano and an organ, crowded rows of drab benches, high desks with attached lamps over them, two huge American flags suspended from a balcony, and people, people, people...
...There were days in this Registry room...
...A Mixed Day:—Like a summer twilight sky with blending colors crowding through the grey clouds is the Registry Division on a mixed day...
...they are heard and seen...
...Faces, dress, baggage—all are light...
...But at times this lightness of the Anglo-Saxon immigrant is heavy on the immigration force...
...And the immigrants from the Orient...
...A light day...
...Sir...
...Upturned faces, craning necks, searching eyes...
...There were dark and noisy days...
...Striking faces...
...Slavs, Jews, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Egyptians, Hindus, and many other nationalities have a habit of mixing, or rather are forced to mix, since most of these peoples must embark for the land of refuge from ports not in their own countries...
...For the Jew hopes...
...so is he...
...Energy bubbles within them...
...The Slav will carry his accordion or some other musical instrument and make use of it at every opportune and inopportune moment...
...The language of eyes, hands, limbs, is, wasted on him...
...Little chance these intelligent, healthy, clean, immaculately clean, people have to sit down...
...They don't need to wait...
...Is it this perfection about him that makes him somewhat grey...
...Quiet and patient the Britisher looks as he waits for his next...
...They run up the aisles, between the benches, huge bundles or chests on their backs or at their sides...
...melodic exclamations...
...it is his diploma of a year or two of homeless wandering before reaching the land of his dreams...
...Italian hands must be used in conversation...
...His dress is colorful...
...Without much ado he seems always ready to pick up the new life before him...
...a colorful day...
...there were light, grey, and dull days...
...Almost all dressed in grey come the tall and fair and rosy-cheeked Scandinavian men and women...
...yields "Sure, I have me landing check...
...Tight bodice on a thin waist-line topping a many colored, many folded skirt beating against high boots...
...A British Day:—English and Irish and Scotch...
...Musical instruments making feet tap...
...Friends and children are called at the top of the voice...
...Gaudy in dress, yet almost always in black...
...The Italian immigrant...
...Help from his kin makes him forget his misery...
...Pretty is the Registry floor with these skirts circling about...
...Rigidly it stays on, as if attached to the head...
...Generous pacifying...
...he may repeat several times before giving the desired answer...
...Passing through Ellis Island to a Scandinavian seems as matter of fact as taking his daily meal...
...A German day...
...A picturesque pattern they make, these various faces, costumes, voices, emotions, behaviors...
...And when a Hindu laughs—charming is the laughter that comes from pearl-white teeth and a very dark face...
...Few women come, and these try to keep up with their men...
...The Britisher resents being called an immigrant and being treated as one...
...How many years have you...
...Keen and alert...
...a colorful day...
...where are the Americans who come for us...
...it is a singing noise...
...And it is well that they are free...
...Size of bundle is of no importance...
...laughing and crying days...
...Though spoken to in his own tongue he sometimes fails to grasp the questions...
Vol. 3 • March 1926 • No. 21
