The New York Custom-House [Castle Garden portion] (1884)

The incoming steamer—the Servia, of the Cunard Line, will answer as an example for all—reported by telegraph from Fire Island, is soon met as she slowly enters port under the guidance of a skillful pilot. The breathing ocean monster, bearing still on her nostrils the salt of much tempestuous spray, is covered with eager Americans returning home, curious foreign tourists, and anxious immigrants gazing for the first time on the shores of the promised land that henceforth is to be their home.

The revenue marine officer assigned to boarding duty, and the inspectors of passengers’ baggage, ascend the rope-ladder, as soon as the sanitary examination of the vessel has been completed by the Health Officer of the port. […]

The examination of personal baggage belonging to returning Americans and to foreign visitors is a matter of great interest to the parties concerned. As soon as the staff officer in charge receives the passenger list from the purser, he and his fellow-officials take their seats at the end of one of the long tables in the saloon. Blanks containing declarations of the different trunks, valises, rugs, etc., and of the dutiable goods contained in them, are on hand, and are filled out consecutively as the passengers, in long lines, present themselves to the inspectors. […]

While this lively scene is in progress the steamer is proceeding up the bay [New York Bay], enters the North River, and slowly moves into her dock.^[1] There matters wear a still more exciting aspect. Crowds of expectant friends are in waiting. Eager salutations are exchanged. The voyagers are as willing to quit the luxurious steamer as was Dr. Johnson the ship that he defined as “a prison, with a chance of being drowned.”^[2] The movable gangway is run from the dock to the deck. The cabin passengers pour down it in ceaseless streams, while the steerage passengers wait wistfully for later debarkation at Castle Garden. The staff officers, declarations in hand, follow. Baggage is landed and deposited in separate piles, according to the initials of the owners’ names, the proper label having been affixed on the steamer. The places are designated by huge letters on the wall of the shed. If there are many Smiths aboard, for instance, there will be a crowded congregation of trunks and owners about S. The examining inspectors are already drawn up in line across the dock, and nothing passes them without due scrutiny. Wearied travellers, who can leave their matters in the hands of friends, are relieved of further waiting, and after quick search of wraps and valises are allowed to depart in peace. […]

By the 346 saloon passengers arriving at New York in the Servia, 230 entries of dutiable goods were made, and on them $946 85 in imposts were collected. […]

When all the work of the examining officers on the dock has been performed they return to the Barge Office, and the inspectors assigned to superintend the discharge of the cargo take charge of the vessel.

But what of the immigrants in the steerage? Their turn comes next. In the Servia their accommodations have been sumptuous compared with those provided in steamers of Continental lines, and especially in those sailing from Holland. All the oxygen of the Atlantic is needed to save them from the diseases that foul air, unaccustomed food, close contact, and unavoidable uncleanliness induce. But even this must be denied in stormy voyages, and many of them arrive in physical condition that imperatively calls for medical assistance. “Man’s inhumanity to man” is often painfully visible on steamship and sailing vessel alike. Matters improve, it is true, but all too slowly. The dens in which many are cribbed, cabined, and confined are often unfit for the use of human beings. The smell of the ship is in the clothing of the unhappy occupants for long weeks after their escape. One vessel brought 1155 steerage passengers from Amsterdam in May, 1882. Spar deck and lower deck were crowded. An average of sixteen people occupied each room. The marvel is that the five deaths on the voyage had not been fifty.

These immigrants are a motley crowd. New York contains representatives of forty-four different nationalities. Those Armenians in red fez and Oriental costume will swell the number to forty-five. Small steamers, under the control of a landing agent who contracts with the steam-ship companies, take off the Babel crowd in detachments from all steamers, and convey them to Castle Garden. There, at the inspectors’ office, record is kept of the steamers arriving, the dates of arrival, the name of each vessel, the port from which she sailed, the number and names of the passengers, the births and deaths during the voyage, the number of packages sent to the public store at Castle Garden, and the names of the inspectors and inspectresses who examined each vessel. In 1881, 941 steamers, bringing 441,110 steerage passengers, were thus recorded; 3791 packages were sent to the public store for appraisement, and somewhat less than $10,000 in duties collected upon them. In 1883 the number of immigrants recorded was 405,352. Smuggling among the steerage passengers is mainly confined to persons who have been visiting their friends in Europe. Minute examination occasionally detects pieces of silk and velvet, rings, watches, gold chains, and liquors. Discretion is wisely intrusted to the officials, and is sparingly exercised toward genuine immigrants. Here is one young Teuton whose trunk reveals, now that its false bottom has been knocked out, a formidable array of little phials containing Magentropfen, or stomach drops, and oils wherewith to lubricate rheumatic limbs. The value of the whole is about twelve shillings—certainly not an inordinate supply for a dyspeptic Dutchman, and hardly enough to last a hypochondriac Yankee for a single month. The value of the 710 seizures of goods of all classes smuggled by incoming passengers in the year ending June 30, 1883, was $125,519.

For each package sent in for appraisement a check is given to the owner, and also a receipt by the United States Public Store-keeper. This check is returned when the package is taken away. Immigrants being poorer now than formerly, only $9360 were collected in duties in 1883. Free baggage is sent into another department, and is duly checked. After the immigrants have been duly registered, their uncurrent funds exchanged for American currency, and their railroad tickets purchased, the baggage is forwarded, after presentation of tickets at the office, to their destinations in the West, or in other parts of the country.^[3] The Castle Garden Express delivers such as is addressed to New York, Newark, and other near cities.

Castle Garden is one of the most beneficent institutions in the world, and owes its present uses largely to Dr. Friedrich Kapp, now a member of the Imperial German Reichsrath [sic⁴], but formerly a resident of New York. It is under the control of nine Commissioners of Emigration, appointed for the term of six years by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate of the State of New York. Thither let us follow a portion of the 6730 immigrants who arrived by seven different steamers on the 15th of May, 1882. The name of each, the date of his arrival, place of departure, number of his family (if any), whither bound, his business, and other particulars, are all registered. This record, together with that of the cabin passengers, is compared with the manifest of each captain, which manifest ought to exhibit the names of all the persons he had on board. It thus becomes a check on the greed of some who have brought more passengers than the law permits, or than were named in the manifests.

Not only do the Commissioners of Emigration protect their often helpless charges against the extortions, robberies, and unspeakable villainies of the human harpies who formerly infested the docks, and preyed upon the luckless incomers—not only do they supply interpreters, maintain an employment bureau, assist in the exchange of funds, purchase of tickets, forwarding of immigrants and baggage—but they also license the boarding-house runners, and subject them to rigid supervision. They further provide for the sick and disabled, the lunatics, and the pregnant women whose husbands, if sick, are sent to the hospital on Ward’s Island, furnish medicine to the ailing and trusses to the ruptured, and preserve recorded particulars of all thus coming under their special care by which they may be found and identified in the future.

Near the Information Bureau from 2000 to 2500 people waiting inquiringly for their friends have sometimes been congregated at one time.

The grandly beneficent work of the Emigration Commissioners deserves better medical facilities than the miserably inadequate hospital accommodations at their immediate command in Castle Garden. New York does the work and bears the expense connected with foreign immigration, but the whole country shares in its benefits. The railroads especially profit by it. The cash value of tickets purchased by inward-bound immigrants in 1881 was more than five million dollars. Moneys to the value of eleven millions were exchanged in Castle Garden, and the estimated amount of the drafts, bonds, and other representatives of specie value brought in during the same year was no less than one hundred million dollars. Castle Garden ought to be a national institution.