Page 128 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Immigration and sweatshops

between two landslayt walking off to the small boat going over to
Manhattan Island.
In the peak of European immigration to this country, around the
time of the Spanish-American War, very few of the immigrants who
landed on the shores of the United States were prevented from
making their home here. The few who were sent back to Europe
were either criminals or those with incurable diseases. Everyone else
was detained in Ellis Island for days, or even months, but eventually
was released to relatives who had been found or, in the case of Jewish
immigrants, to the Jewish immigration society, which guaranteed
their support until they could find work to sustain themselves. I
would have been rescued from the island by the society sooner or
later, but at the time I was not aware of its existence and my anxiety
was great. It was only a few hours, but the suspense was enough to
turn a man’s hair gray and his face wrinkled. As the true Jew does,
kissing the ground when he steps down from the ship onto the soil
of his forefathers’ Palestine, so did I feel when I got off the ferry that
took us over from Ellis Island to the shores of Manhattan.
In this country are hundreds of nationalities. Their members have
associated themselves into organizations according to the districts or
cities where they come from, for protection or to extend help to
those left in the Old World who, as a rule, suffer from poverty. In my
case, very few people from my native place had emigrated to this
happy land at that time, only about three or four families, and in that
great whirlpool New York they felt lonely. In an Americanized lodge
or club, you converse on different subjects, like politics or sports or
the many games prevalent in this land. But in a newcomers’
organization composed mostly of your home-town acquaintances,
news of your relations—parents, brothers and sisters, uncles and
nephews—takes up most of the conversation. Your birthplace and
family and neighbors cannot be forgotten soon. The picture is deeply
implanted in your brain. You think of it often, and dream about those
you left destitute, who sacrificed everything, even pawning the
Sabbath candlestick, to help you better your pitiful economic
existence or save you from being slaughtered on the battlefield.
When those men from my home town came to Ellis Island to
claim a landsman, it was not simply charity for a co-religionist, but also
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