The New York Tribune March 15, 1903 An Ellis Island Tragedy Fate Of Excluded Immigrants Bereft Of Hope It was the hour before daylight and Ellis Island was sleeping more soundly than at any other time in the night. A dim half light was in the big receiving room, which is divided into pens like a Chicago stockyard. In spite of some attempt at ventilation the air was heavy with the odors of many steerages, the smell of the long unwashed, of mouldy lunches and what not. In two pens men and women were sleeping the sleep of hope. Their right to enter America - the land of promise, where men are free and life is worth living - had not yet been decided. Until the last chance is gone the immigrant hopes. In two other pens, one for women and small children, the other for men and boys, two score of unfortunates tossed and tumbled in their sleep. Instead of a soothing hope they were racked with fear, the fear that comes of having to return over a trail on which one has burned all bridges. They slept a travesty of sleep. Now and then a babe moaned on the breast of a restless mother. Once in a while a strong man cried out in a foreign tongue. Every man, woman and child in these exclusion pens was marked "not wanted" and was awaiting deportation. In easy chairs, here and there about the big room, uniformed guards or inspectors dozed comfortably. When possible, on account of the smell, they got near open windows where the smell, they got near open windows where the air which came in from the sea was still fresh. The exclusion pen for men held a few days ago one unfortunate who could not sleep. He was a barber from Miskolez in Hungary. By his side slept his sixteen year old son, a bright looking youth, whose sleep even the dread penalty of exclusion could not disturb. They were ordered deported, and all the night the father had been awake, wondering about the future of his wife and children in the little Hungarian village, of the fate of his son who was barred like himself. At last he felt around his belongings until he found a pencil and paper. He scrawled a note of farewell in Hungarian, slipped it into his son's hand, and risked waking him by planting a feverish kiss on his forehead. He took a revolver out of his baggage. With his left hand he located the exact spot where his hear was beating like a trip hammer. He put the muzzle of the gun there and pulled the trigger. The report rang out and echoed through the corridors. Before the son was awake the rejected immigrant was dead. Guards jumped from their chairs and hurried through the halls. They knew where to go - the exclusion pen. It was just an incident of a night at Ellis Island . Before the noon hour every one had forgotten but the son who was to go back to the fatherland without his father. "The suicides way may be our way." said one of the men in the pen to his companion, as they looked into the hopeless future. "His troubles are over now. They can't keep him out of that promised land." A native born American can hardly realize the bitterness of the immigrant's disappointment on being turned back at the very gates of the country on which he has placed every hope. A gambler who stakes and loses his last cent on the turn of a card still has faith in the turning of his luck. The rejected immigrant generally loses faith in everything, from God down to his miserable self. It was a German steamer day, the one on which a Tribune reporter visited the island, and the immigrant mill was working with the rapidity of a well oiled machine. The number of rejections was small for the thrifty German steamship managers have an inspection of their own on the other side of the ocean. The previous day the island was crowded with Italians, and a score of them, on one ground or another, had fallen below the standard which the government sets. There were also a refugee from Rumania, a couple of doleful Swedes and a few Hungarians. Woe is the portion of every man, woman and child who gets the "Not Wanted" mark. They take the verdict of the inspectors according to their different natures, but in one respect they are all alike - when it finally dawns on them that they can never become Americans hope goes out of their lives. They are going back - to what? With the aid of an interpreter one can ask them. "Who told you to come to America?" the inspector asked a hollow chested Italian who was sitting on a bag of his belongings in a corner of the "exclusion pen." He did not look up, and the interpreter touched him with his foot before he repeated the question. "I cannot go to America, they tell me," answered the unfortunate, and he looked ready to cry out of his big brown eyes. "Dozens of my neighbors in Caivano have come, and were allowed to stay. They write to me glorious accounts of this great free land. That is why I come." "How did you raise the passage money for yourself and family?" was the question which brought out the rest of the story. "I had a tiny farm near the city. I raised the garlic and potatoe, and sold them in Caivano. Year after year the yield grew less. I could barely make a living by working every hour of daylight. My children had to work, too, and there was no school for them on account of it. "In America all this would be changed. I make the money fast. My little boy and girls would go to school. So I sell the little farm, the cow, the pig, everything. It was not for much, but enough to bring us to America." The way they draw out that magic word, and the tenderness with which they speak it gives one an idea how much it means to them. "We come many days in the big ship," continued this son of Naples, "and then in a little ship they bring us here. A man terrible cross asks us questions. How much money? Twelve dollars, two for each one of us. It is not enough, they say. Where are our friends? I look for the letter, but it is lost. I try to think where they live, to tell the man, but I cannot. 'No money, no friends,' says the man. 'You have to go back to Italy.' "What can I do there now? No farm, no money, no chance of getting work to do. We will starve I suppose. I care not for myself, but my wife and the children, and we were going to be so happy here." A young Swede sat in the opposite corner, and played away on a cheap accordion, which he had purchased with practically his last cent just before leaving Stockholm. His case was a sad one, for he learned that morning not only of his rejection as an immigrant, but also that he was in the last stages of consumption. It was no wonder he played a weird sort of dirge. "I was going to have a fine farm in Minnesota," said he in answer to a question. His tense was intensely past, and the tone was entirely bereft of hope. "Then I was going to have a wife." His tune, for he kept on playing softly, took on a bit of life as he spoke of the wife. "There is something wrong with me inside. I am going to have no farm, no wife. Nothing but to die." In the room given over to excluded women there was still less of an understanding why every thing had gone wrong on the very threshold of success. Separated from their husbands for the time being, they are victims of countless fears. It is almost impossible to get them to talk. They have been warned by the men who sold them their passage to say as little as possible. They have their children to occupy their minds and hands, and there is less of moody brooding which so characterizes the "exclusion pen" for men. The immigration laws were never more rigidly enforced at this port than under the present administration of Commission Williams. The steamship companies are beginning to realize this. It is expensive business carrying excluded immigrants back to European ports. An inspection on the other side of the Atlantic to turn back all who are obviously unacceptable is being instituted, and booking agents in the provinces have been instructed to use greater care. It means a great lessening of Ellis Island tragedies.