[Sidenote: The Three Stairs of Separation] All this time you have been guided. Now you are directed to a desk where your railroad ticket-order is stamped; next to a banker's desk, where your money is exchanged for American money; and finally you are motioned to the right stairway of three, this leading to the railroad barge room. Here your baggage is checked and your ticket provided, a bag of food is offered you, and then you are taken on board a barge which will convey you to the railroad station. You have left your fellow-voyagers abruptly, all save the railroad-ticketed like yourself. Had you been destined for New York, you would have gone down the left stairway and been free to take the ferryboat for the Battery. If you had expected friends to meet you, the central stairway would have led you to the waiting room for that purpose. Those three stairways are called "The Stairs of Separation," and there families are sometimes ruthlessly separated without warning, when bound for different destinations. [Sidenote: Careful Supervision] The officers, who have treated you courteously, in strong contrast to the steamship and dock employees, keep track of you until you are safely on board an immigrant car, bound for the place where your relatives are. Your ideas of great New York are limited, but you have been saved by this official supervision from being swindled by sharpers or enticed into evil. You are practically in charge of the railway company, as you have been of the steamship company, until you are deposited at the station where you expect to make your home. You are ready to believe, by this time, that America is at least a spacious country, with room enough in it for all who want to come. At the same time you will admit, as you recall some of your fellow-passengers in the steerage, that there should not be room in the country for those who ought not to come--not only the diseased and insane, crippled and consumptive, who are shut out by the law, but also the delinquent and depraved, whose presence means added ignorance and crime. You only wish the inspectors could have seen some of those shameless men on shipboard, so that in spite of their smooth answers they might have been sent back whence they came, to prey upon the innocent there instead of here. Now that it is all over, you shudder for a long time at night as memory recalls the steerage scenes, through which your faith in God and your constant prayers preserved you.[18] [Sidenote: The Alien's Chance] In such manner the alien gains his chance to become an American. What he will make of that chance is a matter of grave importance to the land that has opened to him the doors of opportunity and liberty. Having seen how the immigrants get into the United States, let us now see how they are kept out. When we know what the restrictive laws are, and how they are enforced or evaded, we shall be in a position to judge as to their sufficiency, and the need of further legislation.