The scene on the pier had something impressive in it, well worthy of a painter of great human scenes. The huge enclosed place, scantily lighted by a few apertures, and massive with great beams and girders, was piled high in some places with freight, and over all the space from far up near the land end, where a double rope was stretched to prevent immigrants from escaping without inspection, down to the pier head, where the big door was open to allow the immigrants to pass out and aboard the barges waiting to convey them down the river again to Ellis Island, was covered with immigrants, customs inspectors, special Treasury detectives, Ellis Island officials, stevedores, ship’s people, dock watchmen, and venders of apples, cakes, etc. The dock employees were all German, some of them speaking very little English, and none that I saw using Italian. While their plan of keeping the immigrants in line in order to facilitate the inspection of baggage was all very good and quite the proper thing, the brutal method in which they enforced it was nothing short of reprehensible. The natural family and neighborhood groups were separated, and a part of the baggage was dumped in one place and a part in another. When the dock men had herded the off-coming immigrants in a mass along the south side of the pier with an overflow meeting forward of the gangway on the north, it was the natural thing for the parties to begin to hunt for each other, and for leaders of groups to endeavor to assemble the baggage. Women ran about crying, seeking their children. Men with bunches of keys hurried hither and thither searching for the trunks to match in order to open them for customs inspection, and children fearsomely huddled in the heaps of baggage, their dark eyes wide with alarm. The dock men exhorted the people in German and English to remain where they were, and, when the eager Italians did not understand, pushed them about, belabored them with sticks, or seized them and thrust them forcibly back into the places they were trying to leave. One massive German speaking good English was endeavoring to prevent our party from going to the spot where we saw our baggage, and where the customs inspectors were already at work. Camela and Concetta were in advance, Antonio was assembling the hand baggage, and my wife was guarding the camera, inoperative here for lack of light, so that there was no one with the party that understood German or English. “Get back there, get back there!” he shouted in English. “I must go unlock my trunks,” said Camela in Italian, understanding from his gesture that she was called to a halt. “I’ll knock the brains out of a few of you dirty —— — —— with this club. G— —— your —— souls to —— any way. I’ll break your neck if you leave that line again, —— —— ——,” etc.