hospital, right on the Island, and made well. Children with measles or other "catching" disease that they can be cured of, are sent to city hospitals.
Inspectors look at the numbered tag pinned to each emigrant's coat, and tell him which wire-screened room to go to. There he finds an officer who speaks his language. The officer has a long paper that tells all about him. It was filled out in the seaport town from which he sailed. Now he must answer all these questions again. What is his name, his age, his birthplace? What useful work can he do? How much money did he bring with him? Has he friends in America? Where does he want to go? Has he ever been in prison; or in an asylum; or dependent on charity? What is his health? If his answers are satisfactory and truthful he pays a fee of $4.00. This is to pay the expenses of the emigrant station.
Then, if he is going farther than New York, an officer goes with him to the ticket office. He buys his ticket and checks his baggage. He finds that, in America, people do not drag heavy bundles about with them, but have them carried safely in trains, for nothing. Then he is put onto a barge with other people going his way, and taken to his railway station. There, another agent puts him on the right train. He is not allowed to go wrong. No one can cheat him or get his money away from him. Many have to wait until friends claim them, or until the sick members of the family come from a hospital. Such people have a big, steam-heated room to sit in. They have good food at low cost. They have white iron and canvas beds to sleep in.
Every one who is admitted to America leaves the emigrant station through a certain swing door. A smiling man in uniform stands there, looks at the admission ticket and points the way. On the door is a sign that reads:
'Push: to New York."
That is the front door to America.
Once the new-comer is through that door he can go anywhere he likes, in our broad land, to live and work. Some days five thousand emigrants go through that door, and every year a million or more. In a few years they learn to speak English, and all other American ways. Their children go to our schools. They all change into Americans so quickly you think there must be some magic in the words on the front door:
"Push: to New York." See New York City, Russia, Hungary, Sweden and Norway.
