"Appeal rejected."
Just two words, stamped in purple ink across a square piece of blue cardboard, but they represent the final decision of the immigrant's last court of appeal!

The clerk at Ellis Island picks up the card and studies its two faces, each divided into a checker board of printed questions and written answers. These set forth in terse fashion the fact that one Antonio Ciserno arrived from Naples, Italy, on the steamer ------ on February 19. The Ellis Island physicians discovered that the man suffers from a slight curvature of the spine, which in time would prevent his laboring and place him in the pauper class. He was turned over to the detention department, and had a hearing three days later, February 22. Here he exercised his right to appeal to the higher immigration officials at Washington, where the decision of the Ellis Island officials was sustained.

The clerk runs his pencil down the list of outgoing steamships, until he finds one belonging to the same company which brought Antonio Cisnero to America; then he fills in the one remaining vacant space on the square of cardboard. He hands the card to his chief, the inspector in charge of deported immigrants, who summons an assistant and remarks:
"Notify Antonio Cisnero that he will be deported via the steamer ------ on Saturday, March 4."

And so, on the very day when the Chief Executive is inaugurated to renew his government over 76,000,000 free people, the little tragedy of one Italian life enters upon its last sad act. Antonio Cisnero, with shoulders drooping, chin sunken in his breast, eyes hollow and deep circled, turns his back upon the land that has refused him entrance, and his face toward a land which holds for him no welcome.

"No doubt your work has its humorous aspect to lighten the tragic side," remarked a caller to Inspector McKee, head of the Deporting Bureau.
The inspector shook his head.

"There is nothing humorous about a deported immigrant," he replied. "You can work in this department until your hair is gray, but you will never get over your dread of pronouncing sentence of deportation on one of those poor devils. It is like closing the gates of Paradise on a man who has climbed the ladder with bleeding feet and hands. It is consigning him to a life of poverty the like of which America does not know, cannot realize. You can't appreciate this until you have been abroad and studied the actual conditions of paupers in Italy, in Russia, in Finland. We, here on the island, can read his horror and dread of returning in his face, particularly in his eyes, but it is the steerage steward on the returning boat, or the ship's doctor, who has a broader comprehension of the deported immigrant's tragic trip.

"Scenes? Yes, we have them sometimes. Women go into hysterics; emotional, highly strung men threaten suicide and tear their hair with their hands and the air with their cries; but the man you want to watch is the man who says 'Si, signor,' and then looks at you with eyes that follow you clear out of the room, and who sits in that one sunken position until his day of deportation arrives, noticing nothing, speaking to nobody and eating next to nothing. He's the an who goes on the boat but never gets off--that is, unless the steerage stewards and the ship's doctor catch him in the act and save his life, for which they get no thanks."

Of all the immigrants landing on American shores the South Italian comes in largest numbers, representing 40 per cent of the alien flood, and he brings the smallest amount of money, an average of $11.36 a head. On the other hand, his own government exercises the great care in getting him out of the country and makes the least provision for his care if he is returned. In truth, Italy has absolutely nothing to offer the emigrant deported from America. He must either beg or steal, for the almshouse offers shelter only to those who are absolutely decrepit and helpless.

He seldom gets beyond Naples. If his home was inland, a poorer welcome awaits him there than in Naples. In the latter city he may beg, in his small inland town or on the miserable farm or vineyard where he left parents or brothers, or even sons, the door will be closed in his face. Perhaps the entire family contributed toward the fund which carried him to America. It was believed that in this news, golden land he would make a fortune which would enable them all to flee in turn from the half starving existence which they led that he might go. That he has the dreaded tuberculosis, or, perhaps, only red rimmed eyes, to bar his entrance to the land of their dreams is no excuse in their eyes. He has failed--failed them and himself. Therefore, let him beg of the rich Americans who forbade him entrance to their land. And he does.

You will meet him at the church doorway, holding back the soiled quilt for your entrance, and as you drop a five-centime piece into his tattered hat you will not dream that the dim eyes once shone with a glad light as this man looked at Ellis Island's turreted roofs, all ignorant of the fate awaiting him as he passed the inspection officers.

If his nature is hardened by the experience, the deported immigrant becomes a dangerous factor in his own land. If he broods, he becomes a menace to the safety of passengers aboard ship on the return voyage. The mental diary of an old ship's doctor holds many secrets of the steerage, tragedies of which the gay life in the first class cabin catches no reflection.

It is still told aboard one huge ocean liner how a deported immigrant started an epidemic of suicide, which struck terror to the ship's crew and which was hidden from her passengers only through strict discipline and the diplomacy peculiar to ship's officers.

A young man and his wife from Southern Italy had been landed at Ellis Island. They had money enough to start on the new life, but during the voyage the man developed a disease which the immigration officials recognized at first glance. He was ordered deported by the same boat on which he had arrived. For a time he and the woman sat in silence, then an argument arose. The woman had elected to remain. The horror of Italy's poverty was stronger than her wifely affection. She was strong, and she could find work. Moreover, she had the funds. In spite of the combined efforts of officials and a priest who was called in to mediate, the woman remained firm. She divided the money with her husband, and left him.

From the time that she left the island her husband never spoke a word. The pity so plainly expressed on faces all about him stung rather than soothed. The steerage steward on the returning boat was warned, and he, in turn, ordered a strict guard placed over the man, but the sixth day out the unhappy creature managed to slip a breadknife into his pocket, and he was found in the bathroom with his throat cut from ear to ear. The ship's surgeon sewed the cut, and despite the rolling motion of the boat succeeded in performing the difficult operation of tracheotomy. The man glared and writhed when he recovered from the anesthetic, but a close guard was placed over him.

Three days later a woman peered into the open doorway of the tiny hospital. Whether she really looked like his wife or whether the mere sight of a member of her sex caused a spasm of fury, the fact remains that the patient reached for his throat, and before attendants could interfere, he tore open the wound and died almost instantly.

The news of the tragedy somehow reached the stokers' room, and that night a lifeless figure was cut down from a dark corner in the coal bunkers. Even the most intelligent of seagoing men are superstitious, and the ship's doctor began to tremble, nor was his anxiety misplaced. Before daybreak he was summoned to a cabin de luxe, where a wealthy woman, travelling in charge of a nurse, had deliberately taken an overdose of morphine.

From that moment, officers and crew redoubled their vigilance, the doctor slept lightly and peace seemed to have settled on the great ocean liner. The last night on board was duly celebrated with the captain's dinner, followed by a dance on the promenade deck. The second cabin passengers crowded to the rail to watch the gay scene, and on the deck below homeward bound Italians played their last games of chance and sang merrily, for on the morrow the ship would drop anchor in the Bay of Naples. Suddenly, above the blare of trumpet and the crash of cymbal, the laughter of young girls and the swish of silken skirts, the first officer, watching the dance, caught the far-off thrilling cry, "Man overboard." Over the railing a deported immigrant had leaped to death rather than face the chill[y] welcome which Naples held for him on the morrow.