Endowments; Immigrants--Services for; Travelers' aid societies; New York (State); Immigrant Guide and Transfer (New York, N.Y.); North American Civic League for Immigrants. New York-New Jersey Committee; Butterfield, John L.; Trumbull, Frank, 1858-1920; Warburg, Felix M. (Felix Moritz), 1871-1937
Format
correspondence
Genre
Business correspondence
Date
[between 1901 and 1919?]
Physical Description
microfilm, 16 mm, b&w
Note (Reel no.)
Reel 83
Note
PDF may contain multiple grant documents.
Immigrant Guide and Transfer, J.L. Butterfield
One of the most important developments of the year has been the formation of an administrative district consisting of the states of New York and New Jersey. This has resulted in the extension of the original New York Committee into a New York-New Jers ey Committee, having entire charge of all work to be done in those two states. Remarkable progress has been made by this Committee. In New York City the most notable extension of the work has been the organization of the Immigrant Guide and Transfer, to deliver immigrants to all points in Manhattan, Brooklyn, or the Bronx, Jersey City, Hoboken, Staten Island, and other points in Greater New York. This involved the employment of a manager and the organization of a complete guide and carrying business, with its attendant outlay for wagons, horses, drivers, etc. The results in protection for the immigrant have, however, been valuable enough fully to warrant the venture... ....One of the most complete and effective first aid and protective measures has been devised and put into operation by the New York-New Jersey Committee of the League. This is the establishment of the Immigrant Guide and Transfer in New York City, which has undertaken the work of safely carrying immigrants from the Battery to railroad stations and house addresses in New York and Jersey City." [SOURCE: North American Civic League for Immigrants. Annual Report 1910-1911. Boston, Massachusetts, 1911?, pp. 12 and 15. HathiTrust, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112040216274. Accessed 28 Sep. 2018.] "Six hundred dazed and weary foreign-born steerage passenger of the steamship Uranium, which had gone ashore on the rocky coast near Halifax on the previous Sunday, reached New York City on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. They were protected from a swarm of runners, swindlers, and confidence men who had flocked to Forty-second Street expecting a rich and easy harvest. This work of the United States immigrant authorities, the North American Civic League for Immigrants, and the other immigrant betterment organizations of New York City was a sociological achievement of which New York's welfare workers will long be proud. It is worth while to record the description sent us by an eye-witness, both as a picturesque story and because people should know the kind of work that these associations are doing. The immigrants had passed the regular United States Immigration medical examination at the Canadian border. The first train, with one hundred and seventy passengers on board, reached the Grand Central at about half-past eight-o'clock on Wednesday night. Three United States immigration inspectors, fourteen guides of the North American Civic League for Immigrants, and numerous representatives of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society, the Russian Home in Fourteenth Street, and the Polish Home in Second Avenue, had been waiting in the train-shed since five o'clock that morning. The immigrants were Hebrews, Russians, and Poles chiefly. The Hebrews carried many bundles and wicker boxes, while the Russians and Poles, one of whose racial characteristics is to 'travel light,' mostly brought their few possessions in their pockets or in colored handkerchiefs. Under the direction of the manager of the Immigration Guide and Transfer, the one hundred and seventy steerage passengers were divided into three groups, according to their races. One reason for this was that the friends of the Russian and Polish immigrants, through another queer racial characteristic, seldom meet them when they arrive in this country, while the friends of the newly arriving immigrant Hebrews come in numbers to the stations or piers. While the immigration authorities had waited all day around the depot, they had been followed about by crowds of anxious friends of the steerage passengers for news as to the hour of the train's arrival and as to the identity of those on board. Manager Butterfield, of the Immigrant Guide and Transfer, in each of these cases had directed his subordinates to take the names of the friends. As soon as an immigrant on the gate of the platform, he was allowed to go away in the later's company." [SOURCE: "How New York Took Care of the Uranium's Steerage Passengers." Outlook (1893-1924), Jan 25, 1913, pp. 149. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/136626373?accountid=10226. Accessed 28 Sep. 2018.] "North American Civic League for Immigrants LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE IMMIGRANT GUIDE AND TRANSFER: Frank Trumbull George A. Cullen John Hays Hammond Mrs. J. Borden Harriman Frank A. Vanderclip Felix Warburg JOHN L. BUTTERFIELD, Manager IMMIGRANT GUIDE AND TRANSFER..." [SOURCE: Kellor, Frances A. Letter to Jacob H. Schiff. 15 May 1914. Frances Alice Kellor. John Kenneth Press, http://www.franceskellor.com/Articles/NACLLetterToSchiff1914.pdf. Accessed 1 Nov. 2018.]