If you went to sleep in the year 1000 and didn’t wake up until 1999, what would be the single biggest news story of the millennium through which you’d just slept?
Sure, you’d be amazed by the sight of men walking on the moon, rooms lit up by electricity and the fact that medical science had extended the human life span beyond age 40.
But the single biggest story — one that changed the entire planet forever — was the discovery and settlement of the “New World” and its eventual overthrow of the “Old World” for global domination.
And, of course, an important part of the story happened here.
The balance of power between the “New World” and the “Old” was relatively level until the middle of the 19th century, when declining standards of living, war, disease, prejudice, and centuries of monarchical stagnation pushed millions of people westward.
Toward New York.
Through Ellis Island.
Europeans — first Germans and Irish, later Italians, Jews, Poles, Greeks and Russians — had been coming to America since the early part of the 1800s. But when the flow of immigration became a torrent by the end of the century, the U.S. government converted an ammunitions dump in New York Harbor into the principal entry point in the country.
“Ellis Island was a place of great hope and of great fear,” says Park Ranger Vincent DiPietro as he stands in the middle of the Great Hall.
Great hope, because the Great Hall — then known as the Registry Room — was the place where immigrants who had survived a health inspection and a legal investigation would be questioned one more time before being set loose into the New World.
Great fear, because information was scarce. Many immigrants were confused — especially after watching first- and second-class passengers on their boats being released with a cursory inspection.
The rich walked down the gangplank into the Brave New World, while steerage passengers were hustled onto a ferry for a 2-mile trip back down river — back toward Europe for all they knew — to Ellis.
That clash of optimism and pessimism strikes DiPietro every day.
“We kept the Great Hall uncluttered so you look around and think, ‘What happened in this room?'” DiPietro says. “For a second, you have the same question as your ancestors 100 years ago.”
In the peak year, 1907, 11,000 newcomers were processed a day. Twenty percent were held over, mostly for health reasons — but in the end, only 2 percent were sent back to their homelands, often because inspectors believed that they would not be able to support themselves in the New World.
In all, between 1892 and 1924, 16 million immigrants — 71 percent of all newcomers — came through Ellis Island. Today, more than 100 million Americans can trace their ancestry to the island.
But even people who have no connection to Ellis Island are astounded by the thought of what happened there.
“It’s amazing to think that people left their homelands not knowing what would happen to them,” said Sue Dale, a visitor from Minneapolis. “Was life in their own countries that bad?”
Yes, it was. But their journey — and the lives they led here — remain the story of the millennium.
NYPOST.COM
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