The House That Shadows Built (1928)

24 THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT ticket personally into the hands of the conductor — and finally, the steamer Russia. This was one of those decrepit little baskets which plied between Germany and the United States in the ’eighties; the great American merchant marine lingered in the womb of time. The steerage was incredibly foul, morally as well as physically. As yet, we were enforcing no restrictions whatever on immigration. The ship’s company represented the scum of Europe, mixed with a little of the unrisen cream — like that undersized boy of sixteen now beginning to experience distressing symptoms in his upper berth. After one look at his surroundings, he had decided that it would be more hygienic not to undress. He wore his second-best suit, with the forty dollars sewed into the lining, through a seventeen-day voyage during which he never left his berth. To this day, Adolph Zukor looks forward to a sea voyage as to a major illness. “Lucky I didn’t undress,” he said years later. “With the company I was keeping, the forty dollars wouldn’t have lasted forty minutes ! They were robbing each other all through the voyage.” There were no landing formalities. The Russia simply ran up to the sea wall at Castle Garden, lashed alongside, and drove its passengers ashore. Zukor, like Pupin and Schurz before him, stepped on to the soil of the New World at Battery Park, an unconsidered little animal in a filthy and bedraggled human herd.