Read the excerpt from Immigrant Kids by Russell Freedman. Men, women, and children were packed into dark, foul-smelling compartments. They slept in narrow punks stacked three high. They had no showers, no lounges, and no dining rooms. Food served from huge kettles were dished into dinner pails provided by the steamship company . . .

The voyage was an ordeal, but it was worth it. . . .

Edward Corsi, who later became United States Commissioner of Immigration, was a ten-year-old Italian immigrant when he sailed into New York harbor in 1907:

My first impressions of the New World will always remain etched in my memory, particularly that hazy October morning when I first saw Ellis Island. The steamer Florida, fourteen days out of Naples, filled to capacity with 1600 natives of Italy, had weathered one of the worst storms in our captain’s memory; and glad we were, both children and grown-ups, to leave the open sea and come at last through the Narrows into the Bay.

My mother, my stepfather, my brother Giuseppe, and my two sisters, Liberta and Helvetia, all of us together, happy that we had come through the storm safely, clustered on the foredeck for fear of separation and looked with wonder on this miraculous land of our dreams.