Trachoma, an infectious eye disease now handled readily with antibiotics, was considered a menace, the major cause of blindness, early in the twentieth century. It came to public attention in 1897 when Dr. Porter S. Wyman, surgeon general of the US Marines, issued a report calling trachoma a “dangerous contagious disease,” after which inspectors at US ports of entry commenced watch for it. Inspections of all immigrants--lifting of eyelids, looking for the telltale follicles underneath--were standard by 1905.
Treatments were sketchy--commonly washes with various solutions, sometimes minor but painful surgery to scrape the inside of the eyelids. Although there was a lot of muddled thought attributing trachoma--sometimes called Egyptian ophthalmia, because Napoleon’s armies were blamed for bringing it home from the Nile; or sometimes “granular ophthalmia,” after the physical symptoms on the eyelids--whatever they called it, attributing the disease to lack of hygiene and poor living conditions, medical people had a clear grasp it was a contagious disease, and public officials thought they could keep it out of the country.
They were eager to do so, because all this got wrapped up with the anti-immigrant nativism of the time, as the number of European immigrants reaching American shores got up to a million a year or more and included many more people from unaccustomed, Eastern European origins. Such as, Germans from Russia headed for the Great Plains. Including, as recounted earlier, Magdalena Klipfel, who made her way to Ashley, North Dakota, by way of Canada, through means I am now ready to explain.
For there were other German-Russians trying to get into the United States and being rebuffed on account of trachoma. In 1902, Senator H.
C. Hansbrough got involved with a case brought to him by constituents at Richardton. A relative of theirs, Benedict Fried, had made his way from Russia to Baltimore, only to be detained on account of infection. He was said to have $2000 in hand and be ready to buy a farm in North Dakota. He had come with three children in tow. I don’t know the resolution of his case.
What Mr. Fried needed to do was get in touch with a fellow named Louis Feigler, in Neche, North Dakota. Feigler was what we today would call a coyote--a human smuggler operating on the border. There were many like him, according to the American agent stationed in Winnipeg to handle immigration matters. That official allowed “there was no doubt a great deal of it went on,” and said “in every case the persons captured were severely dealt with.” If they were caught, that is.
Feigler got tripped up in 1903. It seems three families of Germans from Russia, having been rejected in Winnipeg for entry into the states, took a train south to the border town of Gretna, where they were taken in hand by Feigler. He took them by back roads across the border to Bathgate, whence they proceeded on to Grand Forks. The German-Russians, numbering nineteen persons, were taken into custody there and deported. Feigler was arrested and charged in Fargo; I find no disposition of his case.
So there was no way Magdalena Klipfel, with her medical record, could have entered North Dakota legally from Manitoba. Officials in Portal were rejecting anyone suspected of infection--nineteen in one day, it was reported. Magdalena was a resourceful young woman, and she found someone like Louis Feigler, only smarter, to fetch her into North Dakota and the arms of her family in McIntosh County.
