On June 30th, 1922, New York Harbor was gripped in one of the thickest fogs sailors had ever seen. Most of the commercial liners remained in the relative safety of quarantine and planned to enter the harbor once the fog had lifted. But, in the darkness just before midnight, twelve ships stoked their engines and prepared to steam as fast as they could toward Ellis Island. June 30th marked the end of the national fiscal year, and the ships carrying immigrants from small European countries had timed their entire journey so that they could slip past Ellis Island just as the clock struck midnight and the new fiscal year began. Under the newly implemented quota system, immigrants from countries that did not already have large populations in the United States, like Latvia, Armenia, or Greece, raced against the clock and each other. The occupants of a single ship from Portugal, for instance, could fill the quota for a whole month.
Braving the fog in New York, six ships raced through the night. At the last minute, the other six had turned back because the passage was too dangerous. And it was. The Argentina from Trieste nearly struck a cruise liner; the Presidente Roosevelt came within ten feet of a coast guard cutter, but they didn’t slow. Unable to see, the racing ships, tugs, ferries, and fishing boats filled the fog with whistles and horns, hoping they would be heard in time to avoid collision. At midnight, just as they planned, the six ships that had braved the fog, carrying 1,789 immigrants, crossed the line into the United States and a new fiscal year.
And then, all hell broke loose.
The ships had arrived at midnight in New York City, but in 1922 New York City followed Daylight Saving Time, much of New York State did not, and the federal government only “voluntarily” followed it. The federal law mandating Daylight Saving Time had been repealed in 1919. This raised the question: had the ships arrived in the new fiscal year? Or had they, nightmarishly, arrived just in time to accidentally miss the new year? The scene in the fog was chaos. Some captains were advised to return and try the three mile race again, while others were told to hold their place in line. As the waiting room at Ellis Island filled with exhausted passengers and the piers filled with their friends and family, lawyers, politicians, and businessmen prepared to fight once more over the legality and utility of Daylight Saving Time. As one newspaperman put it, “If the scene had not been a real tragedy, it would have evoked laughter, loud and prolonged.”