We were so nearly starved that we ate too much and our stomachs threw it up.

The saloon-keeper sent word to the Humane Society, and they came and put us on the train for Chicago, where our father was waiting for us." The Bohemians saved from starvation by the pity of a Jewish saloon-keeper is a sample of how our world was running fifty years ago.
Who can doubt that we have a better world to-day?
And the thing that has made it better is the thing that Jew exhibited, human sympathy.
When I found myself head of the Labor Department one of my earliest duties was to inspect the immigrant stations at Boston and New York.

In spite of complaints, they were being conducted to the letter of the law; to correct the situation it was only necessary to add sympathy and understanding to the enforcement of the law.
An American poet in two lines told the whole truth about human courage: "The bravest are the tenderest, The loving are the daring." Tenderness and human sympathy to the alien passing through Ellis Island does not mean that we are weak, or that the unfit alien is welcome.

The tenderer we treat the immigrant who seeks our hospitality, the harder will we smash him when he betrays us.

That's what "the bravest are the tenderest" means.