food, unsanitary and crowded living conditions, excessive childbearing on the part of the mother, the necessary adjustments to climate and to new kinds of work under different conditions, are factors which it seems reasonable to suppose would tend to increase pauperism and raise the sickness, insanity, death, and crime rates of the foreign-born.

Disease. Morbidity statistics are hard to obtain and are incomplete. But those available seem to indicate that the general morbidity rate is higher for the foreign- than for the native-born, that there are certain racial differences in the liability to disThis was particularly evidenced in the army medical examinations. Proportionately more foreign- than native-born were unable to meet the standards, were given limited service or rejected. Fewer were fit for full military service.3

2

Insanity. What is true of sickness is still more true of insanity. Even after allowance has been made for the greater number of adults in the foreign-born group, with their greater liability to insanity, the adjusted foreign rate for insanity is approximately one-fourth greater than the native. The opposite condition ought to hold true, for the foreign-born are supposed to be a selected body from which all persons afflicted with or having tendencies toward mental disability are weeded out by our laws. The fact that this is not the case shows the effects of immigration with the excessive readjustments it requires and possibly indicates a greater natural liability to mental disease. The same factors probably combine to increase insanity among the children of immigrants or of mixed parentage. While these children do not themselves have adjustments to make, they may feel the effect of the strain upon their parents, may live in the same bad environment, and may inherit a tendency to mental disease. Whatever the reasons, the insanity rate for persons of foreign stock is below that of immigrants but is higher than that of native stock.

Death and Birth Rates. If the foreign-born have a greater liability to physical and mental disease, it is to be expected that their death rate will be higher. In 1920 the foreign-born comprised only 13 per cent of the population but they furnished 19.6 per cent of the deaths. Their higher death rate was offset however by a much greater fecundity. The birth rate of the nativeborn was 62.3 per 1,000 females 10 to 59 years of age and that of the foreign-born was 92.7. The birth rate for different races shows a wide variation. Races from northern and western Europe 2 Davis, M. M., Jr., "Immig.ant Health and Community," pp. 40-41. 3 Ibid., pp. 31-34.

CRIME

93 in general have a lower rate or approximately the same rate as that of the native-born. Races from southern and eastern Europe have high rates on the whole. As the majority of the latter group of races are, broadly speaking, comparatively recent arrivals whose home countries in many instances show a higher birth rate than the native countries of the former group, the reasons for this are obvious. New immigrants almost invariably have a high degree of fecundity which lessens with subsequent generations. Backward countries in general have a higher birth rate than more civilized nations, and their immigrant citizens are likely to show the same or greater tendency toward reproduction.

Crime. The maladjustment of the immigrant is evidenced by his seemingly greater liability to disease, insanity, death, and even by his higher birth rate which persists only through the first generations. It is also manifested in the greater amount of crime attributed to him. There are proportionately twice as many commitments to penal institutions for the foreign-born as for the native-born. This is partly due to the abnormal age and sex distribution in the foreign-born group. In this group there are a disproportionately large number of young adult males with their greater liability to commit crime and a correspondingly small number of women and children with their lesser criminal potentialities. But while this fact accounts for a part of the higher crime ratio of the immigrant, it does not account for all. The foreign-born, after due allowance has been made for age and sex distribution, still have a higher criminal ratio than the native-born. A comparison based on the unit of 100,000 white male population of the same race, nativity, and age shows the number of white male prisoners and juvenile delinquents in the foreign-born group to exceed that in the native-born in every age group. The difference is especially great in the age group seventeen and under, diminishing to comparatively little between the ages twenty-one to fiftyfour, and becoming larger again in the older age groups. Moreover the native-born of foreign parentage have a crime rate approximately a third higher than the native-born of native parentage. This is true despite the normal age and sex distribution of the former and their larger number of children. The criminal ratio for the native-born of foreign parentage, like that of the foreign-born, is particularly high in the young and old age groups.

It has been pointed out that the period of adjustment often especially affects the immigrant's family life. Marital difficulties, infidelity, desertion, abusive treatment, incompatibility, tend to

increase as old customs give way to new. Children, learning American ideas, rebel against parental authority of their old world parents, or continued friction causes the parents to abandon all restraint. These conditions raise the immigrant's liability to crime and may be one reason for the especially large proportion of foreign-born and native-born of foreign parentage among the juvenile delinquents. Another reason is the relatively larger number of immigrants resident in those states which have adopted the practice of committing juvenile delinquents to special institutions for reformatory treatment.

The ratio of criminality is determined to some degree by economic status. The fact that so many foreigners belong to the poor or very poor raises their liability to crime. While they are adults in the prime of life, this factor has less effect on their crime rate which approximates that of the native-born. As they grow old, their earning powers are lessened. They have been unable to lay by the necessary surplus for this period of life and so are more likely to become drifters or vagrants. The economic differences between them and the native-born widen as do the differences in their criminal ratio. The poor man cannot buy his way from prison by paying a fine. He cannot afford as competent a lawyer as can the rich man. There is a greater proportionate number of immigrants imprisoned for non-payment of fines than native Americans. This may be partly the result of poverty and partly the consequence of their greater liability to fine, a relatively greater number of their offenses being minor.

Immigrants not only belong largely to the poorer classes, but they are concentrated in the city in contrast to the native population, the majority of whose members live in the country. The temptation to commit crime and the opportunities for doing so are greater in the large city than in the rural community. Geographical location militates against the foreign-born in favor of the native-born. Other conditions which weigh in the debit balance are an often greater ignorance of American law, inability to speak or understand English, exploitation from unscrupulous lawyers and justices, the unconscious prejudice sometimes aroused in the native-born judge. When all factors are considered, apparently it is not a greater inborn tendency to crime that is responsible for the higher criminal ratios of the foreign-born, but the economic and social circumstances surrounding their lives.

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL INFLUENCE

OLD WORLD INFLUENCE ON REFORMS
AND NATURALIZATION

95

The immigrant ordinarily is representative of the less educated and prosperous classes of people in his home country. Enterprise, assistance, or persuasion induce him to come to America. He brings with him all the customs, traditions, prejudices, and ideas which have surrounded him from childhood. Fortunately or unfortunately, if he is an adult when he migrates, these are indelibly stamped upon him. He may adopt American customs but with reservations. This is only natural and normal. If the American emigrated to a foreign land, he would be most unlikely entirely to forget or discard his American ideals and habits. The immigrant, especially if he comes from certain countries, brings with him ideals differing greatly from our own. He is affected to a greater or less extent, varying with the kind of conditions which surround him, by American influences, but also he affects to some degree America and its citizens. This influence is exercised through his children, through contact with other individuals, through the interaction of any immigrant community on other racial communities, through citizenship and the ballot.

The Woman Movement. The immigrant women tend to have a retarding effect on the woman movement in this country. This results from their belief in their own inferiority and their subordination to men, from their submissiveness, their circumscribed life and limited opportunities to acquire new ideas or contribute in any concrete way to the progress of America. Until 1922 they acquired citizenship, if otherwise eligible, upon the naturalization of their husbands. Membership in the state was thus thrust upon them whether they wished it or not. In 1922 the citizenship of married women became by statute practically independent of their husbands, but before that date a vast body of ignorant and indifferent women had already become involuntary citizens. With the passage of the woman's suffrage amendment in 1920, this great body was enfranchised. The influence, which in the past was felt largely through husband and children, now became effective through the ballot. Its possibilities as a check to women's progress can be traced in the actions of male immigrants from countries hopelessly antiquated in their treatment of women.

Women suffragists are still bitter over the fact that male immigrants were in many instances a determining factor in denying to native-born women, many of them descendants of the

founders of the republic, the right to vote. A paradoxical situation was thus created which permitted the foreign-born male, sometimes while still an alien, to have a voice in deciding whether a large proportion of native-born American citizens be given the franchise. The immigrants, opposed to suffrage for women, were actuated partly by their preconceived ideas concerning woman's place, partly by unscrupulous influences willing to buy their vote and use it against the women.*

Prohibition. The prohibition measure was another reform which met the opposition of great numbers of the foreign-born. Their reaction was the natural consequence of their training in the old world, and their economic position as unskilled workers. Liquor to them appeared almost a necessity. It often demoralized their home lives, drained necessary funds from wives and children; it was partially responsible for the large proportion of crime committed by members of their group; but it served as the basis of social gatherings of the males of a community and was to them a source of pleasure.

Part of their reaction against woman suffrage was the fear instilled by liquor interests that the women's vote would bring prohibition. Even had the immigrant been less personally interested in preventing the passage of an amendment forbidding the sale of alcoholic beverages, he might have feared to vote against an often dominant force in his district, the saloon.

In this way, two of the most progressive reforms undertaken by this country in the twentieth century-the enfranchisement of a great body of its citizens, the attempted destruction of a force responsible for much of the suffering and misery in the world-were opposed by large numbers of immigrants. Their opposition was shared and in some instances illegally directed by native Americans, but other native Americans, both women and men, furnished the spirit and life which finally pushed the amendments to victory.

Slavery. Another great social movement occurring in the nineteenth century, the abolition of slavery, met a different reception. European peasants and workers, unfamiliar with the institution, recognizing in it a dangerous economic competitor, helped to strengthen the abolition group in the north. When the KansasNebraska Act opened new federal territory to possible slave settlement, eighty German newspapers out of eighty-eight were opposed to the measure. In the Civil War, proportionately more Germans 4 Prior to 1910, ten states permitted male aliens to vote on their declaration of intention to become citizens.