native-born voters confront the complications of our Federal, state,
and local governments, and the complexity of our inordinately
long official ballots, it is small wonder that, like them, the
foreign-born voter, even after many years’ residence in this country,
follow shibboleths and leaders who to them represent a certain
definiteness and clarity of purpose and action. This is especially
true when the whole subject of governmental reform and efficiency
comes to them in the guise of relatively arid abstractions in
which they do not see their own interests, and by the voice of men
living in far distant parts of the community, who do not understand
their intimate problems, or speak the language of their daily
lives. In almost every instance in which the issue was made clear
and intelligible to them, the foreign-born voters of almost every
nationality have responded in surprising fashion.
XII
THE FOREIGN BORN IN RADICAL MOVEMENTS
It would require an exhaustive investigation, beyond the space limits
and the scope of this volume, to describe the part which the foreign
born have played in the various radical movements marking the history
of the United States. Of course, there is a sense in which anarchism,
philosophical or violent, works toward a “political” end. The attempt
to abolish all government and establish individual free will as the
only law, is in that sense political. From that point of view one
must discuss the influence of primitive Christianity, the teachings
of such philosophers as Herbert Spencer, Tolstoy, Emerson, Thoreau,
and a host of others in all countries. We confine ourselves here
to the activities of the foreign born as they affect our ordinary
political machinery and processes, participating or willfully failing
to participate at the ballot box, or at least directly influencing
political activities and policies.
We have to consider briefly the immigrant’s participation in these
forms of activity: (a) Political Socialism. (b) Populism--lately
embodied in the Nonpartisan League. (c) The Land Question--agitation,
for example, for the so-called Single Tax. (d) Antipolitical
organizations, as exemplified in the I. W. W., Communist party, etc.
It is a curious fact that radical movements in any country habitually
are attributed to the foreign born. Bismarck assured the Germans that
Socialism could not take permanent root in Germany because it was of
English origin; while Gladstone declared that the “Social Democratic”
doctrines could not abide in England because they were imported from
Germany. It is common in this country and elsewhere to assert that
Socialism is a movement inspired and carried on by Jews. There is no
sound basis for this or kindred assertions. Socialism, and radicalism
generally, are of no particular geographical or racial origin. Among
a really prosperous and contented people radicalism is an academic
affair; the common man is not interested. It is only when social
and economic conditions produce extremes of wealth and poverty, and
when primary discontent with the basis and atmosphere of daily life
is widespread, that political radicalism of any kind attracts any
but the fireside debaters. In the last analysis the only real and
effective agitator is injustice. The Socialist movement appeared in
Japan only after modern industrialism and the factory system had
reached a stage of development creating a psychological soil in which
it could grow.
Socialism appeared in America early in the nineteenth century, but
it did not assume any political significance until the country had
become rather industrial than agricultural. It did not originate
among the foreign born, nor were its early protagonists of alien
birth.
Long before the influence of Marx appeared in statements of
Socialistic theory in this country, or any other, the essentials of
Socialism were published and discussed on both sides of the Atlantic.
When Karl Marx was a little boy Robert Owen reprinted in England a
Socialist pamphlet by an American workingman. About the same time
one Thomas Cooper of Columbia, South Carolina, published a book
containing all that is essential of Socialist doctrine. And O. A.
Brownson, editor of the Boston _Quarterly Review_, was preaching
the inevitability of a class war, the abolition of the wage system,
and the necessity of the “triumph of the proletariat.” In 1829, when
Marx was eleven years old, Thomas Skidmore, R. L. Jennings, and L.
Byllesby exercised a marked influence with the preaching of what
would even now be recognized as “straight Socialism.” There was
no influence of Marx or any other immigrant in the substantially
Socialistic--and collectivist--teachings of such men as Horace
Greeley, George Ripley, Charles A. Dana, Parke Godwin, Higginson,
Channing, Margaret Fuller, Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell.
Socialism, in fact, is a spontaneous human reaction to individualist
capitalism. In that hour when the grouping of privately owned wealth,
in the hands and under the control of combined owners as partners or
in the form of corporations, was made necessary by the increasing
intricacy and expensiveness of machinery and the application
thereto of steam power--the institution, in short, of the factory
system--Socialism--the theory of the collective ownership of the
means of production--became the inevitable reaction in the minds of
persons and classes dissatisfied with the workings of the process.
Naturally, these persons would be chiefly of the class of those who
had nothing to contribute except their bare hands and brains--the
proletariat. Bear in mind that we are not here discussing the merits
of the theory.
What Marx did was to elaborate and systematize the theory. And he
did something else. The earlier preachers of Socialism were largely
idealists, most of them of the Christian faith, who appealed to the
sense of brotherhood, talked in terms of the Sermon on the Mount
and the Kingdom of God. Later came, notably in the writings of
Marx, the reduction of the whole business to materialist terms;
the disappearance of all sentimentalism and religious terminology
from the propaganda. Logically it is a short step to the atheistic
extremes of merciless dictatorship by minority and the harsh
suppression of opposition, exemplified in the rule of the so-called
Bolsheviki.
This is very important, because it affords the psychological
background against which to see the reason why materialistic
Socialism has to so great an extent failed to hold the allegiance
of the naturally idealistic, church-bred, native American, and has
so largely come to be a movement supported by the foreign born.
For, whatever may be said about Socialism as not peculiarly of
foreign origin, it nevertheless is a fact that in this country, in
its aggressive political aspect, Socialism is preponderantly of
foreign-born personnel, and to a large extent, though by no means
exclusively, German and Jewish. It is impossible to present reliable
statistics as to the number or racial distribution of Socialists,
because, in the first place, there are thousands of persons of all
races entertaining Socialistic ideas and theories who do not call
themselves Socialists. The vote of the Socialist political parties
includes large proportions of votes due to reasons other than
Socialist views; the Socialist parties have in the past contained
thousands of members who were not voters. Furthermore, there is no
census or tabulation of Socialists that can be relied upon.
THE SOCIALIST PRESS
Some significance might be attached to the relative circulation
of the Socialist daily press, which is largely foreign-speaking.
There appear to be but two daily Socialist newspapers published
in English--the Milwaukee _Leader_, claiming a circulation of
37,000, and the New York _Call_, credited with about 15,000. The
potential circulation of these papers, and even more those in foreign
languages, no doubt is much larger than this, the difficulties of
distribution due in part to lack of capital, but still more to
mailing restrictions inflicted during the war, preventing their
free circulation. There are, or until a recent date were, at least
thirteen Socialist papers published in foreign languages--one
Bohemian, four Finnish, three German, one Hungarian, one Yiddish, one
Lithuanian, one Polish, and one Russian. According to the _American
Labor Year Book_ of 1916, nine of these foreign-language dailies
approximated a total circulation of 302,000. Against these dailies,
however, must be placed many Socialist and Socialistic periodicals,
weekly and monthly, published in English. One source of information
on this subject asserted that “those who have definitely accepted the
Socialist philosophy of life read the Socialist daily newspapers.”
This is hardly supported by the facts. For obvious reasons, the
Socialist dailies are not very satisfactory sources of news
information, and many convinced Socialists do not read them--perhaps
cannot get them--but rely for their Socialist reading upon
periodicals appearing at longer intervals. This would appear from
the circulation of such papers in English as the _Appeal to Reason_,
published at Girard, Kansas, which claims a circulation of 529,132,
and the _National Rip-Saw_, published at St. Louis, which claims
200,000. To what extent these papers represent deeply convinced
Socialists, and those holding more or less mildly Socialistic views,
it is impossible to say.
DUES-PAYING SOCIALIST MEMBERS
According to the _Appeal Almanac_ for 1916, the dues-paying members
of the Socialist party from 1903 to 1915 totaled:
TABLE XLVIII
NUMBER OF SOCIALISTS PAYING DUES EACH YEAR, FROM 1903 TO 1915
==========================================================
1903 | 15,975
1904 | 20,763
1905 | 23,327
1906 | 26,784
1907 | 29,270
1908 | 41,751
1909 | 41,479
1910 | 58,011
1911 | 84,716
1912 | 113,371
1913 | 95,401
1914 | 93,579
1915 | 79,374
==========================================================
The year 1912 was the year of the Roosevelt Progressive revolt
against the Republican party; it may be that thousands of voters of
radical or liberal tendency who resented the Republican attitude,
but could not follow Mr. Roosevelt, or swung farther than the
Progressive party was willing to go, went into the Socialist party.
But it seems quite evident that the heavy slump between 1914 and
1915, when the figure dropped from 93,579 to 79,374, was due to the
reactions of the war, and in particular to the increasing resentment
of native Americans against the attitude of the party leaders which
culminated in the platform adopted by the party organization at St.
Louis--antiwar, and by most ordinary folk, including thousands of
perfectly good Socialists, deemed not only pacifistic, but definitely
pro-German. That situation alone drove a rift down through the
Socialist ranks, and certainly made it legitimate henceforth--for the
present, anyway--to regard the Socialist party, as constituted, as an
organization distinctively of foreign stock and foreign born.
RACIAL GROUPS OF SOCIALISTS
Owing to the polyglot character of the Socialist movement, it became
necessary to organize language groups. This movement was well under
way in the years immediately preceding the war. The German Language
Federation, which was formed in December, 1912, at Newcastle,
Pennsylvania, at the end of the third year claimed a dues-paying
membership of 4,577.[173] The Finnish Socialist Federation was
credited with 10,616 in 1916. The French Language Federation reported
497 members in December, 1915. The Hungarian Language Federation
claimed membership “well above 1,500.” The Italian Socialist
Federation reported “about 1,000 members in good standing.” The
Jewish Socialist Federation was stated to have “about 5,000 members.”
The Lithuanian Socialist Federation stated that it had “a little over
2,000 members.” The South-Slavic Socialist Federation claimed about
2,000. The Scandinavian Federation gave its membership as 1,161, of
whom 265 were women. There were recognized also organizations of
Poles, Slovaks, Japanese, etc.
The Finnish _Kalenteri_ for 1918 gave a list of racial groups of
Socialists in the United States in this order of relative strength.
It is a striking fact that the Americans lead, but it must be
remembered that for their statistical purposes a naturalized citizen
may be as good an American as one native-born of old stock. (See
Table XLIX.)
TABLE XLIX
RANKS OF RACE GROUPS IN RELATIVE SOCIALIST STRENGTH
=================================================
Rank | Race
-------------------------------+-----------------
1 | Americans
2 | Finns
3 | Germans
4 | Jews
5 | Slavs
6 | Lithuanians
7 | Scandinavians
8 | Czechs
9 | Hungarians
10 | Italians
11 | Letts
12 | Slovaks
=================================================
This is well enough for rough purposes, but it is too loose for
generalization as to racial tendencies. “Jews” might be of almost any
nationality, and “Slavs” might cover natives of almost any of the
countries east of the Carpathians and the Adriatic.
The foreign-language groups of the Socialist party in 1916 had an
aggregate membership of over 29,000, and if we accept the estimate
of the National Executive Secretary of the party, of 94,140, as the
dues-paying membership during the first four months of that year, it
would appear that 31 per cent of all dues-paying members of the party
were foreign-born persons, either not citizens or so unfamiliar with
English as to prefer to belong to a foreign-speaking branch of their
political party.
There are two ways of looking at all this. One is to assume that, but
for the war and the disorganization which it threw into the Socialist
party’s ranks, including a virtual decision to confine membership to
voters, there would have grown up a large political body of aliens,
of unknown and probably menacing potentiality. The other is to
recognize that, with the foreign-speaking organizations as a starting
point, the immigrant would have been brought directly and early into
an active interest in American politics, personal participation in
the study of its affairs, and susceptibility far greater than it is
common to acknowledge to the appeal of reason and experience in the
solution of political questions. The present writer believes that to
a considerable extent the fluctuations in the Socialist vote are due
to changes of mind about Socialism _on the part of individual voters
of all races_.
THE SOCIALIST VOTE
Previous to the organization of the Socialist party, the Socialist
political activity in this country was in the custody of the old
Socialist-Labor party. Its vote, as listed by the _Appeal Almanac_
for 1916, developed as follows:
TABLE L
SOCIALIST VOTE FOR PRESIDENT FROM 1888 TO 1898
========================================================
1888 | 2,068
1890 | 13,704
1892 | 21,512
1894 | 30,020
1896 | 36,275
1898 | 82,204
========================================================
After 1898 the vote of this party declined rapidly until, in 1914,
its candidate polled only 21,827 votes.
On the whole, the best index of Socialist political strength is the
vote recorded in the ballot box. A tabulation of the vote of the
Socialist party in the presidential elections since and including
that of 1900 is therefore germane. (See Table LI.)
TABLE LI
THE SOCIALIST VOTE FOR PRESIDENT BY STATES FROM 1900 TO 1920{1}
========================================================================
| 1900 | 1904 | 1908 | 1912 | 1916 | 1920
STATE | DEBS | DEBS | DEBS | DEBS | BENSON | DEBS
--------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------
Alabama | 928 | 853 | 1,399 | 3,029 | 1,925 | 2,369
Arizona | ... | ... | ... | 3,163 | 3,174 | 125
Arkansas | 27 | 1,816 | 5,842 | 8,153 | 6,999 | 5,111
California | 7,572 | 29,533 | 28,659 | 79,201 | 43,259 | 64,076
Colorado | 684 | 4,304 | 7,974 | 16,418 | 10,049 | 8,046
Connecticut | 1,029 | 4,543 | 5,113 | 10,056 | 5,179 | 10,355
Delaware | 57 | 146 | 239 | 556 | 480 | 1,002
Florida | 603 | 2,337 | 3,747 | 4,806 | 5,353 | 5,189
Georgia | ... | 197 | 584 | 1,026 | 967 | 465
Idaho | ... | 4,954 | 6,400 | 11,960 | 8,066 | 38
Illinois | 9,687 | 69,225 | 34,711 | 81,278 | 61,394 | 74,747
Indiana | 2,374 | 12,013 | 13,476 | 39,931 | 21,855 | 24,703
Iowa | 2,742 | 14,847 | 8,287 | 16,967 | 10,976 | 16,981
Kansas | 1,605 | 15,849 | 12,420 | 26,779 | 24,685 | 15,510
Kentucky | 770 | 3,602 | 4,185 | 11,647 | 4,734 | 6,409
Louisiana | ... | 995 | 2,538 | 5,249 | 292 | ...
Maine | 878 | 2,106 | 1,758 | 2,541 | 2,177 | 2,214
Maryland | 908 | 2,247 | 2,323 | 3,996 | 2,674 | 8,876
Massachusetts | 9,716 | 13,604 | 10,781 | 12,616 | 11,058 | 32,265
Michigan | 2,826 | 9,042 | 11,586 | 23,211 | 16,120 | 28,947
Minnesota | 3,065 | 11,692 | 14,527 | 27,505 | 20,117 | 56,106
Mississippi | ... | 393 | 978 | 2,061 | 1,484 | 1,639
Missouri | 6,128 | 13,009 | 15,431 | 28,466 | 14,612 | 20,242
Montana | 708 | 5,676 | 5,855 | 10,885 | 9,564 | ...
Nebraska | 823 | 7,412 | 3,524 | 10,174 | 7,141 | 9,600
Nevada | ... | 925 | 2,103 | 3,313 | 3,065 | 1,864
New Hampshire | 790 | 1,090 | 1,299 | 1,980 | 1,318 | 1,235
New Jersey | 4,221 | 9,588 | 10,249 | 15,900 | 10,462 | 27,217
New Mexico | ... | ... | ... | 2,859 | 1,999 | 2
New York | 12,869 | 36,883 | 38,451 | 63,381 | 45,944 | 203,400
North Carolina| ... | 124 | 345 | 117 | 490 | 446
North Dakota | 518 | 2,017 | 2,421 | 6,966 | ... | 8,283
Ohio | 4,847 | 36,260 | 33,795 | 90,144 | 38,092 | 57,147
Oklahoma | ... | ... | 21,779 | 41,674 | 45,190 | 25,638
Oregon | 1,494 | 7,619 | 7,339 | 13,343 | 9,711 | 9,801
Pennsylvania | 4,831 | 21,863 | 33,913 | 80,915 | 45,637 | 70,021
Rhode Island | ... | 956 | 1,365 | 2,049 | 1,914 | 4,351
South Carolina| ... | 22 | 101 | 164 | 135 | 28
South Dakota | 169 | 3,138 | 2,846 | 4,662 | 3,760 | ...
Tennessee | 413 | 1,354 | 1,870 | 3,492 | 2,542 | 2,239
Texas | 1,846 | 2,791 | 7,870 | 24,896 | 18,963 | 8,194
Utah | 717 | 5,767 | 4,890 | 9,023 | 4,460 | 3,159
Vermont | 371 | 844 | ... | 928 | 798 | 25
Virginia | 145 | 218 | 255 | 820 | 1,060 | 807
Washington | 2,006 | 10,023 | 14,177 | 40,134 | 22,800 | 8,913
West Virginia | 268 | 1,574 | 3,679 | 15,336 | 6,140 | 5,618
Wisconsin | 7,048 | 28,220 | 28,164 | 33,481 | 27,846 | 80,635
Wyoming | ... | ... | 1,715 | 2,760 | 1,453 | 1,234
--------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------
Total | 96,116 | 402,321 | 420,973 | 897,011 | 585,113 | 915,302
--------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------
Total Socialist vote{2}| 408,230 | 424,488 | 901,062 | ... | ...
Socialist-Labor vote{2}| 33,546 | 14,021 | 30,344 | ... | ...
========================================================================
[note 1: _World Almanac_, 1920.]
[note 2: _Appeal Almanac_, 1916.]
This table is compiled from the _World Almanac_. The column for 1920,
in particular, may be suspected of serious inaccuracy in detail. The
figures for Idaho, for example, would appear to be absurd, in view
of nearly 12,000 in 1912 and more than 8,000 in 1916. The _Appeal
Almanac_ for 1916 gives larger totals, and adds a surviving vote of
the Socialist-Labor party. The _World Almanac_ for 1921 adds a note
regarding the 1920 election:
The total for the Socialist-Labor ticket approximated 20,896, but
it is to be said that in a number of the states the Socialist-Labor
electors were called Independent Labor, or Independent, or
Industrial Labor, so that the true total is considerably above that
named above.
In general, the table affords a sufficient basis for general
comparisons and judgment as to tendency.
GERMAN INFLUENCE IN SOCIALISM
Since the declaration of the St. Louis convention of the Socialists
in 1917, which most outsiders and a large proportion of the Socialist
rank and file regarded as not only consistently antiwar, but actually
pro-German, it has been the fashion for Socialists of other than
German leanings to minimize the German influence in the development
of political Socialism in the United States. From the point of
view of the loyally American or pro-Ally Socialists, of whom there
are many thousands, it would no doubt be pleasing to clear it of
the German atmosphere; but, unfortunately, the facts make such a
proceeding difficult.
A great impulse was given to Socialism in this country by the
German Socialists who were driven out of Germany forty years ago by
Bismarck’s anti-Socialist legislation. They were men of a high degree
of intelligence, largely mechanics of skill at their trades. They
brought to America the Marxian orthodoxy, and stamped With their
German rigidity of thought a movement which up to that time had been
more or less a sentimental thing. Let us examine some figures which
would seem to be significant.
The German-language press in this country has been largely confined
to nine states. To the total circulation of the German-language press
in the United States, their circulation in these nine states bears
percentage ratio as follows:
TABLE LII
PER CENT CIRCULATION OF THE GERMAN PRESS IN NINE STATES
=======================================================
| CIRCULATION{1}
STATE +---------------
| PER CENT
---------------------------------------+---------------
New York } |
New Jersey } | 19.4
Wisconsin | 15.4
Illinois | 12.5
Ohio | 10.9
Nebraska | 7.6
Pennsylvania | 6.9
Missouri | 6.2
Minnesota | 5.8
---------------------------------------+---------------
Total | 84.7
=======================================================
[note 1: The circulation figures are based upon reports given in
Ayer’s _American Newspaper Annual and Directory_ for 1916. The
influence of the war emotions and the rising cost of news-print
paper, and other factors would make later figures misleading as
to the general situation. Where Ayer’s fails to give circulation
it is conservatively estimated. New York and New Jersey are
combined because the German papers in New York were largely read
in the preponderantly German towns along the New Jersey bank of
the Hudson River.]
It would thus appear that the German-language papers published in
these nine states claimed a circulation of nearly 85 per cent of
the total circulation of German-language papers in the whole United
States. It is obvious, therefore, that in these nine states one
would look for the bulk of the unassimilated immigrants of German
birth. The census of 1910 sustains this expectation, for of the total
of 2,501,333 German-born residents of the United States, 1,737,827,
or 69.5 per cent, lived in the nine states.
What percentage of the Socialist vote is found in those nine states?
We cannot answer this question as to the vote for the candidates of
the Socialist-Labor party prior to 1900; but the vote for Socialist
candidates subsequent to that gives us illuminating percentages.
In the table made up from the _World Almanac_ for 1921 is the vote of
the Socialist (or Social-Democratic) party in presidential elections
since and including 1900. Note the percentage of that vote cast in
the nine states named.
TABLE LIII
SOCIALIST VOTE FOR PRESIDENTS IN NINE STATES, FROM 1900 TO 1916
===============================================================
| | PER CENT OF
| TOTAL | SOCIALIST VOTE
YEAR | SOCIALIST | IN THE NINE
| VOTE | STATES
------------------------------+----------------+---------------
1900 | 96,116 | 55.6
1904 | 402,321 | 58.2
1908 | 420,973 | 50.5
1912 | 897,011 | 48.0
1916 | 585,113 | 45.8
===============================================================
It appears, then, that these nine states--New York and New Jersey,
containing the large cities of Greater New York, Jersey City,
and Newark; Wisconsin, containing the great German population of
Milwaukee; Illinois, containing Chicago; Ohio, containing Cleveland
and Cincinnati; Nebraska, containing Omaha; Pennsylvania, containing
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; Missouri, containing St. Louis and
Kansas City; Minnesota, containing Minneapolis and St. Paul; to say
nothing of the smaller cities and rural districts, largely inhabited
by immigrants of German birth--have contained more than half of
the voting strength of the Socialist parties. Some discount must
be allowed for the fact that these large cities contain also large
numbers of foreign-born voters of other races; but even a generous
discount for this fact does not nullify the predominance of the
German element in the Socialist voting strength. These nine states
account also for about half of the dues-paying membership in the
Socialist party; according to the _American Socialist_ of January 23,
1916, there were 44,132, or 47 per cent, of the total of dues-paying
membership of the party, in 1914, and 38,194, or 48 per cent, in
1915, in the nine states.
JEWS IN SOCIALISM
It is also true that the active propaganda of political Socialism
has increasingly attracted young Jews of foreign extraction. It
appeals to them in two ways. There is a tremendous fund of idealism
in the Jewish mind. For ages they have been taught to dream of an
earthly millennium, in which the freedom denied them by the world
everywhere would be attained, and the social ideals set forth by
their prophets in their Scripture could be effectuated. Also, they
have been bred to interminable discussion of abstractions and
theoretical relationships regardless of the practical things of
social life from which they were excluded by rigorous governmental
restrictions and the race prejudice under which they have suffered,
especially in Russia. It was to be expected that with the freedom of
movement and expression which they have enjoyed in America, together
with the tense economic and industrial conditions under which they
labor here, they would respond to the propaganda of Socialism with
its idealistic background, its promise of an economic millennium, and
its _minutiæ_ of theory and inexhaustible material for debate. There
are no reliable statistics--little data of any kind--on which to base
an estimate of the number or activity of Jews of any or all national
extraction in the Socialist movement; nevertheless, it is a matter of
common knowledge that they are both numerous and aggressive in its
councils and its propaganda.
EFFECT OF THE WAR ON SOCIALISM
What might have been the development of political Socialism in the
United States had there been no war in Europe it is impossible to
say. To what extent the Germanization, not only of the Socialist
party, but of large elements of politics in the old parties, might
have gone on, it is impossible to say. The reactions of the war
spirit, and of the variants of sympathy among the racial groups,
produced profound effects. They were marked in the Socialist
movement, tending to drive into the “left” or extreme radical wing,
and even out of the party into the nonpolitical and antipolitical
movements, many of the foreign-born Socialists who during past
years have been trying to make the Socialist parties and the labor
organizations of various sorts more and more radical, less and less
patient toward political methods and measures. Inevitably these
ultraradicals took on, or were regarded as taking on, the aspect
of opposition to the cause of the Allies, to the participation of
the United States in the war--to out-and-out pro-Germanism. That
this pro-Germanism among the ultraradicals was not imaginary may
be illustrated by one episode reported by an investigator for the
Americanization Study:
In 1915, in the capacity of a field investigator of the conditions
of unskilled labor for the United States Commission on Industrial
Relations, I happened to visit Port Arthur in the eastern part
of Texas, where a Standard Oil refinery is located. There was
some labor excitement. A young German, 22 or 23 years of age, who
had come to this country when a small boy and who was one of the
local leaders of the I. W. W., addressed a meeting. In attacking
all capitalists of all countries he also spoke of the war which,
according to him, was started and prosecuted by the czars, kaisers,
kings, and capitalists of all countries at the expense of the
working classes, etc., etc..
After the meeting I interviewed a number of local labor leaders.
The youthful orator was sitting on a lumber pile a few feet from
me. Oil barges were passing back and forth on the canal, carrying
oil from the refinery to a large British tanker in the harbor. The
boy intently watched the barges, and exclaimed, as if to himself,
in a low tone of disgust and desperation:
“Hm! Britain gets all the oil; Germany--nothing!”
All his reasoning, based upon international class solidarity, had
given way to his patriotic German heart!
There was, further, the inevitable influence of the fact that the
German Social Democracy has, on the whole, been more close-knit, more
effective in propaganda, and the German Socialist literature, from
Marx down, more widespread in its distribution, than the propaganda
in any other language. Even now, the Germans and pro-Germans in the
Socialist ranks habitually declare that the war was ended by the
German Social Democrats through a revolt against the Kaiser.
The native-born Americans, English, and other English-speaking
Socialists, most of whom had been in sympathy with the cause of
the Allies, revolted against the pacifist, antiwar, and pro-German
element in the Socialist party, and the turmoil shook the
organization to its foundation. The end of this is not yet; but one
big result in the Socialist party itself has been to reinforce the
influence of the moderate element and to some extent to drive the
extremists into the so-called Communist parties and the I. W. W.,
which, whatever else may be said of them, do not exercise themselves
directly about political affairs.
To the deep rift in the Socialist ranks on this account may be
attributed in large part the failure of the Socialists to live up
to their expectations and promises in the presidential election of
1920. It is far too soon to speculate with any confidence upon what
may be the course of political Socialism in the United States in the
years immediately before us when the emotions excited by the war die
down, the hysterical opposition to immigrants as such fades out, and
economic and industrial forces are permitted to operate “normally”
in their effects upon the motives of the working people and their
expression of those motives through their ballots.
THE SINGLE-TAX AND AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS
At the root of all the radical movements in the United States lies,
actually or potentially, an unsatisfied land hunger, a feeling
that somehow the opportunity to have access to a standing on God’s
footstool is circumscribed by man-made restrictions and injustice.
It is to be remembered that the great majority of immigrants to this
country are peasants, whose whole life and social background have
reference to making, or being prevented from making, a living from
the soil. Even the Russian and other Jews, who, generally speaking,
have little or no actual experience of agriculture, come here with
a vision of a land where there is satisfaction for their deepest
longings, and at the bottom lies the longing to own a piece of the
face of the earth as a basis for subsistence. Generally speaking,
the first disillusionment that many a modern immigrant experiences
is in the fact that he cannot step from the ship into the ownership
of land out of which to dig his living. It is a short step from that
state of mind into one of general discontent with the difficulty of
finding the opportunity which, he had been told, waited for him in
the United States at every street corner and crossroad.
In the earlier days, when industrialism was younger in this country
and immigrants could pass more easily into agriculture and into
access to actual land, there was a wider and quicker interest on the
part of the immigrant in the land question as such. Probably that
is why he responded more than he does now to such movements as the
individualist single-tax agitation precipitated by Henry George. In
recent years, when his opportunities for employment came to be more
and more restricted to the cities and to great industrial plants and
mines, the appeal of the Socialist agitation seemed more applicable
to his situation. Furthermore, the single-tax movement represents, on
the whole, an earlier stage in the development of radical theory.
The same might be said of Greenbackism, Populism, and the present-day
Nonpartisan League movement. All three of these movements find the
body of their rank and file among the small farmers, small producers,
and the dissatisfied lower grades of the merchandising class, who
feel, rightly or wrongly, that they are getting the worst of it in
the development of law, taxation, finance, monopoly, or what not.
The contented foreign born, or the contented anybody else, does not
participate in or respond to radical agitation or movements for
drastic reform. There are thousands of foreign-born members in the
Nonpartisan League, but they are in it not as foreign born of any
race, but as farmers who think they are not getting a square deal.
The farmers of the Northwest, who make up the bulk of the Nonpartisan
League, are not at present amenable to Socialist doctrine. The
foreign born among them are largely Scandinavian and old-stock
Germans who have won their way to ownership of land and a measure of
personal prosperity. They might stand for the expropriation of the
powerful Eastern capitalist, but they are not willing to consider the
confiscation of their own hard-earned farms. Peter Alexander Speek,
in his monograph on “The Single Tax and the Labor Movement,”[174]
puts it well:
It may be said that the Socialists understood the labor movement,
its meaning and nature, better than did the Single-taxers. But
what the Socialists failed in was this, that their philosophy,
emphasizing as it did the social side of human life, was not
acceptable to the majority of American wage-earners, who, though
wage conscious and organized as a separate class, still were not
yet class conscious--wage-earners among whom the individualistic
spirit and a desire to become independent small producers prevailed.
Even so early there was visible a racial line of demarkation. The
Irish never have taken kindly to Socialism. Preponderantly of the
Roman Catholic faith, they were impervious to the implications of the
Socialist doctrines as affecting religion and marriage, and nothing
in their experience tended to modify their interest in the ownership
of land. Mr. Speek says:
It is necessary to mention the fact that nationality of the members
of the party (the United Labor party) also played its role in the
conflict. The majority of the Irish element lined up with the
Single Tax faction, the majority of the German element with the
Socialist.
This division by nationalities was itself quite comprehensive.
The Germans have always had a strong communal sentiment and social
viewpoint upon human life, both being inherited from the centuries
long gone by. Furthermore, many of them, before they came to
America, were industrial wage earners in Germany--the homeland of
Marxian Socialism.
The majority of the Irish immigrants had been formerly land tenants
in Ireland. They had an individualistic viewpoint, and were devoted
Catholics. Hence their lining up with Henry George, as a land
reformer and agitator for the Irish cause in Ireland, and with
McGlynn, as a Catholic priest.
A large proportion of the farmers of the Northwest are Scandinavians.
They are of a naturally conservative type, they have been successful
in establishing themselves as individual property owners, and
the property owner does not as a rule afford good material for
the Socialist seed-sowing. You may regard the propaganda of the
Nonpartisan League, for example, as radical and in a general way
“Socialistic,” but it does not satisfy the Socialist.
The importance of this consideration is fundamental. There are great
areas, even whole states, in the Northwest particularly, where the
saturation of the foreign born is so complete that the foreign-born
and second-generation folk themselves _are_ the state. As one
newspaper man in St. Paul put it:
It is not a question of “we” and “they”; _they_ are the whole
thing. In Minnesota there is no “Scandinavian problem”--_they_
are _us_. In a large measure they have become the best kind of
Americans; others have not advanced beyond the grade of the
ordinary American, but they are the people and the government,
and the comparative handful of Yankees cannot pretend to draw a
line around them and set them apart as “foreigners.” They are the
voters, the legislature, the producers, the farmers, the merchants,
and they represent all of us at Washington.
On the other hand, there has been a tendency in the Northwest, as
elsewhere, for little racial groups to center in special localities.
There are whole towns in Minnesota which are virtually entirely
German; others are entirely Bohemian. There is one community which is
entirely Belgian. This is partly due to the fact that many sections
were settled by colonies sent forth as a part of church missionary
effort, especially by the Lutherans and Catholics.
Out of this situation the war suddenly crystallized a real American
sentiment and enthusiasm. There was much shocking injustice and mob
hysteria in those parts, and many accusations of disloyalty; but the
fact that emerges upon any candid investigation is that these folk
of various foreign races gave a good account of themselves in every
form of war participation, whether in the furnishing of volunteers or
otherwise. North Dakota, a hotbed of Nonpartisan League sentiment,
and a preponderantly foreign-born population, nearly doubled its
Liberty Bond allotments and exceeded its quotas in contributions to
the Red Cross and the war-chest funds.
THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE
In December, 1918, Oliver S. Morris, editor of the National
Magazine of the Nonpartisan League, gave to an investigator of the
Americanization Study an analysis of approximate membership of the
League. (See Table LIV.)
TABLE LIV
MEMBERSHIP OF THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE BY STATES IN DECEMBER, 1918
=================================
Minnesota | 50,000
North Dakota | 45,000
South Dakota | 25,000
Montana | 25,000
Idaho | 20,000
| -------
| 165,000
Washington } |
Wisconsin } |
Nebraska } |
Iowa } |
Kansas } | 40,000
Oklahoma } |
Texas } |
Colorado } |
| -------
| 205,000
=================================
The membership has shifted this way and that ever since, and the
experience of the Nonpartisan League government in North Dakota is a
matter of history; but the fact that stands out is that this large
membership did not either accomplish or attempt anything which the
radical Socialist would accept as revolutionary. The Nonpartisan
League movement is a true agrarian movement, on the whole a movement
of property owners _to benefit themselves as such_, to insure their
own hold upon the land they have acquired and the processes of
storage, exchange, and marketing upon which their prosperity depends.
John M. Gillette, professor of sociology in the University of North
Dakota, distinguishes clearly between its underlying spirit and
purpose and those of the revolutionary Socialists:[175]
The Nonpartisan League ... aims at economic and social reforms
through political action; the Bolshevists aim at social reforms
through economic action. The League does not seek to disfranchise
other classes than farmers; Bolshevism disfranchises all other
classes than the proletariat.... The League is essentially
an organization of farmers, the preponderant majority of the
electorate in such states as North Dakota owning the bulk of the
wealth of the commonwealth, for the improvement of economic and
general welfare conditions by recourse to political action.... It
is destroying no fundamental institution, but is reshaping and
redirecting certain ones to make them more amenable to the public
will.
Without any attempt to assess either the righteousness or the wisdom
of the League methods or program, intelligent understanding of its
relation to the spirit and purpose of political Socialism, and of
the reaction to each on the part of various racial groups among the
foreign born, requires that the distinction be carefully kept in
mind. The foreign born who participate in the Nonpartisan League
are not only _citizens of the United States_--voters--but they are
preponderantly of the races whose mental operations tend to be
conservative toward really revolutionary propaganda, and of the
property-owning and property-ambitious class, as contrasted with the
propertyless, job-holding, wage-earning class generally implied in
the term “proletariat.”
This distinction underlies the reason why the strength of the
League lies in the rural communities rather than in the cities. The
League certainly showed strength in the cities, and the Socialistic
character of many of its proposals undoubtedly attracted considerable
support from city radicals who were unsatisfied with the range of the
platform; nevertheless, the Nonpartisan League represents an agrarian
rather than a revolutionary movement. There is a world of difference
between a Socialist program calling for the establishment of a wholly
co-operative commonwealth, the common ownership of all the machinery
of production, distribution, and communication, and the League
program demanding:
1. Exemption of farm improvements from taxation.
2. Tonnage tax on ore production.
3. Rural credit banks operated at cost.
4. State terminal elevators, warehouses, flour mills, stockyards,
packing houses, creameries, and cold-storage plants.
5. State hail insurance.
6. A more equitable system of state inspection and grading of grain.
7. Equal taxation of property of railroads, mines, telegraph,
telephone, electric light and power companies, and all public
utility corporations, as compared with that of other property
owners.
Adding to these the “national demands”--“that the government
refuse to return to private hands ownership or operation of those
public utilities owned, operated, or controlled by the government
during the war,” and “that the conscription of wealth begun by the
government through income and excess-profit taxes shall be continued
and increased, that surplus wealth may be compelled to pay the
money cost of the war”--the program still falls far short of being
revolutionary. On the whole the underlying spirit and purpose are
more or less precisely those of the earlier agrarian Free Soil,
Greenback, Populist, Single Tax, and Free Silver movements.
The Progressive movement of 1912, given extra “steam” by the magnetic
personality of Mr. Roosevelt and the hero worship of his followers,
was a far more powerful influence in drawing common support from
farms and cities. And its support, like that of the Nonpartisan
League, was essentially American, as distinguished from foreign-born
Socialistic support. It is interesting to speculate upon the
attitude of the people generally toward the Progressive movement,
if one could imagine it coming into being during the war. To what
extent would its platform and the utterances of its leaders have been
regarded as “seditious”?
ULTRARADICAL MOVEMENTS NONPOLITICAL
From the beginning of any really radical movement in this country,
its unity of spirit has been broken by profound differences of
opinion as to the effectiveness of the appeal to the ballot box.
For more than half a century the anarchists and other advocates of
“direct action” in the labor movement in America have been telling
the more conservative elements that it would be of no use to resort
to political measures, to the election of public officers pledged to
carry out radical programs.
“The moment you succeed in winning enough votes to elect any
considerable number of your candidates, the representatives of the
capitalists will throw them out and nullify your victory.”
The great service which the New York State Assembly in 1920 rendered
to the ultraradical wing of the Socialists when it ejected legally
elected Socialist members of that house of the state Legislature was
in the verifying this prediction. It strengthened the hands of the
“Reds” not only all over this country, but all over the world. It
made it just that much harder for moderates everywhere to convince
workingmen that their grievances could be remedied by parliamentary
action; that it was really worth while for them to pay any attention
to the ballot box.
The history of the Socialist parties in America is checkered with the
ups and downs of the controversy over this question. In every labor
organization since the beginnings of the Labor movement in America
there has been a continuing warfare between those who advocated
political action as the means to social reform, and those who scorned
anything except economic pressure and even terrorism. It is a curious
fact that in the line-up on this issue, Mr. Gompers and the American
Federation of Labor logically belong with the direct-actionists; he
and his supporters always have opposed the entrance of the Labor
movement as such into politics. It is only fair to add, however, that
one of his principal motives was that of keeping the solidarity of
labor from being broken by the ordinary appeals and influences of the
politicians.
The National Labor Union of 1864, the Knights of Labor of 1869, the
International Working People’s Association of 1883, the Sovereigns of
Industry of 1874, the Workingmen’s party of 1876, the organizations
of brewery workers and miners, the American Railway Union, the
American Labor Union, the Socialist-Labor party--in fact, virtually
all the general labor organizations from the beginning of them until
to-day--have fought back and forth over this question. And the
abiding fact which remained after every battle seems to have been
that the tendency of the Americans and the foreign born longest in
the country on the whole has been to favor action through the ballot
box and parliamentary methods generally; the distinctively foreign
elements have inclined to favor economic and industrial measures,
with the “lunatic fringe” running on toward “direct action,”
sabotage, and the methods of the terrorist.
The World War brought this division sharply to a head. It split
the Socialist party and drove out of it most of the American-born
moderates; it led to the attempt by these moderates and many of
the former Progressives to organize the “National party” and the
“Farmer-Labor party,” which attracted a small following in the
presidential election of 1920. The excesses committed against
foreign-born citizens of nearly all racial groups in the zeal of the
war spirit undoubtedly drove into the extreme radical ranks a large
number of foreign-born citizens who in normal times would have been
content with political methods and would have diminished in their
radicalism as their economic status improved. Doubtless, also, the
period of unemployment and industrial depression following the war,
ensuing as it has upon a period of unprecedentedly high wages, has
tended to encourage radical thought.
But it must always be remembered that the extreme radical movements
have directly relatively little _political_ influence. This for two
very good reasons: In the first place, experience has not justified
the theory of the “Reds” that terrorism in this country will frighten
government into concessions. It has, in America, anyway, quite the
opposite effect. It alienates public sympathy and impels the average
man, normally sympathetic toward the “under dog,” to approve of
repressive measures. Furthermore, the members of these ultraradical
organizations, although they may be technically citizens, _are not
voters_ in any practical sense.
THE “I. W. W.” AND THE HOMELESS WORKER
This latter consideration is more important than is commonly
realized. The rank and file of the Industrial Workers of the
World--better known as the “I. W. W.”--for example, is made up of
men without fixed abode; itinerant workingmen, largely, though
by no means wholly, of foreign birth. They have left their homes
and families, if they ever had either. The I. W. W. is the only
organization which at least pretends to look after the interests of
the homeless, jobless worker. The homeless, jobless worker cannot
become naturalized, because the naturalization process presupposes
a fixed residence, and witnesses who can testify to that residence
over long periods of time. And even if the man be native born or
long since naturalized, he cannot vote or otherwise function as a
political unit because he has no fixed home from which to register
and vote.
A fixed abiding place, a _home_, is psychologically a _sine qua
non_ of real and wholesome civic interest, as well as a legal
prerequisite for participation in public affairs. Theoretically,
a native-born or naturalized citizen has a membership in and duty
toward the United States. Actually, the degree of his participation
depends upon _the depths of his roots in some locality_, and the
relation of that locality to the civic unit toward whose welfare the
voter contributes, not only his taxes, but his personal interest. A
good part of the trouble with city government in New York, Chicago,
Philadelphia, Boston, and other great cities is due to the fact that
so many fine, public-spirited voters live in suburbs.
Thousands of the best men who participate in the daytime in the life
of New York City live in New Jersey and Connecticut, or, anyway,
in towns outside of Greater New York. Their real interests are in
New York, but they vote in another state. They contribute little to
the local welfare in the places Where they live because of their
real interest in New York. Consequently their civic vitality, so
to speak, is entirely lost to both communities--and to the United
States. The foreign-born voter in the crowded East Side of New York
is a far more effective citizen, for good or ill, than the presumably
more intelligent business man who cannot--or at any rate does
not--participate substantially in the political life either of the
city where his business and daily activities are carried on, or in
the village in another state where he has his legal residence.
Over against this anomalous condition put the case of the
well-meaning citizen, native or foreign born, who works for a certain
mining corporation in Illinois. The town where he lives belongs
absolutely to that corporation. It so happens that a part of the
mining property of that corporation lies in Illinois and a part in
Indiana. Under stress of business and mining conditions the company
suddenly moves the whole population, men, women, and children, over
the state line. What must happen then to any possible civic interest
or enthusiasm--supposing any to exist--on the part of American
citizens, voters, who had begun to think about the public interests
of the state of Illinois? What happens to the naturalization
proceedings begun by any alien to make himself a useful citizen of
his adopted country? How can any real civic interest live under such
conditions?
It is common to sneer at the city workingman because he stays in
town unemployed when he might get a job in the wheat fields or at
mining or fruit picking where labor is scant. Laying aside the
question of any desire on his part to stay with his family, or any
doubt in his mind about his ability as a hodcarrier or a tailor
to make good as a farm hand, or any reluctance on the part of the
railroad to assist him with the gift or loan of transportation to
some distant and practically most uncertain job--what becomes in
such a hop-skip-and-jump sort of industrial--and social-existence,
of any interest in civic affairs? To a newly made citizen, who has
faithfully memorized, if you please, the Constitution of the United
States, who knows just how Senators are elected and what is the
relation between the functions of the President and those of the
local dog-catcher, and who can sing, duly standing uncovered, _all_
the stanzas of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” it must appear that his
intellectual equipment for citizenship is more or less extraneous to
the practical and immediate task of feeding his wife and babies!
It is this sort of experience, of shifting employment and residence
and the conditions that go with it, that has given momentum to the I.
W. W. and kindred movements. “Stag towns” in the Far West, matching
“women towns” in New England; permanently separated families; the
utter impossibility of getting and keeping wives or maintaining any
sort of decent, not to say normal, domestic life, are major factors
that have brought into such organizations not only foreign-born
wanderers, some of them naturalized, but a surprisingly large number
of native Americans--the latter particularly among the leadership.
On the other hand, the I. W. W. from its beginning[176] has paid
close attention to the immigrant. Fifteen years ago, at the second
convention of the I. W. W., it was urged that propaganda should start
in Europe before the immigrant left the homeland, so that he would be
prepared upon arrival in this country to join the organization. This
was not done, but even so early there was a large issue of printed
matter in foreign languages, and the whole machinery was conceived
on the presumption of a polyglot membership. Moreover, the I. W.
W. always has taken the most liberal position as regards any form
of race prejudice. At the opening of the first convention William
D. Haywood took a strong stand against discrimination against the
negro by craft unions, and the organization never has tolerated any
distinction of race, color, nationality--or sex. Even with regard to
the Japanese of California, at the third convention a delegate from
that state declared that “the whole fight against the Japanese is
the fight of the middle class of California, in which they employ the
labor faker to back it up.”
The Communist party, into which to a considerable extent went the
extremists from the older movements when the effects of the war
brought division to their ranks and made it impossible for moderate
and ultraradical to abide under the same roof, at first became a
nucleus for the spread of the extreme form of Communist doctrine. It
embodies the essentials of the platform of the Third Internationale.
The ruthless suppression of this organization by the public
authorities may well prevent its having any but a fugitive life.
The I. W. W., too, seems, for the time being, at least, to be under
effective handicap. But whether these, or either of them, survive or
perish, or whatever other organization may be the residuary legatee
of their existence, the fact remains, and it is a most important fact
from the point of view of this Study, that such movements have no
room under their _ægis_ for what Americans understand as political
action. They seek revolutionary change not only in the _form_, but in
the _nature_ of government--would, in fact, abolish all government
as we know it, and substitute the “dictatorship of the proletariat”
as it exists--or has been supposed to exist--in Russia. Their theory
has no use for our present parliamentary methods, for representative
government in our understanding of the word; they scoff at and
would utterly destroy what we mean by Democracy. They would not
leave a recognizable vestige of our Constitution, our courts, our
legislatures. They would provide no political function for the voting
citizen as we visualize him. And--what is most important--they would
bring about these basic changes by compulsion. The ballot box has no
substantial place in their program.
Such propaganda, such programs, appeal only to those who have and
who, however mistakenly, believe they can have, no stake in our
present civilization. To such as these, citizenship in the sense in
which we have here discussed it has no meaning; the “America” which
has been built up, by native and foreign born together, since the
landing of the Pilgrims, arouses no enthusiasm.
It is not surprising that such movements as the I. W. W. and the
Communist parties appeal to the wandering, homeless folk of any
race. And when their propaganda tells such folk (as it does) that
the actual fruit of their labor is a product of sixty dollars a day,
and that the difference between that figure and what they receive
is the measure of what the capitalist class is appropriating, it is
small wonder that the ignorant and reckless, without attachment to
any home or land, smarting under concrete conditions about whose
reality--whoever may be to blame for them--there can be no dispute,
follow such leadership and look to it to bring them into better
conditions.
From the moment of his arrival in this country, every hardship that
the immigrant of any race suffers, every injustice practiced upon
him by his own countrymen or other foreign-born persons who preceded
him hither, by the police and other local officials (to him the
embodiment of government), by landlord or employer or others in more
prosperous circumstances, every hour of unemployment and privation,
every enforced separation from his family, every disillusioning
experience, contributes just so much to his readiness of mind
to accept the “Red” teachings and promises. Revolution finds no
hospitality in contented minds. Injustice, real or fancied, is, in
the last analysis, the only agitator we have to combat.
Every particle of information coming to the Americanization Study
on the subject of the mental attitude of the immigrant of any race
in America confirms the fact which ought to be obvious as a matter
of ordinary common sense: that the opportunity to work, at fair
wages, under anything like decent conditions of home and social
surroundings, and from that work to gain a place to live, the means
of maintaining and supporting a family and making a reasonably
comfortable and happy home, establishing a real stake in the
community, assures the making of a good citizen and a well-meaning
voter, a valuable active member in our body politic.
XIII
SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
The one thing that emerges most clearly in the results of this or any
other candid study of the naturalization and political activity of
the foreign-born citizen of the United States is that admission to
active membership in our political society should be based upon _the
personal qualifications of the individual_.
No sound basis is disclosed for discrimination on the ground of race
or color, religious beliefs or political predilection. Even the
statutory bar against belief in anarchism or polygamy is obviously
ineffectual, because the anarchist theory _per se_ involves, if not
virtual atheism, at least repudiation of government and a disbelief
in the sanctity of an oath. And a declaration of disbelief in
polygamy, so far as it may be assumed to imply anything concerning
personal morality, conveys no assurance of chastity in any sense of
the word. Furthermore, what is the practical use of inquiring into
a person’s beliefs to-day, when there can be no guaranty as to what
they will be to-morrow?
The educational test assures no safety as to character. The ability
to speak, read, and write English or any other language, intelligence
and general or even exact information as to our form of government
and the “high spots” of American history, are little in the way of
assurance of loyalty or usefulness as a citizen. The most noxious
propagandist that we could import or admit to citizenship could
pass the most rigid intellectual test. During the debate on
the naturalization law in the House of Representatives in June,
1906,[177] Representative Steenerson of Minnesota said:
... The qualifications that we have required of people in the past
who intend to become citizens is that they be men of good moral
character and that they are attached to the principles of the
Constitution of the United States.... They may be men of good moral
character and attached to the principles of the Constitution, and
yet be unable to comply with this requirement. Ability to _write_
the English language.... If, for instance, an elderly man like
President Fallières of France should decide to emigrate to the
United States, he cannot be naturalized, because in all probability
he would not be able to learn the English language within five
years; whereas Count Boni de Castellane, who has undoubtedly
had opportunities in the past ten years of learning the English
language, could be naturalized, because he could speak and write
English....
It is not from the immigrants who come here to settle on our public
domain, who come here to abide permanently and to build homes
and raise families, that we may expect frauds upon our election
laws or danger to our free institutions. Such immigrants should
not be denied citizenship because of inability to speak and write
English. They may, notwithstanding, be as loyal and as patriotic
as any. Nothing has been shown that connects inability to speak
English with any of the evils complained of. There is no relation
of cause and effect between them. The frauds and perjury against
naturalization laws were committed by persons proficient in English.
One of the naturalizing judges in Kansas, long familiar with the
workings of the law, said in his answer to the questionnaire of the
Americanization Study:
My judgment is that this government has occasion for greater fear
from many of the educated foreigners than from the uneducated
foreigner. More stress should be placed upon the character of the
man and his loyalty to this government, and his willingness to
abide by its laws and uphold its Constitution than upon his mere
educational qualifications. My observation has led me to conclude
that one of the chief difficulties with the administration of
our naturalization laws is that the Department seems inclined to
apply to all foreigners the same test; whether the applicant has
been a resident of the community for twenty-five years, leading
an exemplary life, upholding all the institutions, interested in
all the efforts to upbuild the state physically, mentally, and
morally, or whether he be a unit in the slum hordes of the city.
The Department seems to have conceived it to be its duty to force
all of them into the same strait-jacket.... I have in mind cases
where the Department has endeavored to withhold citizenship on
the merest technicality from men who for years have been our best
citizens, thoroughly loyal and devoted to the best interests of
the state. We seem to have gone upon the theory that the educated
foreigner, by reason of his education alone, will necessarily be
a good citizen, and that the ignorant foreigner is necessarily an
undesirable citizen.
An educational test, such as that to which petitioners for
naturalization are subjected by some judges and some naturalization
examiners, applied at the ballot box to all who would vote, would
wreak havoc upon the enrollment of both native and naturalized. It is
safe to say that not one out of a hundred of native-born citizens,
even college educated, could pass respectably the examination. A
very small proportion of American-born citizens of any age or of
either sex have read the Constitution of the United States or have
even a superficial knowledge of its contents. The present writer has
derived some amusement during his conduct of this investigation from
asking of more than ordinarily intelligent acquaintances some of the
questions to which applicants for naturalization have to respond in
various courts. The ignorance of even fundamental matters displayed
by these scions of the “old stock” has been almost invariably both
ludicrous and lamentable.
One of the questions which the Americanization Study asked of the
naturalization judges was whether they would favor a standard
intellectual test for both native and foreign born as a prerequisite
for admission to the ballot box. Of 326 judges who answered the
question a substantial majority (180) answered, “Yes,” and 44 were
not sure but that it would be a good thing. The best answer that the
102 who opposed the idea could make was valid enough--_i.e._, that
the native born have had 21 years of residence in the atmosphere
of American institutions, and may be assumed to have a general
intellectual fitness. The other objections were legalistic; but they
all came out to the same fact--that fitness for citizenship and the
ballot is a question of personal character and general attitude
toward the public welfare.
At first glance it might seem simple enough to devise an oral or
written examination by which to test the individual equipment of an
applicant for citizenship--or a native-born citizen seeking access
to the ballot box; actually it is impracticable. A set of questions
would permit memorizing and recital by rote; to leave it as at
present to the wit of the examiner or the judge means that no two
applicants will be subjected to the same test. The naturalization
judges say frankly that they cannot outline an examination, though
they think that somebody might!
The Merchants’ Association of New York appointed a committee on
immigration and naturalization which gave considerable study to this
subject, and came out where everybody else comes out:
In recommending that unnecessary obstructions and technical
difficulties be eliminated from naturalization procedure your
committee does not believe qualifications for citizenship should
be lowered. On the contrary, it believes they should be raised. In
addition to present requirements concerning residence and moral
character there should be an educational qualification requiring
proficiency in English and reasonable familiarity with our history
and government. Your committee _will not attempt to enumerate the
details of such requirement_, but recommends that a suitable and
well-defined educational standard for citizenship be fixed by
statute.
Every applicant for citizenship--including the wives who now are
swept in regardless of their own fitness by the naturalization of
their husbands, or kept out by their rejection or failure to apply,
should be considered in the light of his own personal character and
record of behavior during the preliminary-period residence here. And
character and behavior should be proved as any other material facts
are proved--by _preponderance of evidence_. The present practice
is quite otherwise. The whole procedure would be revolutionized if
the applicant were required, or permitted, to produce _a body of
reasonable and competent evidence sufficient to convince the court or
its representative assigned to take the testimony_. His neighbors,
his employer, his pastor, the school-teacher, his fellow workmen, by
word of mouth or affidavit--in short, all those who know what sort
of person he (or she) has been during the five years of required
residence--could readily satisfy the court as to the essential fact.
The judges themselves in most cases would welcome this change. As it
is now, the whole business is wound up with red tape, and thousands
of persons have been excluded on the flimsiest technical grounds,
simply because the evidence presented to the court must be, in the
typical case, that of two witnesses, _only_ two, and _the same_ two
throughout the whole proceeding. If anything can be found amiss with
these or either of them, the application must be rejected.
It may even be argued that the presumptions and the benefit of
doubts should be in favor of the applicant; that the burden of
proof should lie upon those who oppose admission. During the whole
period, 1908-18, in the whole United States only 14.3 per cent
of all denials of petitions for naturalization were for reasons
involving the personal fitness of the applicant--“ignorance” and
“immoral character.”[178] This means that _if every alien who applied
for citizenship during those eleven years had been granted his
certificate of naturalization without investigation or formality, the
proportion of “ignorant” and “immoral” admitted would have been only
1.7 per cent--less than two in a hundred_!
Whatever might have been the merits, real or imaginary, of the
hairsplitting, meticulous policy which has governed the operations
of our naturalization system since the Act of 1906 swept into
ancient history the scandals of the previous years, that policy was
effectively junked during the war. Since the beginning of the fiscal
year, 1918-19, under the operation of the military naturalization
plan, more aliens have been naturalized on the sole ground that
they were in the war service--practically without regard to race,
declaration of intention, previous residence, educational or moral
qualifications--than the ordinary naturalization of any year since
the beginning of the present system. These are direct admissions;
we have no means of knowing how many “derivative” citizens these
soldiers and sailors carried in with them, or have made by marriage
to alien women since their naturalization.
This wholesale letting down of all the bars, however necessary and
innocuous it may be deemed, at least has reduced to absurdity the
policy of hand picking and superscreening practiced in the ordinary
cases. It furnishes a sound and logical starting point for a new,
more reasonable, and more humane system, under which the alien may
know with greater certainty what he must do and prove in order to
establish his right to join us; a system which will give him a
different impression of our common sense and efficiency, as well
as of our attitude toward him not only as a petitioner for fellow
citizenship with us, but as a fellow member of the human race.
NO LOWERING OF STANDARDS
There is no argument here for lowering the standards of admission.
The applicant should be able to speak intelligibly the English
language. This is not very important practically, because in the
years which ordinarily elapse before the average alien files his
petition he will have learned to speak English anyway. There is
good ground for requiring also the ability to _read_ English. The
intelligent participation in the politics of this country requires
some knowledge of current events and political argument; the voter
should be able to read the English-language newspapers. We are unable
to follow those who would enforce also a requirement of ability to
_write_ in English. Such ability probably will exist in a majority
of cases, anyway. It is no _sine qua non_ of either intelligence or
character.
Theoretically, one might argue for a distinction to be made between
the general rights and responsibilities of bare citizenship (such
as diplomatic protection, the right to own property, exemption
from taxes imposed upon aliens as such, etc.) and the specific
right to vote. This, however, is almost completely academic,
because, except for the limitations of age and residence for a
period prior to election which apply alike to all citizens,
our Constitution--especially with the Nineteenth Amendment in
force--assumes that citizenship includes the ballot. It is difficult
to see any reason for requiring of the naturalized citizen, as a
qualification for voting, educational attainments other than those
required of the native born. It is equally difficult to see how
even a native-born citizen can be an intelligent voter if he cannot
speak and read the language in which the issues of elections are
discussed. Our own statistics of illiteracy, in states where the
proportion of the foreign born in the population is negligible, call
for educational measures having no exclusive reference to the foreign
born.
There is a growing custom in the courts, properly urged by the
Naturalization Bureau, of accepting, in lieu of any other educational
test, a certificate of graduation or proficiency from teachers in
public and other schools. The Naturalization Bureau now supplies the
forms for such certificates. A majority of the judges who answered
the questionnaire of the Americanization Study not only favored this
practice, but declared that it was their own. A good many, however--a
full third of those who expressed themselves on the subject--insisted
upon their own right and duty to examine the petitioner themselves,
or minimized the importance of the educational test altogether. It
seems obvious, however, that the certificate of properly accredited
American schools should be accepted for this purpose. Whatever may
be said in favor of having no educational test whatever, and of
admitting a petitioner who has no such certificate, there seems no
reason for not giving the petitioner the benefit of the extra credit
implied in his having attained such a graduation.
The declaration of intention (to become a citizen) should be
retained, notwithstanding the opinion of many persons, including some
attentive and discriminating students of the subject favoring its
abandonment. But the declaration in its present form and practice is
not satisfactory from any point of view. The procedure surrounding
it is now far too casual. It should be protected by substantial
safeguards and attended by a far greater degree of solemnity. Its
sufficiency in form, its technical correctness, should be certified
at the time of its issue by the officer of the court before whom it
is attested. There should be a preliminary period of residence in
this country before the declaration is made.
The identity of the declarant should be clearly established; he
should have and present a certificate of “lawful entry” into the
country; there should be no confusion or doubt about the name under
which he goes; his photograph, fingerprints, signature, or other
means of unmistakable identification should be attached; all of the
essential facts concerning his nativity, previous residence, marital,
status, occupation, and other things germane to an application for
so vital a change of relationship should be set forth clearly and
suitably attested. As at present, copies of the declaration should be
in the possession of the declarant, and on file in the court and in
the Naturalization Bureau.
It might well be required that the declarant should register with the
court or with the Naturalization Bureau every change of residence,
so that the record of his movements and behavior during the entire
period of his “probation” would be available.
The fact of the making of the declaration should be publicly posted,
so that not only the court and the government, but the general
public, should be put upon notice that a “new member” is applying for
admission. And when it comes into court at last as an indispensable
part of the record in the case, its sufficiency as a document should
be taken for granted. The responsibility for technical errors in it
should lie upon the officer who accepted and attested it; substantial
errors of fact should exist only under penalties as for other kinds
of perjury. The burden of proof against its validity should lie upon
the government or any other person attacking it.
Under the law as now enforced, the declaration of intention expires
at the end of seven years; but there is nothing to prevent its
renewal, and in those states in which formerly declarants had the
right to vote, all the politically important rights of citizenship
could be, and in many cases were, kept alive, as it were, perpetually
by such renewals without any other test or ceremony. Even now, the
other privileges of citizenship may be thus perpetuated by persons
who on no theory could “get by” in a naturalization court. It should
be made at least much more difficult to renew a declaration once
expired. The burden of proof should rest upon the alien to show why
he did not make final application for citizenship within the period
during which his declaration was valid. A judge in Oregon, expressing
the opinion of many judges on this point said:
Declarant should not be permitted to renew his declaration of
intention. Too many use the declaration as a means of escaping
something or obtaining employment; after expiration, the old
declaration is surrendered and a new one requested. The declaration
should disclose the scope of the educational attainments of the
declarant and a willingness to attain practical working knowledge
of the English language, as well as an insight into our system
of government and the names of public officials, their manner of
election and most important duties.
Let it be borne in mind that this is a very different matter from the
question of restrictions upon immigration, literacy, and sanitary
tests for mere admission to the country. The declarant is making his
initial application for fellow membership with us; he desires to
become flesh of our flesh, to share our sovereignty. The essential
value of the declaration of intention is that it registers as of a
certain date a state of mind toward our country and its citizenship.
It has a moral value for the declarant in putting him on notice that
he has definitely determined to put off his old allegiance; it ought
to warn him also that he is passing under scrutiny by his neighbors
and by the government; that his behavior has become in a special way
important to him and to the community. It is conclusive evidence
of at least two of the necessary five years of residence. Rightly
safeguarded and estimated, it would be a most precious possession.
But the corollary of this is that the process of final naturalization
should be greatly simplified. The great number of denials for “want
of prosecution” is in itself an index of the degree to which the
procedure is surrounded by vexatious technicalities, delays, expense,
discouragements which drive the petitioners and their witnesses out
of the business, mostly during the ninety days’ interval between the
filing of the petition and the time for the final hearing. In the
normal case, the witnesses should appear once for all; the record
should come before the court complete, in writing, and once for all,
except in disputed or appealed cases when a deeper inquiry is called
for. Make the standards of admission as severe as you please--the
procedure of complying with them should be simple, direct, as
inexpensive as possible, and readily understood by anyone of ordinary
intelligence.
A FUNCTION ADMINISTRATIVE OR JUDICIAL?
It may be debatable whether the whole function of naturalization
should be taken out of the hands of the courts and made a purely
administrative activity of the executive department of government.
A good many students of the subject favor such a course. The
present study has not led to this conclusion. The judges generally,
while they would be glad to be relieved of a peculiarly exacting
and vexatious duty, do not favor it. From the beginning of our
history the function has been judicial, and very sound reasons
should be advanced for making so radical a change. It would require
the establishment of an enormous machinery at a time when every
consideration cries out for the simplification of the government.
The present Naturalization Bureau, if adequately manned and properly
directed, and required to attend to its own business rather than to
expand itself into an educational institution, could save the time
of the courts to a great extent, and at the same time save to the
situation the dignity and solemnity purporting at least to abide in
the judicial atmosphere.
There has been a proposal to create a system of traveling
naturalization commissions, sitting from time to time at the various
county seats and passing upon petitions. But it is vitally important
to the petitioners, who are almost always folk of limited means and
time, that the place to which they must go shall be as near at hand
as possible, and the necessary traveling for themselves and their
witnesses as little as is absolutely necessary.
Another consideration, too often overlooked, especially by those
to whom the naturalization problem is seen chiefly from the point
of view of the great cities, lies in the fact that in the rural
districts the judges have a wide acquaintance, and are likely to
know, or to have direct means of knowing, all about the petitioner.
Once we rid our minds of the current impression that ignorant
immigrants rush from the landing port to the ballot box, and
remember that in the average case the petitioner has been in this
country more than ten years, and in a vast majority of cases
has lived for five years in the same state, if not in the same
community, the matter takes on a wholly different aspect. It is
quite conceivable that in the great cities a special court, or a
special term of court, might be set aside for the consideration of
naturalization cases.
PHYSICAL CONDITIONS AND DIGNITY
What is most needed is a better arrangement for taking care of this
business--a physical as well as an administrative arrangement. The
physical surroundings leave much to be desired. Merton A. Sturges,
Chief Naturalization Examiner at New York, thus describes[179] the
conditions under which final hearings are conducted in some of the
courts.
... In many instances the court-room has a seating capacity for
less than half the number of persons notified to appear, and often
there is barely space enough to crowd the applicants and witnesses
into the court-room in a standing position.... The applicants and
witnesses are sometimes rushed through as fast as one hundred cases
in half as many minutes. The natural query, especially on the part
of witnesses, is, “Why have we been brought here and kept standing
in a crowded court-room for hours for no apparent reason?”
Of course, in connection with a small percentage of applications,
some question arises which it is desirable to present for
determination by the judges, but aside from these few instances
there is no good reason for witnesses to appear in court, except
that the law requires their appearance....
The oath of allegiance is administered in anything but a
dignified and impressive manner. In fact, the whole proceeding
is lacking in that solemnity and impressiveness which should be
the characteristic of so important a ceremony. Would it be a
great innovation to inaugurate and maintain orderly and patriotic
ceremonies for the conferring of final naturalization? Invite the
applicants to appear in court, accompanied by members of their
family; have the certificates prepared in advance; provide an
appropriately decorated court-room with seating capacity for as
many as are present; call the applicants and their families in
groups by nationality before the judge’s bench; have the judge
administer the oath of allegiance to each group in a fittingly
dignified manner, and present the certificates of naturalization
to each new citizen; have the judge, and perhaps one other
prominent and esteemed citizen, deliver addresses dealing with the
responsibilities and duties of good citizenship.
The tendency in the past few years has been in the direction
indicated by Mr. Sturges. Increasingly, all over the country, judges
have awakened to the need of a greater solemnity in the conferring
of citizenship; a few judges have, at their own expense, furnished a
printed address or book of instructions to the new citizens, and even
a small American flag which is enormously prized by the recipients.
In one court in North Dakota the judge serves upon each declarant, at
the time of his filing of his declaration of intention, the following
formal notice under seal of the court:
State of North Dakota } In District Court
County of Cass } ss Judicial District
Give this notice your most careful attention and respect.
....................., Take notice:
That your Declaration of Intention to become a citizen of the
United States, made this ........ day of ........, A. D., 19....
in this County, Judicial District and State, gives notice to our
Government that your intent is to fit yourself for citizenship
before the time arrives to make your application for your final
adoption. That you will, in good faith, inquire into and acquaint
yourself with not only our form of Government, but the intent and
purpose of its formation and the duties and responsibilities that
will be yours when you are finally adopted. That you believe in,
and will at all times faithfully and energetically uphold, the
principles of our people and the various government agencies.
That you will be prepared, at the time of the hearing of your
application for final adoption, to prove to the Court before which
the hearing is had, and to the representatives of the Government
of the United States then present, that this application is made
in good faith and all sincerity and with love and respect for the
Government of which you are seeking to become a part.
(Signed) .........................
Clerk of the District Court,
Cass County, North Dakota.
By order of ......................
Judge of said Court.
In this court there is a ceremony just such as Mr. Sturges
recommends--a talk by some one selected by the presiding judge, on
the history and meaning of the flag and government, and what it means
to take on the new citizenship. Then there is offered, and of course
taken by all the accepted petitioners, the following pledge, devised
by the judge:
OBLIGATION OF FIDELITY
(Taken voluntarily)
I .................., of ................, being this day about
to be adopted into the full citizenship of the United States,
and believing in a people’s form of government as exemplified by
our now common Government, do solemnly pledge myself to devote a
considerable portion of my spare time for not less than three years
hereafter to inquire into and more fully understand our form of
government, its purposes and practices, the method and manner of
selecting all public officials in this country, the manner in which
and the method by which we can change our laws as changes become
necessary, in a peaceful and lawful manner, all of which is for the
purpose of fitting myself to become a loyal and useful citizen of
this, my adopted country.
This pledge is solemnly taken by me, and is made one of the
representations as to my good intent and purpose in asking
to become a fellow citizen, with the rights, duties, and
responsibilities coming to and depending upon me as a loyal citizen.
Dated at Fargo, N. D., this ....... day of ......, 19...
(Signed) ........................
In many parts of the country it has become a custom to hold public
ceremonies, at which the new citizens naturalized within the past
year or other definite period are assembled with their families to
hear addresses, join in patriotic singing, and otherwise celebrate
their adoption into the new fellowship.
FUNCTION OF THE NATURALIZATION BUREAU
The Naturalization Bureau should be, as it is now, the watchdog of
all this business, the investigating agency of the government. But
its work should not be confined, as it is now to so great an extent,
to picking flaws in papers, straining shrewd technical points of
law and procedure, or trying to find something wrong with the two
witnesses or the intellectual attainments of the petitioner. Being
informed at least two years in advance that George Kristopoulos,
whose address is registered with the court and in its own files, has
declared his intention to apply for citizenship, it can ascertain
affirmatively at all times what he is about, and present to the
court at the time of the final application a complete record of his
conduct, upon which the court can act intelligently. Its functions in
this direction should be materially expanded.
The naturalization examiner should represent the court, in the
relation of a master, taking the necessary testimony, examining
depositions, and presenting to the court at last a record complete
in writing, upon which, in the great majority of cases, the judicial
order would be entered without further ado. This would seem to be
indeed its logical function. The Bureau needs a real job; in fact,
has a real job instead of its present largely self-assumed adventures
in the field of public education, for which it is not properly
equipped, which has bedeviled its legitimate work and demoralized its
correspondence and its whole system of records, upon which the proper
administration of the law so greatly depends.
Except as the carrying out of the existing procedure has unjustly or
unreasonably affected the individual petitioner for citizenship, it
has not been conceived as the purpose of this study to investigate
the Naturalization Bureau as an exhibit of public administration.
Neither the available time nor the space in this volume has permitted
such a study as would have been adequate in scope or just to the
Bureau. Generally speaking, the thing which has been impressed upon
those who have carried on this branch of the Americanization Study
has been the zeal and honesty and vigilance for the public welfare
with which the Bureau has done its work ever since its establishment
in its present functions by the Act of 1906.
No serious charge or insinuation of corruption or willful misconduct
of any kind on the part of any member of that service has come
to the attention of the Study, and it may be predicted without
reservation that no such charge or insinuation would be sustained
by the facts. For fifteen years and more the Bureau has “carried
on,” under conditions of great difficulty, generally undermanned
and insufficiently appropriated for--although its business has
from the beginning not only been self-supporting, but brought into
the treasury of the United States money ample to have paid for
adequate _personnel_--except during the war, when the prevailing
hysteria about immigrants and the ill-informed rage for all manner of
things that might be called “Americanization” led to the hasty and
extravagant subsidizing of anything that could be tagged with that
word. The Bureau deserves great credit for what it has accomplished.
More than that, it is in no captious spirit that any demurrer has
been entered here to what it has gone out of its way to attempt.
The time is ripe now to review and construct to better purpose on
the basis of this long and informing experience, for an overhauling
of the whole process by which aliens are taken into our political
system. The Naturalization Law of 1906 and the amendments thereto
should be revised as a whole, and what has been learned should be
built into a new Act, retaining the substance which experience has
abundantly justified, and sloughing off the excrescences which have
grown up and accumulated. This should be done on the basis of a
thorough investigation under the authority of Congress, and in a
wholly constructive spirit.
Such an investigation would disclose the utter insufficiency of the
force now available at headquarters and in the field; the lack of
precision in the scope and technic of the Bureau; the chaos existing
in its records; the need of intelligent and consistent direction
of the field force by a supervising chief examiner or similar
officer; the waste of effort and money in directions having nothing
substantial or logical to do with the main work of the Bureau; the
need of one or more competent law officers to unify the policy of the
service in its practice under the decisions of the courts; the crying
need of a simplification of the standards and procedure of admission
and of the practices of the clerks of courts in handling the papers
and records upon whose sufficiency and accuracy hang the welfare of
thousands of well-intending human beings who desire to join us and
are needed in our citizenry. The whole subject has gone too long
without due understanding by the public and its representatives in
Congress.
Meanwhile our would-be citizens have been chased from pillar to
post and back again, losing in hundreds of thousands of cases their
affection and respect for the country to whose fellowship they asked
only the privilege of contributing what they might with all good
will.
APPENDIX
TABLE LV
DISTRIBUTION OF PETITIONS STUDIED, BY COURTS
================================================================
| | NUMBER
CODE | NAME OF COURT | OF
NUMBER | LOCATION OF COURT | PETITIONS
| | TABULATED
--------+--------------------------------------------+----------
01 | New York Co. (N. Y.) Supm. Ct. |
| New York City | 11,058
02 | U. S. Dist. Ct. for S. Dist. of N. Y. |
| New York City | 2,401
03 | U. S. Dist. Ct. for E. Dist. of N. Y. |
| Brooklyn, N. Y. | 1,553
04 | Bronx Co. (N. Y.) Supm. Ct. |
| New York City | 1,355
| |
05 | Queens Co. (N. Y.) Supm. Ct. |
| Jamaica, N. Y. | 598
06 | Westchester Co. (N. Y.) Supm. Ct. |
| White Plains, N. Y. | 647
07 | Nassau Co. (N. Y.) Supm. Ct. |
| Mineola, L. I., N. Y. | 135
08 | Passaic Co. (N. J.) Ct. of Com. Pls. |
| Paterson, N. J. | 742
| |
09 | Fairfield Co. (Conn.) Supr. Ct. |
| Bridgeport, Conn. | 410
10 | Knox Co. (Ill.) Circ. Ct. |
| Galesburg, Ill. | 29
12 | Johnson Co. (Iowa) Dist. Ct. |
| Iowa City, Iowa | 13
13 | Androscoggin Co. (Me.) Supm. Judicial Ct. |
| Auburn, Me. | 52
| |
14 | Tompkins Co. (N. Y.) Supm. Ct. |
| Ithaca, N. Y. | 23
15 | Middlesex Co. (N. J.) Ct. of Com. Pls. |
| New Brunswick, N. J. | 389
16 | U. S. Dist. Ct. for N. Dist. of Ohio |
| Cleveland, Ohio | 1,175
17 | Cuyahoga Co. (Ohio) Ct. of Com. Pls. |
| Cleveland, Ohio | 1,703
| |
18 | Multnomah Co. (Ore.) Circ. Ct. |
| Portland, Ore. | 714
19 | Monroe Co. (N. Y.) Supm. Ct. |
| Rochester, N. Y. | 813
20 | U. S. Dist. Ct. for W. Dist. of Washington |
| Seattle, Wash. | 703
21 | King Co. (Wash.) Supm. Ct. |
| Seattle, Wash. | 143
| |
22 | Chemung Co. (N. Y.) Supm. Ct. |
| Elmira, N. Y. | 19
23 | Summit Co. (Ohio) Ct. of Com. Pls. |
| Akron, Ohio | 199
24 | Northampton Co. (Pa.) Ct. of Com. Pls. |
| Easton, Pa. | 115
25 | Worcester Co. (Mass.) Supr. Ct. |
| Worcester, Mass. | 635
| |
26 | Middlesex Co. (Conn.) Supr. Ct. |
| Middletown, Conn. | 74
27 | Rensellaer Co. (N. Y.) Supr. Ct. |
| Troy, N. Y. | 104
28 | U. S. Dist. Ct. for S. Dist. of Ohio |
| Cincinnati, Ohio | 363
29 | New London Co. (Conn.) Supr. Ct. |
| Norwich, Conn. | 119
--------+--------------------------------------------+----------
| All courts | 26,284
================================================================
TABLE LVI
SEX AND MARITAL CONDITION OF PETITIONERS
(Part One)
===================================================================
| | SEX |MARITAL CONDITION|
CODE | |--------+--------+---------|-----------------+
NUMBER | TOTAL | | | No | Married |
OF |PETITIONERS| Male | Female | Inform- |--------+--------+
COURT | | | | ation | Number |Per Cent|
--------+-----------+--------+--------+---------+--------+--------+
Total | 26,284 | 26,117 | 154 | 13 | 18,017 | 68.5 |
| | | | | | |
01 | 11,058 | 10,989 | 69 | ... | 7,191 | 65.0 |
02 | 2,401 | 2,377 | 24 | ... | 1,286 | 53.6 |
03 | 1,553 | 1,542 | 10 | 1 | 1,097 | 70.6 |
04 | 1,355 | 1,347 | 8 | ... | 975 | 72.0 |
05 | 598 | 596 | ... | 2 | 499 | 83.5 |
06 | 647 | 642 | 5 | ... | 488 | 75.4 |
07 | 135 | 135 | ... | ... | 98 | 72.6 |
08 | 742 | 741 | 1 | ... | 579 | 78.0 |
09 | 410 | 406 | 3 | 1 | 297 | 72.4 |
10 | 29 | 29 | ... | ... | 22 | 75.9 |
12 | 13 | 13 | ... | ... | 7 | 53.1 |
13 | 52 | 52 | ... | ... | 41 | 78.8 |
14 | 23 | 23 | ... | ... | 13 | 56.5 |
15 | 389 | 388 | ... | 1 | 310 | 79.7 |
16 | 1,175 | 1,173 | 2 | ... | 933 | 79.4 |
17 | 1,703 | 1,701 | 2 | ... | 1,386 | 81.4 |
18 | 714 | 710 | 4 | ... | 496 | 69.5 |
19 | 813 | 808 | 4 | 1 | 595 | 73.2 |
20 | 703 | 688 | 10 | 5 | 384 | 54.6 |
21 | 143 | 138 | 5 | ... | 96 | 67.1 |
22 | 19 | 19 | ... | ... | 13 | 68.4 |
23 | 19 | 199 | ... | ... | 156 | 78.4 |
24 | 115 | 115 | ... | ... | 99 | 86.1 |
25 | 635 | 634 | 1 | ... | 473 | 74.5 |
26 | 74 | 74 | ... | ... | 53 | 71.6 |
27 | 104 | 101 | 1 | 2 | 68 | 55.4 |
28 | 363 | 358 | 5 | ... | 270 | 74.3 |
29 | 119 | 119 | ... | ... | 92 | 77.3 |
===================================================================
(Part Two)
=====================================================================
| MARITAL CONDITION | PETITIONER’S
CODE |-----------------+----------------+-------+ WIFE BORN
NUMBER | Single | Widowed | No | IN UNITED STATES
OF |--------+--------+-------+--------+Inform-|--------+--------
COURT | Number |Per Cent| Number|Per Cent| ation | Number |Per Cent
--------+--------+--------+-------+--------+-------|--------+--------
Total | 8,084 | 30.8 | 164 | 0.6 | 19 | 1,632 | 9.1
| | | | | | |
01 | 3,824 | 34.6 | 43 | 0.4 | ... | 322 | 4.4
02 | 1,093 | 45.5 | 22 | 0.9 | ... | 155 | 12.0
03 | 441 | 28.4 | 12 | 0.8 | 3 | 43 | 3.9
04 | 374 | 27.6 | 6 | 0.4 | ... | 94 | 9.6
05 | 96 | 16.1 | 3 | 0.5 | ... | 67 | 13.4
06 | 158 | 24.4 | 1 | 0.2 | ... | 60 | 12.3
07 | 36 | 26.7 | 1 | 0.7 | ... | 9 | 9.1
08 | 162 | 21.8 | 1 | 0.1 | ... | 42 | 7.3
09 | 108 | 26.3 | 2 | 0.2 | 3 | 17 | 5.7
10 | 7 | 24.1 | ... | ... | ... | 4 | 18.2
12 | 6 | 46.9 | ... | ... | ... | 1 | 14.2
13 | 10 | 19.2 | ... | ... | 1 | 14 | 34.1
14 | 6 | 26.1 | 3 | 13.0 | 1 | 5 | 38.5
15 | 76 | 19.5 | ... | ... | 3 | 33 | 10.6
16 | 229 | 19.5 | 12 | 1.0 | 1 | 86 | 9.2
17 | 312 | 18.3 | 5 | 0.4 | ... | 178 | 12.8
18 | 204 | 28.6 | 14 | 2.0 | ... | 141 | 28.4
19 | 216 | 26.6 | 1 | 0.1 | 1 | 88 | 14.8
20 | 300 | 42.7 | 14 | 2.0 | 5 | 84 | 21.9
21 | 38 | 26.6 | 9 | 6.3 | ... | 29 | 30.2
22 | 6 | 31.6 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
23 | 41 | 20.6 | 1 | 0.5 | 1 | 16 | 8.0
24 | 16 | 13.9 | ... | ... | ... | 23 | 23.2
25 | 160 | 25.2 | 2 | 0.3 | ... | 53 | 11.2
26 | 21 | 28.4 | ... | ... | ... | 2 | 3.8
27 | 34 | 32.7 | 2 | 1.9 | ... | 8 | 11.8
28 | 85 | 23.4 | 8 | 2.2 | ... | 50 | 18.5
29 | 27 | 22.7 | ... | ... | ... | 8 | 8.7
=====================================================================
TABLE LVII
NUMBER AND NATIVITY OF PETITIONERS’ CHILDREN UNDER TWENTY-ONE YEARS
OF AGE
========================================================================
| MARRIED PETITIONERS |
| | TOTAL
-----+------+------------+------------+------------+------------| NUMBER
| | | | | Having | OF
CODE | | | Having | Having | Both Native|FOREIGN
NUM- | | Having | Native-born|Foreign-born| and | BORN
BER | TOTAL| Children | Children | Children |Foreign-born| CHILD-
OF | | | Only | Only | Children | REN
COURT| |------+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+-----| UNDER
| |Number| Per |Number| Per |Number| Per |Number| Per | 21
| | | Cent| | Cent| | Cent| | Cent|
-----+------+------+-----+------+-----+------+-----+------+-----+-------
Total|18,017|14,371| 79.8|10,563| 73.5| 1,441| 10.0| 2,367| 16.5| 4,843
| | | | | | | | | |
01 | 7,191| 5,760| 80.1| 3,960| 68.8| 683| 11.8| 1,117| 19.4| 2,380
02 | 1,286| 943| 73.3| 754| 80.0| 100| 10.6| 89| 9.4| 158
03 | 1,097| 866| 78.9| 647| 74.7| 97| 11.3| 122| 14.1| 245
04 | 975| 776| 79.6| 673| 86.7| 36| 4.7| 67| 8.6| 114
05 | 499| 409| 82.0| 338| 82.6| 20| 4.9| 51| 12.5| 76
06 | 488| 387| 79.3| 299| 77.3| 22| 5.6| 66| 17.1| 124
07 | 98| 73| 74.5| 61| 83.6| 3| 4.1| 9| 12.3| 21
08 | 579| 506| 87.4| 354| 70.0| 65| 12.8| 87| 17.2| 197
09 | 297| 250| 84.2| 205| 82.0| 10| 4.0| 35| 14.0| 69
10 | 22| 16| 72.7| 9| 56.3| 3| 18.8| 4| 25.0| 6
12 | 7| 4| 57.1| 2| 50.0| 1| 25.0| 1| 25.0| 2
13 | 41| 28| 68.3| 23| 82.1| 1| 3.6| 4| 14.3| 6
14 | 13| 6| 46.1| 4| 66.7| 1| 16.6| 1| 16.7| 2
15 | 310| 262| 84.5| 201| 76.7| 21| 8.0| 40| 15.3| 97
16 | 933| 754| 80.8| 568| 75.3| 75| 10.0| 111| 14.7| 254
17 | 1,386| 1,191| 85.9| 878| 73.7| 101| 8.5| 212| 17.8| 412
18 | 496| 363| 73.2| 301| 82.9| 19| 5.2| 43| 11.8| 104
19 | 595| 469| 78.8| 311| 66.3| 59| 12.6| 99| 21.1| 203
20 | 384| 291| 75.8| 230| 79.0| 20| 6.9| 41| 14.1| 68
21 | 96| 60| 62.5| 45| 75.0| 7| 11.7| 8| 13.3| 21
22 | 13| 7| 53.8| 2| 28.6| 3| 42.9| 2| 28.6| 3
23 | 156| 120| 76.9| 70| 58.3| 18| 15.0| 32| 26.7| 46
24 | 99| 81| 81.8| 58| 71.6| 7| 8.6| 16| 19.8| 28
25 | 473| 385| 81.4| 312| 81.0| 26| 6.8| 47| 12.2| 85
26 | 53| 39| 73.6| 33| 84.6| ....| ....| 6| 15.4| 10
27 | 68| 47| 69.1| 35| 74.5| 5| 10.6| 7| 14.9| 12
28 | 270| 212| 78.5| 143| 67.5| 29| 13.7| 40| 18.8| 79
29 | 92| 66| 71.7| 47| 71.2| 9| 3.6| 10| 15.2| 21
========================================================================
TABLE LVIII
AGE OF PETITIONERS AT ARRIVAL, AND TIME ELAPSING BETWEEN TWENTY-ONE
YEARS OF AGE (OR LATER ARRIVAL) AND PETITION, 1913-14.
====================================================
| PETITIONERS | TIME BETWEEN
AGE AT +--------+----------+ 21 YEARS (OR
ARRIVAL | | | LATER ARRIVAL)
| Number | Per Cent | AND PETITION
----------------+--------+----------+---------------
All Ages | 26,284 | ... | ...
| | |
1 | 149 | 0.6 | 6.2
2 | 114 | 0.4 | 7.4
3 | 127 | 0.5 | 7.3
4 | 118 | 0.5 | 7.7
5 | 120 | 0.5 | 8.5
6 | 118 | 0.5 | 7.5
7 | 155 | 0.6 | 7.0
8 | 168 | 0.6 | 7.9
9 | 169 | 0.6 | 6.9
10 | 213 | 0.8 | 7.4
11 | 219 | 0.8 | 7.3
12 | 285 | 1.1 | 7.5
13 | 396 | 1.5 | 9.5
14 | 556 | 2.5 | 7.2
15 | 812 | 3.1 | 7.1
16 | 1,244 | 4.7 | 7.0
17 | 1,626 | 6.2 | 7.7
18 | 1,999 | 7.6 | 8.7
19 | 1,779 | 6.8 | 9.5
20 | 2,036 | 7.7 | 10.8
21 | 1,736 | 6.6 | 10.6
22 | 1,470 | 5.6 | 10.7
23 | 1,371 | 5.2 | 10.9
24 | 1,290 | 4.9 | 10.8
25 | 1,240 | 4.7 | 10.6
26 | 987 | 3.8 | 10.6
27 | 827 | 3.1 | 10.8
28 | 723 | 2.8 | 10.4
29 | 598 | 2.3 | 10.5
30 | 530 | 2.0 | 10.9
31 | 402 | 1.5 | 10.6
32 | 387 | 1.5 | 10.6
33 | 336 | 1.3 | 10.6
34 | 296 | 1.1 | 10.3
35 | 248 | 0.9 | 10.3
36 | 204 | 0.8 | 9.8
37 | 197 | 0.7 | 10.0
38 | 137 | 0.5 | 10.0
39 | 118 | 0.4 | 9.5
40 | 118 | 0.4 | 9.7
41 | 109 | 0.4 | 9.7
42 | 87 | 0.3 | 9.9
43 | 86 | 0.3 | 9.1
44 | 64 | 0.2 | 9.0
45 | 61 | 0.2 | 9.7
46 | 41 | 0.2 | 8.7
47 | 45 | 0.2 | 9.4
48 | 36 | 0.1 | 10.3
49 | 31 | 0.1 | 10.0
50 | 22 | 0.1 | 8.6
Over 50 | 68 | 0.3 | ...
No Information | 16 | ... | ...
====================================================
TABLE LIX
NUMBER AND PER CENT OF PETITIONERS DENIED FOR EACH CAUSE BY COURTS
(Part One)
===================================================================
| | |PER CENT| WANT OF | INCOMPETENT |
CODE | TOTAL | | PETIT- | PROSECUTION | WITNESS |
NUMBER | PETIT- | TOTAL | IONERS |-------+------|-------+------|
OF | IONERS | DENIALS | DENIED |Number | Per |Number | Per |
COURT | | | | | Cent | | Cent |
-------+---------+---------+--------+-------+------+-------+------|
All | 26,284 | 3,033 | 11.5 | 689 | 22.7 | 422 | 13.9 |
Courts | | | | | | | |
1 | 11,058 | 1,308 | 11.8 | 203 | 15.5 | 107 | 8.2 |
2 | 2,401 | 278 | 11.6 | 73 | 26.3 | 39 | 14.0 |
3 | 1,553 | 200 | 12.9 | 35 | 17.5 | 6 | 3.0 |
4 | 1,355 | 155 | 11.4 | 22 | 14.2 | 54 | 34.8 |
5 | 598 | 119 | 20.0 | 19 | 16.0 | 11 | 9.2 |
6 | 647 | 103 | 15.9 | 30 | 29.1 | 11 | 10.7 |
7 | 135 | 30 | 22.2 | 9 | 3.0 | 6 | 20.0 |
8 | 742 | 48 | 6.5 | 13 | 27.1 | 15 | 31.3 |
9 | 410 | 47 | 11.5 | 14 | 29.8 | ... | .... |
10 | 29 | 4 | 13.8 | ... | .... | 2 | 50.0 |
12 | 13 | 2 | 15.4 | ... | .... | ... | .... |
13 | 52 | 8 | 15.4 | 1 | 12.5 | 1 | 12.5 |
14 | 23 | 4 | 17.4 | ... | .... | ... | .... |
15 | 389 | 37 | 9.5 | 17 | 45.9 | 15 | 40.5 |
16 | 1,175 | 84 | 7.1 | 48 | 57.1 | 10 | 11.9 |
17 | 1,703 | 82 | 4.8 | 43 | 52.4 | 13 | 15.9 |
18 | 714 | 129 | 18.1 | 15 | 11.6 | 55 | 42.6 |
19 | 813 | 65 | 8.0 | 35 | 53.8 | 12 | 18.5 |
20 | 703 | 93 | 13.2 | 26 | 28.0 | 27 | 29.0 |
21 | 143 | 25 | 17.5 | 6 | 24.0 | 7 | 28.0 |
22 | 19 | 2 | 10.5 | 1 | 50.0 | 1 | 50.0 |
23 | 199 | 27 | 13.6 | 15 | 55.6 | 7 | 25.9 |
24 | 115 | 27 | 23.5 | 1 | 3.7 | 8 | 29.6 |
25 | 635 | 70 | 11.0 | 31 | 44.3 | 10 | 14.3 |
26 | 74 | 7 | 9.5 | 5 | 71.4 | ... | .... |
27 | 104 | 13 | 12.5 | 2 | 15.4 | 1 | 7.7 |
28 | 363 | 40 | 11.0 | 22 | 55.0 | 4 | 10.0 |
29 | 119 | 26 | 21.8 | 3 | 11.5 | ... | .... |
===================================================================
(Part Two)
====================================================================
| DECLARATION | | IMMORAL | INSUFFICIENT |
CODE | INVALID | IGNORANCE | CHARACTER | RESIDENCE |
NUMBER |-------+------+-------+------+-------+------+-------+------|
OF |Number | Per |Number | Per |Number | Per |Number | Per |
COURT | | Cent | | Cent | | Cent | | Cent |
-------+-------+------+-------+------+-------+------+-------+------|
All | 1,296 | 42.7 | 220 | 7.2 | 59 | 1.9 | 68 | 2.2 |
Courts | | | | | | | | |
1 | 879 | 67.2 | 20 | 1.5 | 13 | 1.0 | 8 | 0.6 |
2 | 59 | 21.3 | 77 | 27.7 | 2 | 0.7 | 2 | 0.7 |
3 | 87 | 43.5 | 51 | 25.5 | 3 | 1.5 | 3 | 1.5 |
4 | 52 | 33.5 | 2 | 1.3 | 4 | 2.6 | 3 | 1.9 |
5 | 57 | 47.9 | 23 | 19.3 | 1 | 0.8 | ... | .... |
6 | 49 | 47.5 | 6 | 5.8 | 2 | 1.9 | 1 | .... |
7 | 9 | 30.0 | 2 | 6.7 | ... | .... | 1 | 3.0 |
8 | 7 | 14.6 | ... | .... | 1 | 2.1 | 7 | 14.6 |
9 | 21 | 44.2 | 1 | 2.1 | 1 | 2.1 | 3 | 6.4 |
10 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
12 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 50.0 |
13 | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 12.5 | 1 | 12.5 |
14 | 1 | 25.0 | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 25.0 |
15 | 2 | 5.4 | ... | .... | 1 | 2.7 | 1 | 2.7 |
16 | 4 | 4.8 | 2 | 2.4 | 4 | 4.8 | 4 | 4.8 |
17 | 5 | 6.1 | 2 | 2.4 | 3 | 3.7 | 5 | 6.1 |
18 | 11 | 8.5 | 2 | 1.6 | 16 | 12.4 | 2 | 1.6 |
19 | ... | .... | 3 | 4.6 | 2 | 3.1 | 5 | 7.7 |
20 | 15 | 16.1 | 6 | 6.5 | ... | .... | 6 | 6.5 |
21 | 1 | 4.0 | 2 | 8.0 | 1 | 4.0 | 4 | 4.0 |
22 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
23 | ... | .... | ... | .... | 2 | 7.4 | 1 | 3.7 |
24 | 1 | 3.7 | 11 | 40.7 | ... | .... | 1 | 3.7 |
25 | 20 | 28.6 | ... | .... | 1 | 1.4 | 3 | 4.3 |
26 | 1 | 14.3 | 1 | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
27 | 5 | 38.5 | 4 | 30.8 | ... | .... | ... | .... |
28 | 1 | 2.5 | 5 | 12.5 | ... | .... | 1 | 2.5 |
29 | 9 | 26.9 | ... | .... | 1 | 3.8 | 4 | 15.4 |
====================================================================
(Part Three)
====================================================================
| | | | UNABLE TO |
CODE | PETITIONERS | NO | | PRODUCE |
NUMBER | MOTION | JURISDICTION | DECEASED | WITNESS FOR |
OF | | | | DEPOSITION |
COURT |-------+------+-------+------+-------+------+-------+------+
|Number | Per |Number | Per |Number | Per |Number | Per |
| | Cent | | Cent | | Cent | | Cent |
-------+-------+------+-------+------+-------+------+-------+------+
All | 51 | 1.7 | 12 | 0.4 | 11 | 0.4 | 12 | 0.4 |
Courts | | | | | | | | |
1 | 8 | 0.6 | ... | .... | 1 | 0.8 | ... | .... |
2 | 7 | 2.5 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
3 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
4 | ... | .... | 1 | 0.6 | 1 | 0.6 | ... | .... |
5 | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 0.8 | ... | .... |
6 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
7 | ... | .... | 1 | 2.1 | ... | .... | ... | .... |
8 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
9 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
10 | ... | .... | 1 | 50.0 | ... | .... | ... | .... |
12 | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 12.5 | ... | .... |
13 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
14 | 1 | 25.0 | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 25.0 |
15 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
16 | 5 | 6.0 | 3 | 3.6 | 1 | 1.2 | 2 | 2.4 |
17 | 6 | 7.3 | 1 | 1.2 | 1 | 1.2 | ... | .... |
18 | 9 | 7.0 | 3 | 2.3 | 1 | O.8 | 7 | 5.4 |
19 | 6 | 9.2 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
20 | 3 | 3.2 | ... | .... | 1 | 1.1 | ... | .... |
21 | 2 | 8.0 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
22 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
23 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 3.7 |
24 | 1 | 3.7 | ... | .... | 1 | 3.7 | ... | .... |
25 | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 1.4 | 1 | 1.4 |
26 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
27 | 1 | 7.7 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
28 | 2 | 5.0 | 2 | 5.0 | ... | .... | ... | .... |
29 | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 3.8 | ... | .... |
====================================================================
(Part Four)
====================================================================
| | | | |
CODE | ALREADY A | NO | PREMATURE |MISCELLANEOUS |
NUMBER | CITIZEN | CERTIFICATE | PETITION | |
OF | | OF ARRIVAL | | |
COURT |-------+------+-------+------+-------+------+-------+------+
|Number | Per |Number | Per |Number | Per |Number | Per |
| | Cent | | Cent | | Cent | | Cent |
-------+-------+------+-------+------+-------+------+-------+------+
All | 9 | 0.3 | 14 | 0.5 | 7 | 0.2 | 147 | 4.8 |
Courts | | | | | | | | |
1 | 3 | 0.2 | ... | .... | 1 | 0.08| 62 | 4.7 |
2 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | 19 | 6.8 |
3 | 1 | 1.5 | ... | .... | ... | .... | 10 | 5.0 |
4 | 1 | 0.6 | ... | .... | 1 | 0.6 | 14 | 9.0 |
5 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | 7 | 5.9 |
6 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | 4 | 3.9 |
7 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | 3 | 10.0 |
8 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 2.1 |
9 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | 6 | 12.8 |
10 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | 2 | 50.0 |
12 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
13 | ... | .... | 1 | 12.5 | ... | .... | 1 | 12.5 |
14 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
15 | ... | .... | 1 | 2.7 | ... | .... | ... | .... |
16 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 1.2 |
17 | ... | .... | 3 | 3.7 | ... | .... | ... | .... |
18 | 2 | 1.6 | 2 | 1.6 | ... | .... | 1 | 0.8 |
19 | ... | .... | 1 | 1.5 | ... | .... | 1 | 1.5 |
20 | 1 | 1.1 | 2 | 2.2 | 1 | 1.1 | 5 | 5.4 |
21 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 4.0 |
22 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
23 | ... | .... | ... | .... | 1 | 3.7 | ... | .... |
24 | ... | .... | 3 | 11.1 | ... | .... | ... | .... |
25 | 1 | 1.4 | ... | .... | 2 | 2.9 | ... | .... |
26 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
27 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... |
28 | ... | .... | 1 | 2.5 | 1 | 2.5 | 1 | 2.5 |
29 | ... | .... | ... | .... | ... | .... | 8 | 30.8 |
====================================================================
(Part Five)
=======================
|
CODE | NO
NUMBER | INFORMATION
OF |
COURT |--------+------
| Number | Per
| | Cent
-------+--------+------
All | 16 | 0.5
Courts | |
1 | 3 | 0.2
2 | ... | ....
3 | 4 | 2.0
4 | ... | ....
5 | ... | ....
6 | ... | ....
7 | ... | ....
8 | 3 | 6.2
9 | 1 | 2.1
10 | ... | ....
12 | ... | ....
13 | 1 | 12.5
14 | ... | ....
15 | ... | ....
16 | ... | ....
17 | ... | ....
18 | 3 | 2.3
19 | ... | ....
20 | ... | ....
21 | 1 | 4.0
22 | ... | ....
23 | ... | ....
24 | ... | ....
25 | ... | ....
26 | ... | ....
27 | ... | ....
28 | ... | ....
29 | ... | ....
=======================
TABLE LX
NUMBER OF PETITIONERS DENIED FOR EACH CAUSE BY COUNTRY OF BIRTH
(Part One)
=======================================================================
| TOTAL | | | |INCOMP-| DECLAR-|
COUNTRY | NUMBER | TOTAL |PER CENT|WANT OF| ETENT | ATION |
OF BIRTH |OF PETIT-|DENIALS| DENIALS|PROSEC-| WIT- | INVALID|
| IONERS | | | UTION | NESSES| |
------------------+---------+-------+--------+-------+-------+--------+
All countries | 26,284 | 3,033 | 11.5 | 689 | 422 | 1,296 |
| | | | | | |
Australia | 31 | 4 | 12.9 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Austria | 3,875 | 345 | 9.0 | 75 | 36 | 172 |
Belgium | 41 | 5 | 12.2 | 2 | 1 | ... |
Bulgaria | 10 | 1 | 10.0 | 1 | ... | ... |
Canada | 385 | 43 | 11.2 | 13 | 6 | 13 |
Central America | 10 | 1 | 10.0 | ... | ... | ... |
China | ... | ... | .... | ... | ... | ... |
Cuba | 15 | 1 | 6.7 | ... | ... | 1 |
Denmark | 200 | 29 | 14.5 | 5 | 8 | 10 |
England | 831 | 120 | 14.4 | 36 | 23 | 38 |
Finland | 144 | 14 | 9.7 | 6 | 2 | 2 |
France | 86 | 19 | 22.1 | 3 | 5 | 8 |
Germany | 2,305 | 296 | 12.8 | 51 | 43 | 149 |
Greece | 90 | 27 | 30.0 | 13 | 3 | 2 |
Holland | 139 | 21 | 15.1 | 6 | 7 | 4 |
Hungary | 2,443 | 249 | 10.2 | 80 | 31 | 72 |
Indiana | 10 | 2 | 20.0 | ... | ... | 1 |
Ireland | 1,773 | 166 | 9.4 | 45 | 19 | 82 |
Italy | 3,591 | 646 | 18.0 | 182 | 72 | 236 |
Japan | 4 | ... | .... | ... | ... | ... |
Luxemburg | 6 | ... | .... | ... | ... | ... |
Mexico | 4 | 3 | 75.0 | 1 | 1 | ... |
Montenegro | 4 | 1 | 25.0 | ... | ... | ... |
Newfoundland | 12 | ... | .... | ... | ... | ... |
Norway | 389 | 48 | 12.3 | 12 | 13 | 9 |
Portugal | 8 | 1 | 12.5 | 1 | ... | ... |
Rumania | 569 | 54 | 9.5 | 4 | 6 | 37 |
Russia | 7,864 | 744 | 9.5 | 113 | 117 | 381 |
South America | 19 | 3 | 15.8 | ... | 2 | 1 |
Scotland | 288 | 42 | 14.6 | 9 | 5 | 17 |
Serbia | 6 | 4 | 66.6 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Spain | 23 | 4 | 17.4 | ... | 1 | 2 |
Sweden | 616 | 80 | 13.0 | 11 | 11 | 33 |
Switzerland | 197 | 25 | 12.7 | 6 | 5 | 10 |
Turkey in Asia | 142 | 18 | 12.7 | 8 | 2 | 6 |
Turkey in Europe | 92 | 15 | 16.3 | 4 | 1 | 7 |
Wales | 32 | 1 | 3.1 | ... | ... | ... |
Persia | 6 | 1 | 16.6 | ... | ... | ... |
Iceland | 1 | ... | .... | ... | ... | ... |
No information | 23 | ... | .... | ... | ... | ... |
=======================================================================
(Part Two)
====================================================================
| | |INSUFF-| | | |
COUNTRY |IGNOR- |IMMORAL| ICIENT| PETIT | NO | |
OF BIRTH | ANCE | CHAR- | RESID-|IONERS’| JURIS-|DECEASED|
| | ACTER | ENCE |MOTION |DICTION| |
------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+--------+
All countries | 220 | 59 | 68 | 51 | 12 | 11 |
| | | | | | |
Australia | ... | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ... |
Austria | 25 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Belgium | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Bulgaria | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Canada | ... | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
Central America | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | 1 |
China | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Cuba | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Denmark | ... | 2 | ... | 2 | ... | ... |
England | 2 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 |
Finland | ... | ... | 1 | ... | ... | 2 |
France | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Germany | 14 | 7 | 4 | 5 | 1 | ... |
Greece | ... | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ... |
Holland | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Hungary | 19 | 8 | 14 | 8 | 1 | 2 |
Indiana | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Ireland | 3 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1 | ... |
Italy | 92 | 11 | 13 | 3 | 2 | ... |
Japan | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Luxemburg | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Mexico | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Montenegro | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Newfoundland | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Norway | 4 | ... | 3 | 2 | ... | ... |
Portugal | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Rumania | 4 | 2 | ... | ... | 1 | ... |
Russia | 46 | 13 | 13 | 13 | 1 | 2 |
South America | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Scotland | 1 | ... | 1 | 2 | 1 | ... |
Serbia | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Spain | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Sweden | 3 | 4 | 7 | 3 | ... | 1 |
Switzerland | 2 | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ... |
Turkey in Asia | 1 | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ... |
Turkey in Europe | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Wales | ... | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ... |
Persia | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Iceland | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
No information | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
====================================================================
(Part Three)
=======================================================================
| UNABLE TO| | NO | | |
COUNTRY | PRODUCE |ALREADY|CERTIF-| PREMA- |MISCELL-| NO
OF BIRTH | WITNESS | A | ICATE | TURE | ANEOUS |INFORM-
| FOR |CITIZEN| OF |PETITION| | ATION
|DEPOSITION| | DENIAL| | |
------------------+----------+-------+-------+--------+--------+-------
All countries | 12 | 9 | 14 | 7 | 147 | 16
| | | | | |
Australia | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Austria | 1 | 1 | 2 | ... | 19 | 1
Belgium | ... | ... | ... | ... | 1 | ...
Bulgaria | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Canada | ... | 1 | 1 | ... | 1 | ...
Central America | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
China | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Cuba | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Denmark | ... | ... | ... | ... | 2 | ...
England | 1 | 1 | 2 | ... | 6 | ...
Finland | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | 1
France | ... | 1 | 1 | ... | 1 | ...
Germany | 2 | ... | 2 | ... | 18 | ...
Greece | ... | ... | ... | 2 | 4 | 2
Holland | 1 | 1 | ... | ... | 2 | ...
Hungary | 3 | ... | ... | 2 | 9 | ...
Indiana | ... | ... | ... | ... | 1 | ...
Ireland | ... | 1 | ... | 1 | 8 | ...
Italy | ... | 1 | 3 | ... | 28 | 3
Japan | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Luxemburg | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Mexico | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Montenegro | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Newfoundland | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Norway | 1 | 1 | ... | ... | 2 | 1
Portugal | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Rumania | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Russia | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 37 | 3
South America | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Scotland | 1 | ... | ... | ... | 4 | 1
Serbia | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | 1
Spain | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Sweden | 1 | ... | 2 | ... | 2 | 2
Switzerland | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | 1
Turkey in Asia | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Turkey in Europe | ... | ... | ... | ... | 2 | ...
Wales | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Persia | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
Iceland | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
No information | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ...
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TABLE LXI
DISTRIBUTION OF PETITIONERS BY COURTS AND COUNTRY OF BIRTH
(Part One)
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COUNTRY | ALL | CODE NUMBER OF COURTS |
OF BIRTH | COURTS +-------+-------+-------+-------+-----+-----+
| | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
------------------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-----+-----+
All countries | 26,284 |11,058 | 2,401 | 1,553 | 1,355 | 598 | 647 |
| | | | | | | |
Australia | 31 | 11 | 1 | ... | 2 | 1 | ... |
Austria | 3,875 | 1,966 | 293 | 126 | 175 | 68 | 45 |
Belgium | 41 | 5 | 4 | ... | 1 | 1 | ... |
Bulgaria | 10 | 3 | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Canada | 385 | 23 | 14 | 12 | 3 | 2 | 5 |
Central America | 10 | 5 | 2 | ... | ... | 1 | ... |
China | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Cuba | 15 | 10 | 4 | 1 | ... | ... | ... |
Denmark | 200 | 36 | 9 | 7 | 12 | 11 | 6 |
England | 831 | 167 | 93 | 59 | 29 | 33 | 36 |
Finland | 144 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
France | 86 | 45 | 11 | 2 | 2 | ... | 2 |
Germany | 2,305 | 673 | 280 | 204 | 122 | 182 | 41 |
Greece | 90 | 32 | 17 | 4 | ... | ... | ... |
Holland | 139 | 17 | 14 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 2 |
Hungary | 2,443 | 719 | 148 | 38 | 93 | 44 | 31 |
India | 10 | 1 | ... | 2 | ... | ... | ... |
Ireland | 1,773 | 801 | 304 | 86 | 84 | 30 | 82 |
Italy | 3,591 | 1,391 | 303 | 430 | 206 | 128 | 236 |
Japan | 4 | 2 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Luxemburg | 6 | 1 | 2 | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Mexico | 4 | 2 | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Montenegro | 4 | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Newfoundland | 12 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Norway | 389 | 24 | 15 | 54 | 6 | 2 | 2 |
Portugal | 8 | 3 | 2 | ... | ... | ... | ... |
Rumania | 569 | 390 | 69 | 23 | 41 | 1 | 4 |
Russia | 7,864 | 4,434 | 665 | 416 | 538 | 74 | 86 |
South America | 19 | 7 | 10 | 1 | ... | ... | 1 |
Scotland | 288 | 38 | 26 | 21 | 13 | 4 | 33 |
Serbia | 6 | 1 | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ... |
Spain | 23 | 10 | 4 | 6 | ... | ... | ... |
Sweden | 616 | 95 | 31 | 31 | 16 | 4 | 21 |
Switzerland | 197 | 49 | 20 | 9 | 4 | 7 | 3 |
Turkey in Asia | 142 | 34 | 23 | 13 | ... | 1 | 4 |
Turkey in Europe | 92 | 43 | 27 | ... | 1 | ... | 1 |
Wales | 32 | 11 | ... | ... | ... | ... | 2 |
Persia | 6 | 3 | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ... |
Iceland | 1 | ... | ... | ... | 1 | ... | ... |
No information | 23 | ... | 1 | ... | ... | ... | 1 |
========================================================================
(Part Two)
========================================================================
COUNTRY | ALL | CODE NUMBER OF COURTS |
OF BIRTH | COURTS +-----+-----+-----+----+----+----+----+-----+
| | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
------------------+--------+-----+-----+-----+----+----+----+----+-----+
All countries | 26,284 | 135 | 742 | 410 | 29 | 13 | 52 | 23 | 389 |
| | | | | | | | | |
Australia | 31 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 |
Austria | 3,875 | 7 | 74 | 27 | .. | 4 | .. | .. | 36 |
Belgium | 41 | ... | 10 | 4 | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Bulgaria | 10 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Canada | 385 | ... | 3 | 5 | .. | .. | 32 | .. | 2 |
Central America | 10 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
China | ... | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Cuba | 15 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Denmark | 200 | 7 | 1 | 7 | 3 | .. | .. | .. | 20 |
England | 831 | 12 | 19 | 21 | 2 | .. | 1 | 2 | 20 |
Finland | 144 | ... | ... | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 |
France | 86 | 4 | 3 | 2 | .. | .. | 1 | 1 | ... |
Germany | 2,305 | 18 | 94 | 27 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 26 |
Greece | 90 | 1 | 4 | ... | 1 | .. | 2 | 2 | 2 |
Holland | 139 | 1 | 36 | ... | .. | .. | .. | 2 | ... |
Hungary | 2,443 | 8 | 81 | 77 | .. | .. | 2 | 3 | 116 |
India | 10 | ... | 1 | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Ireland | 1,773 | 13 | 17 | 29 | 1 | 2 | 3 | .. | 9 |
Italy | 3,591 | 27 | 104 | 63 | 1 | .. | 5 | 4 | 36 |
Japan | 4 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Luxemburg | 6 | ... | ... | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Mexico | 4 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Montenegro | 4 | ... | ... | 1 | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Newfoundland | 12 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Norway | 389 | 1 | 1 | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | 5 |
Portugal | 8 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Rumania | 569 | 2 | ... | 3 | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 |
Russia | 7,864 | 22 | 247 | 95 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 98 |
South America | 19 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Scotland | 288 | 2 | 15 | 4 | 1 | .. | .. | 2 | 6 |
Serbia | 6 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Spain | 23 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 |
Sweden | 616 | 6 | 8 | 32 | 17 | .. | .. | .. | 2 |
Switzerland | 197 | 2 | 14 | 1 | .. | 1 | .. | .. | 1 |
Turkey in Asia | 142 | 2 | 7 | 8 | .. | .. | .. | 2 | 3 |
Turkey in Europe | 92 | ... | ... | ... | .. | 1 | 1 | 2 | ... |
Wales | 32 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | 1 |
Persia | 6 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
Iceland | 1 | ... | ... | ... | .. | .. | .. | .. | ... |
No information | 23 | ... | 3 | 2 | .. | .. | .. | .. | 2 |
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