THE preceding review of comparative statistics and descriptive history of labor conditions in the past and present has disclosed no evidence in support of the view that the economic interests of the wage-earner have suffered in consequence of immigration. But it is claimed that the evil effects of immigration show themselves in an alarming increase of pauperism and crime. The statistics of dependency and delinquency, however, give no occasion for alarm. According to an investigation made by the Bureau of Immigration, the total number of inmates of penal institutions, insane asylums, and almshouses in 1908 was 610,477,1 which included native and naturalized citizens and aliens. enumeration of the same classes by the Bureau of the Census in 1904 gave their number as 634,877. A comparison of these figures clearly shows that the large immigration of the five-year period 1903-1908 was accompanied by an actual decrease of pauperism and crime.

The

Whether or not the number of paupers in charitable institutions can "serve as a general index of prevailing distress,"3 is beside the question: the contention is that pauperism is

Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1908, p. 96. Benevolent Institutions, p. 12. Paupers in Almshouses, p. 6. Insane and Feeble-minded in Hospitals and Institutions, pp. 6, 107. Prisoners and Juvenile Delinquents, pp. 14, 228.

3 Paupers in Almhouses, p. 8.

on the increase, whereas the latest statistics show that the millions of recent immigrants imposed no new burdens upon the charitable and penal institutions of the country.

B. Pauperism

The Immigration Commission, in its conclusions, notes a decrease of pauperism among immigrants of the present day, compared with the past.

The number of those admitted who receive assistance from organized charity in cities is relatively small. In the Commission's investigation which covered the activities of the associated charities in 43 cities, including practically all the larger immigrant centers except New York, it was found that a small percentage of the cases represented immigrants who had been in the United States three years or under, while nearly half of all the foreign-born cases were those who had been in the United States twenty years or more. This investigation was conducted during the winter of 1908-09 before industrial activities had been fully resumed following the financial depression of 1907-8, and this inquiry showed that the recent immigrants, even in cities in times of relative industrial inactivity, did not seek charitable assistance in any considerable numbers.1

The records of the charitable institutions of New York City also show that the recent immigrant races furnish a much smaller relative number of applicants for charity than the old immigrant races. Table 106 gives the nativity of lodgers who were sheltered in the Municipal Lodging House in New York City during the first quarter of the year 1908, when the crisis was in its acutest stage.

The immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe furnished less than their proportion of homeless men even in a period of industrial depression. The population tables of the XIII. Census for New York City are not as detailed as those of the XII. Census. It may be inferred, however, from the published figures that the ratio of pauperism relative to population must have been still more favorable to the races of Southern and Eastern Europe than shown in Table 106.

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, p. 36.

TABLE 106.

PER CENT DISTRIBUTION, BY NATIVITY, OF LODGERS AT MUNICIPAL LODGING HOUSE IN NEW YORK CITY DURING JANUARY, FEBRUARY, AND MARCH, 1908, and of THE MALE POPULATION 21 YEARS OF AGE AND OVER AT THE XII. CENSUS.1

The increase of the Russian population of New York City in 1000-1910 was 168 per cent, which raised it to 10.3 per cent of the total population of the city; the proportion of adult males in a national group comprising many recent immigrants must necessarily have increased at a greater rate. The increase of the Italians amounted to 134 per cent, and that of the Austrians to 110 per cent.2

It might be argued that the higher ratio of dependency

1 Report of the Commission of Immigration of the State of New York, p. 201. XII. Census. Population, Part I., Table 83, pp. 938-945; Table 80, pp. 930-931.

XIII. Census. Population, vol. i., pp. 178, 826–827.

among the Irish is the result of their "displacement by the Southern and Eastern Europeans." It was shown, however, by the Industrial Commission that in pauperism the Irish had always been in the lead. The demonstration of this fact is given in Table 107, which shows that in 1885-1895, when the Italians and Hebrews from Russia and Austria were but a small fraction of the population of New York City, and even as far back as 1854-1860, when there were practically none at all, the preponderance of the Irish among the recipients of charity was as great as in more recent years.

TABLE 107.

PER CENT DISTRIBUTION, BY NATIVITY, OF FOREIGN-BORN RECIPIENTS OF CHARITY, 1854-1860, AND 1885-1895, AND OF THE POPULATION OF NEW YORK CITY, 1855 AND 1890.1

The proportion of English and Irish paupers in Boston in the '30's and '40's was about the same as in New York City half a century later:

TABLE 108.

COMPARATIVE PERCENTAGE OF ENGLISH AND IRISH PAUPERS IN BOSTON, 1837-1845, AND IN NEW YORK CITY, 1885-1895.❜

1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., pp. 460, 480.

Census of Boston, 1845, PP- 110-111. Report of the Industrial

Commission, vol. xv., p. 480.

It is evident from the preceding figures that recent immigration is not responsible for the high percentage of pauperism among the old English-speaking immigrants. Dr. Kate H. Claghorn, after an exhaustive statistical study of immigration in its relation to pauperism, comes to the conclusion that pauperism "is the result of a considerable period of life and experiences here." It is not the ablebodied workmen and their families, but the industrial invalids that make up the lists of applicants for charity.1 Unemployment is responsible for but a minority of the cases of pauperism, as appears from Table 109, based upon a classification of 7225 Charity Organization Society cases in New York City:

TABLE 109.

PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF CHARITY CASES IN NEW YORK CITY, BY NATIVITY AND CAUSES OF NEED (YEAR).2

"The census of 1890 showed that 92 per cent of the foreign-born male almshouse paupers had been in this country ten years or more. . . Overwork, poor food, and life in the airless, sunless, and crowded tenements of the city, or in the equally crowded and even more unsanitary dwellings of the mill or the mining town—the conditions accompanying the early stages of the immigrant's progress—tend strongly to break down the physical health of the sturdy Italian or Austrian peasants, or even of the Jews, more accustomed to the unsanitary conditions of city life." —Kate H. Claghorn: Immigration in its Relation to Pauperism. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July, 1904, pp. 187-200. 2 Ibid., p. 199.