C. Crime

One of the favorite arguments against immigration since the days of the Know-Nothings has been the assertion that "the foreigner in proportion to his numbers furnishes by far the greater part of crime." In the middle of the nineteenth century the Irish immigrant was the object of popular odium as of a potential criminal. Fifty years later the suspicion turned upon "the undesirable immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe." Although the latest statistics of prisoners, published by the Bureau of the Census simultaneously with the creation of the Immigration Commission, showed "that the popular belief that the foreignborn are filling the prisons has little foundation in fact, "1 yet the Immigration Commission approached the subject under the influence of the popular prejudice. In its report on Emigration Conditions in Europe the Commission lends its support to "the not unfounded belief that certain kinds of criminality are inherent in the Italian race. Accompanying this inherent criminal tendency, in the opinion of the Commission, "is also a seemingly inherent ability to avoid arrest and conviction." The evidence in support of this indictment of the whole Italian race is merely circumstantial. There has been a "remarkable decrease in the number of murders and homicides in Italy," and, it is alleged, there has been a "startling growth of Italian criminality of the same nature in the United States." Although it "obviously cannot be mathematically determined". . . "to what extent emigration is responsible for the decrease of crime in

Sydney G. Fisher: "Immigration and Crime," Popular Science Monthly, September, 1896, p. 625.

"The newspapers and pamphlets of that time published statistics which showed that, although the foreign population was only an eighth of the whole, yet it furnished... 1000 more criminals than all the remaining seven eighths of the people. -Every one-hundred and fiftyfour of them produced a criminal."-Ibid. These early statistics were discredited by later criticism. Cf. Roland P. Falkner: Statistics of Crime in United States. Prisoners, 1904, p. 41.

Italy," yet "in view of the fact that the decrease has been coincident with the emigration movement, and also with the" supposed "growth of Italian criminality in the United States, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that these . . results . . . had been due in large part to the emigration to this country of criminals and the criminally inclined." The Commission concedes that "there are of course other elements which should be taken into consideration, such as the advance of civilization and the better enforcement of law in parts of Italy," but these considerations are of little weight. To be sure, according to Italian statistics of crime, "Sicily, which has a large emigration, and Liguria, which has much the smallest emigration in proportion to population, show nearly the same per cent of decrease," in murders and homicides. But these facts are of no consequence. The homicidal tendency of the Italian immigrant is proved, on the one hand, by the fact that in certain provinces which "furnish the greatest number of transoceanic emigrants according to the population, there has been an exceptionally large decrease in the number of murders and homicides committed," and, on the other hand, by the fact, "that the prevalence of murder and homicide is as a rule much greater in Compartimenti which furnish the largest number of transoceanic emigrants, and consequently are the source of the greater part of the Italian movement to the United States."

This criminological theory is significant in so far only as it betrays the bias of the Commission against the immigrant. Yet, notwithstanding its strong prejudice, which no evidence could overcome, the results of its investigation prove to the satisfaction of its own interpreters, that, "undue significance has been attached" to the supposed effects of immigration upon criminality.

"The number of . . . criminals arriving . . . taken as a percentage of the whole coming is so small that little heed need be paid to it."

1

"Although available statistical material is too small to

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, pp. 204, 205, 209.

draw positive conclusions, such material as is available would indicate that immigrants are no more inclined toward criminality on the whole than are native Americans."

"It is impossible to produce satisfactory evidence that immigration has resulted in an increase of crime out of proportion to the increase in the adult population."'*

The State of New York, which is more affected by immigration than any other State in the Union, has compiled annual statistics of crime commencing with the year 1830. The results of an analysis of these statistics, by the writer, are briefly summed up in the following paragraphs.

2

Surveying the general trend for the seventy-five year period 1830-1905, we find that the increase of crime has merely kept pace with the growth of population. The relative rate of criminality in 1890 was the same as in 1840, notwithstanding the change in the racial composition of the population of the State. In the year 1900 there was just one more conviction for every 100,000 of the population than in 1890, and in 1905 four convictions per 100,000 people in excess of 1900. The fluctuations of the movement of population and of the rate of criminality indicate that the causes which are favorable to the growth of population tend to reduce crime, and vice versa, the causes which retard the growth of population are productive of an increase of crime.

The effects of immigration upon criminality can be traced from 1850 when the census inquiries for the first time took notice of nativity. The statistics for the half-century following show that an increase of the percentage of the foreign-born population is accompanied by a decrease of criminality, and vice versa. During the latest ten-year period, 1900-1909, the wave of criminality rose when immigration was at its lowest ebb, while the high-tide of immigration was contemporaneous with a decrease of crime.

'Jenks and Lauck, lot. cit., pp. 51, 52, 65.

For a detailed statistical analysis of the data upon which these conclusions are based, the reader is referred to an article by the present writer on "Immigration and Crime," in The American Journal of Sociology, January, 1912.

Thus it is found that in the social profit-and-loss account, crime and immigration figure on the opposite sides of the ledger. Immigration does not impair the worker's opportunities to earn a living; on the contrary increase of immigration goes parallel with increase of business prosperity and decrease of crime.

PART III.

IMMIGRANTS IN THE LEADING INDUSTRIES

[The Immigration Commission has devoted several volumes of its report to a description of labor conditions in special industries which are generally believed to typify the evils of recent immigration. Of these, five will be considered in this part.]

THE

CHAPTER XVII

THE GARMENT WORKERS

HE manufacture of clothing in the United States is an immigrant industry. Immigrants have furnished the labor and in most instances the capital. The labor conditions in this industry have attracted wide public attention by frequent strikes, ever since the Russian Jews have become the predominant element among the operatives. The clothing industry has become associated in the public mind with the sweating system, and since the employees are, with few exceptions, immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, the conclusion is readily reached that the root of the sweating system is in the character of the new immigration. This view draws support from the attitude of the United Garment Workers of America, an organization of Jewish garment workers, which, at its annual convention in 1905, adopted a resolution demanding restriction of further immigration for the protection of the foreign-born workers already here. And yet a dispassionate study of

2

* Reports of the Immigration Committee, vol. II, p. 417.

2

John R. Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, p. 115.