While it is impossible to draw any comparison between the races from the data set forth in the above statement as to the tendency to send money abroad, it is evident that they are all very much given to the practice. The objects for which money is sent abroad are principally for the support of relatives, payments on encumbered estates, and for the payment of passages for members of family or friends to this community.

AMERICANIZATION.

The extent to which the foreign races have become identified with American life in Community A through industry, business, electorate, government, trade unions, schools, and churches is discussed elsewhere under the heads of the several topics mentioned. Data bearing upon two other phases of Americanization, namely, ownership of homes and progress in the English language, may also be presented. The following table, showing the ownership of homes in the community, was compiled by estimates made by the assessors of the five borough wards. The table is presented by race, numbers of families, and numbers of homes owned by each race:

TABLE 61.-Number and per cent of families owning home, by race of head of family.

Weighing all of the indications toward Americanization exhibited by the several races the conclusions may be summarized as follows: (1) None of the six prominent races from southeastern Europe has as yet been wholly assimilated.

(2) Considering the size of the various race bodies only the Lithuanians and Poles are sufficiently well represented to permit a comparison of the races.

(3) The Lithuanians are abler and further advanced in Americanization than the Poles.

(4) The evidence tends to show that the Slovaks and Ruthenians rank with the Poles, the Slovaks having possibly a slight advantage. (5) The Syrians and South Italians show the least tendency toward Americanization, with a slight advantage in favor of the former. Among the elements of the community life which may be regarded as favoring the social digestion of the immigrants are to be enumerated the following:

(1) The public-school system, through which the children of the foreigners become the medium of communication for American ideas, customs, and habits of thought. At the schools the immigrant children make acquaintances among the native children, have oppor tunities to visit native homes, and thus learn American ways of living. Some of the adult immigrants learn English at the night schools, The parochial schools, in so far as they live up to the requirement of giving English instruction, are also helpful in the work of assimilation.

(2) The churches, through the encouragement they give the immigrants to become permanent residents of the United States. Some of the churches, as the Greek Catholic, help to instill the principles of our Government.

(3) The public press, through its propagation of American ideas among the immigrants and indirectly its stimulation to the acquisi tion of the English language. About 10 per cent of the Lithuanians, Poles, Slovaks, and Ruthenians read American newspapers.

(4) The contract system of wages in vogue in the mines, in so far as it promotes a rapid advance in economic position, thus inducing & higher standard of living and comfort. The division of the miners into small gangs facilitates the learning of the miner's trade and quickens the rise in the wage scale of the raw laborer. The fact that the contract miner, the boss of these gangs, is frequently of the same tongue makes it easier for the ignorant immigrant to pick up, trade. This condition, however, has disadvantages which will be the discussed in the succeeding section.

(5) Trades unionism, by the opportunity it gives for practice on & small scale in a democratic and representative form of government, through the subordination it encourages of selfish interests to the general good, and by the incitement it affords to acquiring the English language.

Among other agencies which would greatly further Americanization but which are absent in this community may be mentioned such nonsectarian institutions as would encourage and provide for wholesome sports, public baths, reading rooms, and lecture halls for giving free, simple, fully illustrated talks on sanitation and hygiene, together with pictures of healthy American family life.

The chief agencies which retard the assimilation of the immigrants in the community are as follows:

(1) Colonization, to the extent that it prevents contact with American life and lessens the absorption of American ideas and manners of living. The restricted ground in the area of this community makes it impossible for the immigrants to move from among their own kind where they naturally first settle. The gradual withdrawal of the English-speaking first settlers is slowly making a foreign colony of the community.

(2) The contract-miner system, in so far as it results in making the foreigner's working-day environment linguistically the same as his home life.

(3) Trades unionism, in so far as it creates class jealousy and enmity.

(4) The parochial school system, to the extent only that it deprives the immigrant's children from the larger contact with American life and ideas afforded by the public schools.

LIBRARIES.

The only educational facility other than the school system existing in the community is the Free Public School Library, which is an adjunct to the rooms of the board of education and whose secretary is also the librarian in charge. The library contains about 6,500 volumes, selected, so far as any principle is discernible, according to the growing needs of the high-school students and the demands of their courses, supplemented by a generous supply of safe standard juvenile fiction and rows of government reports. The library is growing at the rate of about 150 volumes annually, and has no card index. It derives a certain amount of support from the sale of printed catalogues at 10 cents a copy to all the subscribers to the circulating department. There are about 750 persons who have obtained the privilege of withdrawing books, and during the year ending June, 1904, 9,824 books were taken out for home use. There is hardly any reading on the premises, and the majority of the readers which patronize the library are pupils of the public schools. The library is open for issuing books on Thursdays from 4 to 5 in the afternoon, and on Saturdays from 6.30 to 8 o'clock in the evening.

No special effort has ever been made to interest the immigrants in the use of the library facilities, either by way of providing books in their own languages or aggressively encouraging their use of the English books. As a matter of fact, no demand for literature of any sort has been received from the adult portion of the foreign colony.

The librarian is of the opinion that the children of immigrant parentage who are fairly well along in their classes, especially the Lithuanians and Poles, exhibit more interest in reading than the English-speaking children. Few of the children from the other immigrant races have advanced sufficiently in school to have much use for reading matter, and consequently such use as they may have of the library has not attracted notice.

The librarian has not noticed any distinction between the races in the matter of the character of the books taken out. The same kinds of books are asked for as would be in a community composed entirely of native Americans. The younger children read fairy tales and the older ones juvenile fiction. Classical works of fiction are in little demand. Some of the older pupils have shown an interest in European, and especially Russian, history.

STREET TRADES.

The races engaged in street trades in Community A are as follows: (a) Italians: 2 ice cream venders (1 push cart, 1 horse and wagon); 1 peanut and fruit stand.

(b) Welsh: 1 peanut and fruit stand.

(c) German: 1 peanut and fruit stand.

(d) Hebrew: 1 peanut and fruit stand with soda fountain; 20 rag and bone collectors.

(e) Syrians: 6 peddlers of dry goods, notions, and stationery. f) German (Pennsylvania Dutch): About 100 farmers from Ringtown Valley who peddle garden truck through the streets.

Nearly all of these people have been engaged in their respective businesses all of their lives. A few of them, perhaps, got their start by earning money as laborers about the mines, but most of them are born peddlers.

The farmers and those having stands have lived in and about Shenandoah from three to twenty years, and even longer. The peripatetic venders have been in the town on an average of about five years. During any disturbance of local industrial conditions they move on to some other town.

The farmers are the only class who seem to be making progress, and even in their cases it is not very obvious.

PROGRESS OF IMMIGRANTS.

In view of the fact that practically all of the later immigrants began their money-earning existence here at some kind of work in the mines, a rough idea of their economic ability may be gathered from a comparative study of the races in business. A man who has saved enough money out of his earnings, or developed sufficient enterprise and inspired enough credit, to be able to enter business may be said to have made a respectable economic advance.

The table presented below was compiled from the census of business men and shows the percentage of the families of each race in Community A which has risen to the level of the tradesman class. As respects the English-speaking races the statistics are not complete, in that many of the older residents in business have moved away: TABLE 62.-Number and per cent of foreign-born families engaged in business in Community A, by race of head of family.

Practically the only skilled work about the collieries which the recent immigrants work into is that of a regularly qualified miner. They can obtain a miner's certificate only after serving as a miner's laborer for two years and after passing an oral examination upon the fundamental principles of mining. Consequently in the following statement, compiled from the records of one of the large mining companies, the entry "qualified miners" includes practically all of the skilled workmen of the respective races:

The figures set forth in the above statement indicate that the following immigrant races are making the most industrial progress in the community: (1) Lithuanians, (2) Poles.

The highest positive advancement attained by the several races in the coal industry has been that of contract miner. In Community A there is one Lithuanian fire boss and two Polish machinists, all three in the employment of the company furnishing the above statistics. The general rule has been that progress beyond the grade of contract miner takes the direction and character of business enterprises.

IMMIGRANTS IN BUSINESS.

The only branch of business enterprise which is overcrowded in Community A is that of the saloon business. This business secures recruits from the ranks of the prosperous immigrants annually, although of late years this has not meant more saloons, but the purchase of existing licenses from English-speaking people who were going out of business.

All other lines of general business are fairly well represented in the community. The town has been long a shopping center for a considerable outlying territory and the local trade has developed and expanded in response to the varied demands made upon it.