CHAPTER XI

NATIVEWHITEFOREIGNFOREIGN-STOCKSTOCKBORNRural districts64.120.87.5Cities 2,500-10,00057.534.513.9Cities 10,000-25,00050.442.14.4Cities 25,000-100,00045.946.720.2Cities 100,000-500,00038.953.422.1Cities 500,000 and over25.670.833.6

It is not that the immigrants love streets and crowds. Two-thirds of them are farm bred, but they are dropped down in cities, and they find it easier to herd there with their fellows than to make their way into the open country. Our cities would be fewer and smaller had they fed on nothing but country-bred Americans. The later alien influx has rushed us into the thick of urban problems, and these are gravest where Americans are fewest. Congestion, misliving, segregation, corruption, and confusion are seen in motley groups like Pittsburgh, Jersey City, Paterson, and Fall River rather than in native centers like Indianapolis, Columbus, Nashville, and Los Angeles.

Ten years ago two-fifths of the paupers in our almshouses were foreign-born, but most of them had come over in the old careless days when we allowed European poorhouses to send us their inmates. Now that our authorities turn back such as appear likely to become a public charge, theobvious pauper is not entering this country. We know that virtually every Greek in America is self-supporting. The Syrians are said to be singularly independent. The Slavs and the Magyars are sturdy in spirit, and the numerous indigent Hebrews are for the most part cared for by their own race.

whitesDistribution of Foreign-Born Whites in the United States—1910

Distribution of Foreign-Born Whites in the United States—1910

Nevertheless, dispensers of charity agree that many South Italians are landing with the most extravagant ideas of what is coming to them. They apply at once for relief with the air, "Here we are. Now what are you going to do for us?" They eveninsiston relief as a right. At home it had been noised about that in foolish America baskets of food are actually sent in to the needy, and some are coming over expressly to obtain such largess. Probably none are so infected with spiritual hookworm as the immigrants from Naples. It will be recalled that when Garibaldi and his thousand were fighting to break the Bourbon tyranny in the South, the Neapolitans would hurrah for them, but would not even care for the wounded.

Says the Forty-seventh Annual Report of the New York Juvenile Asylum:

It is remarkable that recently arrived immigrants who display small adaptability in American standards are by no means slow in learning about this and other institutions where they may safely leave their children to be fed, clothed, and cared for at the public expense. This is one of the inducements which led them to leave their native land.

Charity experts are very pessimistic as to what we shall see when those who come in their youth have passed their prime and met the cumulative effects of overwork, city life, drink, and vice. Still darker are their forebodings for a second generation, reared too often by ignorant, avaricious rustics lodging in damp cellars, sleeping with their windows shut, and living on the bad, cheap food of cities. Of the Italians in Boston Dr. Bushee writes:

They show the beginnings of a degenerate class, such as has been fully developed among the Irish.... If allowed to continue in unwholesome conditions, we may be sure that the next generation will bring forth a large crop of dependents, delinquents and defectives to fill up our public institutions.

Says a charity superintendent working in a huge Polish quarter:

It is the second generation that will give us trouble. The parents come with rugged peasant health, and many of them keep their strength even in the slum. But their children often start life weakened physically and mentally by the conditions under which they were reared. They have been raised in close, unsanitary quarters, in overlarge families, by parents who drunk up or saved too much, spent too little on the children, or worked them too soon. Their sole salvation is the open country, and they can't be pushed into the country. All of us are aghast at the weak fiber of the second generation. Every year I see the morass of helpless poverty getting bigger. The evil harvest of past mistakes is ripening, but it will take twenty years before we see the worstof it. If immigration were cut off short to-day, the burden from past neglect and exploitation would go on increasing for years.

In 1908 nine-tenths of the 2600 complaints of children going wrong made to the Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago related to the children of immigrants. It is said that four-fifths of the youths brought before the Juvenile Court of Chicago come from the homes of the foreign-born. In Pittsburgh the proportion is at least two-thirds. However startling these signs of moral breakdown in the families of the new immigrants, there is nothing mysterious about it. The lower the state from which the alien comes, the more of a grotesque he will appear in the shrewd eyes of his partly Americanized children. "Obedience to parents seems to be dying out among the Jews," says a Boston charity visitor. "The children feel it isn't necessary to obey a mother who wears a shawl or a father who wears a full beard." "Sometimes it is the young daughter who rules the Jewish family," observes a Pittsburgh settlement head, "because she alone knows what is 'American.' But see how this results in a great number of Jewish girls going astray. Since the mother continues to shave her head and wear a wig as she did in Poland, the daughter assumes that mother is equally old-fogyish when she insists that a nice girl doesn't paint her face or run with boys in the evening."

Through their knowledge of our speech and ways, the children have a great advantage in their efforts to slip the parental leash. The bad boy tells his father that whipping "doesn't go" in this country. Reversing the natural order, the child becomes the fount of knowledge, and the parents hang on the lips of their precocious offspring. If the policeman inquires about some escapade or the truant officer gives warning, it is the scamp himself who must interpret between parent and officer. The immigrant is braced by certain Old-World loyalties, but his child may grow up loyal to nothing whatever, a rank egoist and an incorrigible who will give us vast trouble before we are done with him.

Still, the child is not always to blame. "Often the homes are so crowded and dirty," says a probation officer, "that no boy can go right. The Slavs save so greedily that their children become disgusted with the wretched home conditions and sleep out." One hears of foreign-born with several boarders sending their children out to beg or to steal coal. In one city investigation showed that only a third of the Italian children taken from school on their fourteenth birthday were needed as bread-winners. Their parents thought only of the sixty cents a week. In another only one-fourteenth of the Italian school children are above the primary grades, and one-eleventh of the Slavic, as against two-fifths of the American school children in grammar grades or high school. Miss Addams tells of a young man from the southof Italy who was mourning the death of his little girl of twelve. In his grief he said quite simply: "She was my oldest kid. In two years she would have supported me, and now I shall have to work five or six years longer until the next one can do it." He expected to retire permanently at the age of thirty-four.

clevelandDependent Italian Family, Cleveland. (Two Children Absent)

Dependent Italian Family, Cleveland. (Two Children Absent)

dependentDependent Slovak Family, Cleveland

Dependent Slovak Family, Cleveland

Not only do the foreign-born appear to be more subject to insanity than the native-born, but when insane they are more likely to become a public charge. Of the asylum population they appear to constitute about a third. In New York during the year ending September 30, 1911, 4218 patients who were immigrants or of immigrant parents were admitted to the insane hospitals of the State. This is three-quarters of the melancholy intake for that year. Only one out of nine of the first admissions from New York City was of native stock. The New York State Hospital Commission declares that "the frequency of insanity in our foreign population is 2.19 times greater than in those of native birth." In New York City it "is 2.48 times that of the native-born."

Excessive insanity is probably a part of the price the foreign-born pay for the opportunities of a strange and stimulating environment, with greater strains than some of them are able to bear. America calls forth powerful reactions in these people. Here they feel themselves in the grasp of giant forces they can neither withstandnor comprehend. The passions and the exertions, the hopes and the fears, the exultations and the despairs, America excites in the immigrant are likely to be intenser than anything he would have experienced in his natal village.

In view of the fact that every year New York cares for 15,000 foreign-born insane at a cost of $3,500,000 and that the State's sad harvest of demented immigrants during the single year 1911 will cost about $8,000,000 before they die or are discharged, there is some offset to be made to the profits drawn from the immigrants by the transporting companies, landlords, real-estate men, employers, contractors, brewers, and liquor-dealers of the State. Besides, there is the cost of the paupers and the law-breakers of foreign origin. All such burdens, however, since they fall upon the public at large, do not detract from or qualify that private or business-man's prosperity which it is the office of the true modern statesman to promote.

In a polyglot mining town of Minnesota is a superintendent who has made the public school a bigger factor in Americanization than I have found it anywhere else. The law gives him the children until they are sixteen, and he holds them all. His school buildings are civic and social centers. Through the winter, in his high school auditorium, which seats 1200 persons, he gives a course of entertainment which is self-supporting,although his "talent" for a single evening will cost as much as $200. By means of the 400 foreigners in his night schools he has a grip on the voters which his foes have learned to dread. Under his lead the community has broken the mine-boss collar and won real self-government. The people trust him and bring him their troubles. He has jurisdiction over everything that can affect the children of the town, and his conception is wide. Wielding both legal and moral authority, he is, as it were, a corporation president and a medieval bishop rolled into one.

This man sets no limit to the transforming power of the public school. He insists that the right sort of schooling will not only alter the expression, but will even change the shape of the skull and the bony formation of the face. In his office is a beautiful tabouret made by a "wild boy" within a year after he had been brought in kicking and screaming. He scoffs at the fear of a lack of patriotism in the foreign-born or their children. He knows just how to create the sentiment. He has flag drills and special programs, and in the Fourth of July parade and the Decoration day procession the schools have always a fine float. He declares he can build human beings to order, and will not worry about immigration so long as the public school is given a chance at the second generation.

But is the public school to have this chance?

Multitudes of the new immigrants adhere to churches which do not believe in the publicschools. "Their pupils," observed a priest to me, "are like wild children." Said a bishop: "No branches can be safely taught divorced from religion. We believe that geography, history, and even language ought to be presented from our point of view." Hence with great rapidity the children of Roman Catholics are being drawn apart into parochial schools. In Cleveland one-third of the population is supposed to be Catholic, and the 27,500 pupils in the parochial schools are nearly one-third of all school children. In Chicago there are 112,000 in the parish schools to 300,000 in the public schools. In New York the proportion is about one-sixth. In twenty-eight leading American cities the attendance of the parish schools increased sixty per cent. between 1897 and 1910, as against an increase of from forty-five to fifty per cent. in the attendance of the public schools. The total number of children in the parochial schools is about 1,400,000. Separate education is a settled Catholic policy, and the bishops say they expect to enroll finally the children of all their people.

To bring this about, the public schools are denounced from the pulpit as "Godless" and "immoral," their product as mannerless and disobedient. "We think," says a Slovak leader, "that the parochial school pupils are more pious, more respectful toward parents and toward all persons in authority." The Polish, Lithuanian, or Slovak priest, less often the German or Bohemian, says bluntly: "If you send your childrento the public school, they will go to hell." Sometimes the priest threatens to exclude from the confessional parents who send their children to the public school. An archbishop recently decreed that parents who without permission send their children to the public school after they have made their first communion "commit a grievous sin and cannot receive the sacraments of the church." Within the immigrant groups there is active opposition, but it appears to be futile. In the soft-coal mining communities of Pennsylvania 9 per cent. of the children of native white parentage attend the parochial schools, whereas 24 per cent. of the Polish children and 48 per cent. of the Slovak children are in these schools. In a certain district in Chicago where the public-school teachers had felt they could hold their own, the foreign mothers came at last to take away their children's school-books, weeping because they were forced to transfer their children to the parish school.

Now, the parish school tends to segregate the children of the foreign-born. Parishes are formed for groups of the same speech, so a parish school will embrace children of only one nationality—German, Polish, Bohemian, Lithuanian, Croatian, Slovak, Magyar, Portuguese, or French Canadian, as the case may be. Often priest and teachers have been imported, and only the mother-tongue is used. "English," says a school superintendent, "comes to be taught as a purely ornamental language, like French in the publichigh school." Hence American-born children are leaving school not only unable to read and write English, but scarcely able to speak it. The foreign-speech school, while it binds the young to their parents, to their people, and to the old country, cuts them off from America. Says a Chicago Lithuanian leader: "There are 3000 of our children in the parochial schools here. The teachers are ignorant, illiterate spinsters from Lithuania who have studied here two or three years. When at fourteen the pupils quit school, they are no more advanced than the public-school pupils of ten. This is why 50,000 Lithuanians here have only twenty children in the high school."

When, now, to the removal of the second generation from the public school there is added, as is often the case, the endeavor to keep them away from the social center, the small park field-house, the public playground, the social settlement, the secular American press and welfare work in the factories, it is plain that those optimists who imagine that assimilation of the immigrant is proceeding unhindered are living in a fool's paradise.

"Our descendants," a social worker remarked to me, "will look back on the nineteenth century as our Golden Age, just as we look back on Greece." Thoughtful people whose work takes them into the slime at the bottom of our foreignized cities and industrial centers find declineactually upon us. A visiting nurse who has worked for seven years in the stock-yards district of Chicago reports that of late the drinking habit is taking hold of foreign women at an alarming rate. In the saloons there the dignifiedsteinhas given way to the beer pail. In the Range towns of Minnesota there are 356 saloons, of which eighty-one are run by native-born, the rest chiefly by recent immigrants. Into a Pennsylvania coal town of 1,800 people, mostly foreign-born, are shipped each week a car-load of beer and a barrel of whisky. Where the new foreign-born are numerous, women and children frequent the saloons as freely as the men. In the cities family desertion is growing at a great rate among foreign-born husbands. Facts are justifying the forecast made ten years ago by H. G. Wells: "If things go on as they are going, the great mass of them will remain a very low lower class—will remain largely illiterate, industrialized peasants."

The continuance of depressive immigration will lead to nothing catastrophic. Riots and labor strife will oftener break out, but the country will certainly not weaken nor collapse. Of patriotism, of the military type there will be no lack. Scientific and technical advance will go on the same. The spread of business organization and efficiency will continue. The only thing that will happen will be a mysterious slackening in social progress. The mass will give signs of sluggishness, and the social procession will be strung out.

We are engaged in a generous rivalry with theWest Europeans and the Australians to see which can do the most to lift the plane of life of the masses. Presently we shall be dismayed by the sense of falling behind. We shall be amazed to find the Swiss or the Danes or the New Zealanders making strides we cannot match. Stung with mortification at losing our erstwhile lead in the advancement of the common people, we shall cast about for someone to blame. Ultimate causes, of course, will be overlooked; only proximate causes will be noticed. There will be loud outcry that mothers, or teachers, or clergymen, or editors, or social workers are not doing their duty. Our public schools, solely responsible as they obviously are for the intellectual and moral characteristics of the people, will be roundly denounced; and it will be argued that church schools must take their place. There will be trying of this and trying of that, together with much ingenious legislation. As peasantism spreads and inertia proves unconquerable, the opinion will grow that the old American faith in the capacity and desire of the common people for improvement was a delusion, and that only the superior classes care for progress. Not until the twenty-first century will the philosophic historian be able to declare with scientific certitude that the cause of the mysterious decline that came upon the American people early in the twentieth century was the deterioration of popular intelligence by the admission of great numbers of backward immigrants.

civicItalian Men's Civic Club. Rochester. N. Y.

Italian Men's Civic Club. Rochester. N. Y.

On a single Chicago hoarding, before the spring election of 1912, the writer saw the political placards of candidates with the following names: Kelly, Cassidy, Slattery, Alschuler, Pfaelzer, Bartzen, Umbach, Andersen, Romano, Knitckoff, Deneen, Hogue, Burres, Short. The humor of calling "Anglo-Saxon" the kind of government these gentlemen will give is obvious. At that time, of the eighteen principal personages in the city government of Chicago, fourteen had Irish names, and three had German names. Of the eleven principal officials in the city government of Boston, nine had Irish names, and of the forty-nine members of the Lower House from the city of Boston, forty were obviously of Hibernian extraction. In San Francisco, the mayor, all the heads of the municipal departments, and ten out of eighteen members on the board of supervisors, bore names reminiscent of the Green Isle. As far back as 1871, of 112 chiefs of police from twenty-two States who attended the national police convention, seventy-seven bore Irish names, and eleven had German names. In 1881, of the chiefs of police in forty-eight cities, thirty-three were clearly Irish, and five were clearly German.

In 1908, on the occasion of a "home-coming" celebration in Boston, a newspaper told how the returning sons of Boston were "greeted by Mayor Fitzgerald and the following members of Congress: O'Connell, Kelihar, Sullivan, and McNary—following in the footsteps of Webster, Sumner, Adams, and Hoar. They were told of the great work as Mayor of the late beloved Patrick Collins. At the City Hall they found the sons of Irish exiles and immigrants administering the affairs of the metropolis of New England. Besides the Mayor, they were greeted by John J. Murphy, Chairman of the board of assessors; Commissioner of Streets Doyle; Commissioner of Baths O'Brien. Mr. Coakley is the head of the Park Department, and Dr. Durgan directs the Health Department. The Chief of the Fire Department is John A. Mullen. Head of the Municipal Printing Plant is Mr. Whelan. Superintendent of the Street Cleaning is Cummings; Superintendent of Sewers Leahy; Superintendent of Buildings is Nolan; City Treasurer, Slattery; Police Commissioner, O'Meara."

The Irish domination of our Northern cities is the broadest mark immigration has left on American politics; the immigrants from Ireland, for the most part excessively poor, never got their feet upon the land as did the Germans and the Scandinavians, but remained huddled in cities. United by strong race feelings, they held together as voters, and, although never a clear majority, were able in time to capture control of most ofthe greater municipalities. Now, for all their fine Celtic traits, these Irish immigrants had neither the temperament nor the training to make a success of popular government. They were totally without experience of the kind Americans had acquired in the working of democratic institutions. The ordinary American by this time had become tinctured with the spirit of legalism. Many voters were able to look beyond the persons involved in a political contest and recognize the principles at stake. Such popular maxims as: "No man should be a judge in his own case," "The ballot a responsibility," "Patriotism above party," "Measures, not men," "A public office is a public trust," fostered self-restraint and helped the voters to take an impersonal, long-range view of political contests.

Warm-hearted, sociable, clannish, and untrained, the naturalized Irish failed to respect the first principles of civics. "What is the Constitution between friends?" expresses their point of view. In their eyes, an election is not the decision of a great, impartial jury, but a struggle between the "ins" and the "outs." Those who vote the same way are "friends." To scratch or to bolt is to "go back on your friends." Places and contracts are "spoils." The official's first duty is to find berths for his supporters. Not fitness, but party work, is one's title to a place on the municipal pay-roll. The city employee is to serve his party rather than the public that pays his salary. Even the justice of courts is to becomea matter of "pull" and "stand in," rather than of inflexible rules.

A genial young Harvard man who has made the Good Government movement a power in a certain New England city said to me: "The Germans want to know which candidate is better qualified for the office. Among the Irish I have never heard such a consideration mentioned. They ask, 'Who wants this candidate?' 'Who is behind him?' I have lined up a good many Irish in support of Good Government men, but never by setting forth the merits of a matter or a candidate. I approach my Irish friends with the personal appeal, 'Do this for me!' Nearly all the Irish who support our cause do it on a personal loyalty basis. The best of the Irish in this city have often done as much harm to the cause of Good Government as the worst. Mayor C., a high-minded Irishman desiring to do the best he could for the city, gave us as bad a government as Mayor F., who thought of nothing but feathering his own nest. Mayor C. 'stood by his friends.'"

The Hibernian domination has given our cities genial officials, brave policemen, and gallant fire-fighters. It has also given them the name of being the worst-governed cities in the civilized world. The mismanagement and corruption of the great cities of America have become a planetary scandal, and have dealt the principle of manhood suffrage the worst blow it has received in the last half-century. Since the close of the CivilWar, hundreds of thousands of city-dwellers have languished miserably or perished prematurely from the bad water, bad housing, poor sanitation, and rampant vice in American municipalities run on the principles of the Celtic clan.

On the other hand, it is likely that our British, Teutonic, Scandinavian, and Jewish naturalized citizens—still more our English-Canadian voters—have benefited American politics. In politics men are swayed by passion, prejudice, or reason. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the average American had come to be on his guard against passion in politics, but not yet had he reached the plane of reason. This left him the prey of prejudice. Men inherited their politics, and bragged of having always "voted straight." They voted Democratic for Jefferson's sake, or Republican from love of Lincoln. The citizens followed ruts, while the selfish interests "followed the ball." Now, the intelligent naturalized foreigner, having inherited none of our prejudices, would not respond to ancient cries or war-time issues. He inquired pointedly what each party proposed to donow. The abandonment of "waving the bloody shirt" and the sudden appearance of the politics of actuality in the North, in the eighties, came about through the naturalization of Karl and Ole. The South has few foreign-born voters, and the South is precisely that part of the country in which the reign of prejudice in politics has longest delayed the advent of efficient and progressive government.

In 1910 there were certainly three million naturalized citizens in the United States. In southern New England and New York they constitute a quarter of all the white voters. The same is true of Illinois and the Old Northwest. In Providence, Buffalo, Newark, St. Paul, and Minneapolis, there are two foreign voters to three native white voters. In Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, and Boston, the ratio is about one to two. In Paterson, Chicago, and New York, the ratio is nearer three to five, and in Fall River it is three to four. When the foreigners are intelligent and experienced in the use of the ballot, their civic worth does not suffer by comparison with that of the natives. Indianapolis and Kansas City, in which the natives outnumber the naturalized ten to one, do not overshadow in civic excellence the Twin Cities of Minnesota, with three natives to two naturalized. Cleveland, in which the naturalized citizens constitute a third, is politically superior to Cincinnati, in which they are less than a sixth. Chicago, with thrice the proportion of naturalized citizens Philadelphia has, was roused and struggling with the python of corruption while yet the city by the Delaware slept.

Between 1895 and 1896 came the great shift in the sources of immigration. In the former year, 55 per cent. of the aliens came from northwestern Europe; in the next year, southern and southeastern Europe gained the upper hand, and have keptit ever since. With the change in nationalities came a great change in the civic attitude of the immigrants. The Immigration Commission found that from 80 to 92 per cent. of the immigrants from northwestern Europe, resident five years or more in this country, have acquired citizenship or have taken out first papers. Very different are the following figures, which show the interest in citizenship of the newer immigrants:

PER CENT.NATURALIZEDRussian Hebrews57Austrians53North Italians46Bulgarians37Poles33Lithuanians32.5South Italians30Russians28Magyars27Slovaks23Rumanians22Syrians21Greeks20Portuguese5.5

In 1890 and in 1900, 58 per cent. of the qualified foreign-born men were voters; by 1910 the proportion had fallen to 45.6 per cent. The presence of multitudes of floating laborers who have no intention of making this country their home, a marked indifference to citizenship on the part of some nationalities, and the stiffer requirementsfor naturalization imposed under the act of 1906, have caused the number of non-naturalized qualified foreigners in this country to swell from approximately 2,000,000 in 1900 to 3,500,000 in 1910. As things are going, we may expect a great increase in the number of the unenfranchised. No doubt the country is better off for their not voting. Nevertheless, let it not be overlooked that this growth in the proportion of voteless wage-earners subtracts from the natural political strength of labor. The appeal of labor in an industry like the cotton manufacture of the North, in which, besides the multitude of women and children, 70 per cent. of the foreign-born men remain aliens after five years of residence, is likely to receive scant consideration by the ordinary legislature. Nor will such labor fare better at the hands of local authorities. The anti-strike animus of the police in Lawrence, Little Falls, and Paterson was voiced by the official who gave to the press the statement: "We have kept the foreign element in subjection before, and will continue to do so as long as I am chief of Little Falls' police." Thus, without intending it, some of our commonwealths are accumulating voteless workers, like those conservative European states which restrict manhood suffrage in the industrial classes.

"Come over here quick, Luigi," writes an Italian to his friend in Palermo. "This is a wonderfulcountry. You can do anything you want to, and, besides, they give you a vote you can get two dollars for!" This Italian was an ignorant man, but not necessarily a bad man. It would not be just to look upon the later naturalized citizens as caring less for the suffrage than the older immigrants. Some of them appreciate the ballot all the more from having been denied it in the old country. For the Declaration of Independence and the Fourth of July they show a naïve enthusiasm which we Americans felt a generation ago, before our muck had been raked. "The spirit of revolt against wrong," says a well-known worker among immigrants, "is stronger in the foreign-born than in the natives, because they come here expecting so much democracy, and they are shocked by the reality they find. It is they who insist upon the complete program of social justice." Granting all this, there is no denying, however, that many of the later immigrants have only a dim understanding of what the ballot means and how it may be used.

banquetPhotograph by LodderA Civic Banquet to "New Citizens," July 4th

Photograph by LodderA Civic Banquet to "New Citizens," July 4th

Photograph by Lodder

A Civic Banquet to "New Citizens," July 4th

Thirty years ago we knew as little of the ways of the ward boss as we knew of the megatherium or the great auk. The sources of his power were as mysterious as were the sources of the Nile before Speke and Baker. Now, thanks to Miss Addams and other settlement-workers who have studied him in action from close at hand, we have him on a film. The ward boss was the discoverer of the fact that the ordinary immigrant is a very poor, ignorant, and helpless man,in the greatest need of assistance and protection. Nevertheless, this man has, or soon will have, one thing the politician greatly covets, namely, a vote. The petty politician soon learned that by befriending and aiding the foreigners at the right time, he could build up an "influence" which he might use or sell to his own enrichment. So the ward politicians became pioneers in social work. For the sake of controlling votes, they did many things that the social settlement does for nothing.

It is Alderman Tim who gets the Italian a permit for his push-cart or fruit-stand, who finds him a city-hall job, or a place with a public-service corporation, who protects him if he violates law or ordinance in running his business, who goes his bail if he is arrested, and "fixes things" with the police judge or the state's attorney when he comes to trial. Even before Giuseppe is naturalized, it is Tim who remembers him at Christmas with a big turkey, pays his rent at a pinch, or wins his undying gratitude by saving his baby from a pauper burial or sending carriages and flowers to the funeral.

All this kindness and timely aid is prompted by selfish motives. Amply is Tim repaid by Giuseppe's vote on election day. But at first Giuseppe misses the secret of the politician's interest in him, and votes Tim-wise as one shows a favor to a friend. Little does he dream of the dollar-harvest from the public-service companies and the vice interests Tim reaps with the "power" he has built up out of the votes of the foreigners.If, however, Giuseppe starts to be independent in the election booth, he is startled by the Jekyll-Hyde transformation of his erstwhile friend and patron. He is menaced with loss of job, withdrawal of permit or license. Suddenly the current is turned on in the city ordinances affecting him, and he is horrified to find himself in a mysterious network of live wires. With the connivance of a corrupt police force, Tim can even ruin him on a trumped-up charge.

The law of Pennsylvania allows any voter who demands it to receive "assistance" in the marking of his ballot. So in Pittsburgh, Tim expects Giuseppe to demand "assistance" and to take Tim with him into the booth to mark his ballot for him. Sometimes the election judges let Tim thrust himself into the booth despite the foreigner's protests, and watch how he marks his ballot. In one precinct 92 per cent. of the voters received "assistance." Two Italians who refused it lost their jobs forthwith. The high-spirited North Italians resent such intrusion, and some of them threaten to cut to pieces the interloper. But always the system is too strong for them.

Thus the way of Tim is to allure or to intimidate, or even combine the two. The immigrant erecting a little store is visited by a building inspector and warned that his interior arrangements are all wrong. His friends urge the distracted man to "see Tim." He does so, and kind Tim "fixes it up," gaining thereby another loyal henchman. The victim never learns that the inspectorwas sent to teach him the need of a protector. So long as the immigrant is "right," he may put an encroaching bay-window on his house or store, keep open his saloon after midnight, or pack into his lodging-house more than the legal number of lodgers. Moved ostensibly by a deep concern for public health or safety or morals, the city council enacts a great variety of health, building, and trades ordinances, in order that Tim may have plenty of clubs to hold over the foreigner's head.

So between boss and immigrant grows up a relation like that between a feudal lord and his vassals. In return for the boss's help and protection, the immigrant gives regularly his vote. The small fry get drinks or jobs, or help in time of trouble. Thepadrone, liquor-dealer, or lodging-house keeper gets license or permit or immunity from prosecution, provided he "delivers" the votes of enough of his fellow-countrymen. The ward boss realizes perfectly what his political power rests on, and is very conscientious in looking after his supporters. Of the Irish "gray wolves" in the Chicago council I was told, "Each of them is a natural ward leader, and will go through hell-fire for his people and they for him."

To the boss with a hold on the immigrant the requirement that the poor fellow shall live five years in this country before voting presents itself as an empty legal formality. In 1905 a special examiner of the Federal Department of Justice reported: "Naturalization frauds have grownand spread with the growth and spread of the alien population of the United States, until there is scarcely a city or county-seat town ... where in some form these frauds have not from time to time been committed." In 1845 a Louisiana judge was impeached and removed for fraud, the principal evidence being that he had issued certificates to 400 aliens in one day. The legislature might have been more lenient could it have foreseen that in 1868 a single judge in New York would issue 2500 of such certificates in one day! The gigantic naturalization frauds committed in the Presidential campaign of 1868 resulted in an investigation by Congress and in the placing of congressional elections under Federal supervision. During the month of October two New York judges issued 54,000 certificates. An investigation in 1902 showed about 25,000 fraudulent certificates of naturalization in use in that city.

There is hardly need nowadays to recount what Tim and his kind have done with the power they filched through the votes of Giuseppe and Jan and Michael. They have sold out the city to the franchise-seeking corporations. They have jobbed public works and pocketed a "rake-off" on all municipal supplies. They have multiplied jobs and filled them with lazy henchmen. By making merchandise of building laws or health ordinances, they have caused an unknown number of people to be crushed, or burned, or poisoned. Worst of all, by selling immunity from police interferenceto the vice interests, they have let the race be preyed on and consumed in the bud. Thanks to their "protection," a shocking proportion of the inhabitants of our cities of mixed population are destroyed by drinking, dissipation, and venereal diseases.

It is in the cities with many naturalized foreigners or enfranchised negroes that the vice interests have had the freest hand in exploiting and degrading the people. These foreigners have no love for vice, but unwittingly they become the corner-stone of the system that supports it. The city that has had the most and the rawest foreign-born voters is the city of the longest and closest partnership of the police with vice. Tammany Hall first gained power by its "voting gangs" of foreigners, and ever since its Old Guard has been the ignorant, naturalized immigrants. Exposed again and again, and thought to be shattered, Tammany has survived all shocks,because its supply of raw material has never been cut off. Not the loss of its friends has ever defeated it; only the union of its foes. The only things it fears are those that bore from within—social settlements, social centers, the quick intelligence of the immigrant Hebrew, stricter naturalization, and restriction of immigration.

In every American city with a large pliant foreign vote have appeared the boss, the machine, and the Tammany way. Once the machine gets a grip on the situation, it broadens and entrenches its power by intimidation at the polls, ballotfrauds, vote purchase, saloon influence, and the support of the vicious and criminal. But its tap-root is the simple-minded foreigner or negro, and without them no lasting vicious political control has shown itself in any of our cities.

The machine in power uses the foreigner to keep in power. The Italian who opens an ice-cream parlor has to have a victualer's license, and he can keep this license only by delivering Italian votes. The Polish saloon-keeper loses his liquor license if he fails to line up his fellow-countrymen for the local machine. The politician who can get dispensations for the foreigners who want their beer on a Sunday picnic is the man who attracts the foreign vote. Thus, until they get their eyes open and see how they are being used, the foreigners constitute an asset of the established political machine, neutralizing the anti-machine ballots of an equal number of indignant intelligent American voters.

The saloon is often an independent swayer of the foreign vote. The saloon-keeper is interested in fighting all legal regulation of his own business, and of other businesses—gambling, dance-halls, and prostitution—which stimulate drinking. If "blue" laws are on the statute-book, these interests may combine to seat in the mayor's chair a man pledged not to enforce them. Even if the saloon-keeper has no political ax of his own to grind, his masters, the brewers, will insist that he get out the vote for the benefit of themselves or their friends. Since liberal plying with beer isa standard means of getting out the foreign vote, the immigrant saloon-keeper is obliged to become the debaucher and betrayer of his fellow-countrymen. In Chicago the worthy Germans and Bohemians are marshaled in the "United Societies," ostensibly social organizations along nationality lines, but really the machinery through which the brewers and liquor-dealers may sway the foreign-born vote not only in defense of liquor, but also in defense of other corrupt and affiliated interests.

The foreign press is another means of misleading the naturalized voters. These newspapers—Polish, Bohemian, Italian, Greek, Yiddish, etc.,—while they have no small influence with their readers, are poorly supported, and often in financial straits. Many of them, therefore, can be tempted to sell their political influence to the highest bidder, which is, of course, the party representing the special interests. Thus the innocent foreign-born readers are led like sheep to the shambles, and Privilege gains another intrenching-tool.

If the immigrant is neither debauched nor misled, but votes his opinions, is he then an element of strength to us?

When a people has reached such a degree of political like-mindedness, that fundamentals are taken for granted, it is free to tackle new questions as they come up. But if it admits to citizenship myriads of strangers who have not yetpassed the civic kindergarten, questions that were supposed to be settled are reopened. The citizens are made to thresh over again old straw—the relation of church to state, of church to school, of state to parent, of law to the liquor trade. Meanwhile, ripe sheaves ready to yield the wheat of wisdom under the flails of discussion lie untouched. Pressing questions—public hygiene, conservation, the control of monopoly, the protection of labor, go to the foot of the docket, and public interests suffer.

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