Part 17

Meanwhile we may try to know and understand the facts. This is not so easy as might be supposed, for the facts are hard to get. The student of the naturalization and political assimilation of the foreign-born citizen finds himself seriously embarrassed by the paucity of definite information on the subject in any of its aspects. To be sure, there is a considerable, though somewhat fragmentary, literature about it, and generalizations of a sweeping and rather dogmatic character have gained wide currency--impressions and prejudices, which it will no doubt be difficult to dislodge, even though such information as may be available, critically examined, entirely fails to support them. In hardly any other field may one find a better illustration of the mischief that may be wrought by inadequate or misinterpreted statistics, creating legends which cannot endure the test of candid, to say nothing of scientific, examination.

This is not to say that there is no material on the subject. There is always the census; there are the reports of the Immigration Commission of 1907; there are the reports of the Commissioner of Naturalization. There are numerous books, essays and pamphlets, by men and women who, to a greater or lesser extent, have come to be regarded as experts on the subject of immigration. But, as we shall see, these are almost all entitled to substantial discount, or at least discriminating study, with results conducive to a better understanding, to a readjustment of some ideas which, although mistaken, have come to be regarded as fundamental.

In the files of the Naturalization Bureau at Washington is a vast mass of original data which would be of priceless value in the study of the way in which those who would be “Americans by Choice” make their initial efforts in that direction; showing under oath their individual age, birthplace and race, date of arrival in this country, date of declaration of intention to become a citizen, marital and occupational status, details of the disposal of the petition for citizenship, and other facts constituting information ample for intelligent interpretation of aspects and relationships now little understood, not understood at all, or, more commonly, altogether misunderstood. These data are contained in the copies of the declarations of intention, petitions for naturalization and certificates of naturalization, issued since the institution of the Naturalization Service under the Act of 1906. The magnitude of this statistical treasure may be judged from Table VII.

Each one of these nearly three million declarations of intention, and more than a million petitions--not to speak of the final certificates of citizenship--contains what amounts almost to a cross-section of the life history of an immigrant. Upon each petition is indorsed the record of the court’s action, acceptance or denial, and the reasons for denial are, if possible, more important than the fact of acceptance for the purposes of study of the immigration question in its political aspect.

Owing in part to the chronic insufficiency of the staff in the Naturalization Bureau--not only preventing any proper statistical record or analysis of this material, but of late years compelling a lamentable curtailment and even the abandonment of such indexing as is obviously indispensable to the most routine official supervision and understanding;--in part to the absorption of the Bureau in its elaborate educational propaganda, and in part to a lack of appreciation of the value of this material by the officials there in charge, the leaders in Congress and the public in general, it has remained in an undigested and now probably indigestible mass in the files of the Bureau. For nearly fifteen years it has been accumulating. To collate and analyze it would be a prodigious job. Yet, as appears from the results of a very modest venture in this direction on the part of the Americanization Study, some of them presented in this volume,[98] it would be immensely worth while. And, what is more important, it probably would go far to modify, if not to revolutionize, many prevailing ideas and afford a new and sounder foundation and point of departure for theory and for guidance of practice as regards the assimilation of the immigrant into the American body politic.

TABLE VII

NUMBER OF DECLARATIONS OF INTENTION AND PETITIONS FOR NATURALIZATION FILED, AND CERTIFICATES OF NATURALIZATION ISSUED BY THE BUREAU OF NATURALIZATION, 1907-20{1}

========================================================= YEAR | DECLARATIONS | PETITIONS | CERTIFICATES -----------+---------------+---------------+------------- 1907{2} | 73,723 | 21,094 | 7,953 1908{3} | 137,229 | 44,029 | 25,963 1909 | 145,794 | 43,161 | 38,372 1910 | 167,226 | 55,038 | 39,206 1911 | 186,157 | 73,644 | 56,257 1912 | 169,142 | 95,627 | 69,965 1913 | 181,632 | 95,186 | 82,017 1914 | 214,016 | 123,855 | 105,439 1915 | 245,815 | 106,317 | 96,390 1916 | 207,935 | 108,009 | 93,911 1917 | 438,748 | 132,320 | 94,897 1918 | 335,069 | 110,416 | 151,449 1919 | 346,827 | 107,559 | 217,358 1920 | 200,106 | 166,925 | 125,711 -----------+---------------+---------------+------------- Total | 3,149,419 | 1,283,180 | 1,205,170 =========================================================

[note 1: _Annual Report of the Commissioner of Naturalization_, 1919, p. 16.]

[note 2: Nine months only.]

[note 3: First full year of 12 months.]

The annual reports of the Commissioner of Naturalization, like those of many other government bureaus, are written not so much to afford information to the public as to extol the work of the Bureau, pointing out the remarkable extent of the ground covered, the great number of letters written, and of cases handled by a force grievously and increasingly inadequate since the very beginning of the service, and so on. They are, however, most unsatisfactory as a source of sociological information; particularly barren are they of any hint of information regarding the various races whose representatives seek citizenship; their relative promptness in seeking and success in getting it; their respective standing as regards the various reasons for denial. They do show voluminously how many declarations and petitions are filed annually in each state and subdivision; increase or decrease in totals; how many clerks of courts are delinquent in sending in the government’s share of fees, and other more or less significant _minutiæ_ of the routine work of the field and clerical force and the courts.

VAST ARREARAGES IN EXAMINATIONS

Moreover, for the past four or five years, the bulk of the Bureau’s reports has been increasingly augmented by large sections devoted entirely to its efforts in the field of education, and its relations, actual, attempted and imaginary, with the public-school authorities. The degree to which the Naturalization Bureau has neglected, perforce of circumstances, the study of the material under its nose is apparent in the fact that the Commissioner’s report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1919, says, in so many words, not only that it no longer is preserving in its files any records of general correspondence, but that it has altogether ceased any pretense of examining naturalization papers!

To illustrate the expedients to which the Bureau has been compelled to resort, in order to relieve the files section, it has adopted the practice of returning, with its replies thereto, letters of general inquiry not referring to some specific naturalization case already a part of the Bureau file, thereby leaving no record of such correspondence.

It has virtually ceased to make an examination of certificates of naturalization to insure the discovery and correction of errors, and it has abandoned a personal card-index of naturalized aliens, etc., not as a matter of choice but of compulsion.[99]

The magnitude of the arrearage thus naïvely accounted for, and the bulk of the potential information involved, may be seen in the fact that on July 1, 1919, according to the Commissioner’s own figures,[100] there were unexamined in the Bureau at Washington _more than one million (1,011,676) declarations of intention, 26,726 petitions for naturalization, and 721,742 certificates of naturalization_. This was an increase in arrearage, for one year alone, of 382,963 (60 per cent) in declarations; of 73 per cent in petitions, and of nearly 25 per cent in certificates. At the very time when the excitement about vigilance in admitting new citizens was at its height, the Naturalization Bureau was diverting to other channels a vital energy which might have been devoted to that vigilance and to collating the elementary information already in its possession, for the benefit of lawmakers and others needing information in dealing intelligently with this subject.

REPORT OF THE IMMIGRATION COMMISSION OF 1907

In point of fact, the only substantial body of statistical information about the naturalization of the foreign-born voter which hitherto has been even ostensibly sufficient for the student as a basis for any racial comparisons, is that gathered by the United States Immigration Commission of 1907. That body, created by an Act of Congress approved February 7, 1907, of which Senator William P. Dillingham of Vermont was chairman, consisted of three Senators, three members of the House of Representatives, and three other persons appointed by the President of the United States, and was directed by the statute to “make full inquiries, examination, and investigation, by sub-committee or otherwise, into the subject of immigration, ...” and to report such conclusions and recommendations as in its judgment might seem proper.

The information gathered by this Commission is very voluminous, and has been of great value to sociologists and others concerned with various aspects of the subject. Indeed, its report has come to be called “the bible of the immigration question.” Nearly all the modern writings on the subject have been based upon it in at least a general way, and their color taken largely from its conclusions and its point of view.

LEGEND OF “THE NEW IMMIGRATION”

To this report is attributable almost entirely the familiar conventional generalization that there is a marked distinction in what might be called _quality of assimilability_, between the immigration of former years and that of the three decades preceding the Great War; between the so-called “old immigration” and the “newer.” This distinction is drawn in the report and, in most of the writings of individuals, based upon it, between the group of races from northern and western Europe--the English-speaking races, the Scandinavians, Germans, Dutch, Belgians, French, and so on, and those from southern and eastern and southeastern Europe, Russia, Austria-Hungary, the Balkan States, Italy, Greece, Turkey-in-Europe, Asia Minor, etc.

This _quality of assimilability_ was regarded by the Commission as inferable to a large extent from the degree to which the representatives of these racial groups concerning whom it got information of various kinds were naturalized or had exhibited interest in naturalization at least to the extent of declaring intention to become citizens. It was assumed in a general way that a racial group showing a high proportion of persons who had become citizens, or taken steps thereto, might fairly be regarded as more adaptable to American life, customs and ideals than one in which relatively few naturalized citizens were found. With this assumption as a starting point, it seemed reasonably obvious that inasmuch as the “older” race showed the higher percentage of naturalized persons, the inference of a difference in essential civic quality followed as a matter of course.

Inasmuch also as this inference coincided with the general public impression and prejudice to precisely the same effect, it occurred to nobody to dispute or seriously to question its validity. Anybody could tell you offhand that the Englishman, Frenchman, German or Swede was more available for citizenship and more easily assimilated than the Syrian, Croatian or Sicilian. It was a matter of common knowledge! And the Immigration Commission gave you the statistics--as if you needed any! For example, here is a table that shows the per cents naturalized for the “old” and “new” races who had been in the United States ten years or more. As is to be expected the “old” races show the highest per cents on both counts.

The Commission recognized a general “tendency on the part of wage-earners of foreign birth to acquire citizenship,” and that this tendency “increased according to length of residence in this country.” But it construed its statistics as showing that while “more than three-fourths of the Bohemians and Moravians, Danish, German, Irish, Norwegian, Scotch, Swedish, and Welsh races who had been in the United States ten years or longer had been fully naturalized,” there was a “lack of political or civic interest” (only 37.7 per cent) “on the part of the southern and eastern European wage-earners” with a similar residence of ten years or longer, and proceeded to assert that these did not possess that “tendency to acquire citizenship which increases according to length of residence in this country.” This assertion was supposed to be supported by the facts given in the above table regarding the races from southern and eastern Europe showing low percentages of individuals who had come to this country when twenty-one years of age or older, who had lived here ten years or over, and were naturalized.

The Commission regarded the table from which these facts were derived as highly significant in its implied indication of the “civic interest” exhibited and capable of being exhibited by the various racial groups.

DISPARITY IN NUMBERS AMONG RACIAL GROUPS

It should be remarked at once that inferences from these figures and others presented by the Immigration Commission require considerable discount and discrimination by reason of the fact--to which Miss Grace Abbott already has called attention[101]--that

... the numbers in the different races from whom information was secured by the Commission varied so greatly as to make it impossible to accept these conclusions as indicating the assimilability of the various national groups. For example, according to the percentages the Armenians appear to be more eager to become citizens than the North Italians or the Poles; but the comparison was made on the basis of information from 171 Armenians, 4,069 North Italians, and 10,923 Poles.

TABLE VIII

PER CENT THAT FULLY NATURALIZED MALE EMPLOYEES ARE OF TOTAL MALE EMPLOYEES WHO WERE TWENTY-ONE YEARS OF AGE OR OVER AT TIME OF COMING, AND WHO HAVE BEEN IN THE UNITED STATES TEN YEARS OR OVER, COMPARED WITH THE PER CENT THAT MALE EMPLOYEES IN THE UNITED STATES TEN YEARS OR OVER ARE OF THOSE HERE FIVE YEARS AND OVER, BY RACE.{1}

============================================================= | IN UNITED STATES TEN YEARS | OR OVER +----------------+---------------- | | PER CENT OF RACE | PER CENT FULLY | THOSE IN UNITED | NATURALIZED | STATES FIVE | | YEARS OR OVER ---------------------------+----------------+---------------- Old | 74.0 | 80.5 Swedish | 87.6 | 79.0 German | 81.5 | 82.6 Irish | 80.0 | 83.8 Bohemian and Moravian{2} | 79.7 | 56.0 Norwegian | 77.5 | 69.2 Danish | 77.3 | 77.3 Scotch | 76.9 | 80.7 Welsh | 76.4 | 94.6 English | 67.0 | 78.0 French | 64.8 | 57.1 Dutch | 64.7 | 76.8 Canadian, Other | 49.6 | 81.0 Canadian, French | 27.7 | 77.9 | | New | 37.7 | 38.9 Finnish | 65.7 | 38.5 Hebrew, Other | 54.2 | 56.3 Italian, North | 49.3 | 38.0 Hebrew, Russian | 48.3 | 37.1 Lithuanian | 41.1 | 39.2 Polish | 39.8 | 44.0 Italian, South | 34.0 | 34.8 Russian | 33.6 | 36.8 Magyar | 26.9 | 31.4 Croatian | 26.8 | 23.5 Slovak | 25.3 | 42.8 =============================================================

[note 1: Compiled by the Americanization Study from _Report of the Immigration Commission_, vol. i, p. 488, Table 100.]

[note 2: The Bohemians and Moravians are classified by the Immigration Commission with the “new” races.]

This same factor of disparity in numbers operates, when a comparison of degree of assimilability is attempted, between the old and new races, with respect to residence in the United States from 5 to 9 years. The Immigration Commission gives the per cent naturalized for each race of individuals here five years. It might be expected that for this period of years conclusions could be drawn about the assimilability of the two groups of races. But here again almost six times as many individuals are classed in the new races as in the old and any general inference would be founded on insecure ground because of this disparity in numbers of cases. They, therefore, base their conclusions on the group here 10 years and over.

THE FACTOR OF LENGTH OF RESIDENCE

As we shall see also from the statistics gathered and analyzed for this volume,[102] the factor of residence “ten years or over,” with all its implications, is exceedingly important--is, in fact, the major factor in the whole situation. The indictment against the “new” immigration hangs upon it, and falls down when the term “ten years or longer” is analyzed, even in the light of the statistics presented by the Immigration Commission itself in support of the indictment. Indeed, the Commission was not entirely without compunctions on this point, and presented a table exhibiting the probability that, of the male employees from whom it derived its information, those of the “older” races had been in the United States _considerably_ longer than ten years, while those of the “newer” races had been here only _slightly_ longer than ten years. But it did not emphasize the point, and at a superficial glance this might seem a quibble; but it is of importance scarcely to be overestimated.

TABLE IX

PER CENT OF FOREIGN-BORN MALE EMPLOYEES REPORTING CITIZENSHIP WHO HAVE BEEN IN THE UNITED STATES EACH SPECIFIED PERIOD OF YEARS, BY RACE{1}

====================================================================== | | IN THE UNITED STATES | NUMBER +---------------+-------------- |REPORTING | 5 to 9 | 10 Years RACE | COMPLETE | Years | and Over | DATA +--------+------+--------+----- | | Number | Per | Number | Per | | | Cent | | Cent ----------------------------+----------+--------+------+--------+----- Recent Races: | | | | | Total | 43,833 | 26,747 | 61.0 | 17,086 | 38.9 Per cent of total | | | | | reporting complete data | 64.9 | .... | 85.3 | .... | 47.3 | | | | | Old Races: | | | | | Total | 23,662 | 4,620 | 19.5 | 19,042 | 80.5 Per cent of total | | | | | reporting complete data | 35.1 | .... | 14.7 | .... | 52.7 ======================================================================

[note 1: Compiled by the Americanization Study from _Report of Commission of Immigration Abstracts_, vol. i, p. 485.]

The Commission remarks, indeed, that “on account of the difference in the length of time the various races have been coming to the United States, a comparison of the older with the more recent immigrants is hardly fair.”[103] But it does fail to appreciate the vital significance of the point. And it apparently did not take adequate notice of the further fact, shown in Table IX, that of those of the “older” races who had been here over five years and reported information in regard to citizenship, _80.5 per cent had been in the United States over ten years, while only 38.9 per cent of the “newer” races had been here so long_. That is, only 19.5 per cent of the “older” races, as compared with 61.1 per cent of the “newer,” had been in the country between five and nine years. This means, of course, that the immigrants of the “older” races had had on the average a much longer time than those of the “newer” to acquire “civic interest” and seek naturalization. The “over” added to five years means for the “recent” races between five and nine years in most cases, while for the “older” races it usually means more than ten. It would appear that every year of residence _added to ten_ increases the probability of efforts toward citizenship.

While the races from southern and southeastern Europe show rates of naturalization ranging from 65.7 to 25.3 per cent with an average of 37.7, they also show a proportion residing in the country ten years or longer ranging down from 56.3 to 23.5 per cent with an average of 38.9.[104] Contrast this, if you will, with rates of naturalization among the northern, “older” races, of from 87.6 to 27.7 per cent with an average of 74.0, but along with that observe that the proportion of those “older,” and supposedly more assimilable, races residing in the country ten years or over ranges from 57.1 to 94.6 per cent with an average of 80.5!

From this point of view, the following table of the Commission becomes highly significant:{1}

TABLE X

PRESENT POLITICAL CONDITION OF FOREIGN-BORN MALE EMPLOYEES WHO HAVE BEEN IN THE UNITED STATES FIVE YEARS OR OVER, AND WHO WERE TWENTY-ONE YEARS OF AGE AT TIME OF COMING, BY RACE