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.
THE NEW IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP
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 kept it 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. | |
| NATURALIZED | |
| Russian Hebrews | 57 |
| Austrians | 53 |
| North Italians | 46 |
| Bulgarians | 37 |
| Poles | 33 |
| Lithuanians | 32.5 |
| South Italians | 30 |
| Russians | 28 |
| Magyars | 27 |
| Slovaks | 23 |
| Rumanians | 22 |
| Syrians | 21 |
| Greeks | 20 |
| Portuguese | 5.5 |
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 requirements for 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.
THE NATURALIZED IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR LEADERS
"Come over here quick, Luigi," writes an Italian to his friend in Palermo. "This is a wonderful country. 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.
