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Still more significant becomes the comparison when we take each of these cities separately, as is done in the chart reproduced on page 163 from the Statistical Atlas of the Twelfth Census.

Here it appears that the extreme is reached in the textile manufacturing city of Fall River, where but 14 per cent of the population is of native extraction, while in the two greatest cities, New York and Chicago, the proportion is 21 per cent, and the only large cities with a predominance of the native element are St. Joseph, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Kansas City, with Denver equally divided. As already stated, grandparents would still further diminish the proportion of native element.

If we carry our comparison down to the 160 cities of 25,000 population, we shall find that in such cities is one-half of the foreign-born population,[91] and we shall also see marked differences among the races. At one extreme, three-fourths of those born in Russia, mainly Jews, live in these principal cities, and at the other extreme, one-fifth of the Norwegians.

The other Scandinavian countries and the Welsh and Swiss have about one-third, while the English and Scotch are two-fifths, Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Poland, one-half to three-fifths, Ireland and Italy nearly two-thirds.

Individual cities suggest striking comparisons. In New York, computations based on the census show 785,035 persons of German descent, a number nearly equal to the population of Hamburg, and larger than the native element in New York (737,477). New York has twice as many Irish (710,510) as Dublin, two and one-half times as many Jews as Warsaw, half as many Italians as Naples, and 50,000 to 150,000 first and second generations from Scotland, Hungary, Poland, Austria, and England.[92] Chicago has nearly as many Germans as Dresden, one-third as many Bohemians as Prague, one-half as many Irish as Belfast, one-half as many Scandinavians as Stockholm.[93]

The variety of races, too, is astonishing. New York excels Babel. A newspaper writer finds in that city sixty-six languages spoken, forty-nine newspapers published in foreign languages, and one school at Mulberry Bend with children of twenty-nine nationalities. Several of the smaller groups live in colonies, like the Syrians, Greeks, and Chinese. But the colonies of the larger groups are reservoirs perpetually filling and flowing.[94]

The influx of population to our cities, the most characteristic and significant movement of the present generation, has additional significance when we classify it according to the motives of those who seek the cities, whether industrial or parasitic. The transformation from agriculture to manufactures and transportation has designated city occupations as the opportunities for quick and speculative accumulation of wealth, and in the cities the energetic, ambitious, and educated classes congregate. From the farms of the American stock the sons leave a humdrum existence for the uncertain but magnificent rewards of industrialism. These become the business men, the heads of great enterprises, and the millionaires whose example hypnotizes the imagination of the farm lads throughout the land. Many of them find their level in clerical and professional occupations, but they escape the manual toil which to them is the token of subordination. These manual portions are the peculiar province of the foreign immigrant, and foreign immigration is mainly a movement from the farms of Europe to the cities of America. The high wages of the industries and occupations which radiate from American cities are to them the magnet which fortune-seeking is to the American-born. The cities, too, furnish that choice of employers and that easy reliance on charitable and friendly assistance which is so necessary to the indigent laborer looking for work. Thus it is that those races of immigrants the least self-reliant or forehanded, like the Irish and the Italians, seek the cities in greater proportions than those sturdy races like the Scandinavians, English, Scotch, and Germans. The Jew, also, coming from the cities of Europe, seeks American cities by the very reason of his racial distaste for agriculture, and he finds there in his coreligionists the necessary assistance for a beginning in American livelihood.

At this point we gradually pass over from the industrial motives of city influx to the parasitic motives. The United Hebrew Charities of New York have asserted that one-fourth of the Jews of that city are applicants for charity, and the other charitable societies make similar estimates for the population at large. These estimates must certainly be exaggerated, and a careful analysis of their methods of keeping statistics will surely moderate such startling statements, but we must accept them as the judgment of those who have the best means of knowing the conditions of poverty and pauperism in the metropolis. However exaggerated, they indicate an alarming extent of abject penury brought on by immigration, for it is mainly the immigrant and the children of the immigrant who swell the ranks of this indigent element in our great cities.