Those who are poverty-stricken are not necessarily parasitic, but they occupy that intermediate stage between the industrial and the parasitic classes from which either of these classes may be recruited. If through continued poverty they become truly parasitic, then they pass over to the ranks of the criminal, the pauper, the vicious, the indolent, and the vagrant, who, like the industrial class, seek the cities.
The dangerous effects of city life on immigrants and the children of immigrants cannot be too strongly emphasized. This country can absorb millions of all races from Europe and can raise them and their descendants to relatively high standards of American citizenship in so far as it can find places for them on the farms. “The land has been our great solvent.”[95] But the cities of this country not only do not raise the immigrants to the same degree of independence, but are themselves dragged down by the parasitic and dependent conditions which they foster among the immigrant element.
Dr. Oronhyatekha
Mohawk Indian, Late Chief of Order of Foresters
Crime.—This fact is substantiated by a study of criminal and pauper statistics. Great caution is needed in this line of inquiry, especially since the eleventh census in 1890 promulgated most erroneous inferences from the statistics compiled under its direction. It was contended by the census authorities that for each million of the foreign-born population there were 1768 prisoners, while for each million of the native-born there were only 898 prisoners, thus showing a tendency to criminality of the foreign-born twice as great as that of the white native-born. This inference was possible through oversight of the important fact that prisoners are recruited mainly from adults, and that the proportion of foreign-born adults to the foreign-born population is much greater than that of the native-born adults to the native population. If comparison be made of the number of male prisoners with the number of males of voting age, the proportions are materially different and more accurate, as follows:—
Number of Male Prisoners per Million of Voting Population, 1890 (Omitting “Unknown”)[96]
| Native white, native parents | 3,395 | |
| Native white, foreign parents | 5,886 | |
| Native white, total | 3,482[97] | |
| Foreign white | 3,270 | |
| Negro | 13,219 |
Here the foreign-born show actually a lower rate of criminality (3270) than the total native-born (3482). This inference harmonizes with our general observations of the immigrants, namely, that they belong to the industrial classes, and that our immigration laws are designed to exclude criminals.
But this analysis brings out a fact far more significant than any yet adverted to; namely, that the native-born children of immigrants show a proportion of criminality (5886 per million) much greater than that of the foreign-born themselves (3270 per million), and 70 per cent greater than that of the children of native parents.