If these figures may be regarded, as Dr. Pearl suggests that they should, as an index of the difficulties which the human organism finds in adapting itself to a new environment, the more detailed study of the various racial groups exhibits some surprising results.
They show, in the first place, wide divergencies in the capacity of different immigrant groups to adapt themselves to American life; they show, in the second place, that the races and nationalities that have lived here longest are the least able to meet the demands of the new environment. Dr. Pearl states it in this way:
With a few trifling exceptions, all the countries from which the present law encourages immigration contributed to almshouse pauperism in 1923 in excess of their representation in the population in 1920. On the other hand, again with a few trifling exceptions, those countries from which the present immigration law was especially framed to discourage immigration appear in the lower part of the diagram, because they contribute a smaller proportion to almshouse pauperism in 1923 than their representation in the general population in 1920.
Two things strike me as significant in this connection: (1) It is the recent immigrants who contribute least to the almshouse population; (2) among these recent immigrants it is, apparently, those who for one reason or another are least willing or able to participate in American life who contribute the least to our almshouse population.
Why is this true? My own inference is that the decisive factors are not biological, but sociological. The explanation of the almshouse statistics, in other words, is less a matter of racial temperament than of social tradition. It is the immigrants who have maintained in this country their simple village religions and mutual aid organizations who have been most able to withstand the shock of the new environment.
The whole subject needs to be investigated further. What would a comparative study of different racial and language groups with reference to disease, delinquency, and family disorganization show? What would a comparison of the Japanese, Chinese, and Mexicans show with reference to crime? I mention these three groups because they are living and working side by side on the Pacific Coast.
The census of 1910 showed the Mexicans to have the highest crime rate of any immigrant group in the United States. My conviction is that when we obtain the facts we shall find that the Japanese have the lowest crime rate, at least the lowest of any immigrant group on the Coast.
The explanation is that the Japanese—and the same is true of the Chinese—have organized what we may call “control organizations” to deal at once with disputes arising among themselves and with the larger community outside.
The Japanese Association, like the Chinese Six Companies, is organized to keep their nationals out of the courts. But the Japanese Association is more than a court of arbitration and conciliation. Its function is not merely to settle disputes, but to maintain the morale of the local Japanese community and to promote in every practical way, mainly by education, the efforts of the Japanese people to make their way in the communities in which they live. With the possible exception of the Jews, the Japanese are better informed than any other group about the condition of their own people in America.
One thing that has sensibly raised the morale of the Japanese, as it has, indeed of the Jews, is its struggle to maintain its racial status in the United States. Nothing, as Sumner observed, so easily establishes solidarity within the group as an attack from without. Nothing so contributes to the discipline of a racial or national minority as the opposition of the racial or national majority.