Chapter XV: Section 11: of the law of May 9, 1918, devoted entirely to the subject (1)

of naturalization of alien enemies, contains a provision:

... that the President of the United States may, in his discretion,
upon investigation and report by the Department of Justice,
fully establishing the loyalty of an alien not included in the
foregoing exemption [relative to the apprehension of alien
enemies], except such alien enemy from the classification of alien
enemy, and thereupon he shall have the privilege of applying for
naturalization; and for the purpose of carrying into effect the
provisions of this section, including personal services in the
District of Columbia, the sum of $400,000 is hereby appropriated,
to be available until June thirtieth, nineteen hundred and
nineteen, including travel expenses for members of the Bureau of
Naturalization and its field service only, etc.

Out of this emergency appropriation, made under stress of war conditions, for the declared purpose of dealing with enemy aliens, the Bureau provided for a large extension of its work, and for much-needed augmentation of its efficiency in the field, and for establishing the extra-legal position of Director of Citizenship, with more or less obvious functions. This would explain the somewhat cryptic allusion in the proposed amendment to the Sundry Civil Appropriation bill quoted above, to the “authority _now being exercised by_” rather than imposed by law upon “the Director of Citizenship,” etc.

But just because it was an emergency appropriation, the new Congress showed no disposition to renew it, and in its absence the whole extra-legal structure under the direction of the Director of Citizenship was imperiled, and in order to save it from complete destruction very serious economies became necessary. The bearing of so large a windfall upon the general work of the Bureau may be inferred from this list of the appropriations for the Naturalization Service in each fiscal year since, and including, that ending June 30, 1908, during which the service was established:

TABLE V

APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE NATURALIZATION SERVICE FOR EACH FISCAL YEAR
FROM 1908-1919

=========================
1908{1} $193,000
1909{1} 150,000
1910 150,000
1911 152,861
1912 175,000
1913 200,000
1914 225,000
1915 250,000
1916 275,000
1917 275,000
1918 305,000
1919 675,000
=========================

[note 1: The field force was under Department of Justice during
1908 and 1909.]

A further instance of the desire for additional powers, which characterizes the “personal equation” of the Naturalization Bureau, appears in a bill which was before Congress in the winter of 1919-20,[93] introduced by Representative Johnson of the state of Washington, which would have provided, among other things:

Sec. 4. That the promotion of the public schools in the training
and instruction of candidates for citizenship, now being carried
on by the Division of Citizenship Training of the Bureau of
Naturalization, is hereby extended to include all persons of the
age of eighteen years and upward, who shall attend classes of
instruction conducted or maintained by any civic, educational,
community, religious, racial, or other organization, under the
supervision of the public-school authorities, and the provisions
of the ninth subdivision of Section 4 of said Act are hereby made
applicable to this added authority. In discharging this additional
authority the Director of Citizenship is also authorized to
disseminate information regarding the institutions of the United
States government in such manner as will best stimulate loyalty to
those institutions, making use of the means heretofore provided,
and through the use of motion pictures. The motion pictures and
motion-picture negatives in the possession of the various branches
of the government shall also be available for these purposes. In
this work the aid of civic, educational, community, religious,
racial, and other organizations may be secured by the Division
of Citizenship Training, in which statistical information shall
be compiled as to aliens in their relation to citizenship. The
foregoing shall apply to the residents of the Panama Canal Zone.

ENORMOUS ARREARAGE IN BUREAU’S WORK

From the very beginning of the activities of the Bureau, it has complained of its inability properly to perform its functions because of lack of clerical force; at the same time pointing out very appropriately that it was a good deal better than self-sustaining from the financial point of view.

Commissioner Campbell, in his annual report to the Secretary of Labor, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1911, said:

At all times the clerical force has been insufficient, even
with the aid of temporary assignments from other offices of the
Department, to keep up with current work. This has resulted in
large undisposed accumulations of official papers; mortifying
delays in making responses to letters from private individuals and
public officials, the continuous exaction of labor from the clerks
for long periods after the conclusion of the ordinary official
hours, on holidays, and even on Sundays; and, consequently,
impaired the accuracy and quality of the work actually accomplished.

The report for 1913 declares that such increase of personnel as had been allowed had “not been sufficient to accomplish anything in the way of bringing up the arrearages which have been steadily accumulating ever since the service was organized in 1907.” These arrearages were described as consisting of “unindexed and unexamined certificates of naturalization and declarations of intention,” and this condition prevailed, notwithstanding an average daily overtime estimate in hours, as equivalent to full time, of more than two persons (2.36). The report for 1914 acknowledged an increase of nine clerks, but stated that “the arrearages of work continued to increase.” So it goes on, the following report (1915) disclosing an arrearage of 346,762 declarations of intention and 395,719 certificates of naturalization unindexed, and thousands more of each unexamined. In the following year’s report is acknowledged the “elimination of the practice heretofore pursued of indexing separately the declarations, petitions, and certificates,” it having been found impossible, even with four more clerks, “to reduce the work that has fallen into arrears.” Yet in that same year’s report begin the ecstatic descriptions of a very wide expansion of activities in the field of education.

The seriousness of this curtailment of records at Washington--all but fatal to the individual alien who wants to prove something about his naturalization case by reference to such records--took on a public aspect with the operation of the Selective Service Act (the so-called “draft law”) when aliens, desiring exemption as such, began to assert to the local exemption boards that they never had declared intention to become American citizens. “The assistance of the Bureau is constantly invoked by the draft boards throughout the country for official report on the claims to exemption from military service by aliens who profess to have made no declaration of intention to become citizens,” says the opening page of the Commissioner’s report of July 1, 1918, notwithstanding the more ingenuous--not to say more truthful--confession of a year before that “_The unavoidable abandonment of indexing declarations has made it impracticable to furnish information sought in regard to aliens claiming exemption from military service._”[94]

At the date of that report, there were, unexamined, in the Washington office 247,373 declarations and 480,553 certificates; one year later--owing, perhaps, largely to the vast and sudden addition of alien soldiers naturalized, and the business incidental thereto, if not quite as much to the absorption of the Bureau in its increasingly ambitious educational campaign--the arrearages had passed the half-million mark, with 628,713 declarations and 578,944 certificates of naturalization unexamined.

Not even by means of a complete, current, and up-to-date index of declarations could the Naturalization Bureau have proved whether or not any given alien ever had filed a declaration whose existence would indubitably entitle the United States to his military service, unless it included the absolutely impossible feature of a reference to every old, as well as new-law declaration. But such an index as might have been kept of declarations under the “new law” would have helped enormously. As it was the field force did its best, and ran down many cases through the records in the district offices and local courts.

THE ALIENS SUPPORT THE BUREAU

In point of fact, the Bureau of Naturalization is, as the Commissioner more than once has pointed out, completely self-supporting. Bare good faith to the petitioner for naturalization would seem to demand that the money he pays in in fees should be used by the government to afford adequate service in his behalf. In every year, except 1918-19, since the present system was established, the receipts from naturalization fees have, by a wide margin, exceeded the amount appropriated for the Naturalization Service; the amount representing that margin has simply gone into the general receipts of the United States, subject to appropriation by Congress. Those receipts, and the margin referred to, which might well have been devoted to improving the Naturalization Service, have been, according to the Commissioner’s reports, as follows:

TABLE VI

RECEIPTS FROM NATURALIZATION FEES AND DISBURSEMENTS FROM VARIOUS
APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE NATURALIZATION LAW FOR
RENTS, SUPPLIES, AND MISCELLANEOUS EXPENSES, FISCAL YEARS 1907 TO
1920{1}

===================================================================
| | | DIFFERENCE IN
YEAR | NATURALIZATION | COST OF | FEES RECEIVED
| FEES | ADMINISTRATION | OVER COST OF
| | | ADMINISTRATION
------+------------------+-----------------------+-----------------
1907 | $65,129.00 | $29,243.18 | $35,885.82
1908 | 166,873.90 | 232,728.05{2} | -65,854.15
1909 | 172,202.13 | 194,428.45{2} | -22,226.32
1910 | 221,766.38 | 176,415.98 | 45,350.40
1911 | 290,551.52 | 222,831.15 | 67,720.37
1912 | 338,315.33 | 257,678.99 | 80,636.34
1913 | 350,716.60 | 290,026.20 | 60,690.40
1914 | 450,228.55 | 331,517.26 | 118,711.29
1915 | 441,764.49 | 363,593.11 | 78,171.38
1916 | 410,272.55 | 389,075.90 | 21,196.65
1917 | 635,927.52 | 393,240.15 | 242,687.37
1918 | 507,932.50 | 416,486.84 | 91,445.66
1919 | 597,087.97 | 812,056.38 | -214,968.41
1920 | 664,539.20 | 753,383.83 | -88,844.63
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Total $842,495.68
Less deficits 391,893.51
-----------
Excess of fees received over cost of administration $450,602.17
===================================================================

[note 1: Department of Labor, _Annual Reports for 1920_, p. 799,
Table 24.]

[note 2: Included in these expenditures are appropriations to the
Department of Justice for maintenance of field force prior to the
transfer to the Department of Commerce and Labor--_to wit_, fiscal
year 1908, $193,000; fiscal year 1909, $150,000.]

The Commissioner puts his finger on the ethical point involved, when he says, as for example in his report for the fiscal year 1918-19:[95]

It is interesting and highly suggestive to note from the next
table that, notwithstanding the “hard-luck story” told in this
report as to arrearages of work and the delays and the omissions
of first one and then another important feature of that work, the
beneficiaries of such work--those who have paid their money for
prompt and efficient service--have annually for years past paid
into the Federal Treasury more than was used for the purpose for
which it was paid.

The aggregate of such surplus items, which cannot be regarded as
other than a trust fund in essence, and even deducting the amount
expended for military naturalizations amounts to $539,446.80. It
would easily have been much more if the clerks had been furnished
to serve the aliens who desired to become citizens. The burst of
public sympathy for, and interest in, the young alien who entered
our service to make the “supreme sacrifice” for democracy which
found expression in a special appropriation of $400,000 to pay
the cost of making these young heroes citizens in law, as they
already are in heart, over a period of 13½ months, did not, in
fact, cost the people of this country as a whole anything. As
long as over half a million dollars of the fund contributed by
the newly made citizens from civil life remain unexpended for the
purposes for which it was paid, it would appear to the ordinary
observer that they, and not the general body of American citizens,
gave the $400,000 to pay for the cost of giving free of charge the
well-deserved “priceless heritage of American citizenship” to the
young alien soldiers who fought for liberty and this country.

The government of the United States is making money out of the business of admitting aliens to citizenship, and is not keeping fairly or efficiently its end of the transaction. In the period since the enactment of the Naturalization Law, as Commissioner Campbell has said, aliens in pursuit of citizenship--even though thousands of them did not get it!--have paid fees to an amount exceeding by more than half a million dollars the total cost of the Naturalization Bureau--a margin itself larger by more than $200,000 than the total appropriation for the Bureau in any year save one.[96]

This money, if devoted to the purposes to which morally it belonged, would have been ample to supply the supervisory and clerical force in the Bureau necessary to make prompt and effective examination of declarations, petitions, and certificates, and to maintain a proper and complete system of records, and of indices by which those records could be made available for reference by the alien, the government, and the public. _Provided_ always that the Bureau did not permit itself to be diverted and swamped by extraneous and self-assumed functions in the field of public education which it is not adapted, either by the logic of good administrative organization or by the nature and aptitudes of its personnel, to perform. It has never been within arm’s length of keeping up with the business committed to it by law, and by the nature of its function; nevertheless, during the past decade at least, it has taken on voluntarily and, with increasing exuberance of ambition, sought additional legislation to authorize activities and functions of an extraordinarily inclusive and far-reaching character in the domain of education--apparently even of native-born persons--beyond any possibility of effective accomplishment without very great increase of expenditure for personnel and material change in the “personal equation” of the present force.

It is no doubt agreeable to compile and publish statistics purporting to show the degree of “co-operation” between the public-school authorities and the Naturalization Bureau; imposing totals can be presented if every slightest indication of general interest in the education of the foreign born is classified and heralded as “co-operation” and no allowance whatever is ever made for failures or defections.[97] All this might be tolerated or condoned; but it becomes a rather ghastly spectacle when its most conspicuous consequence is the neglect of legitimate business of the highest importance to the aliens who pay for but do not get it, and to the people of the United States.

The Naturalization Bureau, in the fundamental nature of its function, has in all conscience enough to do! A “man’s-size job” is to be found in the scrutiny of the petitioner for citizenship, from the day when he files his declaration of intention to that when he receives, or is refused for good reason, his certificate of naturalization. The natural business of the Bureau is to be the disinterested but vigilant informant of the court as to the facts regarding the applicant; the watchdog of the standards by which aspirants for our active membership are judged--also the keeper of records minutely accurate and in cross-referenced detail up to the minute.

FITNESS OF CANDIDATES

There is great need of a better method for ascertaining the fitness of candidates for citizenship than obtains at present. Various suggestions have been made to improve the practice. One is the creation of a system of “traveling commissioners,” appointed perhaps by the courts, who would hold sessions at convenient times and places. Another is that the function of naturalization should be removed from the judicial to the administrative sphere, so that examinations and admissions should both be under the control of the Naturalization Bureau or some other administrative branch of the Executive.

There is much to be said in support, especially, of the latter suggestion. But there seems a weight of reason in favor of maintaining the peculiarly American practice of lodging this solemn function in what is, on the whole, our most impressive organ of government--the court. As a rule, the courts are performing the function with increasing sense of the importance and dignity of the proceeding. It would be simple, and require little either of new legislation or additional personnel or duties, to make the Naturalization Examiner now in being and on duty, already equipped with honesty and zeal, something in the nature of a Master, representing the court in the taking of testimony, and reporting thereto his findings and recommendations. Thereupon the judge could pursue such further inquiry as he thought proper, accept or reject the findings, and enter his order accordingly.

In the great preponderance of practice this is what actually happens now. The proceeding should be the subject of sufficient stenographic record, to be attached to the papers on file in the court and in the Naturalization Bureau at Washington, and the index, certainly at Washington, should be so minutely exact, prompt, and accessible, that the record of every case, from declaration to final adjudication, would be available like any other public record upon a moment’s notice.

Further than that: Every alien who lands upon our shores should receive at the time his suitably detailed and descriptive certificate of lawful entry, with finger prints, if you please, duplicating a permanent record in the office of the Immigration Service; this certificate, and the record underlying it in case of its loss, should be the prerequisite to the declarations and all other proceedings leading to his permanent admission to citizenship. It would obviate an infinite deal of the confusion which now too often surrounds his later adventures in this direction; it would be his protection and the protection of the nation. All matters concerning him now are at the mercy of practices hardly deserving the name of system.

“PERSONAL EQUATION” OF THE PUBLIC

In consideration of all this business of naturalization, and the various projects for improving its conditions, it must be remembered that it is only within very recent years--virtually only since the beginning of the World War with its suddenly aroused or anyway suddenly accentuated excitements of interracial friction here in America, and of ebullitions of loyalty to the various fatherlands engaged in that struggle, on the part of foreign-born residents here--that the people of the United States, of this generation at least, have taken any interest in the behavior, affairs, and assimilation of the alien. It is two-thirds of a century, more or less, since the subsidence of the last important uproar on the subject. A few social-settlement workers and missionaries in the great cities, a few writers on sociological subjects, here and there some more than ordinarily facile and entertaining writer in English among the foreign born themselves, have tried to draw public attention to the seriousness and magnitude of the problem growing within our national life. These have pleaded for a better understanding of the people of other races coming in vast floods to make their homes with us, and for better conditions to govern their assimilation.

But Americans generally pursued their self-absorbed, happy-go-lucky way, giving little attention to these Jeremiahs and Cassandras; pooh-poohed at the warnings, or vaguely hoped that all would come out right in time. Meanwhile, most of them followed the usual human course of shrinking from all avoidable human contact with these outlandish folk of language and customs different from their own; rather glad, on the whole, that they herded, as people in strange climes will, in congested “Little Italys,” “Little Hungarys,” “Deutschlands,” and “Ghettoes”--and in “slums” in general. They surrendered to foreign colonies not only abandoned farm-lands, but even large portions of great cities and great states; vaguely grumbling when they perceived that great political power went with that growth of foreign-speaking population. As a whole, they washed their hands of the whole matter, or at most viewed the encroachment with more or less solicitous disdain.

Meanwhile, most of those who have recognized the existence of a menacing problem have acquired, generally on the foundation of the subtle race-prejudice to which most of us are subject, a vast deal of misinformation on the subject--some of it in the form of widely accepted misinterpretations of official and quasi-official “statistics.”

VII

SOME STATISTICS CONCERNING IMMIGRANTS, “NEW” AND “OLD”

We are talking and behaving now about the immigration of the past few years--allowing for the vastly greater bulk of it and the intensified peril involved in its bulk--just as we talked and behaved about the Irish immigration that began in the early ’30’s and the German immigration that began to bulk large in the early ’40’s. Comparatively small as was the size of that joint inflow, it made the problem that awakened the Know-Nothing and Native-American movement of the mid-century, and eventually culminated in the naturalization legislation now in force. Each phase of immigration has been “the new immigration” at its time; each has been viewed with alarm; each has been described as certain to deteriorate the physical quality of our people and destroy the standards of living and of citizenship.

The Scandinavians, who began to come in considerable numbers in 1879; the Italians, whose immigration became impressive in the late ’80’s; the Russians and Austrians, whose surge became formidable about 1890; the Greeks, never very numerous, but swelling in numbers from 2,339 in 1898 to 36,580 in 1907, their highest tide--each in turn passed or are passing now through the same stages; of comparatively good-natured welcome at the outset, when they were few, and viewed with curiosity; of increasing resentment, as they became noticeable in competition for jobs; at last of angry and vociferous denunciation as a “peril”; then subsiding into acceptance and assimilation into the body social. “Paddy the clodhopper,” butt of the comedian and the newspaper jokesmith, came over from Ireland as green as shamrock, worked at unskilled labor with pick and shovel on railroads and elsewhere, was herded and bribed into citizenship and politics, got on the police force and into the contracting business, increased in prosperity, bought real estate, and has sent down through the years and into the fabric of our population a posterity whose substantial contribution to our life no one now questions. He did not have to learn the language, and that fact greatly facilitated his assimilation. Fritz and Gretchen--we called them “Dutchmen” then--had to climb over the language barrier, but they did it, and their progress has followed the same general course. So did Ole and Chris and Sven and Hilda from Scandinavia, and Salvatore, then the “Dago.” Salvatore already owns apartment houses. Russian and Austrian, Greek, Rumanian, Portuguese, and so on, the latest comers, are in the midst of the same process.

The vast numbers, especially of the Russian Jews and Austro-Hungarians, herded in masses in certain of our great cities, have given us a kind of social indigestion; it must be cured, if at all, by a slow process of absorption, and we have not yet learned just what to do about it. Certainly unintelligent excitement, to say nothing of unlawful violence and mob persecution, and the exaggeration both of the degree and of the nature of the ailment, offer small promise of betterment. Nature, the normal processes of population movements and racial assimilation, work calmly on while we shout and worry. And candid study of the process is reassuring. Conditions have been confused, resentments aroused, and progress retarded by the various kinds of hysteria excited by the World War--but then, there was similar hysteria in the old Know-Nothing days, and we lived through it; it seems rather silly now. We shall live through this.

PAUCITY OF DEPENDABLE INFORMATION

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

=======================================================================
“OLD” RACES || “NEW” RACES
---------------------+-------------++--------------------+-------------
| Per Cent || | Per Cent
| Naturalized || | Naturalized
Race | and Holding || Race | and Holding
| First Papers|| | First Papers
---------------------+-------------++--------------------+-------------
Swedish | 92.3 || Hebrew (other than |
Swiss | 92.1 || Russian) | 61.6
Welsh | 87.0 || Finnish | 61.2
Danish | 86.8 || Hebrew, Russian | 57.2
German | 85.7 || Austrian (race not |
Norwegian | 85.6 || specified) | 53.1
Irish | 82.6 || Armenian | 49.2
English | 80.6 || Italian, North | 45.8
Dutch | 79.9 || Bulgarian | 36.8
Scotch | 79.1 || Slovenian | 35.8
Belgian (race not | || Polish | 33.1
specified) | 76.5 || Lithuanian | 32.5
Bohemian and | || Italian, South | 30.1
Moravian{2} | 76.2 || Russian | 28.0
French | 66.5 || Magyar | 26.8
Canadian (other than | || Slovak | 22.8
French) | 56.7 || Croatian | 22.5
Canadian, French | 31.5 || Rumanian | 21.9
Mexican | 10.0 || Syrian | 20.7
| || Greek | 20.2
| || Ruthenian | 19.8
| || Spanish | 13.6
| || Serbian | 12.8
| || Cuban | 12.1
| || Portuguese | 5.5
=======================================================================

[note 1: _Abstracts_, vol. i, pp. 485, 486.]

[note 2: Classed as “Recent” by Immigration Commission.]

Prof. Edward A. Ross, who, of all the students of this question, is one of the most uncompromising in generalizing from the reports of the Immigration Commission to the disadvantage of the “newer” races, deduced that “with the change in nationalities came a great change in the civic attitude of the immigrants.”[105] He made little or no allowance for the fact that the “civic attitude” of the “newer” immigrants naturally would not have had time to develop as in the case of those who had been here longer; he made even less for any changes in industrial and social life in this country which might help to account for this alleged change in attitude, by intensifying the hardships of the only kind of employment “newer” immigrants could get, by low wages due to an overstocked labor market, or by the increased herding of foreign born in city slums, which last, of itself, might tend to retard the process of adjustment and assimilation. Prof. John B. Clark saw something of this, when he remarked that “there is far more likeness between different branches of the European family than there is between the economic conditions into which immigrants came in the third quarter of the last century and those into which they come to-day. Then they could have farms for the asking, while now most of them go into mills, mines, shops, and railroad plants, or become employees or tenants on farms owned by others.”[106]

Prof. John R. Commons, discussing the differences in the proportions naturalized among the various racial groups, calls attention to the fact that “it is not so much a difference in willingness as a difference in opportunity.... In course of time these differences will diminish, and the Italian and the Slav will approach the Irishman and the German in their share of American suffrage.”[107]

The war has created an entirely new situation with regard to both immigration and naturalization; it is entirely impossible to forecast the effects, either of the chaotic conditions in Europe or of the reconstruction period in America, upon the influx of foreign born into America, upon the duration of their stay here, or upon the attitude toward citizenship of those already here and entitled to citizenship by length of residence. The wholesale naturalization of immigrants in the national army during the war, regardless of length of residence or any of the other requirements ordinarily so rigidly, so meticulously enforced, has swept into citizenship so large a proportion of human material available and hitherto constituting the bulk of the “naturalization problem” that the old generalizations have become both useless and misleading. It will be long before such immigrants as are now coming, or may come during the next five years, can be the subject of intelligible statistics--especially since nobody is collecting or collating any statistics worthy of the name.

Even the statistics afforded by the census have been the subject of uncritical use on which pessimistic generalizations have been based. The Thirteenth Census (1910) showed for the decade since that of 1900 a decrease of 12.4 per cent in the proportion of foreign-born white males twenty-one years of age and over naturalized. Referring to this decrease, Professor Ross predicted[108] that, “as things are going, we may expect a great increase in the number of the unenfranchised.” Of course he could not have foreseen the war and its profound effects upon the whole question; but he might have observed in the same census the fact that there had been a precisely identical (12.4 per cent) decrease in the number of foreign-born whites who had been in the country nine years or more--even if his prejudice on the subject of the “new immigration” prevented his recognizing in this remarkable coincidence a striking evidence of the direct relation between length of residence and naturalization.

THE FACTOR OF LANGUAGE

It would be plausible to expect that language would be a factor in governing the degree to which this racial group or that would seek naturalization. Those whose mother tongue is English, one might naturally suppose, would find it easier to acquire the necessary information, and would the sooner be absorbed into the life and atmosphere of the country, the sooner aspire to full citizenship.

The facts do not support this idea at all. And a very slight consideration of the conditions discloses the reasons. In the first place, no knowledge of English whatever is required for the declaration of intention; and only the statistics of full naturalization are of value in this matter. Both the statistics of the Immigration Commission, and especially those compiled by the Americanization Study, make it clear that, on the average, more than ten years’ residence in this country precedes final naturalization. It is a rare case in which during that ten years the petitioner has not acquired a speaking knowledge of English sufficient for all his practical purposes.

The statistics of the Immigration Commission themselves show how little the original knowledge of English has to do with the matter.[109] For the persons from whom the Commission got information, who had been in this country ten years or over (racial groups represented by 100 individuals or more), the percentages of those fully naturalized exhibit the fact that the Swedish and German show a higher rate than the Irish; the Bohemian, Moravian, Norwegian and Danish outrank the Scotch, Welsh, and English. Even for those who have been in the country only five to nine years the Swedes show the highest percentage.[110] That length of residence, rather than native language, is the dominant factor in determining interest in citizenship, stands forth in Table VIII, which gives percentages by race of those in the United States ten years or longer, and of such of these as have been fully naturalized.

LENGTH OF RESIDENCE AND EARNING POWER

The fallacious nature of the assumption that there is an essential difference between the so-called “older” and “newer” races as such in respect of interest in citizenship is further disclosed by the statistics of the Immigration Commission on the subject of the wages of foreign-born laborers. The Commission found that the members of the “older” races in the households covered by its inquiry were earning more than those of the “newer” races, and occupied, generally speaking, higher positions. This, of course, was to be expected; but little stress was laid by the Commission upon the relation between these facts and the relative rates of naturalization, although it is a conspicuous relationship. Like most of the statistics compiled by the Commission in this particular field, the comparison may be criticized on the ground that the numbers upon which percentages are based and compared are small, and differ widely among the racial groups. Nevertheless, despite this discrepancy, the probability stands forth that, in addition to length of residence, the economic status--the individual and family income--is a most important factor in determining the interest of the foreign born in acquiring citizenship.

From the following table it is clear that the “older” races show a higher average rate of income in all the occupations listed than the “newer.”[111]

TABLE XI

AVERAGE AMOUNT OF WEEKLY EARNINGS OF MALE EMPLOYEES EIGHTEEN YEARS
OF AGE AND OVER, BY RACE AND SPECIFIED INDUSTRIES{1}

(Part One)
=========================================================
| | Average | Agricultural |
| Reporting | Earnings | Implements | Cotton
Race | Complete | per | and | Goods{2}
| Data | Day | Vehicles{2} |
--------+-----------+----------+--------------+----------
“Old” | 17,433 | 2.34 | 13.03 | 11.14
“New” | 65,485 | 1.99 | 11.58 | 8.77
=========================================================

(Part Two)
==================================================
| Woolen | Slaughtering |
| and | and | Coal
Race | Worsted | Meat | Mining
| Goods{2} | Packing{3} | Bituminous{3}
--------+----------+--------------+---------------
“Old” | 11.69 | 2.27 | 2.33
“New” | 8.64 | 1.83 | 2.09
==================================================

[note 1: See Appendix for complete table. This table does not take
account of lost time.]

[note 2: Weekly wage.]

[note 3: Daily wage.]