i6o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION ON HOMICIDE IN 

 AMERICAN CITIES 



I 



BY MAYNARD SHIPLEY 



N his recent report for the Bureau of Immigration, Commissioner- 

 General Sargent again calls attention to the dangers arising from 

 the inadequate immigration laws of the United States. He contends 

 that the time has come when some more effective restrictions must be 

 introduced than those that have so far obtained. Although protests 

 against prevailing legislation on immigration have been heard for more 

 than fifty years, real cause for alarm has, perhaps, existed only within 

 recent years. The total number of immigrant arrivals had never ex- 

 ceeded one half of a million during any one year previous to 1881. 

 Since 1820, we have received 22,932,905 immigrants, an annual average 

 of 269,798. During the fiscal year ending June 30, 1905, the total 

 number of aliens who entered this country (exclusive of Canadian 

 and Mexican immigrants), was 1,026,499, the largest aggregate of 

 immigrant arrivals in any one year of our history. At this rate, we 

 should receive during the next twenty years the same number of aliens 

 that flocked to our shores during the past eighty-five years. As most 

 of the newcomers of recent years have belonged to a class having neither 

 trade nor profession, and as many of them are totally illiterate, it would 

 seem that some very grave consequences must ensue as the result of 

 their congestion within an area of a comparatively few square miles 

 of the Atlantic seaboard. The attempt is now being made to transport 

 many of them to those sections of the United States which can more 

 readily absorb them. In just how far the success of this movement 

 would mitigate present evils the future alone can reveal. Meanwhile, 

 the problems ' arising from the presence of these alien hordes i loom 

 so largely in the prospect of our country,' declares Mr. Sargent, l that 

 it may be said without giving just cause for the charge of exaggeration, 

 that all other questions of public economy relating to things rather 

 than to human beings shrink into comparative insignificance.' 



The great danger from this increase of immigration, however, arises 

 rather through the change in its character than from mere increase in 

 numbers. Once recruited mostly from the United Kingdom, Scandi- 

 navia and Germany, the greater part of our immigrant population now 

 comes from Russia, Poland, Austria-Hungary, Bohemia, Italy and the 

 Balkans. During the decade 1881-90, the proportion of immigration 



