DISCUSS/OX AXD COEBESPOXDKXGE 



377 



numbers are made to appear large as 

 compared with Teutonic immigrants. 

 In all fairness, it ought to be open to 

 question whether the ' Mexicans ' enum- 

 erated in the census are immigrants, 

 as Mr. Shipley assumes, or Spanish- 

 speaking residents of what was orig- I 

 inally Mexican territory, so largely 

 Indian that they could hardly be 

 classified with the Italians, even on ac- 

 count of their 'Latin' blood. But. as 

 for the Italians, the states containing 

 the great bulk of that nationality have 

 the cleanest records, if we except 

 Louisiana and Texas, where the high 

 murder rate is ascribed to the negroes 

 by Mr. Shipley himself. In fact, only 

 one inference could be properly drawn 



callings. He should have realized 

 that adult males are far more prone 

 to acts of violence than either women 

 or children, and that ratios of homicide 

 to nationality mean nothing, unless 

 this factor be taken into account. Im- 

 migration from northern Europe brings 

 in more females than does that from 

 the south and east; the Chinese, accord- 

 ing to the census of 1900, were repre- 

 sented by 81,534 persons, of whom 

 77.936, or 95.59 per cent, were males 

 over 21. At the same time, the native 

 population contained only 25.55 per 

 cent, of males over 20. I have already 

 shown that Mr. Shipley's figures for 

 homicide are valueless, because they 

 do not differentiate between murder 



Table I. 

 I.. Number homicides per 100.000 according to Shipley, II., per- 



Showing 



eentage of males over 19 years, according to Census 

 per 100.000 adult males. 



III., number of homicides 



from his Fig. 5 — that the racial com- 

 position of a state's population has no 

 influence at all, as compared with the 

 general conditions governing the life 

 of its citizens'. 



As to the influence of these general 

 conditions upon homicide, he merely 

 discusses the relative density of popu- 

 lation and the criminal tendency of 

 mining as compared with manufactur- 

 ing pursuits. Having gone so far, he 

 might naturally be expected to proceed 

 to inquire into the brutalizing effect 

 of certain special trades, such as 

 slaughtering — the periodical debauches 

 of sailors in seaports — reckless disre- 

 gard for the value of human life en- 

 gendered by the pursuit of hazardous 



and accident ; but, since he has chosen 

 to calculate the ratio per hundred 

 thousand foreign born of each nation- 

 ality, the following table corrects these 

 ratios so as to apply to foreign-born 

 adult males, by dividing them by the 

 corresponding percentage, as calculated 

 from Table 12, of the Twelfth Census, 

 Volume II. 



The homicides for the entire Lnited 

 States are taken from Mr. Shipley's 

 Fig. 1, for the census year, the per- 

 centage of adult males is based on the 

 ages given in that census and the limit 

 of 19 years was chosen, because that 

 was the nearest approach to 18 pos- 

 sible under censais conditions. The 

 significance of the correction will be 



