132 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



clares that " only one in ten murders and assaults is followed by 

 arrests." Moreover, he states that, " Even when an arrest has been 

 made, when the case comes to trial the Italian witnesses either myste- 

 riously lose their memories or disappear until the trial is over." The 

 Italian of southern Italy thinks there is something unmanly in an 

 appeal to the law, and that it is the duty and privilege of every man to 

 right his own wrongs. 



While the police court records show an increase in the number of 

 arrests for the various forms of homicide from 347 in 1898, to 517 in 

 1902, and to 885 in 1906, these figures do not represent a proportionate 

 increase in the number of deaths by homicide, as may be seen by the 

 accompanying table. 



From the foregoing figures it may be seen that the ratio of deaths 

 by homicide to total population was the same in 1905 (4.12) as it was 

 six years earlier, in 1899 ; and that whereas the annual average ratio 

 for the six years 1898-1903 was 3.70 per one hundred thousand of 

 inhabitants, the average annual ratio for the three years 1904-06 was 

 4.93. Such an increase is hardly sensational. In the matter of the 

 more serious crimes in general, such as robbery, burglary, arson, feloni- 

 ous assault and the various forms of homicide, taken altogether, the 

 increase was from 120.9 per one hundred thousand of population, to 

 166.3 (in 1905) ; an increase of 45.4 in each 100,000 of inhabitants. 

 The greatest increase to be noted is in the number of arrests for 

 felonious assault. 



That a large share of the more grave forms of criminality is per- 

 petrated by certain elements of New York's alien population is easily 

 demonstrated. Thus, of the 4,124 aliens held for grave crime in the 

 penal institutions of the United States in 1904, one fourth were de- 

 tained in the prisons of the empire state. It is also a significant fact 

 that of the ninety-one persons who met death at the hands of a fellow- 

 man in the borough of Manhattan, in 1905, thirty-eight only were 

 born in this county, and the parents of twenty of these were foreign- 

 born. Of the 71 foreigners who were killed, twenty, or 28 per cent., 

 were Italians, though eleven other nationalities were represented. 

 Seven of the deceased were Chinamen (who are, in this country, more 

 murderous in proportion to their numbers than the Italians) ; six of 

 the deceased were Eussians, five were natives of Ireland, four were 

 Germans. No other nationality was represented by more than two 

 victims. It is thus apparent how few of those murdered were native 

 Americans of native-born parents. It is, perhaps, not too much to say 

 that the lives of the better classes of citizens in New York City are as 

 safe now as in previous decades, most of the deaths by homicide being 

 confined to the immigrant quarters, the result of quarrels, of family 

 or tong feuds, rather than of cold-blooded murder, for gain. Coroner 



