IMMIGBATION AND CRIME. 



625 



IMMIGRATION AND CRIME. 



By SYDNEY G. FISHER. 



THE criminal influence of the alien with its steady increase 

 can be traced back in our history for the last sixty years. So 

 surely and yet so gradually has it grown upon us that we have now 

 become thoroughly accustomed to a condition of things which 

 would have been extremely shocking to our rugged ancestors as 

 they are sometimes called. 



When our system of foreign immigration first began to reach 

 serious proportions, about the year 1820, its effect on our manners 

 and morals soon attracted attention. The Native American party, 

 which arose soon after 1840, based its strongest argument on the 

 enormous increase of crime which followed the advent of the 

 foreigners. The belief and confidence in the cheap labor of 

 the immigrant were very strong in those days, or the people 

 would never have been willing to go on with the system in 

 the face of the shocking revelations of pauperism, crime, and 

 corruption which became more and more apparent from 1830 

 to 1850. 



The newspapers and pamphlets of that time published statis- 

 tics which showed that, although the foreign population was only 

 an eighth of the whole, yet it furnished two thousand more pau- 

 pers and a thousand more criminals than all the remaining seven 

 eighths of the people. Every thirty-two foreigners produced a 

 pauper, and every one hundred and fifty-four of them produced a 

 criminal ; but it required three hundred and seventeen natives to 

 furnish one pauper and sixteen hundred and nineteen to furnish 

 a criminal. 



The census of 1880 attempted to summarize the relative pro- 

 portions of the foreign population which were paupers and crimi- 

 nals as far back as 1850. The statistics on which the calculation 

 was based were somewhat incomplete, but so far as they go they 

 show the same result that all other similar investigations have 

 shown. The foreigner in proportion to his numbers furnishes by 

 far the greater part of paujierism and crime. 



Ratio to IfiOOflOO of Population. 



