CITY LIFE, CRIME AND POVERTY 131 



accept them as the judf]^mont of those who have the best means 

 of knowing the conditions of poverty and pauperism in tlie 

 metropohs. However exaggerated, they incHcate an alarming 

 extent of abject penury brought on by immigration, for it is 

 mainly the immigrant and the children of the inmiigrant who 

 sw^ell the ranks of this indigent element in our great cities. 



Those who are poverty stricken are not necessarily par- 

 asitic, but they occupy that intermediate stage between the 

 industrial and the parasitic classes from w^hich either of these 

 classes may be recruited. If through continued poverty they 

 become truly parasitic, then they pass over to the ranks of the 

 criminal, the pauper, the vicious, the indolent and the vagrant, 

 who, like the industrial class, seek the cities. 



The dangerous effects of city Hfe on immigrants and the 

 cnildren of immigrants cannot be too strongly emphasized. 

 This coimtiy can absorb millions of all races from Europe and 

 can raise them and their descendants to relatively high stand- 

 ards of American citizenship in so far as it can find places for 

 them on the farms; but the cities of this country not only do 

 not raise them but are themselves dragged dowTi to a low level 

 by the parasitic and dependent conditions which they foster 

 among the immigrant element. 



This fact is substantiated by a study of criminal and pau- 

 per statistics. Great caution is needed in this line of inquir}', 

 especially since the eleventh census promulgated most errone- 

 ous inferences from the statistics compiled under its direction. 

 It was contended by the census authorities that for each mil- 

 lion of the foreign bom population there were 1,768 prisoners; 

 while for each million of the native bom there were only 898 

 prisoners, thus showing a tendency to criminality of the foreign 

 bom twice as great as that of the white native bom. This 

 inference was possible through oversight of the important fact 

 that prisoners are recruited mainly from adults, and that the 

 proportion of foreign born adults to the foreign bom popula- 

 tion is much greater than that of the native bom adults to the 

 native population. If comparison be made of the number of 

 male prisoners with the number of males of voting age, the 

 proportions are materially different and more accurate. 



But this analysis brings out a fact far more significant 



