CITY LIFE, CRIME AND POVERTY 137 



Here we see tho countorpart of the estimates on crime, 

 for the natives of foreign parentage show a smaller proportion 

 of paupers than the natives of native parentage, while the 

 foreign horn themselves show double the relative amount of 

 pauperism of the native element, and the colored paupers are 

 two and one half times the native stock. 



The census of 1890 also furnishes data for computations 

 which would show the contributions of the different races and 

 nationalities to the insane asylums and all l)enevolent institu- 

 tions. In all cases it appears that the foreign born and the 

 negroes exceed the native classes in their burden on the public. 

 A state like New York suffers under this burden far beyond its 

 just proportion, and, to take the matter of insanity, with one 

 fourth of the population and one third of the voters foreign 

 born, one half of the insane supported by the state of New York 

 are foreign born. In New York city in the year 1900, of 2,936 

 inmates of almshouses only 564 were born in this country. 

 When the permanent census bureau and the bureau of immi- 

 gration, under authority recently granted, shall have made 

 their reports on these important subjects, it will be possible to 

 form more accurate judgments than the present scattered and 

 defective statistics allow. Especially are we ignorant of the 

 extent of outdoor pauperism, that is, the paupers who are aided 

 in their homes and not in pul^Hc or private institutions. That 

 this exceeds the institutional element is altogether probable, 

 and, judging from the reports of charitable associations in 

 various cities, much the greater portion of this class of poverty 

 and pauperism is foreign by birth. There are two reports of 

 the department of labor of great value and significance in- 

 cidentally bearing on this subject, one of them showing for the 

 ItaHans in Chicago their industrial and social conditions. Ac- 

 cording to this report the average earnings of Italians in that 

 city in 1896 were $6.41 per week for men and $2.11 per week 

 for w^omen, and the average time unemployed by the wage 

 earning element was over seven months. In another report 

 of the department of labor it appears that tlie slum population 

 of the cities of Baltimore, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia 

 in 1893 w^as unemployed three months each year. With wages 

 one dollar a day and employment only five months during the 



