PEKILS. — IMMICtRATIO^\ 57 



their church-membership in the East. And a consider- 

 able element of our American-born population are aji 

 par^ntly under the impl'ession that the Ten Command- 

 ments are not binding west of the Missouri. Is it 

 strange, then, that those who come from other lands, 

 whose old associations are all broken and whose reputa- 

 tions are left behind, should sink to a lower moral level? 

 Across the sea they suffered many restraints which are 

 here removed. Better wages afford larger means of self- 

 indulgence ; often the back is not strong enough to bear 

 prosperity, and liberty too often lapses into license. Our 

 population of foreign extraction is sadly conspicuous in 

 our criminal records. This element constituted in 1870 

 twenty per cent, of the population of New England, and 

 furnished seventy-five per cent, of the crime. Tliat is, it 

 was twelve times as much disposed to crime as the 

 native stock. The hoodlums and roughs of our cities 

 are, most of them, American-born of foreign parentage. 

 Of the 680 discharged convicts w^ho applied to the Prison 

 Association of New York for aid, during the year ending 

 June 30, 1882, 442 Avere born in the United States, 

 against 238 foreign-born ; while only 144 reported native 

 parentage against 536 who reported foreign parentage. 



The Rhode Island Work-house and House of Correc- 

 tion had received, to December 31, 1882, 6,202 persons on 

 commitment. Of this number, fifty -two per cent, were 

 native-born and seventy-six per cent, were born of 

 foreign parentage.' Of the 182 prisoners committed to 

 the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women in 1880-81, 

 eighty-one per cent, were of foreign birth or parentage. 

 While in 1880 the foreign-born were only thirteen per 

 cent, of the entire population, thej^ furnished nineteen 

 per cent, of the convicts in our penitentiaries, and forty- 

 three per cent, of the inmates of work-houses and houses 

 of correction. And it must be borne in mind that a very 

 large proportion of the native-born prisoners were of 



1 For additional statistics on this point, see North American Reviexo, 

 January, 1884. 



