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Indiana University Studies 



There remains the necessity for intensive, sympathetic, and 

 understanding study of the immigrant as he lives in this country, 

 not as detached from but in the light of that old home, those 

 causes of coming, that steerage, and that entrance gate. This 

 phase of the subject presents the usual difficulties of an}r con- 

 temporaneous study. The processes are not known and fixed. 

 The ultimate reactions to conditions of American life lie far in 

 the future and all that can be hoped for at present is the indica- 

 tion of certain tendencies and the presentation of certain con- 

 ditions; that is, a better understanding of the nature of the 

 problem. 



Fairchild suggests two kinds of studies of the immigrant as 

 he lives in this country. 1 One he calls a longitudinal section of 

 the problem — the study of single racial groups of immigrants, such 

 as the study of the Slavs by Emily G. Balch; the other a trans- 

 verse section of the problem — the study of particular phases of 

 the life of immigrants of all races or nationalities living in the 

 same group; such as housing conditions among immigrants, the 

 food of immigrants, assimilation, etc. In this study the latter 

 plan is followed: that is, juvenile delinquency and adult crime 

 are studied in their relation to immigrants of all races or national- 

 ities living in a single community. 



There are two characteristic dwelling-places of the immigrant 

 in this country: first, compact colonies in large cities; and second, 

 residence sections of mining camps and smaller industrial cities 

 called "patches". 2 The first offers perhaps the advantage in the 

 study of racial and national problems as isolated problems in 

 the light of conditions in the old home of the immigrant, because 

 such communities grafted on to an American community take 

 little part in public affairs, but are occupied largely with their 

 own businesses of life, forming a community within a community. 

 The second type of dwelling-place, the "patches" of mining camps 

 and smaller industrial cities, furnishes a much more profitable 

 field for studies of the immigrant in his relation to American 

 institutions and conditions of American life, for here oftentimes 

 the immigrant takes his part in the buiiding up of the whole com- 

 munity, socially and politically as well as industrially. Such a 

 community lends itself more readily to the purposes of this stud}^. 



The immigrant population of Gary, Ind., has been selected 

 for this study for three chief reasons. First, this population 



^Fairchild, pp. 213-214. 

 *Pairchild, p. 234. 



