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Indiana University Studies 



of flags of all nations, that the patriotic population is not a homo- 

 geneous American born population; etc. 



Without doubt the most interesting part of the population 

 is that gathered in u The Patch" and other parts of Gary where 

 the New Immigration chiefly lives. 



One of the finest things these people bring to America is 

 their love of the home; and the sacrifices they make in their 

 eagerness to own a home in the New World are often mistaken 

 for selfish greed or interpreted as a lack of appreciation of the 

 privacy of home life. On the contrary, they really have the 

 highest home ideals, but necessity often drives them to yield 

 up such ideals for a time. Most of the homes are bought on 

 credit and are loaded with heavy mortgages, to meet the pay- 

 ments on which the general practice of keeping boarders is fol- 

 lowed. Under one system of keeping boarders, the wife in the 

 family receives S3 or $4 a month from each man in return for 

 doing his washing, his cooking, and furnishing him a place to 

 sleep. Under this system each man keeps his own grocery book 

 and buys his own focd. To make payments on homes in some 

 cases naive methods are resorted to. There have been cases 

 where the family put all its earnings into these monthly pa}^- 

 ments, depending upon public charity for food and coal. 



These homes of the immigrant do not escape the modern 

 tendency to institutionalize the home. While it is true that 

 the Day Nursery cares for its children with a high degree of 

 efficiency, it also puts a premium on the mother's work away 

 from home; and while the hospital gives to the sick a chance utter- 

 ly impossible in these homes, it also takes away in part that sense 

 of responsibility for the weak. Such institutionalizing influences 

 destrojr those finer feelings of self-dependence and responsibility 

 engendered in the inner circle of the home. 



These immigrant people are extremely charitable. If they 

 do not knoAv where the next meal is to come from they will share 

 with those worse off than they, and take them into their homee. 

 An Italian family was evicted for failure to pay the rent on a 

 miserable little shack. They found refuge with another family 

 who themselves had asked for financial aid, and who had so little 

 room that in order to make a place for the evicted family, a 

 baby's bed must be put in the kitchen behind the stove, and 

 some of the children must be taken into bed with the man and 

 his wife. During a period of business depression when many of 

 the men were out of work little immigrant stores dotted here and 



