Americans by Choice

Table XXVI

Racial Distribution of Petitioners, Showing Percentages for the Age Periods “Over Twenty-one,” “Fifteen to Twenty,” and “One to Fourteen,” in the Order of the First-mentioned Age Group

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		Number and Percentage of Those Arriving at Ages
Country of Birth	Whole Number of Petitioners	21 and Over		15 to 20		1 to 14
		Number	Per Cent	Number	Per Cent	Number	Per Cent
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Scotland	288	218	75.7	57	19.8	13	4.5
Switzerland	197	140	71.7	50	25.4	7	3.5
France	86	57	66.3	10	11.6	19	22.1
England	831	538	64.7	216	26.0	77	9.3
Holland	139	90	64.7	32	23.0	17	12.2
Germany	2,305	1,425	61.8	600	26.0	280	12.1
Ireland	1,773	1,087	61.3	609	34.3	77	4.3
Denmark	200	122	61.0	65	32.5	13	6.5
Norway	389	228	58.6	148	38.0	13	3.3
Finland	144	84	58.3	54	37.5	6	4.1
Hungary	2,443	1,291	52.8	960	39.3	192	7.9
Canada	385	198	51.4	99	25.7	88	22.9
Sweden	616	316	51.3	269	43.7	31	5.0
Russia	7,864	3,936	50.1	3,055	38.8	873	11.1
Rumania	569	278	48.9	202	35.5	89	15.6
Italy	3,591	1,742	48.5	1,198	33.4	651	18.1
Austria	3,875	1,828	47.2	1,658	42.8	389	10.0
Turkey in Europe	92	42	45.7	42	45.7	8	8.7
Turkey in Asia	142	63	44.4	69	48.6	10	7.0
Greece	90	31	34.4	47	52.2	12	13.3
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Inferences or generalizations from this table in connection with the age statistics given heretofore would be perilous, since we have not tabulated the data which would show, with regard to any particular racial group, how many of those between 15 and 20 years of age came at 18 or 19; or how many of those over 21 came after they were 25 or before they were 30. So far as it goes, however, it would appear to indicate that those of the so-called “older” immigration left their homelands at a later age, while a larger proportion of those of the “newer” came in younger manhood. The larger percentages in the column “over 21” are credited to the “older”; the larger in the second column, “15 to 20,” to the “newer.”

At the Beginning of Married Life

More than two-thirds (68.5 per cent) of the petitioners were married at the time of their petition for naturalization. One may hazard the guess that the majority were either unmarried or newly married when they came to this country, because, while 89.9 per cent of the 18,017 married petitioners reported wives of foreign birth, 10,563 (73.5 per cent) of them had children exclusively native-born. Only one in ten had foreign-born children only, and only 16.5 per cent had both native and foreign-born children. And 14,371 (79.8 per cent) of the married petitioners had one or more children under 21 years of age.118

As for “Stability of Residence”

The question of what might be called the “residential stability” of the immigrant in this country has been the subject of much assertion and little substantial information. The general tenor of the assertion and the vague impression of the average person are to the effect that the immigrant is more or less of a wanderer, shifting from place to place, and for that reason failing to establish anything resembling permanent residence or to relate himself to the community as a neighbor. Very little statistical data on this point is available, and it is unsafe to generalize. There is, however, a somewhat startling disclosure in the 1915 census of the state of Massachusetts, showing that in the class of otherwise “justified” voters disqualified solely by reason of not having resided one year in the state or six months in the city or town, there were 21,226 native and 3,845 foreign born; in other words, that 3.6 per cent of the native-born voters were disqualified because they were moving about; while only 1.9 per cent, or just about half the proportion, of the foreign-born were disqualified for that reason.

The analysis of petitions by the Americanization Study sheds a little further light on this subject, by segregating the figures in each court showing petitions which were filed by aliens who had filed their declaration in another state. Of the total of 26,284, there were 1,859 of these, or 7.1 per cent. Undoubtedly this moving about, in search of employment or for other reasons, is a considerable factor in the delay between arrival and declaration and between declaration and petition. Naturally, the figures would tend to be high on the Pacific coast, to which immigrants travel by rather long stages of time. The court in Portland, Oregon, showed 234 out of 714 petitioners—almost a third—who had filed their declaration in other states. This court shows also the longest average interval between declaration and petition. The courts in Seattle also show high figures in this regard. The same tends to be true of rapidly growing industrial centers, such as Cleveland, Bridgeport, Paterson, New Brunswick, New Jersey.