Table XXVII
Petitioners Whose Declarations Were Made in a State Other Than the One in Which the Court is Located
| ——— | ||
| ——— | ||
| Court | Petitioners Who Declared In Other States | |
| Number | Per Cent | |
| ——— | ||
| Norwich, Conn. | 52 | 43.7 |
| Portland, Ore. | 234 | 32.8 |
| Seattle, Wash. (state court) | 42 | 29.4 |
| Bridgeport, Conn. | 96 | 23.4 |
| New Brunswick, N. J. | 84 | 21.6 |
| Cleveland, Ohio (U. S. court) | 158 | 13.4 |
| Paterson, N. J. | 76 | 10.2 |
| Seattle, Wash. (U. S. court) | 69 | 9.8 |
| Middletown, Conn. | 7 | 9.5 |
| Cincinnati, Ohio | 34 | 9.4 |
| Cleveland, Ohio (state court) | 152 | 8.9 |
| Easton, Pa. | 10 | 8.7 |
| Ithaca, N. Y. | 2 | 8.7 |
| Akron, Ohio | 16 | 8.0 |
| Iowa City, Iowa | 1 | 7.7 |
| Rochester, N. Y. | 57 | 7.0 |
| Jamaica, L. I. | 39 | 6.5 |
| Elmira, N. Y. | 1 | 5.3 |
| Mineola, L. I. | 7 | 5.2 |
| New York City (U. S. court) | 121 | 5.0 |
| White Plains, N. Y. | 28 | 4.3 |
| Worcester, Mass. | 27 | 4.3 |
| New York City (state court) | 452 | 4.1 |
| Bronx, N. Y. C. (state court) | 47 | 3.5 |
| Brooklyn, N. Y. C. (U. S. court) | 47 | 3.0 |
| ——— | ||
| Total | 1,859 | 7.1 |
| ——— | ||
| ——— | ||
That upward of 13 out of 14—nearly 93 per cent—of alien petitioners for American citizenship, in a total of more than 26,000, should have been able to file their final petitions in the same states in which, on an average of more than five years before, they had declared their intention to do so, certainly attests a degree of “stability of residence” comparing favorably with that of other, native-born residents of the country. And it would seem also to justify the inference that those who become naturalized have generally become well assimilated into the life of the communities where they live.
Intellectual Equipment and Occupation
As for the intellectual equipment and the general usefulness of the aspirants for citizenship represented in the petitions studied, one may infer something from the occupational range shown in an analysis of the petitions for 1913–14 in seven cities,119 representing a wide variety of locality. This analysis showed, for each of the 17 kinds of occupations listed, the ratio between the number of naturalization petitions filed by persons in those occupations in those cities in 1913–14, and the foreign-born white males in those occupations in those cities as shown by the census of 1910. Perhaps the most striking fact emerging from this analysis, illuminating to those who have supposed that the naturalization process swept into citizenship the dregs of immigration, is that the smallest percentage is shown in the class of common labor; the highest in the grade of executives, and the preponderance throughout attaching to trades requiring a degree of dexterity and general intelligence and information, if not technical training. It is unsafe, however, to infer too much from these percentages, because of the relatively small numbers represented in some of the classes, and the large proportions accredited to the garment trades and to “retail dealers,” among whom, doubtless, there were many mere peddlers. The distribution of occupations is here set forth in the order of the percentages: