We are talking and behaving now about the immigration of the past few years—allowing for the vastly greater bulk of it and the intensified peril involved in its bulk—just as we talked and behaved about the Irish immigration that began in the early ’30’s and the German immigration that began to bulk large in the early ’40’s. Comparatively small as was the size of that joint inflow, it made the problem that awakened the Know-Nothing and Native-American movement of the mid-century, and eventually culminated in the naturalization legislation now in force. Each phase of immigration has been “the new immigration” at its time; each has been viewed with alarm; each has been described as certain to deteriorate the physical quality of our people and destroy the standards of living and of citizenship.

The Scandinavians, who began to come in considerable numbers in 1879; the Italians, whose immigration became impressive in the late ’80’s; the Russians and Austrians, whose surge became formidable about 1890; the Greeks, never very numerous, but swelling in numbers from 2,339 in 1898 to 36,580 in 1907, their highest tide—each in turn passed or are passing now through the same stages; of comparatively good-natured welcome at the outset, when they were few, and viewed with curiosity; of increasing resentment, as they became noticeable in competition for jobs; at last of angry and vociferous denunciation as a “peril”; then subsiding into acceptance and assimilation into the body social. “Paddy the clodhopper,” butt of the comedian and the newspaper jokesmith, came over from Ireland as green as shamrock, worked at unskilled labor with pick and shovel on railroads and elsewhere, was herded and bribed into citizenship and politics, got on the police force and into the contracting business, increased in prosperity, bought real estate, and has sent down through the years and into the fabric of our population a posterity whose substantial contribution to our life no one now questions. He did not have to learn the language, and that fact greatly facilitated his assimilation. Fritz and Gretchen—we called them “Dutchmen” then—had to climb over the language barrier, but they did it, and their progress has followed the same general course. So did Ole and Chris and Sven and Hilda from Scandinavia, and Salvatore, then the “Dago.” Salvatore already owns apartment houses. Russian and Austrian, Greek, Rumanian, Portuguese, and so on, the latest comers, are in the midst of the same process.

The vast numbers, especially of the Russian Jews and Austro-Hungarians, herded in masses in certain of our great cities, have given us a kind of social indigestion; it must be cured, if at all, by a slow process of absorption, and we have not yet learned just what to do about it. Certainly unintelligent excitement, to say nothing of unlawful violence and mob persecution, and the exaggeration both of the degree and of the nature of the ailment, offer small promise of betterment. Nature, the normal processes of population movements and racial assimilation, work calmly on while we shout and worry. And candid study of the process is reassuring. Conditions have been confused, resentments aroused, and progress retarded by the various kinds of hysteria excited by the World War—but then, there was similar hysteria in the old Know-Nothing days, and we lived through it; it seems rather silly now. We shall live through this.

PAUCITY OF DEPENDABLE INFORMATION

Meanwhile we may try to know and understand the facts. This is not so easy as might be supposed, for the facts are hard to get. The student of the naturalization and political assimilation of the foreign-born citizen finds himself seriously embarrassed by the paucity of definite information on the subject in any of its aspects. To be sure, there is a considerable, though somewhat fragmentary, literature about it, and generalizations of a sweeping and rather dogmatic character have gained wide currency—impressions and prejudices, which it will no doubt be difficult to dislodge, even though such information as may be available, critically examined, entirely fails to support them. In hardly any other field may one find a better illustration of the mischief that may be wrought by inadequate or misinterpreted statistics, creating legends which cannot endure the test of candid, to say nothing of scientific, examination.

This is not to say that there is no material on the subject. There is always the census; there are the reports of the Immigration Commission of 1907; there are the reports of the Commissioner of Naturalization. There are numerous books, essays and pamphlets, by men and women who, to a greater or lesser extent, have come to be regarded as experts on the subject of immigration. But, as we shall see, these are almost all entitled to substantial discount, or at least discriminating study, with results conducive to a better understanding, to a readjustment of some ideas which, although mistaken, have come to be regarded as fundamental.

In the files of the Naturalization Bureau at Washington is a vast mass of original data which would be of priceless value in the study of the way in which those who would be “Americans by Choice” make their initial efforts in that direction; showing under oath their individual age, birthplace and race, date of arrival in this country, date of declaration of intention to become a citizen, marital and occupational status, details of the disposal of the petition for citizenship, and other facts constituting information ample for intelligent interpretation of aspects and relationships now little understood, not understood at all, or, more commonly, altogether misunderstood. These data are contained in the copies of the declarations of intention, petitions for naturalization and certificates of naturalization, issued since the institution of the Naturalization Service under the Act of 1906. The magnitude of this statistical treasure may be judged from Table VII.

Each one of these nearly three million declarations of intention, and more than a million petitions—not to speak of the final certificates of citizenship—contains what amounts almost to a cross-section of the life history of an immigrant. Upon each petition is indorsed the record of the court’s action, acceptance or denial, and the reasons for denial are, if possible, more important than the fact of acceptance for the purposes of study of the immigration question in its political aspect.

Owing in part to the chronic insufficiency of the staff in the Naturalization Bureau—not only preventing any proper statistical record or analysis of this material, but of late years compelling a lamentable curtailment and even the abandonment of such indexing as is obviously indispensable to the most routine official supervision and understanding;—in part to the absorption of the Bureau in its elaborate educational propaganda, and in part to a lack of appreciation of the value of this material by the officials there in charge, the leaders in Congress and the public in general, it has remained in an undigested and now probably indigestible mass in the files of the Bureau. For nearly fifteen years it has been accumulating. To collate and analyze it would be a prodigious job. Yet, as appears from the results of a very modest venture in this direction on the part of the Americanization Study, some of them presented in this volume,[98] it would be immensely worth while. And, what is more important, it probably would go far to modify, if not to revolutionize, many prevailing ideas and afford a new and sounder foundation and point of departure for theory and for guidance of practice as regards the assimilation of the immigrant into the American body politic.

TABLE VII

Number of Declarations of Intention and Petitions for Naturalization Filed, and Certificates of Naturalization Issued by the Bureau of Naturalization, 1907–20{1}

note 1: Annual Report of the Commissioner of Naturalization, 1919, p. 16.

note 2: Nine months only.

note 3: First full year of 12 months.

The annual reports of the Commissioner of Naturalization, like those of many other government bureaus, are written not so much to afford information to the public as to extol the work of the Bureau, pointing out the remarkable extent of the ground covered, the great number of letters written, and of cases handled by a force grievously and increasingly inadequate since the very beginning of the service, and so on. They are, however, most unsatisfactory as a source of sociological information; particularly barren are they of any hint of information regarding the various races whose representatives seek citizenship; their relative promptness in seeking and success in getting it; their respective standing as regards the various reasons for denial. They do show voluminously how many declarations and petitions are filed annually in each state and subdivision; increase or decrease in totals; how many clerks of courts are delinquent in sending in the government’s share of fees, and other more or less significant minutiÆ of the routine work of the field and clerical force and the courts.

VAST ARREARAGES IN EXAMINATIONS

Moreover, for the past four or five years, the bulk of the Bureau’s reports has been increasingly augmented by large sections devoted entirely to its efforts in the field of education, and its relations, actual, attempted and imaginary, with the public-school authorities. The degree to which the Naturalization Bureau has neglected, perforce of circumstances, the study of the material under its nose is apparent in the fact that the Commissioner’s report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1919, says, in so many words, not only that it no longer is preserving in its files any records of general correspondence, but that it has altogether ceased any pretense of examining naturalization papers!

The magnitude of the arrearage thus naÏvely accounted for, and the bulk of the potential information involved, may be seen in the fact that on July 1, 1919, according to the Commissioner’s own figures,[100] there were unexamined in the Bureau at Washington more than one million (1,011,676) declarations of intention, 26,726 petitions for naturalization, and 721,742 certificates of naturalization. This was an increase in arrearage, for one year alone, of 382,963 (60 per cent) in declarations; of 73 per cent in petitions, and of nearly 25 per cent in certificates. At the very time when the excitement about vigilance in admitting new citizens was at its height, the Naturalization Bureau was diverting to other channels a vital energy which might have been devoted to that vigilance and to collating the elementary information already in its possession, for the benefit of lawmakers and others needing information in dealing intelligently with this subject.

REPORT OF THE IMMIGRATION COMMISSION OF 1907

In point of fact, the only substantial body of statistical information about the naturalization of the foreign-born voter which hitherto has been even ostensibly sufficient for the student as a basis for any racial comparisons, is that gathered by the United States Immigration Commission of 1907. That body, created by an Act of Congress approved February 7, 1907, of which Senator William P. Dillingham of Vermont was chairman, consisted of three Senators, three members of the House of Representatives, and three other persons appointed by the President of the United States, and was directed by the statute to “make full inquiries, examination, and investigation, by sub-committee or otherwise, into the subject of immigration, ...” and to report such conclusions and recommendations as in its judgment might seem proper.

The information gathered by this Commission is very voluminous, and has been of great value to sociologists and others concerned with various aspects of the subject. Indeed, its report has come to be called “the bible of the immigration question.” Nearly all the modern writings on the subject have been based upon it in at least a general way, and their color taken largely from its conclusions and its point of view.

LEGEND OF “THE NEW IMMIGRATION”

To this report is attributable almost entirely the familiar conventional generalization that there is a marked distinction in what might be called quality of assimilability, between the immigration of former years and that of the three decades preceding the Great War; between the so-called “old immigration” and the “newer.” This distinction is drawn in the report and, in most of the writings of individuals, based upon it, between the group of races from northern and western Europe—the English-speaking races, the Scandinavians, Germans, Dutch, Belgians, French, and so on, and those from southern and eastern and southeastern Europe, Russia, Austria-Hungary, the Balkan States, Italy, Greece, Turkey-in-Europe, Asia Minor, etc.

This quality of assimilability was regarded by the Commission as inferable to a large extent from the degree to which the representatives of these racial groups concerning whom it got information of various kinds were naturalized or had exhibited interest in naturalization at least to the extent of declaring intention to become citizens. It was assumed in a general way that a racial group showing a high proportion of persons who had become citizens, or taken steps thereto, might fairly be regarded as more adaptable to American life, customs and ideals than one in which relatively few naturalized citizens were found. With this assumption as a starting point, it seemed reasonably obvious that inasmuch as the “older” race showed the higher percentage of naturalized persons, the inference of a difference in essential civic quality followed as a matter of course.

Inasmuch also as this inference coincided with the general public impression and prejudice to precisely the same effect, it occurred to nobody to dispute or seriously to question its validity. Anybody could tell you offhand that the Englishman, Frenchman, German or Swede was more available for citizenship and more easily assimilated than the Syrian, Croatian or Sicilian. It was a matter of common knowledge! And the Immigration Commission gave you the statistics—as if you needed any! For example, here is a table that shows the per cents naturalized for the “old” and “new” races who had been in the United States ten years or more. As is to be expected the “old” races show the highest per cents on both counts.

The Commission recognized a general “tendency on the part of wage-earners of foreign birth to acquire citizenship,” and that this tendency “increased according to length of residence in this country.” But it construed its statistics as showing that while “more than three-fourths of the Bohemians and Moravians, Danish, German, Irish, Norwegian, Scotch, Swedish, and Welsh races who had been in the United States ten years or longer had been fully naturalized,” there was a “lack of political or civic interest” (only 37.7 per cent) “on the part of the southern and eastern European wage-earners” with a similar residence of ten years or longer, and proceeded to assert that these did not possess that “tendency to acquire citizenship which increases according to length of residence in this country.” This assertion was supposed to be supported by the facts given in the above table regarding the races from southern and eastern Europe showing low percentages of individuals who had come to this country when twenty-one years of age or older, who had lived here ten years or over, and were naturalized.

The Commission regarded the table from which these facts were derived as highly significant in its implied indication of the “civic interest” exhibited and capable of being exhibited by the various racial groups.

DISPARITY IN NUMBERS AMONG RACIAL GROUPS

It should be remarked at once that inferences from these figures and others presented by the Immigration[207]
[208] Commission require considerable discount and discrimination by reason of the fact—to which Miss Grace Abbott already has called attention[101]—that

TABLE VIII

Per Cent that Fully Naturalized Male Employees Are of Total Male Employees Who Were Twenty-one Years of Age or Over at Time of Coming, and Who Have Been in the United States Ten Years or Over, Compared with the Per Cent that Male Employees in the United States Ten Years or Over are of Those Here Five Years and Over, by Race.{1}

note 1: Compiled by the Americanization Study from Report of the Immigration Commission, vol. i, p. 488, Table 100.

note 2: The Bohemians and Moravians are classified by the Immigration Commission with the “new” races.

This same factor of disparity in numbers operates, when a comparison of degree of assimilability is attempted, between the old and new races, with respect to residence in the United States from 5 to 9 years. The Immigration Commission gives the per cent naturalized for each race of individuals here five years. It might be expected that for this period of years conclusions could be drawn about the assimilability of the two groups of races. But here again almost six times as many individuals are classed in the new races as in the old and any general inference would be founded on insecure ground because of this disparity in numbers of cases. They, therefore, base their conclusions on the group here 10 years and over.

THE FACTOR OF LENGTH OF RESIDENCE

As we shall see also from the statistics gathered and analyzed for this volume,[102] the factor of residence “ten years or over,” with all its implications, is exceedingly important—is, in fact, the major factor in the whole situation. The indictment against the “new” immigration hangs upon it, and falls down when the term “ten years or longer” is analyzed, even in the light of the statistics presented by the Immigration Commission itself in support of the indictment. Indeed, the Commission was not entirely without compunctions on this point, and presented a table exhibiting the probability that, of the male employees from whom it derived its information, those of the “older” races had been in the United States considerably longer than ten years, while those of the “newer” races had been here only slightly longer than ten years. But it did not emphasize the point, and at a superficial glance this might seem a quibble; but it is of importance scarcely to be overestimated.

TABLE IX

Per Cent of Foreign-born Male Employees Reporting Citizenship Who Have Been in the United States Each Specified Period of Years, by Race{1}

note 1: Compiled by the Americanization Study from Report of Commission of Immigration Abstracts, vol. i, p. 485.

The Commission remarks, indeed, that “on account of the difference in the length of time the various races have been coming to the United States, a comparison of the older with the more recent immigrants is hardly fair.”[103] But it does fail to appreciate the vital significance of the point. And it apparently did not take adequate notice of the further fact, shown in Table IX, that of those of the “older” races who had been here over five years and reported information in regard to citizenship, 80.5 per cent had been in the United States over ten years, while only 38.9 per cent of the “newer” races had been here so long. That is, only 19.5 per cent of the “older” races, as compared with 61.1 per cent of the “newer,” had been in the country between five and nine years. This means, of course, that the immigrants of the “older” races had had on the average a much longer time than those of the “newer” to acquire “civic interest” and seek naturalization. The “over” added to five years means for the “recent” races between five and nine years in most cases, while for the “older” races it usually means more than ten. It would appear that every year of residence added to ten increases the probability of efforts toward citizenship.

While the races from southern and southeastern Europe show rates of naturalization ranging from 65.7 to 25.3 per cent with an average of 37.7, they also show a proportion residing in the country ten years or longer ranging down from 56.3 to 23.5 per cent with an average of 38.9.[104] Contrast this, if you will, with rates of naturalization among the northern, “older” races, of from 87.6 to 27.7 per cent with an average of 74.0, but along with that observe that the proportion of those “older,” and supposedly more assimilable, races residing in the country ten years or over ranges from 57.1 to 94.6 per cent with an average of 80.5!

From this point of view, the following table of the Commission becomes highly significant:{1}

TABLE X

Present Political Condition of Foreign-born Male Employees Who Have Been in the United States Five Years or Over, and Who Were Twenty-one Years of Age at Time of Coming, by Race

note 1: Abstracts, vol. i, pp. 485, 486.

note 2: Classed as “Recent” by Immigration Commission.

Prof. Edward A. Ross, who, of all the students of this question, is one of the most uncompromising in generalizing from the reports of the Immigration Commission to the disadvantage of the “newer” races, deduced that “with the change in nationalities came a great change in the civic attitude of the immigrants.”[105] He made little or no allowance for the fact that the “civic attitude” of the “newer” immigrants naturally would not have had time to develop as in the case of those who had been here longer; he made even less for any changes in industrial and social life in this country which might help to account for this alleged change in attitude, by intensifying the hardships of the only kind of employment “newer” immigrants could get, by low wages due to an overstocked labor market, or by the increased herding of foreign born in city slums, which last, of itself, might tend to retard the process of adjustment and assimilation. Prof. John B. Clark saw something of this, when he remarked that “there is far more likeness between different branches of the European family than there is between the economic conditions into which immigrants came in the third quarter of the last century and those into which they come to-day. Then they could have farms for the asking, while now most of them go into mills, mines, shops, and railroad plants, or become employees or tenants on farms owned by others.”[106]

Prof. John R. Commons, discussing the differences in the proportions naturalized among the various racial groups, calls attention to the fact that “it is not so much a difference in willingness as a difference in opportunity.... In course of time these differences will diminish, and the Italian and the Slav will approach the Irishman and the German in their share of American suffrage.”[107]

The war has created an entirely new situation with regard to both immigration and naturalization; it is entirely impossible to forecast the effects, either of the chaotic conditions in Europe or of the reconstruction period in America, upon the influx of foreign born into America, upon the duration of their stay here, or upon the attitude toward citizenship of those already here and entitled to citizenship by length of residence. The wholesale naturalization of immigrants in the national army during the war, regardless of length of residence or any of the other requirements ordinarily so rigidly, so meticulously enforced, has swept into citizenship so large a proportion of human material available and hitherto constituting the bulk of the “naturalization problem” that the old generalizations have become both useless and misleading. It will be long before such immigrants as are now coming, or may come during the next five years, can be the subject of intelligible statistics—especially since nobody is collecting or collating any statistics worthy of the name.

Even the statistics afforded by the census have been the subject of uncritical use on which pessimistic generalizations have been based. The Thirteenth Census (1910) showed for the decade since that of 1900 a decrease of 12.4 per cent in the proportion of foreign-born white males twenty-one years of age and over naturalized. Referring to this decrease, Professor Ross predicted[108] that, “as things are going, we may expect a great increase in the number of the unenfranchised.” Of course he could not have foreseen the war and its profound effects upon the whole question; but he might have observed in the same census the fact that there had been a precisely identical (12.4 per cent) decrease in the number of foreign-born whites who had been in the country nine years or more—even if his prejudice on the subject of the “new immigration” prevented his recognizing in this remarkable coincidence a striking evidence of the direct relation between length of residence and naturalization.

THE FACTOR OF LANGUAGE

It would be plausible to expect that language would be a factor in governing the degree to which this racial group or that would seek naturalization. Those whose mother tongue is English, one might naturally suppose, would find it easier to acquire the necessary information, and would the sooner be absorbed into the life and atmosphere of the country, the sooner aspire to full citizenship.

The facts do not support this idea at all. And a very slight consideration of the conditions discloses the reasons. In the first place, no knowledge of English whatever is required for the declaration of intention; and only the statistics of full naturalization are of value in this matter. Both the statistics of the Immigration Commission, and especially those compiled by the Americanization Study, make it clear that, on the average, more than ten years’ residence in this country precedes final naturalization. It is a rare case in which during that ten years the petitioner has not acquired a speaking knowledge of English sufficient for all his practical purposes.

The statistics of the Immigration Commission themselves show how little the original knowledge of English has to do with the matter.[109] For the persons from whom the Commission got information, who had been in this country ten years or over (racial groups represented by 100 individuals or more), the percentages of those fully naturalized exhibit the fact that the Swedish and German show a higher rate than the Irish; the Bohemian, Moravian, Norwegian and Danish outrank the Scotch, Welsh, and English. Even for those who have been in the country only five to nine years the Swedes show the highest percentage.[110] That length of residence, rather than native language, is the dominant factor in determining interest in citizenship, stands forth in Table VIII, which gives percentages by race of those in the United States ten years or longer, and of such of these as have been fully naturalized.

LENGTH OF RESIDENCE AND EARNING POWER

The fallacious nature of the assumption that there is an essential difference between the so-called “older” and “newer” races as such in respect of interest in citizenship is further disclosed by the statistics of the Immigration Commission on the subject of the wages of foreign-born laborers. The Commission found that the members of the “older” races in the households covered by its inquiry were earning more than those of the “newer” races, and occupied, generally speaking, higher positions. This, of course, was to be expected; but little stress was laid by the Commission upon the relation between these facts and the relative rates of naturalization, although it is a conspicuous relationship. Like most of the statistics compiled by the Commission in this particular field, the comparison may be criticized on the ground that the numbers upon which percentages are based and compared are small, and differ widely among the racial groups. Nevertheless, despite this discrepancy, the probability stands forth that, in addition to length of residence, the economic status—the individual and family income—is a most important factor in determining the interest of the foreign born in acquiring citizenship.

From the following table it is clear that the “older” races show a higher average rate of income in all the occupations listed than the “newer.”[111]

TABLE XI

Average Amount of Weekly Earnings of Male Employees Eighteen Years of Age and Over, by Race and Specified Industries{1}

note 1: See Appendix for complete table. This table does not take account of lost time.

note 2: Weekly wage.

note 3: Daily wage.

When the expense of becoming a citizen is taken into consideration, the bearing of income on acquiring citizenship is important. Add to that the obvious fact that wages and general economic and social status tend to improve in the individual case with length of residence, and the situation becomes not only clear but just what common sense would suggest as probable. It ought not to require elaborate argument to substantiate the assertion that the immigrant in his early years in America is too busy getting a job and an economic footing, acquiring a working knowledge of the language, overcoming the general prejudice against him as a foreigner, and so on, to pay much attention to the question of becoming a citizen; besides which he must, in any event, live here five years before he can do anything effective in the matter.

VOTING ON “FIRST PAPERS”

The present state of public opinion in the United States on the subject of the foreign born is very different from what it was in the earlier years of our development; this is largely, though not entirely, due to the emotions and disclosures connected with the war. When we were opening up the vast domain west of the Alleghanies, and there was great need of human labor to clear forests, break virgin land, and help in the beginnings of our industries, the immigrant was a welcome helper, and every inducement was offered to entice him to come and settle on even terms with the native born. One of these inducements was citizenship, for all intents and purposes, on very easy terms.

Prior to 1910 there were ten states in which aliens were permitted to vote on their mere declaration of intention to become citizens—subject, however, to the same conditions of length of residence in state, county, and election district as citizens. These were Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, and Texas.[112]

That this easy acquisition of the suffrage would act as a deterrent to the completion of citizenship was to be expected, and that it has indeed so acted appears in a comparison of the proportions of foreign-born males of voting age holding “first papers” only, in the alien-suffrage states, with those in states requiring full citizenship as a prerequisite to voting.

TABLE XII

Per Cent of Foreign Born of Voting Age Having First Papers, and Also the Per Cent in States Permitting Aliens to Vote on First Papers, Compared with Certain States Not Permitting Aliens to Vote on First Papers, for 1900 and 1910{1}

note 1: United States Census, 1910, vol. i, p. 1071.

In 1900 the ratio of those holding declarations only was about 12 to 6 in favor Of the alien-suffrage states. By 1910 this difference had diminished to about 12 to 9. If aliens of any race were interested in voting as soon as they had a chance, this interest certainly would have manifested itself in the states permitting them to vote on the “first papers” which they could get, if they chose, an hour after landing.

WHAT BECOMES OF THE DECLARATIONS?

To what extent does the declarant follow up his declaration of intention to apply for citizenship? The reports of the Commissioner of Naturalization give each year, by states, the number of declarations of intention (“first papers”) and the number of petitions for final naturalization. The most striking fact apparent in these statistics is that the number of declarations is far in excess of the number of petitions—to say nothing of what may happen to the latter by way of denials when they reach the naturalizing judge.

Now, it must be remembered that these totals are not directly comparable. In no event can the final petition follow the declaration by less than two years, and the law now permits a lapse of seven years before the declaration must expire. If the number of declarations and petitions were fairly uniform from year to year, or bore any constant relation to each other, something might be inferred from a comparison of totals for a seven-year period. Since, however, the number of petitions, as well as the number of declarations, increased rapidly from 1908 to 1918, no sound conclusion can be reached without taking such variations into account.

For example, none of the 136,698 declarations of intention filed in 1908 could become the basis for petitions until 1910, and all would be valid until 1915. In 1910 the number of petitions filed was only 56,038, and seven years later it was 123,855. There is no way of knowing how the petitions which actually consummated the declarations filed in 1908 were distributed among the years 1910–14; but it would seem to be sufficiently dependable to take the average of those years, which would be 88,670. Instead, therefore, of comparing the 43,864 petitions of 1908 with the 136,698 declarations of that year, it is proper to compare the 136,698 with the average of 88,670 which gives a ratio of 64.9.

The ratio of about 65 petitions to each 100 declarations is in fact corroborated by other calculations, as will appear below. Take, for instance, the figures[113] for the period of five years 1908–12, inclusive:

TABLE XIII

Number of Declarations Filed Each Year, 1908–12, with Average Number and Ratio of Petitions Consummating in Five-year Period Ending Each Year

Take it another way, remembering that each declaration of intention has a valid lifetime of seven years—five after the two which must elapse before it can be made the basis of a final petition. Assuming that the petitions consummating the declarations of any given year are distributed approximately evenly over the five-year period during which they are valid for that purpose, then one-twenty-fifth of the declarations of 1908–18 covered by Table XIII eventuated in petitions in 1910, two-twenty-fifths in 1911, and so on, reaching five-twenty-fifths in 1914, and falling again to one-twenty-fifth in 1918. The following diagrammatic table, tracing out on this basis the probable distribution of the declarations consummated by the petitions filed from 1908 to 1918, inclusive, shows graphically the weight which should be given to the petitions of each year, in calculating the ratio of declarations to petitions. It fully substantiates the showing of Table XIII, and justifies the assertion that 35 out of every 100 declarants fail to file petitions within the period now fixed by the law.

TABLE XIV

Showing Number of Declarations Filed in Each Year During the Period 1908–1912, and the Number of Final Petitions for Naturalization Assumed to Have Been Based upon Those Declarations in Each Year During Which, Respectively, the Declarations Were Valid