Speech #590091375

South Carolina 328. Georgia 518. and Arkansas 432. These figures suggest that a very large number of immigrants who came to this country last year found places to locate in only six States out of the fortyfive. and that over 300.000 of them went to the State of New York and 210.000 went to the State of Pennsylvania. If immigrants continue to go to those States in that way there will be a serious problem to solve in those States. These figures suggest another serious problem. While we of the South have the race problem constantly with us. and development. both educational and industrial. is hampered and influenced becauie the South Ii biracial. nevertheless both races speak the same language and have for generations lived under the same government. and have worked in harmony. while the people of New York. Pennsylvania. Massachusetts. and New Jersey have with them not the problem of two races. but the problem of many races. and the influx each year of hundreds of thousands of Immigrants who are unfamiliar with our language. ignorant of our manners and customs. and without any conception of our Government. and the people of these States are called upon to solve a stupendous problem. which not only concerns amalgamation of these divers races into proper citizenship. but also the economic question as to how they can be cared for and controlled. The extent and the importance of the immigration problem can not be properly shown without presenting the social. effects of immigration and the filling of our prisons. almshouses. and asylums with foreigners. thereby entailing extra burdens upon our people. According to statistics presented by the CommissionerGeneral of Immigration. and by Prescott F. Hall. secretary of the Immigration League. it appears that 44 per cent of the crime committed by white persons in the United States Is charged -to the native element and 56 per centto the foreign element. and under the census of 1890 the number of nativeborn whites in penitentiaries was 12.842 and the number of those of foreign birth or parentage was 15.598. or 54 per cent of the total. in other words. the foreign white element. which was twofifths of the total. furnished threefifths of the white criminals of the United States at that time. The same census shows that. not counting the feebleminded and idiots. 33 per cent of the insane of the United States were of foreign birth. as compared with 28 per cent in 1880. and although the foreign born constituted In 1890 only 14 per cent of the total population they furnished two and onethird times their normal portion of insane. and comparing an equal number of the foreign element and the native element of the year 1905 the foreigners furnished three times as many paupers as the native element. Of all tle aliens confined In our criminal and penal institutions in 1904. 32 per cent of them were of the Celtic and Teutonic races of northern and western Europe. and 64 per cent of them were of the Slavic and Iberic races of southern and eastern Europe. In 1905 the total number of inmates in our criminal and penal Institutions was 349.885.