Thus are the sacred rights of citizenship obtained by thousands upon thousands, not in New York alone, but in all our cities. More than that, fraudulent use is freely made of naturalization papers. The Italian immigrant, for example, finds his vote is wanted, and obtains a false paper. He returns to Italy to spend his earnings, and there is offered a sum of money for the use of his papers. These are given to an emigrant who probably could not pass the examination at Ellis Island, but who as a naturalized citizen, if he is not detected in the fraud, cannot be shut out. Then he sends the papers back to Italy. It is admitted that there is a regular traffic in naturalization papers. In every way the alien is put on the wrong track, and his American experiences are such as would naturally make him lawless and criminal rather than a good citizen. He needs nothing more than protection against corrupting and venal agencies, which find their origin in politics and the saloon. [Sidenote: The Saloon and the Immigrant] The foreign element furnishes the saloons with victims. In his graphic book describing tenement life in New York Mr. Riis shows the rapid multiplication of the saloons in the slums where the foreigners are crowded into tenements, nine per cent. more densely packed than the most densely populated districts of London. In the chapter, "The Reign of Rum,"[75] he says: [Sidenote: Testimony of Riis] "'Where God builds a church the devil builds next door a saloon' is an old saying that has lost its point in New York. Either the devil was on the ground first, or he has been doing a good deal more in the way of building. I tried once to find out how the account stood, and counted to 111 Protestant churches, chapels, and places of worship of every kind below Fourteenth Street, 4,065 saloons. The worst half of the tenement population lives down there, and it has to this day the worst half of the saloons. Up town the account stands a little better, but there are easily ten saloons to every church to-day. [Sidenote: Hunting for an American] "As to the motley character of the tenement population, when I asked the agent of a notorious Fourth Ward alley how many people might be living in it, I was told: One hundred and forty families--one hundred Irish, thirty-eight Italian, and two that spoke the German tongue. Barring the agent herself, there was not a native-born individual in the court. The answer was characteristic of the cosmopolitan character of lower New York, very nearly so of the whole of it, wherever it runs to alleys and courts. One may find for the asking an Italian, German, French, African, Spanish, Bohemian, Russian, Scandinavian, Jewish, and Chinese colony. The one thing you shall ask for in vain in the chief city of America is a distinctively American community." [Sidenote: The Peril of Poverty]