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