Americanization; Civics; Immigrants -- United States; Naturalization -- United States; Noncitizens -- United States
---------------------------------+-------------+-----------
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:
TABLE XXVIII
LIST OF PRINCIPAL OCCUPATIONS REPRESENTED IN PETITIONS FOR
NATURALIZATION FILED IN SEVEN CITIES, 1913-14; SHOWING RATIO
BETWEEN NUMBER OF PETITIONS AND TOTAL OF FOREIGN-BORN WHITE MALES
IN THOSE OCCUPATIONS IN THOSE CITIES IN 1910
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