Not enough schedules were obtained to be of statistical value--there
were only ninety in all--but the families chosen are believed to be
more or less typical. They were selected with the advice of leaders of
their group or were known to our foreign-speaking investigators, who
had a wide acquaintance in several groups. That is, we have tried so
far as possible to see the problem with the persons, if not through
the eyes of the persons whose fellow countrymen we wished to know.
We do not mean to suggest that other and very important groups might
not have been studied, but we tried to learn of others; and sometimes
because we could not find the clew, sometimes for lack of time, it
proved impossible to go farther. We feel that we have obtained an
insight into the situation among the Polish in Chicago and in Rolling
Prairie, Indiana; the Lithuanians, Bohemians, Slovaks, Croatians,
Slovenians, nonfamily Mexicans, Russians--both family and
nonfamily--and Italians in Chicago; Italians in Herrin and Freeman,
Illinois, and Canonsburg and Washington, Pennsylvania; and the
Ukrainians in Chicago and in Sun, West Virginia.
Besides the large body of evidence with reference to these groups, we
have suggestions from many interested and kindly persons of other
groups. The Magyars and the Rumanians, particularly, we should have
liked to know better, and we have had most suggestive interviews with
certain of their leaders. We were not able, however, to follow the
leads they gave, and therefore do not claim to speak for them, except
to express the feeling of the need for greater understanding and
appreciation.
With reference to those groups discussed, it should be noted that
some, such as the Polish, Bohemian, Lithuanian, Italian, are among the
largest of the great foreign colonies in Chicago, the growth of a
long-continued immigration. They live in the different sections of the
city, in crowded tenement districts, or in more recently developed
neighborhoods for whose growth they are responsible. The Croatian and
Ukrainian groups are newer groups, and are therefore poorer. The
Croatians are moving into houses which the Bohemians are vacating. In
the Russian and Mexican groups we have the current evidence that the
old problem of the nonfamily man is still with us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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