Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/397

 GREEKS IN CHICAGO 383

reformatory institutions of the United States. Of this number one hundred and ninety-six were Greeks.^ In the north central group which includes Illinois and eleven other states forty Greeks and 2,570 other aliens, are reported as so detained-^ These figures undoubtedly do not give the number of alien criminals for the entire year, but they seem incredibly small even for any one time of the year when it is remembered that they include alien adult and juvenile offenders held in municipal, county, state, and federal institutions. The Chicago Bureau of Police Records in its report for 1908 shows that in Chicago during that year 141 Greeks committed felonies, 125 state mis- demeanors, and 891 violated some city ordinance, making 1,157 Greeks whose names appear on the criminal records of Chicago. Using the figures given by the school census for 1908, which are the only ones available, this means that approximately twenty- seven out of every hundred Greeks in Chicago have violated some law of the city or state. During the same year only seven out of every hundred Americans and less than four out of every hundred of the entire population — native, negro, and foreign — were convicted of such an offense. The Greeks can, however, show that these figures are unfair to them. There were proba- bly about three or four times as many Greeks in the city during the year 1908 as the school census shows, and those who go out to work on the railroads from April to November and spend four or five months in idleness in Chicago, although not counted in the census, are probably the very ones who are found most fre- quently in the municipal courts, charged with disorderly conduct. The fact that so many of the Greeks are independent peddlers and merchants instead of employees in some large factory is in part some explanation of their difficulties. Hot-headed and inde- pendent they are, like the Irishman, drawn into disputes, which often end in serious quarrels. Undoubtedly their criminal record in America is worse now than it will be in the future. The Greek is one of the last to come into this complex population of ours and the colony as a whole is still ignorant of our language

'Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1908, p. 102. ^ Ibid., p. no.