Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/381

Rh numbers are made to appear large as compared with Teutonic immigrants. In all fairness, it ought to be open to question whether the 'Mexicans' enumerated in the census are immigrants, as Mr. Shipley assumes, or Spanish speaking residents of what was originally Mexican territory, so largely Indian that they could hardly be classified with the Italians, even on account of their 'Latin' blood. But. as for the Italians, the states containing the great bulk of that nationality have the cleanest records, if we except Louisiana and Texas, where the high murder rate is ascribed to the negroes by Mr. Shipley himself. In fact, only one inference could be properly drawn from his Fig. 5—that the racial composition of a state's population has no influence at all, as compared with the general conditions governing the life of its citizens'.

As to the influence of these general conditions upon homicide, he merely discusses the relative density of population and the criminal tendency of mining as compared with manufacturing pursuits. Having gone so far, he might naturally be expected to proceed to inquire into the brutalizing effect of certain special trades, such as slaughtering—the periodical debauches of sailors in seaports—reckless disregard for the value of human life engendered by the pursuit of hazardous callings. He should have realized that adult males are far more prone to acts of violence than either women or children, and that ratios of homicide to nationality mean nothing, unless this factor be taken into account. Immigration from northern Europe brings in more females than does that from the south and east; the Chinese, according to the census of 1900, were represented by 81,534 persons, of whom 77.936, or 95.59 per cent, were males over 21. At the same time, the native population contained only 25.55 per cent, of males over 20. I have already shown that Mr. Shipley's figures for homicide are valueless, because they do not differentiate between murder and accident; but, since he has chosen to calculate the ratio per hundred thousand foreign born of each nationality, the following table corrects these ratios so as to apply to foreign-born adult males, by dividing them by the corresponding percentage, as calculated from Table 12, of the Twelfth Census, Volume II.

The homicides for the entire United States are taken from Mr. Shipley's Fig. 1, for the census year, the percentage of adult males is based on the ages given in that census and the limit of 19 years was chosen, because that was the nearest approach to 18 possible under census conditions. The significance of the correction will be