Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/402

398 Hearst newspapers regularly? These questions have not in recent years been put so clearly—not in 1910 when the campaign for the governorship was complicated by the intervention of Roosevelt in favor of Stimson, not in 1911 when only minor officials were elected, not in 1912 when the personal element again was paramount.

In view of the prevalent solicitude concerning the effect of racial conglomeration upon American national life, it is of great practical importance to ascertain as definitely as possible what the behavior of different races constituting the American population is in response to specific appeals. Does nationality play any part in determining the point of view of our foreign communities in political matters? Will American problems be dealt with in the same way by one of the foreign districts as by a community of native Americans born of native parents?

From the Thirteenth Census, which gives the number of specified nationalities in each assembly district, and also the number of naturalized voters, one can deduce approximately the percentage of voters belonging to each nationality in every district.

We shall first consider the answers of the chief constituent nationalities of New York to the question: "Are you in favor of government by political organizations of the Tammany kind?"

We present to begin with a table giving the ten districts in which the voters of native parentage were found in the greatest numbers. The first column gives the borough and district, the second, the per cent. of all the voters constituted by the Americans of native parentage, the third, the per cent. of the whole vote in each district given to the Tammany candidate for mayor. In the fourth, the vote for Dix, Tammany candidate in 1910, is added:

These districts of mainly American voters answered "nay" to Tammany, throwing in every case over sixty per cent. of their votes against it. In 1910 Dix received a little over 50 per cent. in half of these districts, but as has been said, Tammany was not then the sole issue.

There is no difficulty in finding a dozen districts in which the Russians alone far exceed every other nationality in number. As is well