336 THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM 
manufacturing, in coal mining and other branches of 
industry, the southern and eastern European works 
in connection with machines, but these machines have 
eliminated the skill formerly required and the immi 
grants’ duties are largely mechanical. From the stand 
point of the general industrial situation it may be said 
that recent immigrant wage-earners as a whole have 
made substantial advancement in earning ability after 
a more or less extended period of residence, but the 
great majority remain in the unskilled occupations, 
and the comparatively few cases of marked industrial 
progress are a matter of individual effort and intelli 
gence. 
Naturalization and Interest in Public 'Affairs 
The tendency toward the acquisition of citizenship 
and permanent residence by recent immigrants is not 
very marked and is largely dependent upon period of 
residence. A study of 68,942 males who had been in 
the United States five years and who were twenty-one 
years of age or over, was made by the Immigration 
Commission in connection with its industrial investi 
gations, and may be considered representative of the 
recent alien population. Of this number, all of whom 
could have been citizens, exactly one-third were fully 
naturalized, and an additional 16 per cent, had secured 
first papers. In other words, a fraction less than 50 
per cent, of these foreign-born employees had either 
become citizens or declared their intention to become 
such. On account of the difference in the length of 
time the various races have been coming to the United 
States, a comparison of the older with the more recent 
immigrants is hardly fair. It is best to separate the