A STUDY OF THE GREEKS IN CHICAGO
GRACE ABBOTT Director of the League for the Protection of Immigrants
It is only since 1900 that the Greeks have regarded the United States as a good field for settlement. At that time there were, according to the census of 1900, only 8,655 Greeks in the country. Since then they have come in increasingly large numbers until during the year 1907 alone there were 46,283 Greek immigrants admitted.^ In 1908, because of the financial stringency which caused the general decline in immi- gration, there were only 28,808 admitted,^ but with the return to normal business conditions more are coming and there can be little doubt that the next ten years will see an enormous increase in our Greek population. Appreciating that its im- mediate neighborhood was becoming Hellenic, an investigation of the Greeks in Chicago was made by Hull House in order that with reliable information about their housing-conditions, their occupations, their family life, and their ambitions, the resources of the House could be made more useful to its new neighbors. For this purpose, in a preliminary investigation made last sum- mer, 350 Greek residences were visited and 1,467 Greeks counted on the schedules. These were not confined to any one neighbor- hood but were representative of the city's entire Greek popu- lation, the wealthier as well as the poorer. During the winter and spring a Greek-speaking woman was employed by Hull House to do systematic visiting among the Greek families of its neighborhood and among the Greek boys of the downtown district. Upon the information thus secured by Hull House this study is almost entirely based.
According to the school census for 1908 there are 4,218 Greeks in Chicago of whom 3,521 are foreign-bom and 697
^Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1907, Table III,
'Ibid., 1908, Table III.
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