clares that "only one in ten murders and assaults is followed by arrests." Moreover, he states that, "Even when an arrest has been made, when the case comes to trial the Italian witnesses either mysteriously lose their memories or disappear until the trial is over." The Italian of southern Italy thinks there is something unmanly in an appeal to the law, and that it is the duty and privilege of every man to right his own wrongs.
While the police court records show an increase in the number of arrests for the various forms of homicide from 347 in 1898, to 517 in 1902, and to 885 in 1906, these figures do not represent a proportionate increase in the number of deaths by homicide, as may be seen by the accompanying table.
From the foregoing figures it may be seen that the ratio of deaths by homicide to total population was the same in 1905 (4.12) as it was six years earlier, in 1899; and that whereas the annual average ratio for the six years 1898-1903 was 3.70 per one hundred thousand of inhabitants, the average annual ratio for the three years 1904-06 was 4.93. Such an increase is hardly sensational. In the matter of the more serious crimes in general, such as robbery, burglary, arson, felonious assault and the various forms of homicide, taken altogether, the increase was from 120.9 per one hundred thousand of population, to 166.3 (in 1905); an increase of 45.4 in each 100,000 of inhabitants. The greatest increase to be noted is in the number of arrests for felonious assault.
That a large share of the more grave forms of criminality is perpetrated by certain elements of New York's alien population is easily demonstrated. Thus, of the 4,124 aliens held for grave crime in the penal institutions of the United States in 1904, one fourth were detained in the prisons of the empire state. It is also a significant fact that of the ninety-one persons who met death at the hands of a fellowman in the borough of Manhattan, in 1905, thirty-eight only were born in this county, and the parents of twenty of these were foreign born. Of the 71 foreigners who were killed, twenty, or 28 per cent., were Italians, though eleven other nationalities were represented. Seven of the deceased were Chinamen (who are, in this country, more murderous in proportion to their numbers than the Italians); six of the deceased were Russians, five were natives of Ireland, four were Germans. No other nationality was represented by more than two victims. It is thus apparent how few of those murdered were native Americans of native-born parents. It is, perhaps, not too much to say that the lives of the better classes of citizens in New York City are as safe now as in previous decades, most of the deaths by homicide being confined to the immigrant quarters, the result of quarrels, of family or tong feuds, rather than of cold-blooded murder, for gain. Coroner
