Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1914-02-05
STARTLING CENSUS FIGURES
High Percentage of Illiteracy in
BurlingtOn's Population.
OF $500 who Are Above Ten Years
of Age, loo Cannot Read or
Writc-Profcssor Groat Fore
sees Problems.

81 wonder how many people realize that
less than half the population OF Burlng-
ton are natives" said Professor c. @.
Groat at the First Church Young Peoples
society meeting Sunday. He then took
the figures of the 1910 United States CEN
sus and made an analysis Of the popula-
ton. which brought out some startling
facts.
Of the 2064S people in Burlington but
$500 are natives. that is to say, born in
the United States of native-born parents
There are $500 foreigners and there are
G5O0 who were born in this country of
foreign born parentage. Burlington Is
never held up as a cosmopolitan city
but we have over is nationalities well
represented Canadians come first with
400 foregn-hon and 1,70O of foreign par
cntage, The Irish are second with 374
foreign-born and 1923 OF foreign-born par
cntage. Next como the Russians, with
! 493 foregn-bor and ass OF foreign par
| entage. After Germany, England and
! Scotland comes Turkey, which has 45 rep
resentatlvcs in Burlington. Greeks are
not the last, with 10 in the city. 1t is
noteworthy that none of the Greeks or
| Turks was born in his country.
With all this foreign element in our
population, we have some problems be-
fore US. He showed how these figures re-
lated themselves to the city's vote, its
iIlteracy. and its school attendance. and
gave figures showing how many of the
recent immigrants do not care to become
citizens. 1t may interest some citizens
of Burlington to know that we are seven
] nor MT
! the men of voting age cannot read or
write, that 203 children between six and
IA years are not IN school. and that 400
aliens Of voting age have taken no steps
| to become voters.
There are 300 men of voting age in
| Burlington. OF these $50 are natives,
100" are foreign-born, and 1900 are ma
tive-born of foregn-bo parents. OF
these foreigners $50 are naturalized. 70
have taken out first papers, 3Si have taxi
on no steps toward naturalization and
III are uncassficd. This shows that the
later immigrants are not as anxious to
become citizens, and We have not yet
seen many of the less desirable from
southern and eastern Europe.
| There are 100 iliterates out of the
| $500 who are above 10 years of age. This
is : per cent. illitcracy. while Vermont
as a whole has three per cent illiterates
| This high per cent. comes from the for
eign-b born. of whom 10 per cent are III
| terate. This means not only that they
can not read and write English, but can
! not read or write any language. And
ten per cent. Of the men of voting age
! can not read or write.
The school attendance statistics are
more likely to be accurate than those
! which could be obtained through a tru-
ant officer. In April, 1910, there We're 2o3
| children between six and Il who did not
attend school. OF these % are natives, 70
are of foreign-born parents. and SO are
foreign-born.
These figures compiled in 1910 are
probably not very different from those
of to-day. They show a problem which
someone will have to deal with" said
Professor Groat; and that problem will
surely increase when we receive the less
desirable immigrants which are sure to
reach us as they have the larger cities"