Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/180

152 therefore, was at the rate of 1·38 per cent. I cannot find in the small edition of the Census for 1860 the number of births; but in 1860 the percentage of increase is nearly, if not precisely, the same as in 1850—the total increase of population from 1840 to 1850 being 35·87, and from 1850 to 1860 35·59 per cent.

That this estimate of 1·38 as the yearly rate of increase of the population without immigration cannot possibly be an understatement appears evident when we compare it with the percentage of the yearly increase of the population of other countries. In England, the rate was only 1·25; in France, 0·44; in Russia, 0·74; in Prussia, 1·17; in Holland, 1·23; in Belgium, 0·61; in Portugal, 0·72; and in Saxony, 1·08. This increase of 1·38 added each year to the aggregate of the preceding year, down to 1865, would give us the population of the United States as it would have been if the policy of excluding immigration had been followed. The whole white and free colored population in the year 1790 having been 3,231,930, it would have amounted, if increased only by the excess of births over deaths:

Deducting 9,034,245 from 30,000,000, the remainder, or 20,965,755, represents the population of foreign extraction gained by the United States since 1790. If the influx of aliens had been stopped in that year, the population in 1865 would have been very nearly what it was in 1825. Immigration, therefore, has enabled this country to anticipate its natural growth some forty years. The increase of wealth in every branch of national activity has been, too, in the exact ratio of the increase of population. Official statistics show, indeed, that the augmentation of imports, exports, tonnage, and revenues has been most rapid during the periods of the largest immigration. The following tables give ample proof of this fact: