Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/688

670 the colored people have not so far surpassed the whites of the South in ratio of gain as to give any considerable encouragement to the suspicion of incorrectness in the showing of the census reports. It is as true that the Southern white population has gained slightly from foreign immigration during the decade, but it is also true, as going partly to offset this, that the colored population of the United States has gained slightly from the intermarriage of white women with colored men.

The foreign population in the South is very small compared with that in the North. The foreign-born population in Missouri is (1880) but 10 per cent, of the native population of the State; in Maryland, 9; in Texas, 7; in Louisiana, 6; while in Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, it is about three fourths of one per cent.; in Georgia, two thirds of one per cent., and in North Carolina but one fourth of one per cent. On the contrary, the foreign-born population bears a large proportion to the native in the Northern States. In Nevada it is 70 per cent.; in Minnesota, 52; in California, 51; in Wisconsin, 44; in Rhode Island, 39; in Massachusetts, 33; in New York, 31; in Michigan, 31; in Nebraska, 27; in Connecticut, 26; in Colorado, 25; in Illinois, 23; and so on down to Indiana, the lowest, 7. The aggregate of foreign-born in the Northern States is 5,854,000, while in the Southern States it is only 658,000: that is, 1,011 foreigners out of 10,000 (or a little more than one out of ten) have up to the present time settled in the South. In a comparison of the white gain South and the white gain North during the last decade, the disadvantage which the former has in this element of immigration is without compensation, inasmuch as the migration from South to North is probably about equal to that from North to South, and is comparatively small at any rate. Yet the white gain South was 32·9 per cent., and North but 26·8 per cent. What, then, would be the figures after making proper allowance for the numerical effects of immigration on the population of the two sections? Only approximate results can be had.

The arrival of foreigners during the last decade is counted at 2,813,000. Deducting from this aggregate 60,000 Asiatics as non-prolific, and also other foreigners in the Territories about 65,000 more, there would remain 2,088,000 as the number belonging to the States. But these were not all counted in the census. They were here during an average of nearly five and a half years (the heaviest arrivals having taken place during the earlier years of the decade), and allowance must be made for deaths during this periedperiod [sic]. Few children or old persons emigrate. Most are in the prime of life, and the proportion of deaths would probably be allowed for at 12 per cent. Making this reduction, there would remain 2,352,000 immigrants which were added to the population of the States during the last decade and counted in the census.

But this result may be reached by a different route—by adding the