Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/689

Rh actual gain in our foreign white population during the decade to the loss of the foreign white population which was here at the beginning of the decade. There were 979,000 more white foreigners in the States in 1880 than in 1870. According to the census of 1870, there were 5,438,000 white foreigners in the States. At 25 per cent, for the mortality of this class in ten years, it lost 1,373,000 during the decade. Adding this to the actual gain of foreign white population, 979,000, we get the number of immigrants during the decade, which were still surviving and counted in the census of 1880. The result is 2,352,000—the same as by the other process. The error in this result must be comparatively inconsiderable.

Then, in order to ascertain the gain of Northern whites and of Southern whites respectively, the numerical disturbance of this foreign element must be got rid of by deducting it from the census figures of 1880; and, to this end, we must know what part of it belongs to the Northern and what to the Southern States. The South during the last decade did not receive its average quota of foreigners. In nine of the Southern States there was a falling off of foreign population amounting to 29,700. Missouri alone lost 11,000. In the other eight there was a gain of 66,000. Texas alone gained 50,000; so that, but for Texas, there would have been a loss of foreign population in the South during the decade. The foreign gain in the South, deducting Chinese, was 35,000; in the North, 944,000. Adding to the first of these numbers the foreign loss in the Southern States during the decade, 157,000, we have 192,000 foreign whites who settled in the South during the decade, and were counted in 1880. By a like process, we find the corresponding number for the Northern States to be 2,160,000. Being enabled thus to eliminate the immigration of the decade, we find the percentage of gain in the white population of the Southern States to be 30·8, and of the Northern States 17·7.

But this calculation does not bring out the relative increase of the native whites North and the native whites South. It includes all the children born of foreign parents who came to this country after the decade commenced; and this is a very considerable item. Of the foreign-born in this country, 23 per cent, are females between the ages of twenty and forty years. Of actual immigrants, it was formerly somewhat less, as it is now probably somewhat more than this. As the immigrants of the decade were here during an average of nearly five and a half years, it would be safe to reckon one living child to each immigrant female between the ages of twenty and forty, deduction having already been made for the mortality of immigrants during the decade. Making this further correction, the ratio of increase for the Northern whites would be 15·7, and for the Southern whites 30·4.

Still we have not reached the relative increase of the native whites North and South. Allowance should be made for the excess of