Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/96

88 56·87 per cent of the population have one or both parents foreign born; Rhode Island, 59·29 per cent; New York, 57·45 per cent; Maryland, 30·27 per cent; Wisconsin, 74·14 per cent; Minnesota, 76·01 per cent; North Dakota, 79·74 per cent; Louisiana, 26·02 per cent; Utah, 66·75 per cent. We notice again that the white element of foreign extraction is found chiefly in the Northern and Western States. The native whites having both parents foreign should also be considered. The proportion of this element varies as follows: Massachusetts, 27·09 per cent; Rhode Island, 27·29 per cent; New York, 30·64 per cent; Maryland, 15·01 per cent; Wisconsin, 43·09 per cent; Minnesota, 39·80 per cent; Utah, 41·04 per cent. The Southern States show the usual small percentage, ranging as follows: Virginia, 1·52 per cent; Georgia, 1·07 per cent; Mississippi, 1·30 per cent; while, taking the Southern and South Central sections together, the proportion is only 4·13 per cent.

The colored element in 1890 amounted to 7,470,040, the population being distributed as follows:

In taking the South as a whole there was a proportional increase in the colored population up to 1840, but since then the proportion has diminished gradually. Having stated the principal elements with which we have to deal, let us now consider the various methods of dealing with the problem.

If we consider the problem from an ethnological standpoint, we shall have four races in the United States—the white, negro, Indian, and Chinese. But these races do not mingle together. The Indian is dying out, and, although the negroes mingled in the days of slavery, the offspring carried the stigma of the race. Herbert Spencer is the chief authority on the sociological theory of the mixture of races. He claims that it is a theory of evolution, and the unity that is developed is not of blood but of institutions. The historical theory does not try to determine whether there is really a mixture of blood, but it simply considers the institutions, customs, and laws, and how these have been modified. In applying this theory to the United States, the mixture of races does not mean a mixture of blood but of institutions.

The mixture of nationalities in this country has differed from that of other parts of the world. In other countries mixture has occurred by conquest, but it has been peaceful in the United States. There has been no forcing of institutions or blood, except in the case of the negro, and we thus have the unique negro