Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/259

Rh which contained the Revolution. The falling continues, with one or two slight revivals, as we follow the column, until in the decade 1880 to 1890 it has reached the very low figure of 24·53 per cent—more than four per cent lower than during the Revolution.

It is to be observed that the first serious fall begins after the year 1830, the point which all observers have fixed upon as the time when the effects of immigration began to be palpably felt.

If we look at the number of foreigners for the year 1830, we find them to have been 315,830—almost as many as there had been in the three previous decades. In the next decade they more than double, and in the next they almost treble, with the rate of native increase steadily declining.

It is also rather significant that the first break and decline of the native rate occurs after the year 1820, when immigration had begun to attract so much attention that the Government decided to take statistics of it.

These coincidences of the decline of the native increase with the increase of immigration are so exact that they can hardly have been accidental. There is, to say the least, a strong suspicion of cause and effect. And if it should be asked what is the exact nature of that relation of cause and effect, the question may be concisely answered in the words of General Francis Walker, superintendent of the tenth census and now President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

"The access of foreigners, at the time and under the circumstances, constituted a shock to the principle of population among the native element. That principle is always acutely sensitive alike to sentimental and to economic conditions. And it is to be noted, in passing, that not only did the decline in the native element, as a whole, take place in singular correspondence with the excess of foreign arrivals, but it occurred chiefly in just those regions to which the newcomers most freely resorted."

That the arrival of the foreigners was a shock to the natives is very clearly shown in the formation of the Native American or Know-Nothing party, and the riots and violence which followed for a period of twenty years. The foreigners came to work for lower wages than the native and drove the native from his place. For a hundred years the native had been accustomed to a standard of living which was remarkably high. This was particularly true of the New England and Middle States, where all classes had every incentive in their surroundings to produce large families. They felt that they owned their country, and were proud of it. They were the creators of their own destinies and the architects of their own fortunes. They built up homes and families. They were sure there would always be enough for all, and that their children would have to enjoy as good, if not better, conditions.