Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/265

Rh whole population, with the greatest immigration added, kept steadily falling.

What shall be said of the last decade, 1880-'90, when the increase of the whole population, with a still greater immigration added, has fallen to a rate which is four per cent lower than the rate of the native whites during the Revolution? Is this a crowded country? We have sixty-five millions in a territory which every one admits can easily support four hundred millions. Is this a luxurious, worn-out, jaded country? Where, how, and by what? Possibly among a fraction of the population in a few great cities. But they do not constitute the country. Look at the small towns, the great country districts, the masses of the people, and where are the signs of the luxury that enervates? Fashionable society has grown in recent years; but even admitting that it has grown to the fullest possible extent, and that it is guilty of all the folly with which it is charged, it has not yet become one fortieth part of the population.

Spain is said to be an old, worn-out nation, but during the ten years from 1880 to 1800 she increased the annual rate of her growth from 35 per thousand to 54 per thousand. Even France, though her rate had fallen very low in 1870, has steadily increased it in the last twenty years, and raised it from 7 per thousand inhabitants in 1870 to 37 per thousand in 1890. England has steadily increased her rate in the last twenty years. So has Russia, whose rate is very high, being 105 per thousand in 1870, 130 in 1880, and 140 in 1890. Holland, a very old and closely settled country, has increased her rate in almost the same proportions, 80 per thousand in 1870, 118 in 1880, and 135 in 1890. Belgium's rate is not far behind.

Of all these countries none are superior to the United States in natural fertility and resources. Most of them are much inferior, and have a larger proportion of people to the square mile. The United States has only 21·31 to the square mile; but Russia has 42, Spain 86, Great Britain 184, France 320, Holland 350, and Belgium 530.

If we are right in believing that the lowering of the rate of native growth was due to the increase of foreigners, then immigration has not materially increased, but, on the contrary, has somewhat decreased the American population. If the native population had kept up an increase per decade of only 34 per cent, which was less than it had in the twenty years 1790 to 1810, and immigration had ceased, the white population would