Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/69

 Rh to have answered for every individual in the United States, man, woman, and child, white or black, native or foreign-born, intelligent or ignorant. The final reports will doubtless show failure in many directions. Thus far we have information upon only one point, that is the total population of the United States, which (exclusive of white persons in Indian Territory, Indians on reservations, and Alaska) was 62,622,250. Including the above omissions it will reach a round 63,000,000. This number was less than was commonly expected. Was the common expectation exaggerated, or was the enumeration defective? This is a very important question, for if the enumeration was defective it detracts from the value of all the information contained in the population schedule. It will be much easier to determine this after we get the details of the enumeration, for unless the deficiency is distributed with a wonderful amount of regularity it is scarcely possible but that in some of the relations of sex, age, colour, nationality, occupation, or local distribution, or in comparison with the census of 1880, such glaring inconsistencies will show themselves as to prove that there has been a deficiency. It will be necessary, therefore, to defer final judgment until then, but inasmuch as the Census Office itself has felt the need of defending its figures it may be well to examine the matter superticially.

The population of the United States at the last four censuses is shown by the following table:—

Now the astonishing thing about this table is that the rate of increase should have fallen from 30 per cent. between 1870 and 1880 to less than 25 per cent. between 1880 and 1890, and this in the face of an enormous immigration during the latter decade amounting to more than five million persons. The explanation of the Census Office is that as a country grows older the natural rate of increase tends to decline; and this is true, but of doubtful application when we consider the amount of land still unoccupied in the United States, and that immigration during the last twenty years has added to the population an enormous number of persons