672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lifieacy of foreign-born mothers who came previous to the beginning 

 of the decade. The foreigners among us have larger families than 

 the natives of the North generally. So large a proportion of immi- 

 grants come in the prime of life, that, though the males predominate, 

 foreigners have a larger percentage of increase than natives, even if 

 their families were not larger. While the proportion of foreign-born 

 white females from twenty to forty years of age was (in 1870) 23 per 

 cent, of the entire foreign-born population, the proportion of native 

 white females of corresponding age was not quite 13*8 per cent, of 

 the native white population ; but, of course, this great disparity is 

 due in part to the fact that the American-born cjiildren of foreigners 

 are counted, not with the foreigners, but with the natives. It is a fact 

 little thought of, that the number of foreign-born white females from 

 twenty to forty years of age is nearly one fourth of all the white fe- 

 males of that age in the United States. In 1870 the number of native 

 white females of this age in the whole country was 3,867,617, and of 

 the foreign 1,260,965, the latter being 24'6 per cent, of the whole. 

 How is it for the Northern States alone ? 



It is deducible, from the report of 1870, that the foreign-born fe- 

 males in the North, between the ages of twenty and forty years, num- 

 bered 1,119,000, while the native-born white females of like age in the 

 same States numbered 2,532,000, the foreign being 30*6 per cent, of 

 the whole. A similar calculation shows that in the South the propor- 

 tion of foreign-born in the period of motherhood was but 9*6 per cent. 

 Granted an excess of prolificacy in our foreign families over the na- 

 tive, the advantage thereof to the rate of increase accrues wholly to 

 the North. It is not probable that foreigners in this country are any 

 more prolific than, or, indeed, quite as prolific as, the native Southern 

 whites. 



On the admission of greater prolificacy in immigrants generally 

 than in Northern natives, the points to be met are so numerous that 

 any arithmetical statement of them would be rather complicated and 

 tedious. We let that pass with the statement of an assured belief 

 that, if proper allowance were made for this element of the i^roblem, 

 the ratio of increase in the native white population of the North would 

 be shown to be very little, if any, above 12 per cent. But we omit 

 this. The comparative rate of increase may then be recapitulated as 

 follows: Native whites North, 15-7 per cent.; whites South, 30--4 j^er 

 cent.; colored in the United States (allowing 1*5 per cent, for error in 

 census of 1870), 33*3 per cent. 



I am aware that the division-line assumed in this statement be- 

 tween the North and South is quite arbitrary, and that where the bor- 

 der States meet there is comparatively little divergence in the char- 

 acteristics referred to ; but some such line had to be assumed to bring 

 out the lesson of this study, and that which has been used j^robably 

 involves as little disturbance of results as anv. 



