THE FOREIGNER IN AMERICAN CIVILIZATION. 389 



tion movement, and this proposition, while it has been generally 

 accepted, must be relegated to the already long list of popular pre- 

 vailing fallacies; and although this movement may have been re- 

 sponsible for a slightly larger aggregate increase than if the natural 

 increase had alone prevailed, it can scarcely be considered an impor- 

 tant factor. 



It is a well-known law of population that, other things being 

 equal, the rate of natural increase of population varies in an almost 

 inverse ratio to its density, so that as the density of the population 

 was increased by the addition of aliens, the rate of natural increase 

 declined, which is demonstrable from statistics furnished by the cen- 

 sus records of this country. 



Prior to 1830 the foreign arrivals constituted far less than five 

 per cent of the entire increase, yet it was during the period from the 

 close of the Revolutionary War to that year that the entire rate 

 of increase was the greatest, and we witness from that time a 

 steadily declining rate of aggregate increase and a steadily ad- 

 vancing rate of increase of alien arrivals; thus in the decade end- 

 ing 1840 the foreign element constituted ten per cent of the entire 

 increase, in 1860 it had risen to thirty-two per cent, and in 1890 to 

 forty-five per cent, and while the action of the law may be slightly 

 disturbed by the varying fecundity of the different nationalities 

 among the alien immigrants, yet this disturbing factor is in part 

 equated by the larger mortality usually prevailing among children 

 of parents belonging to those races marked by the greatest fecundity. 



It is my purpose in the following pages to briefly trace the immi- 

 gration movement, and outline the more important developments in 

 the nation's progress attributable to it. The early citizens of this 

 country were, as in every other new state, a hardy race, inured to 

 toil, unaccustomed to luxury, with little scholarship and less wealth; 

 but with this addition, every white man was actually as well as theo- 

 retically the peer of every other citizen. There was no dominant 

 class; there were few servants except the slaves. 



Scarcely had peace been declared when the immigration move- 

 ment began again, but it was not extensive, and up to 1810 the alien 

 arrivals in this country varied from four thousand to six thousand 

 annually. In that year, however, unfriendly relations, followed by 

 war with Great Britain, for a time put a stop to this movement; but 

 in 1815, a state of amity again prevailing, it resumed with increased 

 vigor. Among the immigrant arrivals in these early days we find 

 a large proportion of agriculturists, mechanics, and skilled laborers; 

 the trouble of 1798 drove many of the ablest Irishmen hither, and 

 the immigrants were usually the more intelligent and ambitious 

 members of the middle classes. The British journals, in 1815, com- 



