180 TERILS. — THE CITY. 



The city has become a serious menace to our civiUza- 

 tion, because in it, excepting Mornionism, each of the 

 dangers we have discussed is enhanced, and all are focal- 

 ized. It has a peculiar attraction for the immigrant. 

 Our fifty principal cities in 1880 contained 39.3 per cent, 

 of our entire German population, and 45.8 per cent, of 

 the Irish. Our ten larger cities at that time contained 

 only nine per cent, of the entire population, but 23 per 

 cent, of the foreign. While a little less than one-third of 

 the population of the United States was foreign by birth 

 or parentage, sixty-two per cent, of the population of 

 Cincinnati was foreign, eighty-three per cent, of Cleve- 

 land, sixty-three per cent, of Boston,^ eighty per cent, of 

 New York, and ninetj^-one per cent, of Chicago.^ A cen- 



1 The State Census, takeu in 1885 showed 67 per cent. 



2 "Foreign by birth or parentage" includes tliose, only one of whose 

 parents was foreign. Their number is comparatively small and even less 

 impoi'tant than they might seem, because in a large proportion of instances 

 the native parent was of foreign parentage. 



The Tenth Census gives the numbei" of persons, foreign-born, in each of the 

 fifty principal cities, but does not give the native-born population of foreign 

 parentage. We have, however, tolerable satisfactory data for computing 

 it. The parentage of the populations of twenty-eight states, seven terri- 

 tories and the District of Columbia was tallied according to a highly compli- 

 cated form in order to secure the desired ratios. On this basis the Census 

 Office made an elaborate estimate of those who were foreign by birth or par- 

 entage in the whole country and placed the number at 14,955.943. The whole 

 number of the foreign-born was ascertained to be 6,679,94.3. The former 

 number contains the latter 2. 2.3S times; that is, the foreign-born population 

 multiplied by 2.238 gives the population foreign by birth or parentage. It 

 should be observed, however, that this ratio varies in different states, due 

 doivbtless to the preponderance of different races in different sections of the 

 country. For instance, in Massachusetts those of foreign parentage were 

 in 1880 almost exactly twice as many as those of foreign birth. Accordingly 

 for any city in that state we multiply the numVter of foreign-born by two, 

 which gives the total of the foreign-born and the native-born of foreign par- 

 entage, provided the ratio between the two is the same in the cities as in the 

 whole state, which must be assumed as long as there is no evidence to the 

 contrary. In Wisconsin, the Census showed that those of foreign parent- 

 age were 2.34 times the number of the foreign-born, while in Missouri the 

 ratio was 2.63 to one. 



Accordingly, in order to t;^timate the number of those foreign by birth or 

 parentage in a given city in any one of the thirty-five states and teiritories 

 in which the above tally was made. Ave multiply the number of the foi-eign 

 born in that city by the number which the census showed to be the ratio 



