110 RESOURCES OF SOUTHERN ALABAMA. 



poor, while the whites mostly live in town. But there are 

 other factors involved, for the values of farm buildings vary 

 in a similar manner, as can be seen from the agricultural 

 tables. Judging by education alone, the foreign whites are 

 a little superior to the natives in agricultural communities, 

 and inferior in manufacturing cities, seaports, and mining 

 communities. (This may not hold true throughout the Uni- 

 ted States, however.) The aggregate illiteracy depends 

 chiefly on density of population, percentage of urban, pro- 

 portion of whites, and average migration distance, as can 

 be readily understood. 



NATIVITY. 



In 1883 about 83 per cent of the persons living in this 

 area were born in Alabama, and we may guess that 75 per 

 cent of them were born in this part of the State and 60 per 

 cent in the counties in which they lived. (If we had sepa- 

 rate returns for adults, however, all these figures would be 

 reduced somewhat, for adults of course migrate more than 

 children do.) The other states which had furnished the 

 most settlers were Georgia, South Carolina, North Caro- 

 lina, Mississippi, Virginia, Florida, and Tennessee, in the 

 order named, except that Louisiana should doubtless appear 

 somewhere in the list, as explained in the description of the 

 pine hills. No later data of this kind are available, unfor- 

 tunately, but in recent decades there seems to have been 

 considerable immigration from the northern central states, 

 such as Michigan and Illinois, to the southwestern pine 

 hills. 



The leading foreign nationalities represented in this 

 area in 1880 were Irish, German, English, French, Scotch, 

 Canadian, Swedish (including Norwegian), and Swiss; and 

 in 1910 the sequence was German, English, Irish, Swedish, 

 Russian (including most of the Poles, if there were any in 

 these parts, but probably more Semitic than Slavonic) , Can- 

 adian, Austrian, Hungarian, Greek, Norwegian, Italian, 

 Scotch, "Turkish" (probably mostly Syrian), Danish, 

 French, and Dutch. Similar data for the southwestern pine 

 hills, which has the most foreigners, have been given on an 

 earlier page (74). 



CITIES AND TOWNS. 



The largest cities and towns have already been listed 

 by regions, and they are here brought together for the whole 



