Our unprecedented Growth. 23 



rate of increase has diminished. Instead of doubling in the last 

 twenty-five years, as it did in the first half-century of our history, 

 it has required thirty years, the jDopulation in 1890 being almost 

 precisely double that in 1860. 



In the early decades of our history the rate of increase ranged 

 from 36 to 32 per cent. Between 1840 and 1850 it rose again 

 suddenly to nearly 36 per cent, owing to the first rush of immi- 

 gration. Between 1860 and 1870 the check due to the civil war 

 is strongly emphasized. 



The rates of increase shown by the figures are extremely 

 large as compared with those of European nations ; many times 

 larger than that of France, several times larger than that of Great 

 Britain, and greatly in excess of that of Germany. Indeed, in 

 rapidity of growth no other civilized nation of history has ever 

 approached this country. While in the past thirty years this 

 country has doubled its population, France has increased but 3 

 per cent, Great Britain and Ireland 29 j^er cent, and Prussia 62 

 per cent. Since 1797 Prussia has increased in number from 

 8,700,000 to 30,000,000, while this country has increased from 

 four or five millions to 62,622,250 ; nor is this tremendous in- 

 crease due in any great degree to immigration, since in all proba- 

 bility, as shown later, the earlier rates of increase would have 

 been nearly maintained by the excess of births over deaths had 

 there been no immigration. 



While in the United States as a whole the population has in- 

 creased during the century at this marvelous rate, individual 

 states show the widest possible range in their rates of increase. 

 As a group, the thirteen original states have never gained so 

 rapidly as the United States as a whole. Their rate of increase 

 has always been smaller than that of the country. The reason 

 for this is that throughout our history these states have furnished 

 the brain and brawn for the settlement of the west. There has 

 been a continuous stream of emigration from the Atlantic border 

 to the Mississippi valley, the plains, the Rocky mountains, and 

 the Pacific slope. Millions upon millions of young men and 

 women of the east have left their homes to found empires in the 

 west. 



In the northeastern states this drain has since 1847 been in 

 large part made up by foreign immigration, and thus has the 

 character of the inhabitants of these states in great measure been 

 changed from the pare English stock of Revolutionary times. 

 In the south there has been no flood of immigration, and the 



