INFLUENCE OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 333 
relatively large proportion of our city population is composed of 
people of foreign birth. The great tide of immigration that comes 
to our shores tends to lodge chiefly in our cities and large num- 
bers never get beyond the original port of entry. New York 
which receives by far the largest number of arriving aliens had in 
1910 a foreign born population of 1,927,703 or 40.4 per cent of her 
total inhabitants. The proportion of foreign born and their 
immediate descendants in our cities has increased rapidly in 
successive decades. In the Abstract of the Thirteenth Census of 
the United States it is stated that “Of the aggregate urban popu- 
lation—this is, the population of incorporated places of 2.500 
inhabitants or more, including New England towns of that size— 
of the United States in 1910, 41.9 per cent were native whites of 
native parentage, 29 per cent native whites of foreign or mixed 
parentage, 22.6 per cent foreign-born whites and 6.3 per cent 
negroes. In the rural population, on the other hand, 64.1 per 
cent were native whites of native parentage, only 13.3 per cent 
were native whites of foreign or mixed parentage, and 7.5 per 
cent were of foreign born whites, while negroes constituted 14.5 
per cent. Thus the foreign born whites and their children con- 
stituted fully one-half (51.6 per cent) of the urban population and 
only about one-fifth of the rural” (p. 91, 1916). 
It is in New England and the Middle Atlantic States and 
some states of the north such as Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Mich- 
igan and Wisconsin that the foreign born constitute an especially 
large part of our city population; the south in general has been 
less affected by foreign immigration. The native born population 
of native white parents is in many cities decidedly in the minority. 
Thus this element in New York constituted in 1910 only 19.3 per 
cent, in Chicago, 20.4 per cent, in Boston 23.5 per cent, in Phila- 
delphia, 37.7 per cent, in Milwaukee, 21.1 per cent, and in San 
Francisco, 27.7 per cent. Our larger cities especially of the 
east and north are becoming populated by foreigners and their 
immediate descendants. In view of the fact that this condi- 
tion obtained to a considerable extent for several decades and 
that a considerable proportion of those counted as native Ameri- 
