The results of the census of 1911 have as yet not been published. In Mr. Dillon's opinion, "Ireland has made more progress in the last ten years than during the previous two hundred years." Is it reasonable to assume that the same rate of emigration from Ireland could be maintained to-day as half a century ago?

I. Conclusion

To sum up the preceding review of economic conditions in the countries of Northern and Western Europe, it is not because the "new immigration" has had an unfavorable effect upon labor conditions in the United States, but because those countries have become better homes for their citizens, that fewer of them are nowadays coming to the United States. If this country is to have immigration, it will have to come from other sources. To be sure, it may be argued that this country has no further need of immigration in general and can therefore dispense with immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Be it as it may, it is a fallacy to assume that they could be replaced by potential immigration from Northern and Western Europe.

I

CHAPTER IX

RACE SUICIDE

cannot be seriously disputed that the great immigration of recent years has come in response to a demand for labor in the United States. Industrial progress and improvement of the condition of the wage-earners and farmers in the countries of Northern and Western Europe rendered the supply of immigrant labor from those sources inadequate. Without the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, the rapid industrial expansion of the past decade would have been impossible. But it seems to the Immigration Commission, that "there is ground for argument or speculation" that "less immigration of a character tending to keep down wages and working conditions might have been attended by a larger natural increase among the nativeborn portion of the population."

This theory, originated by Gen. Francis A. Walker, until lately held unchallenged the field of economic and sociological discussion. General Walker believed that immigration had caused a decline in the birth-rate of the native American population:

The American shrank from the industrial competition thus thrust upon him. He was unwilling himself to engage in the lowest kind of day-labor with these new elements of the population; he was even more unwilling to bring sons and daughters into the world to enter into that competition. Foreign immigration into this country has . . . amounted not to a re-enforcement of our population, but to a replacement of native by foreign stock. . . . If the foreigners had not come, the native element would long have filled the places the foreigners usurped.

...

* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 494.

2Francis A. Walker: Discussions in Economics and Statistics, pp. 422-425.

:

In proof of his theory, General Walker maintained that the decline of the birth-rate

among Americans began at the very time when foreign immigration first assumed considerable proportions; it showed itself first and in the highest degree in those regions, in those States, and in the very counties into which the foreigners most largely entered. It proceeded for a long time in such a way as absolutely to offset the foreign arrivals, so that in 1850, in spite of the incoming of two and a half millions of foreigners during thirty years, our population differed by less than ten thousand from the population which would have existed, according to the previous rate of increase, without re-enforcement from abroad. These three facts. . . constitute a statistical demonstration such as is rarely attained in regard to the operation of any social or economic force.1

General Walker's statistical demonstration consisted in a comparison of the census figures from 1820 to 1890 with a calculation made by Elkanah Watson in 1815 on the basis of the increase of population from 1790 to 1810. The census figures for 1820-1850 closely coincided with Watson's estimates. Yet, whereas prior to 1820 immigration was insignificant, from 1820 to 1850, 2,500,000 foreigners were added to the population of the United States without increasing it to any appreciable degree. The inference seemed to be incontrovertible that the development of the natural resources of the United States made provision for a fixed population at every census, so that the two-and-a-half million foreigners merely usurped the places of as many unborn Americans. At every subsequent census Watson's calculations proved to be overestimated, viz.: in 1860 by over 300,000, in 1870 by 3,770,000, in 1880 by more than Walker, loc. cit., p. 441. Ibid., pp. 120-122:

six millions, and in 1890 by over fourteen millions. Chief among the social and economic causes of this shortage compared with Watson's calculation was, according to General Walker, "the access of vast hordes of foreign immigrants bringing with them a standard of living at which our own people revolted. The revolt assumed the form of a strike of American parents against child-bearing. This conclusion illustrates in a striking manner the effect of a preconceived idea upon the reasoning ability of a scientific writer. Twenty years before promulgating his theory, General Walker had made light of Watson's predictions. Writing in 1873 on the results of the IX. Census (1870), he dwelt upon the social change which

began when the people of the United States began to leave agricultural for manufacturing pursuits; to turn from the country to the town; to live in up-and-down houses. . . . A close observer must discern causes now working within the nation, which render it little less than absurd longer to apply the former rates of growth to the computation of our population at 1880, 1890, or 1900. . . . It would be merely an attempt at imposture to assume that numerical data exist for determining, within eight or ten or twelve millions, the population of the country thirty years from the date of the last census. As long as one simple force was operating expansively upon a homogeneous people, within a territory affording fertile lands beyond the ability of the existing population to occupy, so long it was no miracle to predict with accuracy the results of the census. But in the eddy and swirl of social and industrial currents through which the nation is now passing, it is wholly impossible to estimate the rate of its progress.'

Still General Walker's later theory stands and falls with Watson's predictions.

A reaction against that theory was led by Prof. Walter F. Willcox, in the Supplementary Analysis of the Results of the XII. Census. Later, in a paper read at the annual meeting of the American Statistical Association in St. Louis in 1910,3 Professor Willcox proved by an analysis 2 Ibid., p. 43.

I Walker, loc. cit., p. 426.

"The Change in the Proportion of Children in the United States" etc., by W. F. Willcox: Quarterly Publications of the American Statistical Association, March, 1911.

of population statistics "that the decrease in the proportion of children began in the United States as early as 1810." The number of children under five years of age to one hundred women of the child-bearing age decreased in 18101830 by 9.9, and in 1880-1900 by 9.4. Thus the twentyyear period of the recent immigration did not substantially differ in this respect from the time when, according to General Walker himself, immigration had not affected the birthrate among native Americans.

Moreover, the declining birth-rate is a world-wide social phenomenon of the present day. In the Australian Commonwealth, with her vast continent as yet unsettled and practically no immigration, as well as in New Zealand, "the decline of the birth-rate has probably been as rapid, says Professor Willcox, "as among native American stock." 2

The greater decline of the native birth-rate in those sections and counties into which the foreigners most largely enter, goes together with the growth of the urban population. The percentage ratio of native white children of native parentage under five years of age, to native women of child-bearing age averaged in 1900 for cities with 25,000 inhabitants or over—29.6, and for smaller cities and rural territory—52.2. The latter ratio, of course, is subject to great variation, the limits being 76.7 in Louisiana and 29.1 in Massachusetts. As indicated by these two extremes

Walker, loc. cit,, pp. 495–496.

• Supplementary Analysis. XII. Census, p. 410. Carlton, loc. cit., P. 347.

“So alarming has this phenomenon of the falling birth-rate become in the Australian colonies, that in New South Wales a special governmental commission has voluminously reported upon the subject. It is estimated that there has been a decline of about one third in the fruitfulness of the people in fifteen years. New Zealand even complains of the lack of children to fill her schools."-"Race Progress and Immigration," by William Z. Ripley, Annals of the American Academy of Politieal and Social Science, vol. xxxiv., pp. 132–133.

• Supplementary Analysis, XII. Census, Table XXII., p. 434.