TABLE 18. Aliens debarred at all United States ports during the fiscal years 19. Emigrant aliens departed from the United States in fiscal years 21. Emigrant aliens departed from the United States in fiscal years 22. Emigrant aliens departed, fiscal years 1908, 1909, and 1910, by race 24. Per cent of emigrant aliens in each specified class or occupation Page. 111 112 113 115 116 117 118 STATISTICAL REVIEW OF IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES, 1820 TO 1910. As a part of its complete report to Congress the Immigration Commission has undertaken to bring together all official statistics relative to the immigration movement during the ninety-one years specified. This abstract contains the more essential data shown in the complete report. Statistics relative to immigration to the United States date from 1819, when the first United States law regulating the carriage of steerage passengers at sea was enacted. In addition to the requirements respecting the carriage of steerage passengers, the act of 1819 provided that the captain or master of any ship or vessel arriving in the United States from any foreign place should deliver and report to the collector of the district in which such ship or vessel shall arrive, a list or manifest of all the passengers taken on board of the said ship or vessel at any foreign port or place; in which list or manifest it shall be the duty of the said master to designate, particularly, the age, sex, and occupation of said passengers, respectively, the country to which they severally belong, and that of which it is their intention to become inhabitants. The law further provided that collectors of customs should return copies of such lists or manifests to the Secretary of State, quarter yearly, which official was directed to present statements of the same to Congress at each and every session. The first report of the Secretary of State under the law closed with the end of the following fiscal year, September 30, 1820. In addition to the other data specified in the law, the first report contained the names of arriving passengers, but this practice was not continued. Statistics of immigration were collected by the Department of State from 1820 to 1874, and by the Bureau of Statistics from 1867 to 1895. Since 1895 they have been gathered exclusively by the Commissioner-General of Immigration, whose bureau began the collection of these statistics several years prior to that date. The statistics therefore have been duplicated for a part of the period by the Bureau of Statistics and Department of State, and for a part by the Bureau of Statistics and the Commissioner-General of Immigration. In 1903 the United States Bureau of Statistics published a monograph entitled "Immigration into the United States, Showing the Number, Nationality, Sex, Age, Occupation, Destination, etc., from 1820 to 1903." Undoubtedly this was the most complete and comprehensive statistical review of immigration in existence, and except See Statistical review of immigration to the United States, 1820-1910. Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 3. (S. Doc. No. 756, 61st Cong., 3d sess.) See Vol. II, p. 590. for the fiscal years 1892 to 1895, inclusive, when the total immigration as presented in the monograph differs from that presented in annual reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, the Commission accepted it as the basis of the present compilation. For the period since 1903 the data presented have been taken from annual reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration. Since 1899 immigrants have been recorded by "race or people" as well as by country of birth or origin, and considerable data compiled on this basis have been utilized in the preparation of this abstract." The basis of enumeration varied during the ninety-one years covered by the statistics of the Commission, and this fact should be borne in mind in comparing years. For 1820 to 1867 the data are for "alien passengers arriving;" for 1868 to 1903, for "immigrants arriving;" for 1904 to 1906, for "aliens admitted;" and for 1907 to 1910, for "immigrant aliens admitted." NUMBER OF IMMIGRANTS, 1820 TO 1910. The table which appears below shows the immigration to the United States for each year from 1820 to 1910, inclusive. TABLE 1.-Immigration to the United States, 1820 to 1910. [Compiled from official sources. For 1820 to 1867 the figures are for alien passengers arriving; for 1868 to 1903, for immigrants arriving; for 1904 to 1906, for aliens admitted; and for 1907 to 1910, for immigrant aliens admitted. The years from 1820 to 1831 and from 1844 to 1849, inclusive, are those ending September 30; 1833 to 1842 and 1851 to 1867, inclusive, those ending December 31; 1869 to 1910, those ending June 30.] The number of immigrants in 1910 was 1,041,570. This number he has been exceeded only in 1906 and 1907, and it is almost equal to rone-half the number during the thirty-one years from 1820 to 1850. The figures given are summarized by decades in the table next te presented. TABLE 2.-Immigration to the United States, 1820 to 1910, by decade. [Compiled from official sources. For 1820 to 1867 the figures are for alien passengers arriving; for 1868 to 1903, for immigrants arriving;. for 1904 to 1906, for aliens admitted; and for 1907 to 1910, for immigrant aliens admitted.] The number arriving during the decade from 1901 to 1910 was 8,795,386, which is more than 60 per cent higher than the greatest number arriving during any previous decade and almost two and four-tenths times as many as the number arriving during the decade from 1891 to 1900. Of the total immigration during the ninety-one years, 31.5 per cent came during the decade from 1901 to 1910; 18.8 per cent came during the decade from 1881 to 1890; and 13.2 per cent came during the decade from 1891 to 1900. The average number of immigrants during the past ten years has been 879,539; during the ten years from 1891 to 1900 the average was 368,756; and during the ten years from 1881 to 1890 the average was 524,661. IMMIGRATION BY SEX, 1820 TO 1910. Although the act of 1819, as previously shown, required that arriving immigrants be recorded by sex, no satisfactory compilation of these data prior to the year 1869 has been made. The earlier reports of the Secretary of State to Congress, however, contain partial data on this subject, and the Commission has compiled such data to show the approximate sex distribution from 1820 to 1867, inclusive. This compilation is made on the basis of years ending June 30 during the period under consideration, and consequently can not be compared with the annual immigration from 1820 to 1867 as shown in Table 1, for the reason that the last mentioned data, as explained in that table, are for entirely different fiscal years. Therefore the percentages given in the table which follows can not possibly be reduced to numbers. Moreover, as previously explained, the data are not complete, as in most years during the period a considerable number of immigrants were admitted for whom sex was not reported; but on the whole the percentages may be accepted as fairly representative of the sex distribution in the years considered. 72289°-VOL 1-11-5 TABLE 3.-Per cent distribution (approximate) immigration to the United States, by sex, for years ending June 30, 1820 to 1867. [See explanatory text immediately preceding this table.] The total immigration to the United States for the fiscal years ending June 30, 1868 to 1910, and the distribution by sex from 1869 to 1910, are shown in the following table. Data relative to the sex of immigrants admitted during the fiscal year 1868 are not available. TABLE 4.-Immigration to the United States, by sex, for years ending June 30, 1868 to 1910. [Compiled from official sources. For 1868 to 1903 the figures are for immigrants arriving; for 1904 to 1906, for aliens admitted; and for 1907 to 1910, for immigrant aliens admitted.] |