A vague idea is current everywhere that the proportion of
foreigners in the United States is very large, but few people are aware of the precise figures. The Census Bureau has now reported that in the great block of populous territory covered by New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, containing 12,700,800 people, 2,724,000, or more than one person in five, are foreign-born, and a third of them cannot speak English. This, moreover, does not represent the whole truth, for in New York State only 42 per cent, of the whole population are native whites, born of native whites ; in New Jersey, only 48i per cent. ; and in Pennsylvania, only 611 per cent. This. is as if in the United Kingdom we had six millions of foreigners, and twenty millions who were born of foreign parents. We should find it difficult to assimilate such num- bers, more particularly if the number of native-born children to each pair were sinking, as it is in the Union. Throughout the Union, the number of persons per family has declined steadily from 5-55 in 1850, to 4-93 in 1890, and this in spite of an increase among the Negroes of the South. In one typical State, Maine, the average has declined from 5.64 in 1850, to 4.40 in 1890. These figures will greatly intensify the growing desire in the Union to check white immigration, and it Will ultimately become as intense as the desire to prohibit the arrival of Chinese.
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