eighteen hundred thousand, the remainder being immigrants from Scotland and Wales. There are also nearly one million Canadian immigrants living in the United States; they are partly of English and partly of French extraction, but many of them are immigrants from Europe who have tried Canada before finally coming to the United States. It may be said, as the result of this study of the census figures, that immigrants of Germanic and Keltic stocks form nearly eight ninths of the total foreign-born population of the country. The conditions of living in the South still prevent immigration to that region, although there is some improvement in this respect out of the nine million immigrants whose parentage we have just been noting, only about one half million dwell in the old slave states. These are the figures as given in the official tables, but many of those who are here enumerated among the foreign-born residents of the United States are only sojourners. Hardy fishermen 1890] Population 583 come from the Maritime Provinces of Canada every spring to man the fishing vessels of New England; other Canadians come to work in the fields and the mills of the North. Many of these fishermen, laborers, and mill hands return home in the autumn, and others remain for a year or two only; they all appear in the tables as residents. Moreover, many Canadian fishermen and laborers come to the United States summer after summer, counting each time as one immigrant; in this way one man may often be represented in the tables as ten or more immigrants. The same thing is true of the Italians, who frequently return home for the winter or after a few years of toil; these, too, appear in the lists as immigrants, while, as a matter of fact, they are rather to be classed as visitors. But when every deduction has been made, the constant influx of immigrants has been one of the chief factors in our prosperity. They have made possible the building of our railroads, mills, and warehouses; they perform much of the work required in running our mills, and our great agricultural and grazing establishments; they descend into our mines and make accessible the mineral wealth of the country. In short, the value of the work done by immigrants in building up American industries has been enormous; and it should never be underestimated in a consideration of the forces which have made the United States what it is. Many persons think, however, that the time has now come when some limitation should be placed on immigration. tion. 395. Distribution of Population, Area, etc.—The settled Distribution area of the United States has increased from a little over of populaone million square miles in 1860 to almost two million square miles in 1890. At the same time the urban population has greatly increased in 1860 about sixteen per cent of the people were gathered in cities and towns; in 1890 more than twenty-nine per cent of the population was classed as urban. The great cities have all grown. New York con- The cities. tained in 1890 nearly twice as many inhabitants (1,515,301) as it did in 1860; and, having regard to the densely in habited country in its neighborhood, the population of the metropolis of America (New York City, Brooklyn, Jersey City, Hoboken, and Newark) was over two millions, and New York, as thus designated, is the third city in the world. in point of numbers, being exceeded only by London and Paris. The growth of Chicago has been startling; in thirty years its population increased tenfold, numbering over one million in 1890; it is now the second city in the United States. The population of Philadelphia has also doubled in thirty years, and stood at over a million in 1890. The center of population has been affected by both the circumstances just noted: the increase of the settled area, mainly in the West, and the great increase in the urban pop Center of population. Expansion of the railroad system. The Brooklyn Bridge ulation, which has been confined mainly to the states east of the Mississippi. In thirty years the point denoting the center of population has moved westward one hundred and fiftyeight miles, and was near Cincinnati in 1890. It should be noted, however, that its westward movement in the decade ending in 1890 was less than in any other decade since 1830, save only that which included the Civil War; and, since 1890, the increase in the population of the country east of Cincinnati has been so much greater than the growth of population west of that point, that the center of population is now practically stationary. 396. Transportation, 1890.- Hand in hand with this great development in population, this growth of cities, and this increase of cultivated land, the railroads have multiplied until the United States contained in 1890 one half of the railroad mileage of the world. In 1860 there were thirty These low rates were possible, of course, only in those sections of the country where there was an enormous traffic; in those portions of the country which were recently settled, or were devoted mainly to agriculture, the railroad Clan Howe companies could not carry goods on such favorable terms. This was especially true in the purely agricultural states of the Northwest. The farmers of those regions banded together into societies termed "granges," and sought, by legislation, to compel the railroads to lower their charges to rates which would not repay the cost of transportation. This "granger legislation," as it was called, compelled the roads to diminish expenses in every way. It resulted in a great decrease in the efficiency of the service, and Regulation of railroad rates. Interstate Analysis of railroad business. Manufacturing industries. put an end to railroad building in those portions of the country. The relations of the railroad corporations to the people. also aroused attention in the East, especially in Massachusetts, where a railroad commission was instituted by act of the state legislature. At first the functions of this body were largely conciliatory and advisory; the system worked well for both the people and the railroads, and, as time went on, the powers of the commission were enlarged. Other states acted on similar lines, and, in 1887, the Federal Congress established a national commission to regulate interstate commerce. This last commission has authority to prohibit discriminating rates, the "pooling" of traffic, and the division of receipts. These processes had been resorted to by the great railway systems to avoid competition, and worked to the undue favoring of large shippers of goods and large centers of traffic. The Interstate Commerce Commission has accomplished some good, though less than its promoters expected. Most of the effects of the marvelous change produced by steam transportation have been confined to the northeastern section of the country: over one half of the passenger railway movement of the United States is in the region east of the Alleghanies and north of the Potomac ; another quarter is confined to the four states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois - in other words, three quarters of the whole movement is east of the Mississippi and north of the Potomac and the Ohio; the South contributes but one sixteenth, and the country west of the Mississippi to the Pacific gives the other three sixteenths. The cause of the industrial activity in the northeastern states indicated by these figures is to be found in the great development of manufacturing, milling, and mining industries in that region. 397. Industrial Development, 1860-96. — In 1860 the manufactured products of the United States were valued at slightly over four billion dollars; in 1896 the estimate had risen to over nine billion dollars, - the United States then ex - |