Enough has been said to show that immigra tion does not make the additions to our popula tion which a cursory examination of the figures indicates. It is probable that the duplications, with the greater ease and cheapness of ocean travel, are more numerous of late years than formerly. These duplications do not rob the problem of its seriousness. but give it simply another aspect.
There has been of late years a change in this character of immigration has been the cause of mu•ll concern, and flinch has been written of the `undesirable' quality of recent immigration. The most desirable immigrant is doubtless he who promises most rapidly to be absorbed into the great mass of our population and lose his identity as a newcomer. Kinship in language and race is the prime mark of this de sirability. Other things being equal. English speaking immigrants are preferable to all others, those of allied race and language more to he desired than those allied by neither race nor language to the mass of the people.
The developments of recent years are shown in the following figures: who arrived after the enumeration of 1890 and left before that of 1901). We have some data to estimate the relative magnitude of these elements. as we know from figures for the port of New York in lstal. and in the years 1S97-1900 for the entire country, that 235.90S arriving immigrants had been in the country before. As this is 15.9 per cent. of the total arrivals. we may estimate that for the entire decade. 1891 1900, .1S11.223 arrived in the 'United States who had been here before, and so far as any addition to our population is concerned. represented simply a double counting. Some of The last decade shows marked contrasts with the first. Then more than three-quarters of our immigrants spoke English, but now this element represents less than one-fifth of the total. This relative decline was at first made up by an influx of Germans and Scandinavians. peoples of a certain racial kinship, who as late as the decade 1SS1-90 eomprised nearly one-half of the immigrants, \Odle in the latter periods the nations of Southern and Eastern Europe have assumed the leadership. Equally instructive is the separation of the immigrants by race, which for the fiscal years 1901 and 1902. was as fol lows: That such a notable change in the character of immigration must affect the composition of the foreign born in the United States is obvious, and is disclosed in the following statement from the census of 1900: It will be noted tbat in the case of the Irish the women even outnumbered the men, that the races named which show a less percentage of men than the average already quoted, 70.1, be
long, with the exception of the Hebrews, to the older immigration. The Hebrews represent more largely than the other races immigration by fam ilies.
Among the immigrants the proportion of per These figures show that the older immigration, relatively stronger in the foreign born than in the new arrivals, is still losing ground. The arrivals in the past decade are insufficient, ex cept among the Scandinavians, to maintain the absolute numbers of ten years ago. On the other hand, the absolute numbers of the foreign born from Eastern and Southern Europe have more than doubled. The apparently anomalous fact that the group 'Other Countries' has in creased more rapidly than the aggregate immi gration is explained by the entire absence in the immigration returns of any Canadians. who con stitute more than one-half of the undistributed foreign born in the above table.
The reports of the Bureau of Immigration enable us to study many characteristics of the immigrants. That males predominate over fe males, inasmuch as the immigration embraces so many unmarried men, and so many married men who have left their families behind them, who come to seek fortune in the New World, is well known. It is. however, interesting to note that the proportion of males is increasing. In 1S93 to 1895 it was 61.5 per cent. of the total: in lS96 to 1900, 63.5 per cent.: and in the last two fiscal years, 1901 and 190•. it averaged as much as 70.1 per cent. The older immigration was-by families to a larger extent than at pres ent, and this is seen by comparing some of the older and newer elements in our immigration.
In 1902 the figures for some of the prominent races were as follows: sons in the prime of life is always considerable. The increase of the proportion indicates a falling off of family immigration. Figures for the en tire period are not uniform, but the following statement shows this characteristic plainly: Considering .the same races as in the ease of the sexes, we find the percentage of children under fourteen in 1902 to be as follows, the average being 11.4: Here again it appears that family immigra tion is especially prominent among the Hebrews.