and plays a considerable role among Germans and natives of Great Britain. The low percert age of children among the Irish is a consequenee of the large immigration of unmarried women, and this is true, in some mea.ure, of the Seamli navians. .\mong the newer races. children are ',cry infrequent in the Croatian and Slovenian immigration.
Statistics of occupation among the immigrants show comparatively few in the prolc..ional class tion of illiterates is generally higher among im migrants than in the poinilation at large of the countries whence they come.
EFFEur TIIE POPULAims. The influence of immigration upon the population at large de pends not only upon its volume, but also upon its or that of skilled laborer.. Ily far the greatest number are in the ela•-es grouped as mi.cella neous, in %Odell laborers, farm laborers. and per sonal and domestic .ervants itinke up nearly the entire number (393.154 out of 412,879 in 1902). The general results are given in the following table: The figures above given afford a comparison of the decade ending June 30. 1890, with the last fiscal year, and ,how that there has been a fall ing off of the proportion of skilled labor and a in that of unskilled labor. That this change is largely due to the newer elements can be seen from an examination of the figures for 1902. For certain races we find the following perevIllages: Corresponding to the figures for oectipations are those for illiteracy. The following instruc tive table is taken from the Report of the In dustrial Commission (xv. p. 2S4): diffusion. ‘Ve have already seen that the foreign horn in 19011 constituted 13.7 per cent. of the total population of the country: but it is to be noted that of the ten million foreign horn enu merated, few more than half a million were found in the Southern States both of the Atlantic coast and the :\lississippi Valley.
The figures for 1900 are in the table above.
It will be noted that the largest number of foreign horn is in the North Atlantic division, and here, too. the proportion is the largest, In 1890 the largest proportion was in the Western the largest number in the North Cen tral division. Of the aggregate increase of 1,15) 891 in the number of the foreign born, 874,619 are credited to the North Atlantic States. litre the proportion of foreign horn slightly exceeds 30 per cent. in Rhode Island and :Massachusetts, and is greater than 25 per cent. in New York
and Connecticut. In the Northwest these fig ur•s are paralleled by 35.4 per cent. in North Da kota, 28.9 in Minnesota.•and 24.9 in Wisconsin. While not drawn from urban classes at home, the foreigners tend to concentrate in cities. In the principal cities of the nation (101 cities, having over 25.000 inhabitants), as much as 20.1 per cent. of the population is foreign born, white in the remainder of the country but 9.4 per cent. are foreign born.
This tendency to the cities is due not only to the fact that cities represent the most rapidly developing part of our and hence ex the strongest attraction for the floating elements, but in part also to the fact that the inonigrant finds iu the cities groups of his own countrymen. upon whom lie naturally relics to e.tablish relations with the world into which he has come. Hence it occurs that in one place certain nationalities will predominate which are insignificant in numbers in other cities. The The races here enumerated range themselves neeording to the general degree of education at home, though it should he noted that the propor censtis report of 190b gives in detail nationalities of nineteen cities having 200.000 inhabitants, and of ten other cities where the foreign born number a least 30,000. In seventeen cities the Germans lead, their proportions varying from 28.8 per cent. of all foreign born in New York, to 65.9 per cent. in Cincinnati; in nine cities the Irish lead, with proportions between 17.3 in Paterson, N. J., and 36.9 in Cambridge, Mass.; in two cities, Fall River and Lowell, the French Canadians are most nu merous, with proportions of 40.3 and 35.8 per cent. respectively; while Swedes. with 32.8 per cent., lead the foreign born in Minneapolis.
The cities having, on the one hand, the largest number of foreign born, and, on the other, the largest percentage of foreign born, were: In the ten cities there are four only, Philadel phia, Boston, Saint Louis, and Buffalo, in which the number of foreign born potential voters does not exceed the number of the native born. This does not imply that the foreign born have where a political majority. as there is among them a considerable proportion of unnaturalized persons, the average for the nation showing about one-fourth of the foreign born to be aliens.