History of the United States, Volume 5Andrews, Elisha Benjamin
History
History of the United States, Volume 5
Andrews, Elisha Benjamin
United States -- History
At the South alone did the negro continue a considerable element.
Eighty-nine per cent. of the negroes lived there. At the North only
Pennsylvania had any large numbers. The country held 8,840,789, an
increase of 18.1 per cent. in ten years, the percentage of white
increase being 21.4 per cent. In West Virginia and Florida, also in the
black belts, especially that of Alabama, blacks multiplied faster than
whites. In Delaware and Georgia the pace was even. In Alabama as a
whole, however, the negro element had not relatively increased since
1850. Blacks outnumbered Caucasians in South Carolina and Mississippi,
no longer in Louisiana. In Mississippi the black majority shot up
phenomenally. Of the total population the negroes were now only 11.6 per
cent., barely one-ninth, as against one-fifth in 1790. Between 1890 and
1900 the proportion of the colored increased both at the North and at
the far South, diminishing in the border southern States. This indicated
migration both northward and southward from the belt of States just
south of Mason and Dixon's line.
[Illustration: Large office building.]
The Census Office, Washington, D. C.
The foreign-born fraction of our population, which had alternately risen
and fallen since 1860, now fell again, from 14.8 per cent. to 13.7 per
cent. The South retained its distinction as the most thoroughly American
section of the land, having a foreign nativity population varying from
7.9 per cent. in Maryland to only 0.2 per cent. in North Carolina.
The foreign born, conspicuous in the Northwest and the North Atlantic
States, were mostly confined to cities. They had augmented only 12.4 per
cent. as against 38.5 per cent. from 1880 to 1890. Nearly a third of the
recorded immigration from 1890 to 1900 was missing in the enumeration,
due only in part to census errors. Many foreigners had returned to their
native lands, most numerous among these being Canadians. The
preponderance of immigrants was no longer from Ireland, Canada, Great
Britain, and Germany, but from Austria-Hungary, Bohemia, Italy, Russia,
and Poland.
In 1900 the United States proper had 89,863 Chinese against 107,488 in
1890. Of Japanese there were 24,326 against only 2,039 in 1890. In the
Hawaiian Islands alone the Chinese numbered 25,767 and the Japanese
61,111. Natives of Germany still constituted the largest body of our
foreign born, being 25.8 per cent. of the whole foreign element compared
with 30.1 per cent. in 1890. The proportion was about the same in 1900 as
in 1850.
The Irish were 15.6 per cent. of the foreign born. The figures had been
20.2 per cent. in 1890, and 42.8 per cent. in 1850. The proportion of
native Scandinavians and Danes had slightly increased. Poles. Bohemians,
Austrians, Huns, and Russians comprised 13.4 per cent. of the foreign
born as against 6.9 per cent. in 1890, and less than one-third per cent.
in 1850.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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