CONJUGAL CONDITION OF IMMIGRANTS, 1910 ══════╤═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ SEX │ PERCENTAGES ──────┼───────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────── „ │ 14 TO 44 YEARS[166] │ 45 YEARS AND OVER ──────┼──────┬───────┬───────┬────────┼──────┬───────┬───────┬──────── „ │Single│Married│Widowed│Divorced│Single│Married│Widowed│Divorced ──────┼──────┼───────┼───────┼────────┼──────┼───────┼───────┼──────── Male │ 55.3│ 44.2│ 0.5│ [167] │ 5.2│ 86.8│ 7.9│ [167] Female│ 57.7│ 39.9│ 2.3│ [167] │ 6.6│ 52.8│ 40.5│ 0.1 ══════╧══════╧═══════╧═══════╧════════╧══════╧═══════╧═══════╧════════ Footnote 166: All the immigrants under 14 were single, with the exception of one female. Footnote 167: Less than one tenth of 1 per cent. This table furnishes further verification of the fact that our present immigration is in no sense an immigration of families. More than half of all the immigrants fourteen years of age or over, of both sexes, are single. This affects the problem of assimilation very deeply. One of the greatest forces for Americanization in immigrant families is the growing children. Where these are absent, the adults have much less contact with assimilating influences. If there was a large degree of intermarriage between these single immigrants and native Americans, the aspect of the case would be very different; but thus far, this is not the case. Much has been said and written about the absolute economic gain to this country through immigration. It is pointed out that each year an army of able-bodied laborers, in the prime of life, is added to our working force. To the expense of their rearing we have contributed nothing; they come to us as a free gift from the nations of Europe. Various efforts have been made to estimate the actual cash value of these alien laborers. Professor Mayo-Smith enumerates three different ways of attacking the problem. The first is by estimating the cost of bringing up the immigrant, up to the time of his arrival in the United States. The second is by estimating his value as if he were a slave. The third is by estimating the amount of wealth he will contribute to the community before he dies, minus the cost of his maintenance—in other words, his net earnings.[168] The lack of uniformity in the results obtained by different methods and by different investigators gives weight to the opinion that it is, after all, a rather fruitless undertaking. To estimate the monetary value of a man seems to be, as yet, too much for economic science.