It is thus apparent that the laws of population would lead us to expect exactly the result which the statistical data indicate—a decided fall in the native birth rate, due to the enormous and ever increasing immigration into this country. The conclusion thus reached is corroborated and verified by a host of social workers, who testify from their own experience and observation. As an example, note the words of Rev. Walter A. Rauschenbusch, whose keen insight into social questions has placed him in the front rank of American thinkers: “The natives, who suffer by the competition of the immigrants and who feel the tightening grip of our industrial development, refuse to bring children into a world which threatens them with poverty.”[191] Whether this decline in the native birth rate has been sufficient to offset the high birth rate of the foreign-born, and produce an actually smaller population than we would have had without any immigrants since 1820, is impossible of proof. It seems wholly probable that it has. The second generation of immigrants themselves feel the effect of the newcomers, and our foreign population shows a sharp decline in its birth rate after a generation of American life.[192] At least, if immigration has not positively lessened our population, we may be certain that it has failed to increase it to any considerable extent. Its net result, as far as size of population is concerned, has been to substitute a very large foreign element, from various sources, for a native element which would otherwise have come into being. The size and diversity of this foreign element in the United States is constantly increasing. The representatives of different foreign nationalities are becoming ever more numerous and more important in the life of the country. In them is embodied the “problem of the immigrant.” One of the most essential factors conditioning this problem is the distribution of these foreign residents. The importance of this aspect of the situation is becoming more and more felt, and will manifest itself in the succeeding pages. There are two main sources of official information on this point. The first of these, the immigration reports, has already been considered, and its data taken for what they are worth.[193] The other is the reports of the Bureau of the Census, which give the actual distribution of the foreign-born, at ten-year intervals. According to this authority, the per cent distribution of the foreign-born among the various territorial divisions in 1900 was as follows: PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES (EXCLUSIVE OF ALASKA AND HAWAII) AMONG THE DIVISIONS, 1900[194]