This period is past. The labors of the typical alien are not now expended on the railroad, the canal, or the farm, but in the mines and foundries, the sweatshops and factories. The immigrants of to-day are meeting an economic demand radically different from that of a century or half a century, yes, we may say a quarter of a century ago.[342] This change is further exemplified by the increased concentration of population in cities which the United States has witnessed in the past century. In 1790 there were only 6 cities in the United States with over 8000 population each, containing 3.4 per cent of the total population. In 1840 the percentage of population in cities of this size was still only 8.4. But in 1900 there were 545 cities of over 8000, counting among their inhabitants 33.1 per cent of the total population. In other words, the ratio between city and country dwellers (taking the city of 8000 as the dividing line) has changed from one to twenty-eight in 1790 to one to two in 1900. At the same time the average density of population of the country as a whole has increased from 3.7 per square mile in 1810 to 10.8 in 1860, 17.3 in 1880, and 25.6 in 1900. Hand in hand with these changes has come a sweeping change in the scale of production, which must have an important bearing on the immigration situation. The early immigrants, to a very large extent, came into more or less close personal relations with their employers, often working side by side with them on the farm or in the shop. Now foreigners are hired by the thousands by employers whom they perhaps never see, certainly never have any dealings with, the arrangements being made through some underling, very likely a foreigner himself. Working all day side by side with others of their own race, or of other races equally foreign, and going home at night to crowded dwellings, inhabited by aliens, and with a European atmosphere, the modern immigrants have but slight commerce with anything that is calculated to inculcate American ideas or contribute any real Americanizing influence.