If these thirty-five
million were distributed by nationality according to the proportions
estimated for 1790, the result would appear as follows:
English 28,735,000
Scotch 2,450,000
Irish 665,000
Dutch 875,000
French 210,000
German 1,960,000
All others 105,000
In 1900 there were also thirty-two million descendants of white
persons who had come to the United States after the First Census, yet
of these over twenty million were either foreign born or the children
of persons born abroad. If this ratio of increase remained the same,
the American stock would apparently maintain its own, even in the
midst of twentieth century immigration. But the birth rate of the
foreign stock, especially among the recent comers, is much higher than
of the native American stock. Conditions have so changed that,
according to the Census, the American people "have concluded that they
are only about one-half as well able to rear children--at any rate,
without personal sacrifice--under the conditions prevailing in 1900 as
their predecessors proved themselves to be under the conditions which
prevailed in 1790."
The difficulty of ascertaining ethnic influences increases
immeasurably when we pass from the physical to the mental realm.
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