Of the seventy-six million inhabitants recorded by the 1900
census, ten and a half million were born and brought up in one or other
of the European social systems, and the parents of another twenty-six
millions were foreigners. Another nine million are of African negro
descent. Fourteen million of the sixty-five million native-born are
living not in the state of their birth, but in other states to which
they have migrated. Of the thirty and a half million whites whose
parents on both sides were native Americans, a high proportion probably
had one if not more grand-parents foreign-born. Nearly five and a half
million out of thirty-three and a half million whites in 1870 were
foreign-born, and another five and a quarter million the children of
foreign-born parents. The children of the latter five and a quarter
million count, of course, in the 1900 census as native-born of native
parents. Immigration varies enormously with the activity of business,
but in 1906 it rose for the first time above a million.
These figures may be difficult to grasp. The facts may be seen in a more
concrete form by the visitor to Ellis Island, the receiving station for
the immigrants into New York Harbour. One goes to this place by tugs
from the United States barge office in Battery Park, and in order to see
the thing properly one needs a letter of introduction to the
commissioner in charge.
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