GROWTH OF THE UNITED STATES.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8743, 1 April 1890, Page 3

GROWTH OF THE UNITED STATES.

At the rate of 3{ persons every minute, 194 every hour, or about 1,700,000 in a year, the United States are adding to the population which Census Superintendent Porter is about to record and report upon. Time was when Americans regarded this growth with pardonable pride. It was rapidly placing them in the front rank of the world's powerful nations. I3ut now, Avith only Russia, India, and China reporting as large a population, and those nations by no means rivalling the United States in i lduatrial progress, Americans have ceased t > think so much of mere numerical gains, and are beginning to critise a little more closely the materials of which the population is composed. Including on'y the immigration ollicially reported, the population should be not far from 66,768,000 next July, if it has increased during the last decade at the previous rate by excess of births over deaths. It may be larger if tho movement across the Canadian border has been such as many believe, or may prove semewhut smaller if new conditions in large parts of the country have altered the rate of increase. Of the sixty-six millions of people, probably ten will be found of foreign birth, about nine of the coloured race, and forty-seven nativeborn whites: but of the latter perhaps eight millions will be found children of foreignborn parents. With about twenty-boven millions of foreign birth of parentage, or coloured, and thirty million inhabitants essentially American and white, tho American will ahk hinibclf whether continued and unrestricted immigration has any danger for his country. Acouhidwuldu part of tlie children of ioreign paretilagi; become in every respect essentially Americans, but the body remaining, which retains foreign interests, Njiu|iciliiii.b, habits, and associations, is large and increasing. Thus it is that the question whether immigration of the least desirable sort should be restricted, and to what extent, iss steadily growing in public interest.