Population

“ The amount of the population of the United States, determined by the returns of the census, is a source of the most pleasing reflections, whether it be viewed in relation to our national safety and respectability, or as a proof of that felicity in the situation of our country, which favors so unexampled a rapidity in its growth. ”

“ Whether it is well to rejoice that the population of our planet has grown so fast during the last century, even as the inhabitants of a city rejoice when a decennial census reveals a rapid growth in their city, is a question which may be deemed a branch of the larger one whether life is worth living. ”

“ The concentrated population of cities, for example, would ever have, under such a distribution, far more weight in the government, than the same number in the scattered and sparse population of the country. One hundred thousand individuals concentrated in a city two miles square, would have much more influence than the same number scattered over two hundred miles square. ”

“ I freely concede the desirability of the results, which you have so glowingly pictured. Nevertheless, I cannot quite agree with you, about the existence of a law, through which the tide of wealth and population will again flow towards the country. I am inclined to think, that facts and figures are against such a result. The statistics of the census of 1890, indicate that about one-third of the population, and over seventy-five per cent of the wealth of the nation, were then located in the cities. ”

“ Our hemisphere is more remarkable even for extent of population than for the quantity of land. Here indeed is the chief seat of population, and the principal theatre of human history and human civilization.
The entire population of America, which, as it is for the most part of European extraction, is better known to us than that of many countries more contiguous—the entire population of America at the highest computation of the whole number of inhabitants on the globe, forms but a thirtieth part, and at the lowest computation, not a four-and-twentieth part of the whole. ”

“ At that time we shall probably have a hundred million people to share the burden, instead of thirty-one millions, as now. And not only so, but the increase of our population may be expected to continue, for a long time after that period, as rapidly as before; because our territory will not have become full.
"I do not state this inconsiderately. At the same ratio of increase which we have maintained, on an average, from our first National census in 1790, until that of 1860, we should, in 1900, have a population of 103,208,415. ”

“ I am indebted to a worthy and sensible friend, and a friend also of the poor, for the following estimate of what I shall term 'pig population,' and set it in array against the increasing demands of the home population, which goes on at the rate of not quite 11/2 per cent, per annum—nay, little more than 11/4 by the last ten years' census. ”

“ CONSULS. The population of a large town is perpetually receiving accessions from the country—not for the purpose of increasing the aggregate of inhabitants, but to supply the waste of existence which takes place in such a scene, and to furnish a better selection for the peculiar offices and business of a city than what could be obtained from the successive generations of the ordinary inhabitants. ”

“ I. INCREASE OF POPULATION. The ratio of increase of population, especially in this country, is one of the surest tests of public prosperity. Let us then again listen to the impartial testimony of the late census. From this we learn that the increase of population in the free States from 1830 to 1840, was at the rate of 38 per cent., while the increase of the free population in the slave States was only 23 per cent. ”

“ And can there be a doubt that the large disproportion in the distribution of the population between city and country, in the interior, will be lessened, so that, instead of being, as now, only one to five or six, they will rapidly approach the proportion of one to two or three? ”

“ With these extraordinary encouragements to population, and every cause of depopulation, as we have supposed, removed, the numbers would necessarily increase faster than in any society that has ever yet been known. ”

“ We discover that relation by considering the difference between population and populousness. The population may be considerable, and yet a country may not be populous, comparatively with its extent. Such is our case. Whatever may be the actual census of the United States, yet a superabundance of uncultivated land, will long prevent them from being populous. To determine correctly how nature legislates in such a case, we must be governed by the character she has given to man. ”

“ I give the various countries from which our population is drawn, with the numbers from each country, and the number of native born and foreign born, which, aggregated, constitute our entire population. ”

“ Great population as constituting importance [136] in a city is comparatively a modern notion. In other ages towns became famous on account of their superior civic organization, their more advantageous situation, or the greater activity, intellectual, political, or commercial, of their citizens. ”

“ This is the natural consequence of recency of settlement and rapid increase. The census of these States shows how great a proportion of the whole population occupies the classes between infancy and manhood. ”

“ Somewhat to my surprise I discovered a comparatively simple equation which represented the census enumerations very closely and which, notwithstanding the fluctuations in the various factors which affect the growth of population, followed the general course of this growth with remarkable fidelity, as will be seen by the following table, which shows the population as given by the Census Bureau and as determined by the empirical formula. ”

“ When the working members of Section F get hold of a report of the census, or any other document containing the numerical data of Economic and Social Science, they begin by distributing the whole population into groups, according to age, income-tax, education, religious belief, or criminal convictions. The number of individuals is far too great to allow of their tracing the history of each separately, so that, in order to reduce their labor within human limits, they concentrate their attention on a small number of artificial groups. ”

“ That population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio. ”

“ So the census grew, from the simple enumeration of the people in 1790, under the very brief schedule which has been given, not only through various additions to the population schedule, but by the introduction of inquiries relating to production, until nearly all the material conditions surrounding the people, their industries, their wealth, their taxation, their carrying trade, fisheries, schools, health—nearly everything, in fact, that the social scientist wishes to know concerning the people and their conditions—are embodied in the census. ”

“ The important thing is the tremendous expansion of population that now ensued for the Western states, the blackening of the census maps in spaces once barren, the crossing and interweaving of the Northern and Southern populations, which now occurred as both sections pressed out into the West. ”

“ Till we know something of the distribution within the country of the various races which formed viiits population, their relative growth and decay, their social organisation, and the extent to which its peculiar features were preserved, and influenced and coloured the future condition of the entire population formed by the amalgamation of its various elements, we know little of its real history. ”

“ I think we may fairly say, from all the accounts that we have of nations of shepherds, that population invariably increased among them, whenever, by emigration, or any other cause, the means of subsistence were increased; and, that a further population was checked, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice. ”

“ In a word, through the census a picture is drawn of the economic condition of all the households of the community. The number of those who can read, or who are learning to read, is also given in the census. Certainly the material collected appears to be of such a character as to furnish fundamental facts for the formation of a judgment as to the economic condition of the population. ”

“ There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of co-operation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, been attained. ”

“ A population, originally consisting of the most diverse and, for the most part, very demoralized elements, a population that gradually grew to 2,500, he turned into a model colony, in which drunkenness, police, magistrates, lawsuits, poor laws, charity, were unknown. And all this simply by placing the people in conditions worthy of human beings, and especially by carefully bringing up the rising generation. ”

“ Let us consider the broad features of the redistribution of the population that has characterised the nineteenth century. It may be summarised as an unusual growth of great cities and a slight tendency to depopulation in the country. The growth of the great cities is the essential phenomenon. ”

“ The constant effort towards population, which is found to act even in the most vicious societies, increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. ”

“ The marvelous growth of the nation, which from three million in 1780 had attained to a population of 76 million in 1900, and, by the last Census numbered around 92 million people, has been the wonder of the world by reason of its rapid expansion ”

“ If the local rural population is markedly short-headed, the general type 52over a larger area from which the city population is drawn more long-headed, then the city population will be more long-headed, and vice versâ. Unless selection can be demonstrated to occur in a sufficient number of definite families, this explanation seems simpler and adequate. ”

“ Whilst we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two millions, we shall find we have millions more to manage. Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood than they spread from families to communities, and from villages to nations. ... But the population of this country, the great and growing population, though a very important consideration, will lose much of its weight, if not combined with other circumstances. The commerce of your colonies is out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the people. ”

“ The population is the most cosmopolitan imaginable. It ranges from dignified, helmeted British officers down to the meanest Chinese or Hindu coolie living in a dilapidated shamble on the border of a marshy rice-field. ”

“ Thus, in the study of the social population, statistical methods are employed not only to give the total number of inhabitants dwelling within a given territory and the degree of density of population per square mile, but also to show to what extent population increases by births in excess of deaths, to what extent by immigration in excess of emigration, and to what extent the composition of the population is rendered complex by the intermingling of many nationalities. ”

“ Our loss of population is not only the most serious problem, but it grows out of the other two. Here we are, a nation of some eight million people. To the south of us is your country, with a population twelve times as great. ”

“ By combining these data with the information issued by the Census Bureau as to the number of male and female adults, children, etc., we reach the conclusion that the amount consumed by the total population would be equal to the amount consumed by a number of adults represented by 80 per cent, of the population. ”

“ To speak, therefore, correctly, perhaps it may be said, that the number of unmarried persons in proportion to the whole number, existing at different periods, in the same, or different states, will enable us to judge whether population at these periods, was increasing, stationary, or decreasing, but will form no criterion by which we can determine the actual population. ”

“ In the back settlements, where the sole employment is agriculture, and vicious customs and unwholesome occupations are little known, the population has been found to double itself in fifteen years. Even this extraordinary rate of increase is probably short of the utmost power of population. ”

“ An important indication of prosperity is in the growth of population. In this respect the two regions started equal. In 1790, at the first census under the Constitution, the population of the present Slave States was 1,961,372, of the present Free States 1,968,455, showing a difference of only 7,083 in favor of the Free States. ”

“ This shows an average decennial increase of 34.60 per cent in population through the seventy years from our first to our last census yet taken. It is seen that the ratio of increase at no one of these seven periods is either 2 per cent below or 2 per cent above the average, thus showing how inflexible, and consequently how reliable, the law of increase in our case is. ”

“ The population embraces some fifteen thousand persons, emigrants, or their children, from the United States, with a large native population, held in subjection and already won toward civilization, amounting to more than two hundred thousand. ”

“ Civilization and taxation appear to be inseparable.
III. Having detailed the steps taken in procuring the census, it only remains to subjoin a few remarks, which I beg leave to add, on the general features of the statistics and the results of their agriculture upon their condition and prospects.
The printed queries being prepared exclusively for a population in a high state of prosperity and progress, embrace many items for which there was no occasion, among pseudo hunters, herdsmen, or incipient agriculturists. ”