opulation in the
pre-immigration era, falling short of it by only 47,073 in a total of
17,000,000; while in 1850 the actual population, in spite of the arrival
of 1,713,000 more immigrants, exceeded Watson's estimates by only 6,508
in a total of 23,000,000. Surely, if this correspondence between the
increase of the foreign element and the relative decline of the native
element is a mere coincidence, it is one of the most astonishing in
human history. The actuarial degree of improbability as to a coincidence
so close, over a range so vast, I will not undertake to compute.

If, on the other hand, it be alleged that the relation of cause and
effect existed between the two phenomena, this might be put in two
widely different ways: either that the foreigners came in increasing
numbers because the native element was relatively declining, or that the
native element failed to maintain its previous rate of increase because
the foreigners came in such swarms. What shall we say of the former of
these explanations? Does anything more need to be said than that it is
too fine to be the real explanation of a big human fact like this we are
considering? To assume that at such a distance in space, in the then
state of news-communication and ocean-transportation, and in spite of
the ignorance and extreme poverty of the peasantries of Europe from
which the immigrants were then generally drawn, there was so exact a
degree of knowledge not only of the fact that the native element here
was not keeping up its rate of increase but also of the precise ratio of
that decline as to enable those peasantries, with or without a mutual
understanding, to supply just the numbers necessary to bring our
population up to its due proportions, would be little less than
laughable. Today, with quick passages, cheap freights, and ocean
transportation there is not a single wholesale trade in the world
carried on with this degree of knowledge, or attaining anything like
this point of precision in results.

The true explanation of the remarkable fact we are considering I believe
to be the last of the three suggested. The access of foreigners, at the
time and under the circumstances, constituted a shock to the principle
of population among the native element. That principle is always acutely
sensitive alike to sentimental and to economic conditions. And it is to
be noted, in passing, that not only did the decline in the native
element, as a whole, take place in si