ngular correspondence with the
excess of foreign arrivals, but it occurred chiefly in just those
regions to which the newcomers most freely resorted.

But what possible reason can be suggested why the incoming of the
foreigner should have checked the disposition of the native toward the
increase of population at the traditional rate? I answer that the best
of good reasons can be assigned. Throughout the northeastern and
northern middle states, into which, during the period under
consideration, the newcomers poured in such numbers, the standard of
material living, of general intelligence, of social decency, had been
singularly high. Life, even at its hardest, had always had its luxuries;
the babe had been a thing of beauty, to be delicately nurtured and
proudly exhibited; the growing child had been decently dressed, at
least for school and church; the house had been kept in order, at
whatever cost, the gate hung, the shutters in place, while the front
yard had been made to bloom with simple flowers; the village church, the
public schoolhouse, had been the best which the community, with great
exertions and sacrifices, could erect and maintain. Then came the
foreigner, making his way into the little village, bringing--small blame
to him!--not only a vastly lower standard of living, but too often an
actual present incapacity even to understand the refinements of life and
thought in the community in which he sought a home. Our people had to
look upon houses that were mere shells for human habitations, the gate
unhung, the shutters flapping or falling, green pools in the yard, babes
and young children rolling about half naked or worse, neglected, dirty,
unkempt. Was there not in this a sentimental reason strong enough to
give a shock to the principle of population? But there was, besides, an
economic reason for a check to the native increase. The American shrank
from the industrial competition thus thrust upon him. He was unwilling
himself to engage in the lowest kind of day labor with these new
elements of the population; he was even more unwilling to bring sons and
daughters into the world to enter into that competition. For the first
time in our history, the people of the free states became divided into
classes. Those classes were natives and foreigners. Politically, the
distinction had only a certain force, which yielded more or less readily
under partisan pressure; but socially and industrially that distinction
has been