irie into
wheat land before he took the final stage of his western journeyings
to southern California. Here he was surrounded by neighbors whose
migration had been not unlike his own, and to the same sunny region
another relative found his way "by way of a long trail through Iowa,
Dakota, Montana, Oregon, and North California."

When the last frontier had vanished, it was seen that men of this
American stock had penetrated into every valley, traversed every
plain, and explored every mountain pass from Atlantic to Pacific. They
organized every territory and prepared each for statehood. It was the
enterprise of these sons and grandsons and great-grandsons of the
Revolutionary Americans, obeying the restless impulse of a pioneer
race, who spread a network of settlements and outposts over the entire
land and prepared it for the immigrant invasion from Europe. Owing to
this influx of foreigners, the American stock has become mingled with
other strains, especially those from Great Britain.

The Census Bureau estimated that in 1900 there were living in the
United States approximately thirty-five million white people who were
descended from persons enumerated in 1790. If these thirty-five
million were distributed by nationality according to the proportions
estimated for 1790, the result would appear as follows:

English 28,735,000
Scotch 2,450,000
Irish 665,000
Dutch 875,000
French 210,000
German 1,960,000
All others 105,000

In 1900 there were also thirty-two million descendants of white
persons who had come to the United States after the First Census, yet
of these over twenty million were either foreign born or the children
of persons born abroad. If this ratio of increase remained the same,
the American stock would apparently maintain its own, even in the
midst of twentieth century immigration. But the birth rate of the
foreign stock, especially among the recent comers, is much higher than
of the native American stock. Conditions have so changed that,
according to the Census, the American people "have concluded that they
are only about one-half as well able to rear children--at any rate,
without personal sacrifice--under the conditions prevailing in 1900 as
their predecessors proved themselves to be under the conditions which
prevailed in 1790."

The difficulty of ascertaining ethnic influences increases
imm