CHAPTER XXXV

THE PEOPLE'S LIFE (1900-1916)

374. Population and Cities. The number of people in the United States grew rapidly. From about 4 million in 1790 it rose to about 100 million of "continental" population in 1916; besides nearly 10 million in Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. Nearly a third of the continental population lived in the old South, and about a fourth lived west of the Mississippi River. More than 30 million out of the 100 million lived in cities.

Most of the great cities lay along the Atlantic coast, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, and the Pacific coast. These crowded centers brought many new problems for lawmakers and officials. Millions of foreigners, many of whom could not speak English, had to be taken care of. The building of "sky-scraper" business blocks and office buildings brought much of the business into small areas in each city;

and hundreds of thousands of people had to be carried into and out of the business centers every day. Most cities had a crowded and unwholesome "slum" district, which needed regulation. The great numbers of children needed new

The distance of the curve from the base shows the number of immigrants entering the United States every year since 1820

In the twenty years from 1893 to 1913 they were 13,900,000. In this immense number were few of the English, Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians who had previously been the principal immigrants. The majority were now Italians, Portuguese, Hungarians, Croatians, Russian and Polish Jews, Bohemians, Bulgarians, Albanians, French Canadians, Mexicans, Greeks, and even Turks, Syrians, and Arabs.

The effect of immigration was somewhat reduced by about 700,000 American farmers from the northwestern states, who crossed the border to take up Canadian wheat lands; and hundreds of thousands of Italians and others went back to Europe. During the Great War in Europe, also, immigration was small. The census of 1910 showed that out of 82 million white people in the continental United States, 13 million were foreign born and 19 million more were children of foreign-born parents; probably 18 million more were grandchildren of

schools and playgrounds. Parks and boulevards were provided, and some cities began to tear down and rebuild on a better and more healthful plan.

375. Native Born and Immigrants. Notwithstanding the checks laid upon immigrants (§ 311) the number kept rising.

This shows the distribution of immigrants in 1910. For example, they were between 10 and 15 per cent of the population in Ohio but less than 5 per cent of the population in Kentucky

foreign-born persons. Therefore, at least 50 million immigrants or children and grandchildren of immigrants were alive in the United States in 1910, against 32 million descended solely from the people, mainly English or English-speaking, who were in the coun

try before the Revolution.

The immigrants were scattered all over the Union, though only one sixteenth of them were in the southern states. Although there were so many unskilled laborers seeking employment, most of them found work; and hundreds of thousands

were able to buy little homes and to become full-fledged Americans. The public schools proved to be a great aid in assimilating these people of many kinds.

Various attempts were made to shut out part of the immiA small head tax was raised to $3 for each immigrant (1917). Sick, helpless, and diseased people, even if they had only a slight trouble with the eyes, were sent back to Europe. In 1917 an act was passed over the veto of President Wilson which excluded all grown people who could not read some language.

376. Chinese and Japanese. The census of 1910 showed 71,000 Chinese and 72,000 Japanese in our country. The Chinese, under the law excluding Chinese laborers (§ 312), were diminishing. Since there was no law against the immigration of Japanese, the people of the Pacific coast were afraid that great numbers would come over and form permanent settlements. In 1906 the school authorities of San Francisco for a time excluded all Japanese from schools for white children. The Japanese government, however, stopped the departure of laborers from Japan, without any formal agreement to that effect.

Later the state of California passed an act forbidding Japanese to acquire land (1913), an act which the Japanese government resented. Chinese and Japanese students and business men were welcomed, but there was strong objection to receiving Asiatics in large numbers. Doubtless there would be just such objections in Japan if scores of thousands of American laborers were to settle down there and compete with the native laborers.

377. Place of Women. The first societies for women's rights began nearly a hundred years ago, and were intended to secure for women greater control of their own property and children. The next step was the better education of girls, in common schools, then in public high schools, then in most of the western colleges and universities (§ 248), and in some eastern ones. A special group of colleges,, of which Vassar was the first, was founded for the separate college education of girls. "Coördinate colleges" were founded alongside Harvard, Columbia, Western Reserve, and some other men's universities.

Better education fitted women for new chances of business

PLACE OF WOMEN

473

and employment, and many became inspectors, clerks, stenographers, librarians, saleswomen, bookkeepers, and managers and owners of stores. Factories took from the home many of the old-fashioned industries, such as spinning, weaving, and making clothing. This set free great numbers of women who found employment in the textile mills and in

Original building of Wellesley College for women, erected in 1876

other lines of work not requiring great manual strength. A few women became lawyers, doctors, ministers, architects, journalists, and college professors. In some states, after 1869, women were given the right to vote on the same terms as men, beginning in the frontier states where women took a large part in the new settlements.

Education, votes, and employment for women all depended upon a growing belief that they had an important part in public and commercial life, and that they must take a new place in the work of making the United States great. Therefore women were chosen as managers of charitable societies, as presidents of women's colleges, as workers in social settlements; and in some states they became superintendents of city schools and of state school systems and even members of

HART'S SCH. HIST.-27