I refer to important changes in the composition and characteristics of the population. The last thirty years have seen a great influx of foreign peoples to this country. The reports of the Department of Labor show that in the period since 1880, 22,300,000 immigrants reached our shores. In the year ending June 30, 1914, the net increase in population due to immigration was 915,000. These immigrants have settled principally in the registration states. In a recent paper. Professor Chapin, of Smith College, has pointed out that the nine states, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have been receiving over three fourths of the total immigration during the last 25 years.[1] This tendency to concentration of immigration in a few of our eastern states has been so marked that it has been assumed that from 65 to 70 per cent, of the urban growth of the United States is due to immigration. Recent immigration has given a distinctive tone to our urban life.
This immigration to our registration area must, therefore, largely determine the adult mortality which these communities experience. If the immigrants are relatively short lived and suffer especially from the diseases of middle life, then we must expect an increased incidence in the mortality rates from these causes in the area where they congregate, and correspondingly a reduction in the expectation of life in the total population.
While immigrants to America come from all parts of the world, the larger number have come, in recent years, from the countries of southern and eastern Europe. Thus, in the year closing June 30, 1914, 23.3 per cent, of all immigrants came from Italy; 21.0 per cent, from Russia and Finland; 11.1 per cent, from Austria; 11.8 per cent, from Hungary. Together, these four countries supplied America with 67.1 per cent, of its total immigration in this year. The mortality rates prevailing normally in these countries are uniformly higher than those found in the registration area. Thus, according to the latest available figures the crude death rate in Russia was 28.9 per 1,000 in 1909; 18.2 per 1,000 in Italy in 1912; 20.5 per 1,000 in Austria, and 23.3 per 1,000 in Hungary in 1912. We have no right to assume that the mere entry of these foreign peoples has at once a favorable effect upon their mortality. Their adverse conditions of life, especially in our large cities, the economic stress to which they are put, and the dangers in the unskilled trades in which they engage, all would point to a continuance, at least, of the higher death rates from which they suffer in their native countries.
Such a conclusion is certainly warranted by the mortality statistics
- ↑ "Immigration as a Source of Urban Increase," by F. Stuart Chapin, Ph.D., Qtly. Publications of the American Statistical Ass'n, Vol. XIV., Sept., 1914.
