The Twelfth Census revealed slight change in the centre of population. This now stood six miles southeast of Columbus, Ind., having moved west only fourteen miles since 1890. In computing its position neither Hawaii nor Alaska were considered. Never before had its occidental shunt been less than thirty-six miles in a decade. For three score years it had not fallen under forty per decade. What sent it southward two and a half miles was the doubling of population in the Indian Territory and the filling of Oklahoma. The trifling shift of fourteen miles westward pointed significantly to the exhaustion of free land in the West and to the immense growth of manufactures, mining, and commerce in eastern and central States, retaining there the bulk of our immigrants and even recalling people from the newer States and territories.
Males still bore about the same proportion to females as in 1890, although females had increased at a rate 0.2 per cent. greater than males. In the North Atlantic and South Atlantic groups the sexes were equal in numbers.
At the South alone did the negro continue a considerable element. Eighty-nine per cent. of the negroes lived there. At the North only Pennsylvania had any large numbers. The country held 8,840,789, an increase of 18.1 per cent. in ten years, the percentage of white increase being 21.4 per cent. In West Virginia and Florida, also in the black belts, especially that of Alabama, blacks multiplied faster than whites. In Delaware and Georgia the pace was even. In Alabama as a whole, however, the negro element had not relatively increased since 1850. Blacks outnumbered Caucasians in South Carolina and Mississippi, no longer in Louisiana. In Mississippi the black majority shot up phenomenally. Of the total population the negroes were now only 11.6 per cent., barely one-ninth, as against one-fifth in 1790. Between 1890 and 1900 the proportion of the colored increased both at the North and at the far South, diminishing in the border southern States. This indicated migration both northward and southward from the belt of States just south of Mason and Dixon’s line.
The Census Office, Washington, D. C.
The foreign-born fraction of our population, which had alternately risen and fallen since 1860, now fell again, from 14.8 per cent. to 13.7 per cent. The South retained its distinction as the most thoroughly American section of the land, having a foreign nativity population varying from 7.9 per cent. in Maryland to only 0.2 per cent. in North Carolina.
The foreign born, conspicuous in the Northwest and the North Atlantic States, were mostly confined to cities. They had augmented only 12.4 per cent. as against 38.5 per cent. from 1880 to 1890. Nearly a third of the recorded immigration from 1890 to 1900 was missing in the enumeration, due only in part to census errors. Many foreigners had returned to their native lands, most numerous among these being Canadians. The preponderance of immigrants was no longer from Ireland, Canada, Great Britain, and Germany, but from Austria-Hungary, Bohemia, Italy, Russia, and Poland.
In 1900 the United States proper had 89,863 Chinese against 107,488 in 1890. Of Japanese there were 24,326 against only 2,039 in 1890. In the Hawaiian Islands alone the Chinese numbered 25,767 and the Japanese 61,111. Natives of Germany still constituted the largest body of our foreign born, being 25.8 per cent. of the whole foreign element compared with 30.1 per cent. in 1890. The proportion was about the same in 1900 as in 1850.
The Irish were 15.6 per cent. of the foreign born. The figures had been 20.2 per cent. in 1890, and 42.8 per cent. in 1850. The proportion of native Scandinavians and Danes had slightly increased. Poles. Bohemians, Austrians, Huns, and Russians comprised 13.4 per cent. of the foreign born as against 6.9 per cent. in 1890, and less than one-third per cent. in 1850.
The congressional apportionment act based on the twelfth census, and approved January 16, 1902, avoided the disagreeable necessity of cutting down the representation of laggard States by increasing the House membership from 357 to 386, a gain of twenty-nine members. Twelve of these (reckoning Louisiana) came from west of the Mississippi, two from New England, three each from Illinois and New York, four from the southern States east of the Mississippi, two each from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and one from Wisconsin.