Estimating the immigration before 1820 at 10,000 per year, and using the official figures after that date, we find that the immigration by decades from 1791 to 1910 was as follows:
| 1791–1800 | 100,000 |
| 1801–1810 | 100,000 |
| 1811–1820 | 98,385 |
| 1821–1830 | 143,439 |
| 1831–1840 | 599,125 |
| 1841–1850 | 1,713,251 |
| 1851–1860 | 2,511,060 |
| 1861–1870 | 2,377,279 |
| 1871–1880 | 2,812,191 |
| 1881–1890 | 5,246,613 |
| 1891–1900 | 3,687,564 |
| 1900–1910 | 8,795,386 |
Combining these two sets of figures, it appears that for each immigrant coming to this country during the decades specified, there was at the close of the decade the following number of square miles of territory in the United States:
| 1800 | 8.278 |
| 1810 | 19.998 |
| 1820 | 20.927 |
| 1830 | 14.355 |
| 1840 | 3.437 |
| 1850 | 1.739 |
| 1860 | 1.205 |
| 1870 | 1.273 |
| 1880 | 1.076 |
| 1890 | .570 |
| 1900 | .824 |
| 1910 | .347 |
This table illustrates forcibly the fact that from the point of view of the need of new settlers immigration at the present time is a vastly different matter from what it has ever been before in the history of our country. This impression is strengthened if we make another comparison, which is even more significant for our purposes, viz. the relation of immigration to the public domain, that is, to the land which still remains unclaimed and open to settlement. If there were still large tracts of good land lying unutilized, and available for settlement, as there have been in other periods of our history, we could take comfort in the thought that as soon as the incoming aliens caused too great a congestion in any region, the surplus inhabitants would overflow, by a natural process, into the less thickly settled districts. Let us consider what the facts have to show in this respect.
In 1860 there were, as nearly as can be estimated, 939,173,057 acres of land lying unappropriated and unreserved in the public domain. In 1906 there were 424,202,732 acres of such land, representing the leavings, after all the best land had been chosen. In other words, for each immigrant entering the country during the decade ending 1860 there were 374 acres in the public domain, at least half of it extremely valuable farm land. In 1906, for each immigrant entering during the previous ten years, there were 68.9 acres, almost wholly arid and worthless.
The fact that the immigrants in this country do not, to any great extent, take up this unclaimed public land does not destroy the significance of this comparison. As long as there was a strong movement of the native population westward, it was not so much a matter of concern, if large numbers of foreigners were entering the Atlantic seaboard. And this was exactly the case during the middle of the nineteenth century. This was the period of the great internal migration to the new lands of the Middle West. In point of fact also, at this time, many of these pioneers were actually immigrants. It is scarcely necessary to say that nothing comparable to this is going on at the present time. The frontier, which has had such a determining influence on our national life, is a thing of the past. Of the 424,202,732 acres remaining in the public domain in 1906, only a very small part consisted of valuable farm lands, such as existed in great abundance when the Homestead Act was passed in 1862. Evidence of this fact is furnished by the act recently passed allowing homesteads of 640 acres to be taken up in certain sections of Nebraska, where it is impossible for a man to make a living from less. Not only are the incoming hordes of aliens not now counterbalanced by an important internal migration, but there is an actual movement, of noteworthy dimensions, of ambitious young farmers from the United States to the new and cheaper wheat lands in Canada.
This set of conditions may be stated in another way by saying that the United States has changed from an agricultural to a manufacturing and commercial nation.[[341]] In the early nineteenth century the rural family was the typical one, to-day it is the urban family. Then the simplicity and independence of the farm gave character to the national life; to-day it is the complexity and artificiality of the city which govern. The nineteenth century was a period of expansion. Particularly in the earlier part of it was the subduing of new land the fundamental consideration of national development. This was the period of internal improvements, the building of roads and canals, and later of railroads. It was the adolescence of the American people. At such a period the great demand is for accessions of population, and it is no wonder that many of the writers of that day were frank in their demands for the encouragement of immigration. And even in the thirties and forties, though the miserable shipping conditions and the large number of incoming paupers aroused a countercurrent of opinion, still the immigrants found a logical place on the great construction works of the period, as well as on the vacant arable lands.
This period is past. The labors of the typical alien are not now expended on the railroad, the canal, or the farm, but in the mines and foundries, the sweatshops and factories. The immigrants of to-day are meeting an economic demand radically different from that of a century or half a century, yes, we may say a quarter of a century ago.[[342]]
This change is further exemplified by the increased concentration of population in cities which the United States has witnessed in the past century. In 1790 there were only 6 cities in the United States with over 8000 population each, containing 3.4 per cent of the total population. In 1840 the percentage of population in cities of this size was still only 8.4. But in 1900 there were 545 cities of over 8000, counting among their inhabitants 33.1 per cent of the total population. In other words, the ratio between city and country dwellers (taking the city of 8000 as the dividing line) has changed from one to twenty-eight in 1790 to one to two in 1900. At the same time the average density of population of the country as a whole has increased from 3.7 per square mile in 1810 to 10.8 in 1860, 17.3 in 1880, and 25.6 in 1900.