Statistics are considered by many people as dry and uninteresting, and the fact that a book is statistical is a warning that it should not be read, or that the statistical paragraphs should be passed over for the narrative and historical parts. This is a dilettante and lazy attitude to take, and especially so in the study of social subjects, for in these subjects it is only statistics that tell us the true proportions and relative importance of our facts. The study of statistics leads us to a study of social causes and forces, and when we see that in the year 1790 three per cent of our population lived in cities, and in the year 1900 thirty-three per cent lived in cities of 8000 population and over, we are aroused to the importance of making a serious inquiry into the reasons for this growth of cities and the effects of city life on the future of democracy and the welfare of the nation. More impressive to the student of race problems becomes the inquiry when we realize that while one-fifth of our entire population lives in the thirty-eight cities of over 100,000 population, two-fifths of our foreign-born population, one-third of our native offspring of foreign parents, and only one-tenth of our people of native parentage live in such cities. That is to say, the proportion of the foreign-born in great cities is four times as great, and the proportion of the children of foreign parents is three and one-third times as great as that of the colonial and older native stock. These proportions appear in the accompanying table and the upper diagram on page 162.
POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES AND LARGE CITIES: 1900
| Total for United States | In United States | In 38 Cities of 100,000 Population and Over | ||
| Number | Per cent | Number | Per cent of total of corresponding class | |
| Population | 75,994,575 | 100.0 | 14,208,347 | 18.7 |
| Native white, native parents | 40,958,216 | 53.9 | 4,245,817 | 10.3 |
| Native white, foreign parents | 15,637,063 | 20.6 | 5,280,186 | 33.2 |
| Foreign white | 10,213,817 | 13.4 | 3,972,324 | 39.7 |
| Negroes | 8,833,994 | 11.6 | 668,324 | 7.6 |
| Indian and Mongolians | 351,385 | .5 | 32,696 | 9.3 |
If we present the matter in another form in order to show the full extent of foreign influence in our great cities, we have another diagram, which shows that 59 per cent of the population outside, and only 30 per cent of the population within these cities is of native parentage, while 27 per cent of the population outside, and 65 per cent of the population within these cities is of foreign parentage. The census enumeration carries us back only to the parents, but if we had knowledge of the grandparents we should probably find that the immigrant element of the nineteenth century contributed a goodly portion of those set down as of native parentage.
Distribution of Population: 1900
Percentage of Population in Cities: 1900
CONSTITUENTS OF THE POPULATION OF CITIES OF MORE THAN 100,000 INHABITANTS: 1900