3. Society is under obligation to ensure every industrious man a decent living.

CHAPTER II
THE PEOPLE, RACES, AND RACIAL PROBLEMS OF
THE UNITED STATES

The purpose of this chapter is to explain how the population of the United States has grown, how it is distributed, the varied races of which it is composed, and the racial problems which immigration has created.

How the national population has grown.

We, the People of the United States.—The national constitution begins with the words: “We, the People of the United States”. But who are the people? No one cares to carry a lot of figures in his head and most people think that statistics are uninteresting; but there are some figures which everyone ought to know and, moreover, there are some statistics which are far from being dry or tedious. The figures relating to the population of the United States, its growth and distribution, are interesting because they portray something that the world has never seen before and probably will never see again,—a country doubling its population four times in just about a single century. That is what the United States did in the hundred years from 1790 to 1890. In 1790 the entire population was less than four millions. (There are more people in the single city of New York today, and almost as many in Chicago.) The population had doubled in 1813, and had doubled again in 1838, when it passed sixteen million. In 1864, only twenty-four years later, it had doubled once more (32,000,000). It passed the sixty-four million mark in 1891, and in all probability will double for the fifth time about the year 1940. In 1920, when the last national census was taken the population had passed 105,000,000.

Will this increase continue? If so, with what results?

Now if you will take the data at the foot of the page and work the calculation to the year 2000 (allowing for the gradual slackening of the increase) what will the population of the United States be then?[[7]] It will be around three hundred millions, which is more than the white population of the entire world today. Even so the country would not be nearly so thickly populated as some European countries now are. Today there are in the United States about thirty-five persons to the square mile. But there are 700 to the square mile in England and 658 per square mile in Belgium, which are two of the most thickly-populated of all countries at the present time.[[8]] Three hundred million people in the United States, if the figure should reach that total at the end of the twentieth century, would be less than one hundred per square mile. There would still be six acres of ground for every man, woman and child in the country. Whether there would be a sufficient food supply to support so large a population is another question and one which is not so easily answered.

THE CENTER OF POPULATION

The way in which the center of population has been steadily moving westward is indicated by this map. It will be noted that in its journey to the west it has held closely to the 39th parallel of latitude. The median point, on the other hand, has remained practically fixed during the last thirty years.