Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1864-07-28
SOCIAL STATISTICS.

The Boston Daily Advertiser calls the attention
vice and crime among the female population of the
State, as seen in the growing abandonment of in
FAINT children and in the enlarged category Of the
offences for which women are arrested by the police
of the cities. The first and chief of the natu-
raj causes which aggravate the moral condition Of
the State under this head is found by our conten-
porary in the great disp~Portion that exists in
Massachusetts, between the number of the male
and female Notwithstanding the commu-
nifty in peculiar difficulties prospecting the oc-
cupation of women, their residence, the tempta-
tons which surround them, and the way in which
what the English call the social question affects
our systems of public punishment and reform"
1t appears from the returns of the last national
census that in 1860 the excess of the number
of women, of all ages, in the State Of Massa-
chusetts, above that of men, was 5000. Since
that time the war and the steady surplus in the
emigration of the males must have taken from the
State, the Advertiser thinks, sixty or seventy
thousand more men-these also, it must be OBJ
served, of the manageable ages-leaving surplus
of 100000 women. Between the ages of ff-
teen and forty five, the population of women in
Massachusetts is about $40, 900. The population
of men of the same age does not probably ex-
coed 900 at the present time. On this state
of facts our contemporary remarks as follows:
"This entire disproportion, greater than remember
to have observed in tho statistics of any other country
may be ascrbed, to considerable extent to the war
But should mistake greatly if should consider the
war az its only cause. Before the existed, in 1860
the excess OF women of all ages was as we have said
go Counting only the population between the ages
of fifteen and fifty, the of within those
limits was twenty-seven thousanda surplus much too
large to be overlooked careful study the crime Of the
community. The causes are evident. Young men emil
crate freely and largely They emgrse in much greater
propo -tion than do The emigration from Massa
chusetts much larger than the emigration into it, The
is that large proportion of unmarried women
are left by the tide of emigration within borders.
The movement Of the army to be looked upon large
emig alton Many alas of those who have left cannot
return OF those who many will be tempted to take
no their abedes In distant States So that the surplus Of
one hundred thousand marrsgesbe above the
Der OF Of the msrageable in Massachusetts may
be looked upon, not indeed precise statistical state
ment of an evil which have to correct but not so
far distant from the truth at first sight might appear
The Advertiser conceives that the correction of
this evil is to be found in the encouragement, by
all proper means, of the emigration of women from
Massachusetts, into the regions of the West, where
they are needed, and of the systematic immigra-
ton of men from Europe into the State; in sup
port Of which former remedy it adds: "Merely
selfish considerations Of a temporary lack in the
supply of workwomen ought not to stand a mo-
ment in the way of the rectifying gross dispro-
portion, which, of necessity, seriously endangers
the morals of the community end the very founda-
ton of civil society"