The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1880-10-02
Growth of the southern States.


There is really nothing 80 remarkable in the
fact that the South has grown as rapidly as the
North during the past decade. There is an old
and homeIy proverb which recites that you can
not eat your cake and keer it. A great many
Northern people seem to have forgotten this fact.
For years they have been complacently regarding
the rapid increase Of population in the far West
and Northwest, and figuring out the gains which
the north, as a section, would derive from the
growth of Kansas. Nebraska. Minnesota and
other States in that region. They have not re-
hected that the great bulk Of this increase has
been drawn from New England, the Middle
States and even the nearer OF the Western States,
like Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and that the
North as a section has not gained by this trans
fer of people from the east OF the Mississippi
River to the west of that stream. The older
States could not suffer this drain without feeling
the effect, and the returns show that some Of
them, like Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont,
have remained almost stationary during the past
ten years, while even New York and Pennsyl-
vania have not made gains, and some districts of
the nearer Western States have lost 80 much by
emigration still farther West that they contain
fewer people now than 1870. 1t is true that the
North has gained much more than the South by
immigration from abroad. but in considering
the enormous proportions which this immigration
has reached in the last few months people forget
that it dropped off in the years Of depression
which followed the panic of 1873 to less than
half its former proportions, and in 1877 had
fallen as low as only 1873 ,469 souls. Another
thing which Northern people forget is the fact
that the natural increase OF population is larger
in the South than in their Own section.
The Negroes are proverbial for fecundity, and
among the whites large families are much oftener
found than in the North. The small number of
children in the Eastern families has attracted the
attention of all statisticians and good ministers
in New England have been known to preach to
their congregations upon their neglect to fulfil
the Divine command SO to replenish the earth"
The difference in this respect between the North
and South is 80 marked that it cannot fail to
attract the travellers attention, and this is q
most vital element in the problem. Moreover.
this relative advantage on the side of the South
has been even greater than usual during the past
decade. The North suffered much more than
the South from the panic and the hard times
which followed it. The extensive interruption of
manufacturing, the general upsetting in business
centers and the depression caused thereby were
felt much more keenly in the upper than in the
lower half of the country. The population of
the South, supported almost entirely by agricul-
tural industry did not experience the difficulty in
obtaining even a bare subsistence which befell large
classes in the North. Now, no fact is more con-
~clusively proved by statistics than that hard
times greatly diminish the number of
marriages, and materially reduced the birth
rate. Not only, therefore, is the natural
increase among a million people at the South
HAOnSSA bhod VIZ ooWO ou40C u tuC
in ordinary times, but this preponderence on the
part of the South has been even greater than
usual during this last decade. 1t must be kept
in mind, also, that while there has been next to
no emigration from the South to the North since
1870, there has been a large movement of popu-
lation the other way. Not q Southern State but
has received many Northern colonies, and in sew
eral the gains from this source have been very
large.
The elements of the problem 1T is obvious,
therefore, that there is nothing suspicious in the
showing made by the South. The elements of
the problem are very simple. In 1870 the for
mer slave States contained about fourteen millions
of people, and the North about twenty-four.
Three millions is an estimate Of the number of
immigrants from abroad during the decade. If
the South had received a third of this number
its increase from this source would be about as
great as the other two millions would produce
among the almost twice as large population of
the North. The South has not received anywhere
near a third, but the deficit has largely been made
up by emigration from the North. The growth
of ten or eleven millions in the %country's popula-
ton come chiefly from the natural increase of
thirty-eight millions who were in it ten years
ago, and when it is considered that this natural
increase is always faster in the South than in the
North, and has been relatively even faster than
usual in the last ten years, any reasonable man
would expect to find that this gain counter-bal-
anced the advantage which the North obtained
from larger foreign immigration, and that the
population of the two sections had grow in about
the same proportion. And this is just what the
figures show.-AnderSon lnteAigencer.