Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1883-08-02
Longevity Statistics.

|
| A student Of the reports of the tenth
census has compiled a table for the pur-
pose of showing in what State or States
one has the best chances for long life.
| New Hamshire seems to him to be the
favorite refuge of green old age. for he
| finds that one-seventy-fourth of the in
habitants are at least eighty years old.
The proportion among native white
males is one in eighty, but the environ
ment in New Hampshire seems to have
been even more favorable to the preser-
walton of life in the other sex, for the
proportion among native white females
is one in tifty-eight. Other New Eng
land States do not contain quite so
many old persons, the average proper
ton for the six being one in 1874. Com
| ing to New York, he finds that for one
person who has reached the age OF
| eighty there are 161 who have not been
| so fortunate, and in the three middle
| States the average proportion is one in
| 1872. AS he goes southwark he discov-
ers greater preponderance of young
| blood, for in six south Atlantic States
| the average proportion is one in 2O3.
| The gulf States afford less attractive
| shelter for the aged, for the average is
| one in 800.
| In Texas, where SO many worthy per
sons die with their boots on in the prime
of life, only one Octogenarian can be
found in group of 497 citizens. The
average rises again in the interior States
east OF the Mississippi, but in the great
lake States it falls to one in 263, a
! good old age being obtained with the
greatest difficulty in the wealthy and
| prosperous State of Illinois. In seven
States west of the Mississippi River the
aged rarely appear, for the average
proportion is one in 453. In Iowa a
| crop of 334 persons yields only one who
| has reached the age of four-score; in
| Minnesota, Nebraska. and Kansas only
| one OF these aged citizens can be found
in 4 group that would yield two in
Iowa, and in Colorado, 1, $50 inhabit-
ants must pass in review before an &C.
togenarian comes in sight. The old
are even more rare in Nevada, but in
California and Oregon the proportion is
nearly one in 500. If the inhabitants of
the whole country could be assembled
in 227 groups, it would be possible to
place at the head of each group one
patriarch of eightyIor more years. SO
our student, assuming that long life is
the inalienable right of those who re-
side in New Hampshire, Verm ont, and
Maine, cries: Flee to the mountains of
New England for health and longevity
But these figures, although they may
have been carefully compiled, are mis-
leading. If the boundaries of our States
were walls so high and so thick that no
one could get over them, and if these
walls had securely shut in the inhab-
itants for eighty or ninety years while
they were coming into the world, grow
ing and dying, an enumeration of each
segregated State group, with state
ment of each person s age, might prove
that in one State old men and women
could be more easily grown than in an
other, and might reveal the best soil for
such mature crops. Boundaries are not
walls. Emigration is a mighty factor
in this problem. Young men and women
have been going out of New England
into other States, and especially into
the West. Old men and women have
returned to New England to pass their
days where they were born, by the side
of other old men and women who have
passed all their lives there. And so we
lind that the young are comparatively
few while the old are many in the States
of New England. The figures which
relate to other Eastern States should be
accompanied by the same explanation,
and by others which will occur to every
thoughtful person.
And why should we expect to find
aged men in Colorado or IN the other
States which were almost uninhabited a
few years ago9 There has not been
time for them to grow there. and very
few of them have gone there from other
parts of the country. The same statement
can be made concerning other States.
but with less and less force as we ap-
proach the Atlantic coast from the west.
The subject grows as we examine it:
many explanations-the influence of
foreign immigration, the varying attrac-
tons of ones native soil, mortality in
the late war, a thousand and one causes
for movements of the young and the
middle-aged-crowd the mind. Fig
ures. it is said, do not lie, but sometimes
they deceive those who handle them
with the best intentions. Long life can
be more easily attained, it is true. in
some places than it can be in others. but
the figures quoted above throw but little
if any light upon the subject of the in
quiry.-C aicdgo Times.
A Wag Wants Postage Stamps.