| -6,508 | 1,713,251
1860 | 31,443,321 | 31,753,825 | +310,503 | 2,598,214
1870 | 38,558,371 | 42,328,432 | +3,770,061 | 2,314,824
1880 | 50,155,783 | 56,450,241 | +6,294,458 | 2,812,191
1890 | 62,622,250 | 77,266,989 | +14,644,739 | 5,246,613
1900 | 75,559,258 | 100,235,985 | +24,676,727 | 3,687,564
------+------------+---------------+-------------+-----------
Total immigration 1820-1900 19,229,224
-------------------------------------------------------------

This question of the "race suicide" of the American or colonial stock
should be regarded as the most fundamental of our social problems, or
rather as the most fundamental consequence of our social and industrial
institutions. It may be met by exhortation, as when President Roosevelt
says, "If the men of the nation are not anxious to work in many
different ways, with all their might and strength, and ready and able to
fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of families, and if the women
do not recognize that the greatest thing for any woman is to be a good
wife and mother, why that nation has cause to be alarmed about its
future."[126]

The anxiety of President Roosevelt is well grounded; but if race suicide
is not in itself an original cause, but is the result of other causes,
then exhortation will accomplish but little, while the removal or
amelioration of the other causes will of itself correct the resulting
evil. Where, then, shall we look for the causes of race suicide, or,
more accurately speaking, for the reduced proportion of children brought
into the world? The immediate circumstances consist in postponing the
age of marriage, in limiting the number of births after marriage, and in
an increase in the proportion of unmarried people. The reasons are
almost solely moral and not physical. Those who are ambitious and
studious, who strive to reach a better position in the world for
themselves and their children, and who have not inherited wealth, will
generally postpone marriage until they have educated themselves, or
accumulated property, or secured a permanent position. They will then
not bring into the world a larger number of children than they can
provide for on the basis of the standing which they themselves have
attained; for observation shows that those who marry early have large
families, and are generally kept on a lower station in life. The real
problem, therefore, with t