rse, immigration brings no need of
prudence--it rather helps to bring the enormous fortunes which distract
their attention from the home. But their numbers are insignificant
compared with the millions who determine the fate of the nation. More
significant are the well-to-do farmers and their wives who have
inherited the soil redeemed by their fathers, and whose desire to be
free for enjoying the fruits of civilization lead them to the position
so strongly condemned by President Roosevelt. This class of farmers, as
shown in the census map of the size of private families,[130] may be
traced across the Eastern and Northern states, running through New
England, rural New York, Northern Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan,
parts of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa. In the rich counties of
southern Michigan, settled and occupied mainly by native stock from New
York, the average size of families is less than four persons, as it is
in a large area of Central New York, whereas for the country at large it
is 4.7, and for counties in the mining sections of Michigan occupied by
immigrants it rises as high as 5.8 persons.

The census figures showing the size of families do not, however, reveal
the number of children born to a family, since they show only those
living together and not those who have moved away or died. This
especially affects the large-sized families, and does not reveal, for
example, a fact shown by Kuczynski from the state census of
Massachusetts that the average number of children of the foreign-born
women in that state is 4.5, while for native women it is only 2.7.[131]
This also affects the showing for a state like West Virginia, composed
almost entirely of native Americans of colonial stock, with only 2 per
cent foreign-born and 5 per cent colored, where the average size of
families is 5.1 persons, the highest in the United States, but where in
the Blue Ridge Mountains I have come upon two couples of native white
Americans who claimed respectively eighteen and twenty-two children.
Throughout the South the reduction in size of families and the
postponement of marriage have not occurred to any great extent either
among the white or colored races, and these are states to which
immigration has contributed less than 3 per cent of their population.
Yet, if Superintendent Walker's view is sound in all respects, the
Southern whites should shrink from competition with the negro in the
same way that the Northern white