Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/748

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734
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

an absolute excess of females in their total city population,[1] and that only one, North Carolina, has an excess of females in its rural districts. The map on opposite page indicates more clearly than the table the geographical grouping of the states with an excess of females in their urban districts.

There is, then, an excess of females in the cities of all the states east of the Mississippi except Delaware,[2] and those states which have recently received a considerable immigration from the older states as well as from abroad. As five-ninths of the immigrants from other countries are male, and as they are so numerous in the eastern cities the disproportion of the sexes among the native population in those cities is probably even greater. For example, of the 2,612,343 native Americans living in the 118 cities and towns of New York state in 1890 51.32 per cent, were females, while of the 1,298,904 immigrants living in the same cities only 50.46 per cent. were females. Yet, there is some evidence to show that the sexes of our immigrant population are more dissociated than the sexes of our native population. For of the immigrants residing in the cities of New York state 50.46 per cent, are females, while of those in the rural districts only 45 per cent, are female, a difference of 5½ per cent. between city and country. Among the native population in the same state the females are, in the country, 49.74 per cent, of the total, and in the cities 51.32 per cent, of the total, a difference of but little over 1½ per cent. On comparison of the negro and white population of the Southern states a similar fact appears. Thus in the cities of Georgia the percentage of females among the whites was 50.33 per cent., while among the negroes it was 54.84, and in the rural districts of the same state the percentage of females among the whites was 49.88 and among the negroes 49.76. The difference for the whites between city and country was thus less than half of 1 per cent., while for the negroes it was over 5 per cent., and on the average in Southern cities the

  1. These twenty-three states include 999 of the 1522 cities, or nearly 66 per cent.
  2. The importance of various forms of iron working in two of the three cities in Delaware may explain the slight excess of males in their population.