communicants (0.3%) are heads of families only, and largely of the
Protestants; whereas they represent practically the total Roman
Catholic population above years of age. In comparing the figures
of 1890 with those of 1906 these cautions are not of force, since both
census counts were taken by the same methods. The membership
of the Protestant bodies increased in the interval 44.8%, while
that of the Roman Catholic Church increased 93.5%. The immigration
from Catholic countries could easily account for (though
this does not prove that in fact it is the only cause of) this great
increase of the Roman Catholic body.
Among the Protestants, the Methodists with 17.5% of the total membership, the Baptists with 17.2, the Lutherans with 6.4, the Presbyterians with 5.6 and the Disciples and Christians with 3.5—each of these bodies comprising more than a million members—together include one-half of the total church membership of the country, and four-fifths (81.3%) of all Protestant members.
The Baptists and Methodists are much stronger in the South, relatively to other bodies, than elsewhere; the former constituting in the South Atlantic states 43.9% of all church members, and in the South Central states 39.5%. Adding in the Methodists these proportions become 76.3 and 65.3%. The Lutherans are relatively strongest in the North Central division of the country (13.2%); the Presbyterians in the North Atlantic and Western divisions (6.0%); and the Disciples in the South Central division (6.1%). The Roman Catholics are strongest in the Western division and the North Atlantic division, with 49.2% in the former and 56.6% in the latter of all church members; their share in the North Central division is 36.9%. Thus the numerical superiority of the Baptists and Methodists in the two Southern divisions is complementary to that of the Roman Catholics in the other three divisions of the country. New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire in the eastern part of the country, Louisiana in the south, and New Mexico, Arizona, California and Montana in the western part are distinctively Roman Catholic states, with not less than 63% of these in the total church body. Racial elements are for the most part the explanation. So also the immigration of French Canadians and of Irish explains the fact that in every state of one-time Puritan New England the Roman Catholics were a majority over Protestants and all other churches. This was true in 1890 of 12 states, while in one other the Roman Catholics held a plurality; in 1906 the corresponding figures were 16 and 20. The Protestant bodies are more widely and evenly distributed throughout the country than are the Roman Catholics.
The total value of church property (almost in its entirety exempt from taxation) reported in 1906 was $1,257,575,867, of which $935,942,578 was reported for Protestant bodies, $292,638,786 for Roman Catholic bodies, and $28,994,502 for all other bodies.
Occupations.—29,073,233 persons 10 years or more of age—nearly two-fifths (38.3%) of the country's total population—were engaged in gainful occupations in 1900. Occupations were reported first for free males in 1850, and since 1860 women workers have been separately reported. Five main occupation groups are covered by the census: (1) agriculture, (2) professional service, (3) domestic and personal service, (4) trade and transportation, (5) manufacture and mechanical pursuits. The percentage of all wage-earners engaged in these groups in 1900 was 35.7, 4.3, 19.2, 16.4, and 24.4 respectively. Outside of these are the groups of mining and fishing.
Although manufactures have increased tremendously of recent years—their products representing in 1905 a gross total of $14,802,147,087 as compared with $6,309,000,000 for those of farms (according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture)—agriculture is still the predominant industry of the United States, employing nearly half of the workers, and probably giving subsistence to considerably more than half of the people of the country.
Turning to the factor of sex, it may be stated that the total number of the gainfully employed in 1900 above given included 80.0%, of all the men and boys, and 18.8% of all the women and girls in the country. The corresponding figures in 1880 were 78.7 and 14.7%. The proportion of women workers is greatest in the North Atlantic group of states (22.1%) where they are engaged in manufacturing, and in the South (23.8) where negro women are engaged in agricultural operations. The percentage of such wage-earners is therefore increasing much more rapidly in the former region. But in all other parts of the country the increase is faster than in the South; since aside from agriculture, which has long been in a relatively stable condition, there is not by any means so strong a movement of women into professional services in city districts. The increase is universal. There is not a state that does not show it. The greatest increase for any section between 1880 and 1900 was that of the North Central division from 8.8 to 14.3%. Here too both factors—farm-life, as in North Dakota, and manufacturing, as in Illinois-showed their plain influence.
Of all agricultural labourers 9.4% were females in 1900 (7.7 in 1880); but in the South the proportion was much greater—16.5 in the South Atlantic and 14.9 in the South Central division. In professional service 34.2% (in 1880, 29.4) were females, the two northern sections showing the highest proportions. In the occupations of musicians and teachers of music, and of school-teachers and professors (which together account for seven-eighths of professional women) women preponderate. The same sex constituted only 37.5% (34.6% in 1880) of the wage-earners of the third group; the South also showing here, as is natural in view of its coloured class, much the highest and the Western division of states much the lowest percentage. Women are in excess in the occupations of boarding and lodging house keepers, housekeepers, launderers, nurses and midwives, and servants and waiters. These account for almost all women in this group; servants and waitresses make up two-thirds of the total. Finally, in the fourth and fifth groups the percentage of women was 10.6 (3.4 in 1880) and 18.5 (16.7 in 1880). In manufactures the South Atlantic states show a higher percentage than the North Central, owing to the element of child labour already indicated. In the third group women greatly preponderate in the occupation of stenographers and type-writers; and in those of book-keepers and accountants, clerks and copyists, packers and shippers, saleswomen (which is the largest class), and telegraph and telephone operators they have a large representation (13 to 34%). A great variation exists in the proportion of the sexes employed in different manufacturing industries. Of dress-makers, milliners, seamstresses (which together make up near half of the total in this occupation group) more than 96% are women. Of the makers of paper boxes, of shirts, collars and cuffs, of hosiery and knitting mill operatives, of glove-makers, silk mill operatives and book-binders they are more than half; so also of other textile workers, excluding wool and cotton mill operatives (these last the second largest group of women workers in manufactures), in which occupations males are in a slight excess. The distribution of women wage earners in 1900 among the great occupation groups was as follows: in agriculture, 18.4%; professional service, 8.1%; domestic and personal service, 39.4%; trade and transportation, 9.4%; manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, 24.7%.
The proportion which children 10 to 15 years of age engaged in gainful occupations bore to the whole number of such children was in 1880 24.4% for males, and 9.0% for females. Twenty years later the corresponding figures were 26.1 and 10.2%. In the North Atlantic and North Central states, notwithstanding their manufacturing industries, the proportions were much lower (17.1 and 17.0 in 1900), and they increased very little in the period mentioned. In the Western group the increase was even less, and the total (10.9% in 1900) also. But in the South Atlantic and the South Central states—where agriculture, mining and manufacturing have in recent decades become important—although the increase was very slight, the proportions were far above those of the other sections, both in 1880 and in 1900. In the former year the ratios were 40.2 and 41.5, in the latter 41.6 and 42.7%. In Alabama (70.8% in 1880), North and South Carolina, and Arkansas the ratio exceeded 50% in 1900.
National Wealth.—Mulhall has estimated the aggregate wealth of the United States in 1790 at $620,000,000, assigning of this value $479,000,000 to lands and $141,000,000 to buildings and improvements. It is probable that this estimate is generous according to the values of that time. But even supposing $1,000,000,000 to be a juster estimate according to present-day values, it is probable that the increase of this since 1790 has been more than a hundredfold and since 1850 (since when such data have been gathered by the census) about fifteenfold. The value of farm property increased from $3,967,343,580 in 1850 to $20,439,901,164 in 1900. The gross value of manufactures rose in the same interval from $1,019,106,616 to $13,010,036,514; of farm products, from $2,212,540,927 in 1880 to $6,309,000,000 in 1900. The census estimate of the true value of “property” constituting the national wealth was limited in an enumeration of 1850 to taxable realty and privately held personalty; in 1900 it covered also exempt realty, government land, and corporation and public personalty. The estimate of the national wealth of 1850 was $7,135,780,228; in 1904 (made by the census office), $107,104,192,410. It may be added that the net ordinary revenue of the government was in 1850 $43,592,889, and in I909 $662,324,445; that the value of imports rose from $7.48 per capita in 1850 to $14.47 in 1909; and of exports from $6.23 to $18.50. The public debt on the 1st of November 1909, less certificates and notes offset by cash in the Treasury, was $1,295,147,432.04. (F. S. P.)
VI.—Industries and Commerce
Manufactures.—In the colonial period there were beginnings in some lines of manufacturing, but the policy of the British government was generally hostile and the increase was insignificant. In the first decades after the establishment of independence the resources and energies of the nation were absorbed in the task of occupying the vacant spaces of a continent, and subduing it to agriculture; and so long as land was so abundant
