Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 81.djvu/210

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204
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES IN 1910

The Bureau of the Census has now issued a bulletin giving the official figures of the thirteenth census, preliminary statements of which have from time to time been made public. The population of the United States was 93,402,151, of which 1,429,885 belongs to the non-contiguous territory of Alaska, Hawaii and Porto Rico and persons in the military and naval service stationed abroad. There are still to be added the inhabitants of the outlying possessions of the United States—some eight millions—nearly all in the Philippine Islands. The percentage of increase from the preceding census is 21, being three tenths of a per cent, larger than for the preceding decade. The population of the United States shows an increase of about one third during each of the seven decades from 1790 to 1860, of about one fourth during the three decades from 1860 to 1890 and of about one fifth during each of the last two decades. Thus while the increase in population over the preceding census continually increases, the percentage of increase becomes continually less, and there is no reason to suppose that the population will increase indefinitely. Indeed, if it were not for foreign immigrants and their larger families, the increment of increase of the population would he very small. It should, however, be added that there are those who hold that the native population would increase more rapidly if it were not for the large immigration.

The density of population and the increase of population, as shown on the accompanying maps, are very unequally distributed over the United States. There are ten states in which there were in 1910 a population per square mile of more than one hundred. Rhode Island with 508, and Massachusetts with 418 are the most densely populated

Number and Distribution of Population per square mile by States, 1910.