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Show j lUby Mmzrka UJomm Outnumber ilen i f Whatever difference Dame Nature ? may have intended between the spheres I of influence of men and women, she -vidently intended that numerically at i least the two sexes should stand on I ' nearly the same footing. The world over, except where recognizable, and r ""hat might be called artificial, causes . interfere, the male and female t le- ments of the population are about 1 equal. At first sight, perhaps, this may not seem at all remarkable. But it. is to be remembered that in manv families large ones, toothe great majority of the children are of one sex or the other. And one should not be surprise if the aggregate effect of this lop- hldedness were to produce a consider- j able excess of men or women in a na - I tion. The fact that such is not the I case, then, shows that there is some ' potent and mysterious law of compen- ' ration at work upon the race as a ! whole. And this Hw operates upon. many oi me animals as well as men. On the farm it i. founl convenient to Xreerve a great predominance of one sp" over t'-e :it..v i- l.i cati.e and chickens. chick-ens. The bull calf is predestined from his birth to conversion into veal, and a sim 'a rly- stern fate consigns the superfluous su-perfluous cockerel to the gridiron or thicken pie at a tender age. But, so far as the natural increase is con-cerned con-cerned among cattle and poultry, an approximately even balance is pre- 1 served. ' Curiosity, not to say astonishment, I is excited, therefore, by a recent an- j nouncement of the census bureau. The ' enumeration of 1900 shows that there I are more men and boys than women and girls in this country, and that vhe difference exceeds 1.800,000 in a population popula-tion of Tfi.3C3.3S7. The excess appears more distinctly, perhaps, when it is faid that there are 512 males and only . 4 4SS females in every 1,000 people in the United States. FLUCTUATIONS OF FIFTY YEARS. What is more, this sort of thing has been going on. with some little fluctuation fluctu-ation in the percentage, for over half a century. As long ago as 1S50 there was a distinct numerical superiority of the male over the female element. By 1860 ! the preponderance was even more con-. . spicucrs. but in 1ST0 less than for sev-' sev-' eral decides. The returns for 1SS0 show a. slieht gain once more, though the disparity of 1850 was not quite . reached, and those for 1S!)0 a still further fur-ther increase. Th situation has scarce-J scarce-J ?v changed in th last ten years. In-: In-: deed. th census bureau figures out a j microscopic falling off in the growth of the mnle population .as compared with lh" female. To be sure, the excels ex-cels was only l.R60."97 in 1R90. and has sinc been enlarged by 251.727; but the bureau finds that the percentages of gain are not ouite alike, and that ther? are faint indications of a future reaction. 1 The stat of things here revealed is i the mor striking when comnared with i that evistjng in Europe. Both in the United Kingdom and on the continent te women ar mn" numerous than : ihe Tve-v Tt i posiVle to detect forces ; tat d-c-tnrb the tmiinee In some of , th"s- coii-ts But Mr. Porter, su-j su-j pe-inleT'ent o" th- census of 1S10. was I in'-Pned to th:rV: that thee influences I rlH n-t nncrflti perceptibly in Austria j a th- N"tbo"'?n''s. and hnc tint j rorrni" the f."mala sex outnumbers the mpl i-n neir-iv the nmportion of ?t s r.ornr(nrj,nn wjth tn Ftan. drd hQn. r.TVP5 the excess of males Amric stmo than if nature exhibited ex-hibited strict Impartiality. WAR AND IMMIGRATION. The two forces which appear to be chiefly concerned in upsetting the equilibrium equi-librium are war and immigration. And of the two the former is much the less effective. Still it was powerful enough to influence the returns in Germany and France after the famous struggle of 1870-71. And in the United States it pulled down the male proportion of 5,112 in every 10,000 in 1S60 to 5,056 in 1870. Migration, of course, works in two ways. The majority of immigrants are men. The departures from one country, coun-try, therefore, leaves the other sex I in excess in one part of the world, while' they promote the preponderance of their own in another. Thus, in some European countries the proportion of males to females is about 4S5 to 515. I Now, inasmuch as three out of every i five immigrants who come to the United States are men, and ten out of j every seventy-five people here are of i foreign birth, it is easy to see how im-! im-! portant is this factor in establishing j the ratio between the sexes. In 1890, for instance, the excess of. males here i was made up in this proportion: Native Na-tive born. 62S.797: foreiirn born. 884.713 j And yet scarcely a seventh of the pop-j pop-j ulation came from other lands. It is to ' this fast, no doubt, that immigration i has experienced a slight check in the last few years, that the recent slight falling off in the masculine ascendency in America is due. WOMEN STAY AT HOME. But people migrate not only from one country to another, but also from one part of a country to another. This is peculiarly true in the United States. In consequence, there is a depletion of the ranks of the sterner sex in the east and a strong reinforcement in the west. Indeed, in the latter quarter there is a double invasion from the more densely ! populated parts of our own land and from the old world. Hence the distribution dis-tribution of the sexes is not uniform. Along the Atlantic seaboard Sor at least half a century there has been practically no excess of males, and on the whole, a slight deficiency. The suT perabundance of women has been most conspicuous, though, in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia. Co-lumbia. Just why there should be such a situation at the national capital is not clear. But in New England a special local agency has been at work an influx in-flux of factory girls Trom Canada. Thus there is an occasional exception to the rule that the majority of immigrants are males. As might be expected, the greatest excess of men is to be found in the far west, in the great agricultural and mining districts. In Minnesota and Nebraska there were at least fifty-four men out of every 100 people for a long time, from fifty-five to fifty-eight In the Dakotas, and from sixty to sixty-eight sixty-eight In most of the regions to the west and southwest. The ratio in Montana was once as great as eighty-one out of 100. and even in 1890 was 66 -to 33. A slow, steady tendency toward equality equal-ity has been observable, however, except ex-cept in Utah, where the excess of men kept below the national average until 1830, and then increased only slightly. The connection between this fact and. polygamy is too obvious to need point-ins- out. |