Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/746

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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

That is, while native males are more numerous in the country, as a whole, and also in three-fourths of the states, native females are more numerous in seven-tenths of the cities. As the immigrant foreign born population is about five-ninths male, and is largely settled in our cities, it might be urged that this excess of females among the native population in the cities may merely serve to counterbalance the excess of males among the immigrants. To determine this it is necessary to recur to the proportion of the sexes among the total population in city and country. The total number of males and the total number of females in the 1522 cities of the country has been found, and the following table prepared:

Table V.

NUMBER OF EACH SEX IN THE RURAL AND URBAN (2500+) POPULATION IN 1890.

No. of Males

No. of Females

Excess of

Males

Females

Per Cent. of

Males Females

Rural 20,708,894 19,180,931 1,527,963 51.92 48.08

Urban 11,358,986 11,373.439 14,453 49.97 50.03

This shows that the total excess of males in the United States is not quite equal to their excess in the rural districts, and that in the cities on the average the sexes are almost equal in number, while in the rural districts there are about forty- eight women and fifty-two men in every hundred. The result seems to support the conjecture that the excess of native women in cities about offsets the excess of foreign-born men. Further light, however, is necessary, and it may be obtained by examining how the sexes are distributed between city and country in each state and territory. In Table VI. on next page the states are arranged according to the proportion of females in the cities.

From this table it appears that the proportion of females in the cities is almost uniformly greater than it is in the rural districts of the same state, that nearly half the states have