A Century in Census Numbers, 1800–1900

Draft for "A Century in Numbers" (January 1901)

1Clara Mendez, a reporter for an invented newspaper, the Riverton Herald, spread the census reports across her desk. Since 1790, the Constitution has required a count of everyone in the country every ten years. With the century just ended, she wanted to show her readers how much the 1800s had changed the nation.

2The country grew fast. In 1800 about 5 million people lived in the United States; by 1900 there were about 76 million. Part of the growth came from large families and part from new lands added in the West. Part came from people arriving from other countries.

3The census counted any place with 2,500 or more people as urban. In the early 1800s, almost all Americans lived on farms or in small villages. After about 1840, factories, railroads and trade drew more people to cities. New farm machines such as reapers let fewer workers harvest more grain, so many young people left farms for city jobs. Chicago, a small town in the 1830s, became the meeting point of more than a dozen railroads and a center for shipping grain, lumber and meat.

4In 1845 a disease began to destroy Ireland's potato crop, and the famine that followed lasted until about 1852. About a million Irish people died, and many more crossed the Atlantic. Many settled in Eastern port cities such as Boston and New York, where they could find work right away. Germans also came in large numbers; many bought farmland in Midwestern states such as Wisconsin and Missouri, while others opened shops in cities like Cincinnati and Milwaukee. Later, many Swedes and Norwegians started farms in Minnesota. On the West Coast, Chinese immigrants came during the California gold rush and helped build the transcontinental railroad, until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred most Chinese workers from entering.

5During the Civil War (1861–1865), many immigrants served in Union armies. In 1892, the federal government opened a new immigration station on Ellis Island in New York Harbor. A year later, in 1893, a severe depression began. Many factories closed, and many workers lost their jobs for several years.

6By 1890, about one in seven people living in the United States had been born in another country. Most of them lived in the North and the West; the South, with fewer factory jobs, drew far fewer newcomers. Clara wondered which of her numbers would surprise her readers most.