Fletcher W. Hewes & Henry Gannett, Ratios of Total Foreign-Born...to the Total Population in Each of the Fifty Most Populous Cities (1883)

The graphs in this display were included in Scribner's Statistical Atlas of the United States, published in 1883, and compiled under the direction of Fletcher W. Hewes and Henry Gannett using 1880 US Census data. The top graph visualizes the ratio of foreign-born immigrants compared to the native-born population of the 50 most populous cities in the United States in 1880. The lower three graphs further subdivide the immigrant population by providing separate ratios of Germans, Irish, and British-Americans compared to the total population in the same 50 cities. Between 1870 and 1900, 12 million immigrants arrived in the United States, mostly from European countries; specifically Germany, Ireland, and England. In the top graph, the three cities with the highest ratios of foreign-born migrants are Fall River, Massachusetts; San Francisco, California; and Lawrence, Massachusetts. Both Fall River and Lawrence had major textile industries which attracted many European laborers, while San Francisco attracted mostly Chinese immigrants, thanks in part to the Gold Rush. German immigrants made up almost 30% of Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s population, drawn there due to its reputation as a “boom town” and as a center for German Catholicism. 14.7% of British-Americans settled in Lowell, Massachusetts, home to a major textile industry. This increase in immigration also led to an increase in racial tensions and xenophobia. Of the foreign-born population, Hewes and Gannett remark, “It appears that every nationality except one, the Swedes and Norwegians, affects urban life to a greater extent…than does the native element… The fact that nearly one-half of the Irish, and much more than one-third of the Germans and French, have swarmed into the cities, is highly significant in connection with the problems of city government” (p. li). These visualizations help to inform our understanding of immigration during the Industrial Revolution, including patterns of immigrant settlement and rising racial conflict in different regions.