U.S. Census Office, Interstate Migration: 1900 (1903)

This butterfly chart or diverging bar graph, which was included in the 1900 Statistical Atlas of the United States compiled under the direction of Henry Gannett, depicts interstate migration per state in 1900. The graph is split into two sections: number of emigrants on the left and number of immigrants on the right. They are measured in hundreds of thousands with the states listed on the vertical axis. New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio stand out as having significantly high emigration numbers paired with lower immigration numbers. This is most likely due to issues such as overcrowding in big cities, economic competition and pull factors to new, developing areas. There are also quite a few southern states on this graph that have higher emigration numbers than immigration numbers such as, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. This is most likely due to people of color moving north to escape the southern states because of their Jim Crow laws and rampant racism. During this time there was also increasing settlement in the West, due to the development of the Transcontinental Railroad opening access to those states.