Population growth

The 1990s was the only decade of the 20th century when every state gained population.

The growth rate during the 1990s (13 per cent) was more than the rate in the1980s (10 per cent), but significantly less than the rate experienced during 1950s -when a baby boom contributed appreciably to the 18 per cent gain. With an overall 20

per cent growth rate, the West grew more rapidly than any other region. Nevada swelled 66 per cent and Arizona gained 40 per cent. California had the largest numerical gain of any state, adding 4.1 million people. Altogether, the West gained 10.4 million

new residents. The South was the second fastest growing region, increasing 17 per cent. With a 26 per cent gain, Georgia was the most rapidly growing state in this region. Texas and Florida had the largest numerical increases in the South, 3.8 million

and 3.0 million, respectively.

The total gain for the South (nearly 14.8 million) was the most of any region. The increase in the Northeast was 6 per cent or 2.8 million people. In general, metropolitan areas across the United States grew faster than nonmetropolitan areas, 14 per cent and

10 per cent, respectively. In the Northeast, the population in metropolitan areas Immigration played an outstanding role in the making of the American nation. All Americans, except the Red Indians, are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, immigration came at different times, in different circumstances, from different parts of the globe. But all of them went through the same experience of being uprooted from their old

homes and transplanted to a new one. All, even the ignorant and lowly, brought their strength, culture and faith. All of them are ingredients in the giant melting pot of America. Among the flood of immigrants to North America, one group of people arrived unwillingly. These were Africans. About half a million Africans were brought to the colonies as slaves between 1619 when the first blacks were brought to Virginia and, when importing slaves to the United States was banned. By 1810, there were 7. 2 million people in the United States of which 1. 2 million were slaves and 186, 768 fгее blacks. Slavery was abolished in 1865 according to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. In present day America African Americans compose more than 12 percent of the total population of 300 million (2007). With the formation of the American republic immigration to the United States from the Old World continued far and wide. From 1820, when records were first kept, to the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, about 5 million newcomers from Ireland, England and Germany threw in their lots with those Americans who had become naturalized. Between 1845 and 1850 the Irish people faced famine. The potato crop, upon which the Irish depended for subsistence,

suffered blight for five years, and about 750, 000 Irish starved to death. Many of those who survived left Ireland for the United States. In 1847 alone more than 118,000 Irish

people emigrated to the United States. By 1860, one of every four people in New York had been born in Ireland. Even the Civil War did not seriously stop the stream of immigration, and after the war it swelled to a torrent.

During the Civil War, the federal government encouraged immigration from Europe, especially from the German states, by offering grants of land to those immigrants who would serve as troops in the armies of the North. The Homestead Act of 1862 which granted land free of charge to those who would take up farming was a major magnet in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1865 about 20 per cent of Northern soldiers were wartime immigrants. Today, one-third of Americans are of German stock. The

American population of 1870 was consequently, a very heterogeneous one. Out of one thousand Americans, in that year, 435 were native-born whites of native parentage, 292 native-born whites of foreign or mixed parentage, 144 foreign-born whites, 127 Negroes; one Indian and one Chinaman rounded out the number. It is interesting to relate the change of attitude to immigration by the American ruling-class. Chinese immigration may serve as an interesting example. Before the 1850s few Chinese entered the country. During the 1850s more than 41,000 Chinese made their way across the Pacific Ocean to settle in the United States. They were encouraged to come because "coolie" labour was in great demand when cheap workers were needed to build the transcontinental railroad system. It was estimated that 9,000 out of the 10,000

labourers who built the Union Pacific railroad were Chinese. Continued Chinese emigration to America was met with great favour by the railroad builders of America until 1869 when the transcontinental line was finished at Ogden (Utah), and thousands of Chinese were thrown out of work. When economic depression occurred in the 1870s the slogan

"The Chinese must go" echoed around the nation.

Until about 1880, most immigrants came from northern and western Europe. These immigrants were termed as the "old" immigration. Then a great change occurred. More and more immigrants began coming from countries in eastern and southern Europe. They were Poles, Italians, Russians, Ukrainians, Greeks, Hungarians, Czechs. By 1896 more than half

of all immigrants were from eastern and southern Europe and they were known as the "new" immigration. The first decade of the 20th century brought only 340, 000 immigrants from Ireland, and another 340, 000 from Germany, but it brought over two million from Austria - Hungary. Before restrictions were introduced after the First World War, Italy had sent to the

United States four and a half million of her sons and daughters, Austria-Hungary four millions, Russia and Poland three and a quarter million.

One group of people who came to the United States during this period were Jews. The first Jewish people actually settled in North America as early as 1654, but Jews did not move to the United States in great numbers until the 1880s. During the 1880s, Jews suffered terrible pogroms throughout eastern Europe. Between 1880 and 1925, about two million Jews emigrated to America. The "old" immigration had spread out quite evenly throughout the North and West of the USA and in about equal numbers in farming and industry, but the "new" immigration congregated in the industrial centres of the East and Middle West. By 1900, two thirds of the foreign-born were living in towns and cities. In New York City there were hundreds of thousands of Italians, Poles, Jews, Russians. There were so many immigrants coming that

the government opened a special port of entry in New York harbour. This port was called Ellis Island. Between 1892, when Ellis Island was opened, and 1954, when it closed, more than 20 million immigrants entered the United States through this port of entry. During its busiest days, almost 2, 000 immigrants a day passed through this place. The immigrants contributed much to the American nation, but their contribution was not only that of unskilled labour. They gave richness and colour to American life and in

many fields added greatly to the nation's scientific, technical and cultural heritage. Yet immigration had created problems too. Labour felt it in the form of competition for jobs. Housing posed by far the most serious urban problem, for substandard living quarters aggravated other evils, such as disease, the danger of fire, and the disintegration of family with its attendant mental anguish, crime and juvenile delinquency. Crime flourished in

the slums. Around 1900 there developed a widespread feeling that it was time to call a halt on unrestricted immigration. With the end of World War I Congress set a quantitative limit to immigration by passing a series of laws in 1921, 1924 and 1929. The limit was 150, 000 a year. Thus, by 1930 an era in American immigration history came to an end.

As a result of mass immigration in the past and the continued immigration of the present the United States is termed as the "melting pot" of nations. A "melting pot" meant that as immigrants from many different cultures came to the United States, their previous national identity melted away and they became part of a completely new culture. The United Sates was likened to a big melting pot when different cultures blended together

forming a new cultural identity. However, such an approach today sounds simplistic, for different groups of people keep many of their old customs, they live together in distinctive communities in many large American cities. They also mix with native-born Americans and old traditions give way to new customs. Popular use of the melting-pot metaphor is believed to have derived from Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot, which was first performed in Washington, D. C. in 1908. The melting pot idea is most strongly associated with the United States, particularly in reference to "model" immigrant groups of the past. Past generations of immigrants in America became

successful by working to shed their historic identities and adopt the ways of their new country. Even today "melting pot" remains a stock phrase in American political and cultural dialogue. The general perception of its process and effects can be summed up in "The Great American Melting Pot" song which actually was composed in the 1970s for children's TV:

Traditionally, immigration scholars have seen the phenomenon of assimilation as a

relentless economic progression. The hardworking new arrivals struggled along with a

new language and at low-paying jobs in order for their sons and daughters to climb the economic ladder, each generation advancing a rung. There were many cases in the US

history when this was true. But in the current immigration wave, something markedly different is happening in the middle of the great American "melting pot". The idea of multiculturalism which often comes along with political correctness is often put forward as an alternative to assimilation. This theory, which contrasts to the melting pot theory, is described as the salad bowl theory, or, as it is known in Canada, the cultural mosaic. In the multicultural approach, each "ingredient" retains its integrity and flavour, while contributing to a successful final product. Immigrant communities in the

United States, for example, display the influences of both multicultural and melting-pot approaches. The decision of whether to support a melting-pot or multicultural approach has developed into an issue of much debate. The prevailing attitude today is multiculturalism when the concept of nationhood is closely associated with an awareness of one's ethnic heritage and a deep respect of people of different races with every group contributing

something to the making of the American nation. The specific features of capitalism in the USA influenced the labour movement in the

country. The existence of a large area of unoccupied land substantially affected labour trends. To a certain degree the unoccupied lands of the West had served as a "safety valve" for labour discontent or as a refuge for many workingmen. Had the millions of immigrants who poured into the United States in the nineteenth century all stayed in the industrial cities of the East instead of swarming over the country, the position of labour

would have been vastly worse than it actually was. This supply of land was exhausted only in the eighteen nineties after which the working class movement became an organized phenomenon. Labour could no longer escape the problems of an industrialized society, but was forced to stand and face them. Another hindrance to the growth of labour movement was the multinational composition of the working class primarily due to mass immigration which meant that every year several hundred thousand recruits joined the ranks of labour, eager for work in the mills and mines, at almost any wages and under almost any conditions. The "captains of capitalism"

made use of this diversity of nationalities to split the labour movement. It set the workers of one nationality against the workers of another.

Nor was this the only competition that confronted labour in the North. From the South, after the turn of the century, came tens of thousand of sturdy Negroes ready to take places beside the Poles, Italians and Hungarians. However, in boom times there was work enough or all. Yet, the general tendency of this mass movement was to drive down wages.

A third factor — again one unique to the United States — was the existence side by side of a national economy and a Federal political system. The problems of labour — in the coal industry, in textiles, in iron and steel mills — were much the same the nation over,

but the power to deal with them was lodged in the states alone. Competition was nation-wide, but the right to regulate wages and hours was only state-wide. Thus labour might win important concessions in the textile industry of Pennsylvania only to have them nullified by a shift of these industries to states where laws were less exacting. The system was fully changed only (in the 1930s of the 20th) century when national control over the

whole field of industrial relations was established.

The seventies and eighties of the 19th century became a turning point in the history ofthe USA's labour movement when three types of labour organizations emerged: the first was the industrial union, best represented by the Knights of Labour; the second was the craft union and the subsequent federation of craft unions into the American Federation of Labour; the third type was the radical socialist or revolutionary labour groups.

Among the early organizations of the American working men, one should note the Noble Order of the Knights of Labour, founded in 1869 but dating its real history from 1879, when Terence Powderly became Grand Master. The organization was open to all workers — skilled and unskilled, farmers, mill hands, miners and artisans, and demanded an eight-hour working day and the abolition of child labour. In the eighties a mass

movement of labour led to serious confrontations in the country.

On May 1,1886 active preparations were made for a general strike for the eight-hour working day. In Chicago the strike inspired a grand meeting at Haymarket Square. On May 1, 40,000 workers went on strike, and for the first two days mass demonstrations were of a peaceful character, but on May 3 the police opened fire on the unarmed workers killing five of them and wounding fifty severely. On the following day during a mass protest meeting someone threw a bomb killing 7 policemen. The latter retaliated killing and wounding many more workers. The authorities arrested the leaders of the strike, four

of which were later hanged. Despite all the bloodshed the dramatic events proved successful with 50,000 workers winning the 8-hour working day. Since then May 1 has been celebrated as a day of working class struggle and solidarity. Meanwhile a new organization was rising to power: the American Federation of Labour (AFL). In 1863 a Dutch immigrant named Solomon Gompers arrived in the United States. He had given up his London cigar shop and decided to try his luck in America. He brought with him a thirteen year-old son, Samuel, who promptly joined a union and from that time the life of Samuel Gompers was identified with union labour in the United States. He brought together the representatives of various trade-unions which in 1886 became the American Federation of Labour, and Samuel Gompers

became its president for 42 years. increased 6 per cent, while population in nonmetropolitan areas increased by 5 per cent.

In the Midwest the metropolitan areas had a nine per cent gain, compared with a six per cent gain in nonmetropolitan areas. The South saw a population increase of 19 per cent in metropolitan areas, compared with an increase of only 12 per cent in nonmetropolitan areas. However, the West did not follow the trend. While metropolitan areas in the West increased almost 20 per cent, nonmetropolitan areas grew 21 per cent.