If numbers and social and industrial importance warrant special library
facilities for children, certainly the same reasons underlie the
special library work with foreigners which has within recent years
been carried on extensively in the larger cities. Last month the
census bureau issued an abstract of startling import to those who view
in the coming of vast numbers from across the waters a menace to the
institutions of this democracy. According to this official enumeration,
in but fourteen of fifty cities having over 100,000 inhabitants in 1910
did native whites of native parentage contribute as much as one-half
the total population. The proportion exceeded three-fifths in only
four cities. On the other hand, in twenty-two cities of this class, of
which fifteen are in New England and the Middle Atlantic divisions,
less than one-third of the population were native whites of native
parentage, over two-thirds in all but one of these cities consisting of
foreign-born whites and their children.