Human Tide

Five decades ago, when U. S. population numbered 60,000,000, its rate of growth was 2.5% per year. From 1920 to 1930 it grew 1.6% per year. Now the growth rate of the post-adolescent U. S.

has slowed to .7% a year. So reported the Bureau of the Census last week in revealing that the U. S. population this year reached and passed by 215,000 the milestone figure of 130 millions.

For years immigration outweighed by far the natural increase of the population. It does so no longer. Despite a birth rate which has fallen irregularly since Depression's onset in 1931, U. S. births are this year estimated to exceed deaths by 916,000--, while immigration exceeded emigration by only 43,000.

Over the past eight years, however, the U. S. has lost population on balance to foreign countries. Due to Depression, foreigners stayed away or took their U. S.

savings and went home. With war elsewhere in the world and a degree of Recovery in the U. S., the human tide has again turned.

While Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins was discussing the German-Austrian influx last week (see p. 9) her subordinates at Angel Island immigration station in San Francisco were wrestling with a Chinese refugee problem. Wives and children of U. S. Chinese are admitted under citizenship laws. They are now filtering across the Pacific at a rate of 225 per month.

*The fiscal 1938 birth rate: 18 per 1,000: the death rate: 11 per 1,000.

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