William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[311] thousand. Inequality began with immigration, and will cease when immigration stops. America can readily account for the disturbance in her social system; the whole excess of male life in America being due to the fact that, in the ten years from 1860-70, four hundred and fifty thousand more males than females entered the ports of Boston and New York.

Her surplus male population is four hundred and sixty-nine thousand. If during the ten years, from 1860 to 1870, no immigrants had come in-or if the male and female arrivals had been equal in numbers-she would have shown a total of only nineteen thousand males over females. Thus her balance of the sexes would have been partially restored. With the stoppage of immigration the curse will die down. But is not such a cure as bad as the disease?