New Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784 with a population of a little over 3000. It was for a time one of the foremost shipping ports of the country until the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812 checked development along this line. The Joint Stock Corporation Act of 1837, however, furnished a stimulus to industrial enterprise and the growth of New Haven as an industrial center was well under way, fifty years or more ago, Eli Whitney's gun factory, the clock company and the rubber shop being the leading establishments.

The railroad to New York, completed in 1849, was an important factor in the development of the city; and the location in New Haven of the general offices of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company has made the railroad a doubly significant factor in the life of the community. Industrial production has largely followed the historical lines of firearms, clocks, carriages, rubber goods, hardware and corsets, most of which were initiated fifty years ago, the munition trades in particular having undergone a phenomenal development during the past two years. Brickmaking and oyster culture are also important industries of New Haven and its surrounding suburbs.

The presence of Yale University has for two centuries been a significant factor in the social and economic life. of the community. [16]

The population of New Haven rose from 5157 in 1800 to 22,529 in 1850, 50,840 in 1870, 85,981 in 1890, 108,027 in 1900 and 133,605 in 1910. Using the census method of calculation, which assumes a direct arithmetical progression, the estimated population for July 1, 1916, would be 149,685. It seems certain that the great development of the munitions industry in the past two years has led to a greater addition of population than the annual increment of 2590 estimated by the Census Bureau. Dr. F. W. Wright, the Health Officer of New Haven, on the basis of information furnished by some of the larger employers of labor, estimated that 5000 operatives came to the city in 1915 of whom one-fourth brought their families with them. We are informed that 4200 new hands were taken on in one factory in 1915 and 3500 in 1916. The city directory offers corroborative evidence of abnormal growth during the past two years. The average annual increment of names in this publication between 1910 and 1914 was 1660, while the list increased by 2869 names in 1915 and by 3078 names in 1916.

On the other hand it is known that many of the operatives attracted by recent industrial developments reside in surrounding suburbs; and of those who do live in New Haven a majority are unaccompanied by their families. The school records do not indicate any abnormal addition to the child population. The average annual increase in the average number of children registered between 1910-11 and 1914-15 was 690, while the increase for 1915-16 was 813. The population of 149,685 derived by the census method of calculation is almost certainly too low, but since the excess population is largely made up of persons at an age when the death rate is not large and the practice of estimating population on any other than the regular arithmetical basis is in general so liable to abuse, we have deemed it best to use the conservative figure in all subsequent calculations. It is very probable, however, that the death rates so calculated may be from half a point to a point per thousand too high.

The age and race composition of the population of New Haven as compared with the urban population of the Registration Area of the United States is -shown in the tables below. The' data are for 1910 and are derived from the reports of the United States Census. The influx of population since 1914 has been predominantly of young adults, at first, as we are informed, largely of native and English stock, with more recent increments of Poles and of native and Portuguese negroes.

The age distribution of the population of New Haven in 1910 (see Table I) was of a nature distinctly unfavorable to a low death rate, an unusually large proportion of its population being in the age groups of high mortality-under 5 and over 45 years. New Haven has a high proportion of population of foreign or mixed [17] parentage and a very high proportion (32 per cent, against 23 per cent for the cities of the Registration Area) of foreign nativity. The principal foreign stocks represented (indicated in Table II below) are Italian (31 per cent), Irish (21 per cent), and Russian (19 per cent). The first and last of these as shown in a recent study by L. I. Dublin* (*American Economic Review, VI, 3, September, 1916) are characterized by death rates practically as low as those of the native born. The Irish race in America, on the other hand, generally shows a markedly excessive death rate, and the presence of this racial group in such large numbers is a distinctly unfavorable factor from the standpoint of probable mortality.

TABLE I
Percentage Composition of the Population of New Haven in 1910 Compared
With the Total Urban Population of the Registration Area

NEW HAVEN

		Native white
Ages	All Classes	Native Parentage	Foreign or mixed parentage	Foreign-born white	Negro
All	100.0	28.2	37.0	31.9	2.6
Under 5	10.3	2.8	7.0	0.2	0.2
5-14	18.1	5.4	10.4	1.9	0.4
15-24	18.9	5.1	7.5	5.9	0.5
25-44	32.4	8.0	8.7	14.6	1.1
45-64	15.8	4.9	3.1	7.3	0.4
65+	4.3	2.0	0.3	1.9	0.1

UNITED STATES-URBAN

		Native white
Ages	All Classes	Native Parentage	Foreign or mixed parentage	Foreign-born white	Negro
All	100.0	41.6	28.9	22.6	6.3
Under 5	9.8	4.7	4.3	0.2	0.5
5-14	17.3	8.2	6.9	0.1	1.1
15-24	20.0	8.6	6.3	3.9	1.4
25-44	33.2	12.5	8.0	10.2	2.3
45-64	15.2	5.8	3.1	5.4	0.8
65+	4.0	1.8	0.3	1.7	0.2

[18]

TABLE II
Original Nationality of Foreign-Born Population

	New Haven	Registration Area
Austria	2.6	8.7
Canada, French	1.1	2.8
Canada, other	2.0	6.0
England, Scotland and Wales	6.2	9.0
France	0.4	0.9
Germany	9.6	18.5
Greece	0.2	0.7
Hungary	1.1	3.7
Ireland	21.0	10.0
Italy	30.7	9.9
Netherlands and Belgium	0.4	1.2
Norway, Sweden, Denmark	4.5	9.3
Russia, including Finland	18.7	12.8
Turkey	0.4	0.7
All others	1.3	5.6

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