In nineteen ten, eleven immigrants were coming to America for every thousand Americans already living here. In fact, the number of immigrants to the United States had been dropping for many years. The reason for this was that fewer immigrants were coming from foreign countries. But the total population of the United States did not increase as much during this period as one might have expected. It was true that the average number of children per family was increasing.
Families in the suburbs wanted a new life, a good life, for their children. Parents also bought millions of dollars' worth of pianos, violins, and other musical instruments for their children. In nineteen sixty, parents bought almost three times more educational books for children than ten years earlier. Parents also tried to improve their children's education. During the same period, the number of Girl Scouts increased by two-million. The number of boys playing on Little League baseball teams increased from less than one million to almost six million between nineteen fifty and nineteen sixty. Parents did everything they could to make life good for their children.
Friends felt free to enter without knocking or asking permission." If little Bobby out-grew his clothes, his mother gave them to little Billy across the street. Children in the suburbs exchanged toys and clothes almost as though they were group property. Manchester wrote, "Families moving in found that their new friends were happy to help them get settled. Historian William Manchester described life in the suburbs in this way: "The new suburbs were free, open, and honestly friendly to anyone except black people, whose time had not yet come." Barbecue parties where families gathered to cook and eat outside. The parent-teachers association at the school. There were boy scout groups for the boys. There were all sorts of group activities. Young families would buy the houses with money that they borrowed from local banks. A businessman would buy the land and build houses on it. It usually was created on an empty piece of land just outside a city. A suburb was sub, or something less than, a city. The word suburb comes from the word urban, or having to do with cities. Many of the new parents moved to homes in the new suburbs. The number of children between the ages of five and fourteen increased by more than ten million between nineteen fifty and nineteen sixty. And people everywhere felt the need for a family and security after the long, difficult years of the war. Suddenly, it seemed, every family started having babies. This changed immediately after World War Two.
By nineteen hundred, the average woman only had three or four children and by nineteen thirty-six, during the great economic depression, the average American mother gave birth to only two children. Families began to have fewer and fewer children. Families needed a lot of help on the farm. In the early years of America, the average mother had eight to ten children. By nineteen fifty, there were more than one hundred fifty million persons in the United States. One hundred years later, the population had increased to about sixty-three million persons. At that time, the country had about four million persons. The first count was made two-hundred years ago. The government needed to know how many people lived in each state so it would know how many congressmen each state should have. The United States has always counted its population every ten years. Our program today will look at the growth of suburbs and other changes in the American population in the years after World War Two. Millions of them moved out of cities and small towns to buy newly-built homes in the suburbs. And many people were earning enough money to look for a better life. Many Americans were not satisfied with their old ways of life. Some major changes began to take place in the American population. The American economy was stronger than ever. Industry stopped producing war equipment and began to produce goods that made peacetime life pleasant. Soldiers began to come home and find peacetime jobs.
Life in the United States began to return to normal. World War Two ended finally in the summer of nineteen forty-five. THE MAKING OF A NATION - a program in Special English by the Voice of America.