William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[307] males to five hundred and fourteen females; a difference in the thousand of twenty-eight, where Prussia shows a difference of thirteen. In every thousand souls of Massachusetts there are four hundred and eighty-three males to five hundred and seventeen females; a difference in the thousand of thirty-four, where Great Britain and Ireland show a difference of only twenty-eight. North Carolina has a greater excess of females than any country in Europe except Sweden, and the old Puritan State of Rhode Island overtops her Puritan neighbour Massachusetts.

The most crowded female region in the civilised world is the district of Columbia, in the centre of which Washington stands. In this purgatory of women, there are, in every thousand souls, five hundred and twenty-eight females to four hundred and seventy-two males. No one appears to understand the causes of this singular phenomenon. We know the reason why Great Britain shows a larger excess of females than Prussia. During the present generation Great Britain has sent out half a million more emigrants than Prussia, and a vast majority of these emigrants have been males. A similar explanation covers the cases of Massachusetts and Rhode Island;