On the front end in the 1700s and 1800s, these would-be Americans arrived young. Fogies and biddies couldn’t (and wouldn’t) put up with the sort of cramped conditions required for a multi-week sail across an ocean. That meant that upon arrival they were (a) less likely to die of old age, (b) more likely to immediately start having a lot of kids, (c) able to expand into all kinds of open land, and (d) reinforced by more young settlers in the next ship in the queue at Ellis Island.
