The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-06-20
RESIDENCES OF PRESIDENTS.

Many More Have Come From Country
 Homes Than City Homes-Political Ira
 dition-The Cities Furnish Many Aspi-
 rants, but the Country Seems to Fur
 nish the Presidents-This Year as Other
 Years Furnishes an Example.
 (From the New York Sun.]
 There is an ancient political proverb which declares that the cities of the country furnish unsuccessful candi- dates for the presidency, and small towns furnish the presidents. In this years canvass as in other national campaigns, it has been observed that some of the city men-big city men-do not cut as much figure as those frora the minor towns of the interior, and it is recalled that Washington was from a plantation in Virginia, far removed from Mt. Vernon; Adams lived in the village of Quincy, Mass; Jefferson resi- ded at Monticello, Va; Madison was a country gentleman residing at Montpe- Her, in Virginia Monroe lived at Oak Hill, Va; the younger Adams lived in Quincy; Jackson was a Tennessee far mer, residing at his country seat, the Hermitage, near Nashville; Van Buren lived in the village of Kinderhook, on the Hudson; the first Harrison lived in North Bend; Polk resided in Nashville; Taylor, a retired army officer, made his home at Baton Rouge; Pierce came from Concord, N. H.; Buchanan lived at Wheatland. in Pennsylvania; Lin- an1y i,,C Cpt,ip 6ol1 mi jiIyS1 n Galena; Hayes lived at Fremont, a small town in Ohio, and Garfield was from the rural village of Mentor. Nor were the vice-presidents who after ward were elevated to the presidential office through vacancies the represen- tatives of large cities. John Tyler, when elected vice-president, was a res- ident of Williamsburgh, Va. Andrew Johnson was a resident of a little mountain town of Tennessee, Green vile. If these were all the facts of the record however, 1t would be perfectly fair and very reasonable to conclude that there existed some prejudice against the large cities when presidents were to be nominated. The truth of the matter, however is that the num- Der of large cities of the United States is now, after more than one hundred years of national existence, relatively small when compared with the number of smaller places, and in the earlier years of the republic the number of large cities was, of course, materially less.
 By the last census of the United States taken under federal authority there were 3,715 towns, cities or villages of more than one thousand population, and only seven of them had more than four hundred thousand population each. By the same census it was seen that of the total population of the country, which was returned as sixty two million, more than half, or thirty six millionpeople, resided in places of less than one thousand inhabitants, And of twenty-six thousand persons who resided in places of more than one thousand inhabitants only three and one-third per cent. lived in cities of over one hundred and fifty thousand. In other words, only fraction, a small fraction, of the people of the United States live in what may be called first class cities. The latter, of course, have a much larger floating, much larger U diiolClltt psliu eh liiuCil dllel population than do the smaller places, but on election day it is the permanent residents only who count, and they do not seem to count very much either when president Of the United States is to be elected, to judge from the previous records of such elections. Nevertheless, and de- spite these disadvantages. the present President of the United States was a resident of the city of New York when chosen and his rupublcan opponent and official predecessor, Benjamin Harrison, was a resident of the city of Indianapolis. which has a population considerably in excess of one hundred thousand, which is considerably more than the city of New York had at the close of the Revolutionary war, while by the census of 1910 it was returned as having ninety-siX thousand, three hun dred persons less than the city of Phil adelphia. MT. Clevelands immediate predecessor at the beginning of his first term was Chester A. Arthur, resident of the city of New York.
 While zis true that many Of the de-