The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1901-07-26
URBAN AND RURAL GROWTH
Some Interesting Facts Disclosed by the
Late Census.

New York Tribune:
Some interesting, if not unexpect-
ed, conclusions are suggested in the
elaborate study of urban growth dur
ing the last decade just issued by the
Federal Census Bureau. For many
preceding censuses no tendency in our
national growth had been more marked
than the steady drift of country popu-
lation toward the towns and cities.
1t was only natural, therefore, to as
sumo that this movement toward the
centres of industry and commerce
would continue unchecked during the
decade Just ended, if, indeed, it did
not gain an accelerated force from the
enormous strides which the nation was
seen to have made in industrial energy
and industrial progress. Cautiously
enough, this priori assumption finds
only qualified support in the ex-
hibits of relative rural and urban
growth from 1890 to 1900. The cities
and towns of the United States have
of course, claimed much more than an
equal share in the general increase in
population. But they have not made
the relative gain they did in the decade
preceding, nor do they seem destined
at their present rate of progress to
wrest from the rural districts an alb
solute, supremacy in numbers for sew
eral censuses to come.
The rate of increase in population
for the country at large from 1890 to
1900 was about 81 per cent. The rate
of urban increase was 81 per cent. But
in the decade from 1880 to 1890 the
urban population had grown at rate
slightly over 90 per cent. The per-
centage of the population living in
towns of 4, 900 inhabitants or over was
in 1890 about 33 per cent, as compared
with 90 per cent in 1880. But in 1900
the ratio had risen to only 37.3 per
cent, leaving to the country the still
formidable fraction of 62.7 1t is in
teresting to note also that the ratio of
growth for the greater cities is slightly
lower than that for the growth of
towns and cities as a whole. While
urban population proper increased
from 1890 to 1900 by 81 per cent, the
population of the 100 cities which have
%, 600 inhabitants or over showed a
gain of only 49,. 5 per cent and these
same 100 cities from 1909 to 1900 &C.
tually gained 900 inhabitan is less
than they did between 1880 and 1890
The greatest disproportion between
urban and rural growth is shown in
the northern central division of states,
where an enormous expansion in
manufacturing industries has turned
the drift of population strongly city
ward. The Western, Southern Atlantic
and Northern Atlantic states, in which
industrial conditions have undergone
less violent change, show a more
evenly balanced development, though
in five states of the last division
Rhode Island, Massachusetts,, Connecti-
cut, New York and New Jersey-the
urban now outnumbers the rural popu-
lation. In this state, Rhode Island and
Massachusetts the urban preponderance
is now more than two to one. Such a
preponderance is inevitable in ensely
populated areas where manufacturing
and commerce establish fixed centers
of attraction. But for the country as
whole, as yet but thinly and sparsely
populated, no such congestion is now
remotely imaginable. Certainly the
results of last year census do little to
encourage the belief that the city is to
oyerwhelm the country in numbers
within our generation, or that within
that time new balance of power
social, political and moral-will have
to be struck between these two con-
tending influences in our national life.