New-York tribune., 1901-07-14
URBAN AND RURAL GROWTH.

Some interesting, if not unexpected, conclu-
sions are suggested in the elaborate study OF
urban growth during the last decade just issued
by the Federal Census Bureau. For many pre-
ceding censuses no tendency In our national
growth had been more marked than the steady
drift of country population toward the towns
and cities 1t was only natural. therefore, to
assume that this movement toward the centres
Of industry and commerce would continue
unchecked during the decade just ended, If,
indeed, it did not gain accelerated force from
the enormous strides which the nation was seen
TO have made in industrial energy and indus
trial progress. Curously enough, this prori
assumption finds only qualified support in
| the exhibits 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 absolute supremacy in num-
bers for several censuses to come
The rate OF increase in population for the
country at large from 1890 to 1900 was about
21 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 a rate
slightly over 80 per cent. The percentage OF
the population living in towns Of 1000 inhabi-
tants or over was in 1890 about 33 per cent,
compared with % per cent in 1880. But in
1900 the ratio had risen to only 37.3 per cent,
leaving to the country the still formidable frac-
ton Of 62.7 1t is interesting 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 whole. While urban population
proper increased from 1890 to 1900 by 81 per
cent, the population Of the 16O cities which
have $4,000 inhabitants or over showed gain
Of only 1925 per cent: and these same 160 cities
from 1890 to 1900 actually gained 10000 inhabi-
tants 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 expan-
sion In manufacturing industries has turned the
drift of population strongly cityward. The
Western, Southern Atlantic and Northern Allan
| tic States, in which industrial conditions have
undergone less violent change, show a more
evenly balanced development though in five
States OF the last dvsion-Rhode Island Mas
sachusetts Connecticut New-York and New
Jersey-the urban now outnumbers the rural
population. In this State, Rhode Island and
Massachusetts the urban preponderance is now
more than two to Such preponderance
! is inevitable in densely populated areas where
manufacturing and commerce establish fixed
| centres OF attraction. But for the country a
whole, as yet but thinly and sparsely popu-
lated, no such congestion is now remotely
imaginable. Certainly the results OF last years
census do little to encourage the belief that the
city Is to overwhem the country in numbers
within our generation, or that within that time
a new balance Of power-social, political and
moral-wil have to be struck between these
two contending influences in our national life