342 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



The life tables for 1880-81, 1885-6 and 1895-6 showed for 

 most age periods, except those of old age, that the death rate in 

 general decreased with the size of the city and was markedly less 

 in the rural districts. (Bailed.) In Berlin in the years 1890, 1895 

 and 1890, although the crude death rate was lower than it was in 

 Prussia, there was a shorter average duration of life. 



In certain regions the rural districts may be actually more 

 unwholesome than the city. During the last few decades many 

 cities have made remarkable records in the improvement of their 

 sanitary conditions. And infant mortality which until recently 

 continued in most cities to be inexcusably high has been rapidly 

 reduced in the last decade. It is not surprising that many rural 

 districts which have been relatively backward in adopting meas- 

 ures for improving the health of their inhabitants should have a 

 death rate higher than that of near-by cities. The health record 

 of cities has improved more rapidly than that of the country 

 because there was more room for improvement; and we may look 

 forward to much greater advances in the near future. But despite 

 the great progress which has actually been made, and the exist- 

 ence of statistics which so often place the health of the urban 

 population in too favorable a light, there is little doubt that cities 

 have been and still are deleterious to the physical welfare of 

 their inhabitants. 



Besides their enhanced death rate, the unwholesomeness of 

 cities is indicated by a number of other symptoms. As has been 

 pointed out in a previous chapter, their birth rate is generally 

 below that of the surrounding country, and where the crude urban 

 birth rate exceeds the rural, it is usually owing to the presence 

 of a relatively large proportion of women of child-bearing age in 

 the city population. The average number of children per married 

 woman of 15-45 years of age is, in most places, lower in the cities 

 than in the country. Suicides are notoriously more prevalent in 

 cities, their frequency diminishing with the size of the city. Cities 

 usually show also a relatively high percentage of crime. Prosti- 

 tution is prevailingly an urban vice, and associated with this is, as 

 has been discussed in Chapter VII, a relatively high percentage 



