AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT. 97 



In 1840, our total population was 501,793, and our city 

 population 15,218 — while in 1870 our total population was 

 626,915, and our city population 73.584 — or 344 per cent, of 

 city population to total population. A careful examination 

 of the figures bearing upon this question as related to all our 

 American cities, large and small, and in fact to the cities of 

 the world, would reveal the operation of an agency at work 

 to bring about these results, which is so fixed and regular in 

 its operations as to be counted a social law — a law as active 

 in France where the total population scarcely increases at all, 

 as in Illinois where it increases by one-half during ten years ; 

 a law in operation alike in Maine with less than twenty in- 

 habitants to the square mile, as well as in England with nearly 

 four hundred to the square mile. And this law comes to us 

 in some such form as the following : Under the conditions of 

 society such as exist with us, and found also in several Euro- 

 pean nations, the inevitable tendency of population is to con- 

 centrate in cities. Where this takes place to an extent un- 

 afiecting the products of the soil, it cannot be said to work a 

 positive injury; where it does, of course the harmony be- 

 tween production and consumption is destroyed, and disaster 

 inevitably follows. Following this, is the law that on every 

 given area of territory, there is required a given number of 

 laborers to produce food for a given number of inhabitants — 

 the means of production being the same. Now, statistics show 

 that in 1840 it took eight laborers to produce and deliver to 

 the consumer a given amount of grain, while thirty years 

 later, in 1870, in consequence of improved machinery and 

 appliances for the shipment and handling of commodities, the 

 same amount was produced and delivered by a single laborer. 

 This fact, alone, shows that the proportion of city population 

 to rural or country population might be seven times as great 

 as it was thirty years ago, and result in no personal injury — 

 provided the means of obtaining sustenance was in operation 

 and open to all. But that such is not the case, the 150,000 

 persons out of employment in the city of Philadelphia alone, 

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