466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



spread and cliaracteristic of all, as the rural lias been in the past 

 and as the urban may perhaps be said to be in the present." This 

 aspect of affairs is perfectly reasonable, and is the only condition 

 that could have been expected. It should be remembered that the 

 cities named are great mercantile and manufacturing centers, 

 their prosperity developing rapidly, and it should also be remem- 

 bered that the rapidity of the development of cities in commercial 

 or industrial ways retards the growth of population in the com- 

 pact quarters to a very large degree. Every time an advance is 

 made along a street by the extension of business houses, the fami- 

 lies living there are crowded out ; they may move to other parts 

 of the city or locate in the suburbs ; in either event there is only 

 a shifting of population, and not an increase. The transfer of 

 great manufacturing establishments from the city to the country 

 carries large numbers of families, or if the transfer is made within 

 the city limits there is simply a change in location of the popula- 

 tion interested in the establishment. In taking the Federal census 

 of 1880 for the State of Massachusetts I discovered a loss in one 

 of the wards of the city of Boston ; but I found upon investigation 

 that the removal of one establishment from that ward to another 

 in a distant part of the city had carried with it more than one 

 thousand people ; so the increase in the population of the part of 

 the city to which the removal was made apparently indicated 

 growth. Cities lay out new streets and avenues, necessitating the 

 tearing down of rookeries and crowded tenement-houses. Every 

 such improvement displaces a large number of families, who seek 

 a residence either in some other part of the city or in the suburbs. 

 Thus, the building of a large number of houses, often referred to 

 as an evidence of increase of j)opulation, may not mean any in- 

 crease whatever. If a hundred families are crowded out of their 

 old locations by improvements or by the encroachments of trade, 

 there is an immediate demand for a hundred new tenements, which 

 makes it appear that the population is increasing rapidly, when 

 there is no increase. That the argument that new houses always 

 indicate an increase of population is unanswerable can not be 

 admitted, for very frequently the reverse is true ; even in a 

 country town a new house or a dozen new houses may not indicate 

 an increase of a single person in the population, as it may be en- 

 tirely the result of the improved financial condition of one or sev- 

 eral families formerly living in the same house. The building of 

 new houses is an indication of prosperity and of increase, but not 

 positive evidence of increase. The retarding influence of the in- 

 crease of trade and of manufactures must be felt more and more 

 as their extension becomes more rapid, and in all great cities 

 where large business blocks are erected in place of crowded tene- 

 ments there must be a dispersion of population. 



