SOCIAL STATISTICS OF CITIES. 609 



measurements, and from latest obtainable data, or from records 

 in the offices of the city engineers of the respective cities. Fall 

 River is an exception to this rule, as the boundaries of Wards 6 

 and 9 in that city have never been accurately defined. The city 

 of Washington, in the table, includes the area and population 

 inclosed within the actual municipal boundaries, and not the total 

 area and population of the District of Columbia. The islands in 

 the East River, with an area of five hundred and twenty acres, 

 and which are geographically situated in Wards 12, 19, and 23, are 

 included as part of New York, 



The most interesting feature of the foregoing table is that 

 relating to the distribution of population according to area ; but 

 in this one must not be deceived. The population to each acre or 

 to each square mile of a city can not well be compared with like 

 data for another city, unless the exact area of dense population is 

 known — as, for instance, a city may comprise fifty square miles of 

 territory and have 500,000 population, which would give a popu- 

 lation of 10,000 to each square mile, but the population may be 

 compressed into twenty-five square miles, when the actual- distri- 

 bution would be 20,000 persons to the square mile ; while another 

 city of like area and like total population, but with the population 

 distributed more evenly over the whole area, would be in a much 

 better sanitary condition than the first city named, although in 

 statistics the population per square mile would be the same when 

 the whole area is considered. 



Twenty-two of the cities named in the foregoing table have a 

 population of over 100,000 each, the total being 8,737,648, which is 

 13'95 per cent of the total population of the country. The popu- 

 lation to the square mile of these twenty-two cities is 15'92 to the 

 acre ; but the differences in ratios of population to area are very 

 great, ranging from four in St. Paul, five in Minneapolis, nine in 

 Omaha, ten in New Orleans and Bufi'alo, eleven in Chicago and 

 Denver, and twelve in St. Louis, to thirty in San Francisco, 

 thirty-one in Washington, forty-eight in Brooklyn, and fifty-nine 

 in New York. Tliese figures represent population to a square 

 acre. So skillful a statistician as Dr. Billings is of course careful 

 to remark that the ratios indicated by the statistics published 

 " give no information as to the difi'erence in density of the popu- 

 lation in the actually built-up portions," and he cites that in New 

 York the number of persons per acre ranges from four hundred 

 and seventy-four in Ward 10 to three in Ward 24, while in Chi- 

 cago there is a range from one hundred and sixteen in Ward 16 

 to two in Wards 28 and 23. These instances show the extremes, 

 and teach us emphatically that any comparison of population to 

 the square acre or to the square mile for the purpose of drawing 

 conclusions relative to sanitary and other conditions must be 



VOL. XL. — i2 



