THE DECREASE OF RURAL POPULATION. 627 



land States combined, and not ten per cent less than that of Great 

 Britain. Of the 141 counties into which this tract is divided, no 

 less than 138 have lost rural population since 1880 ; and the aver- 

 age increase in the three increasing counties, which form enclaves 

 within it, has been less than three and three quarters per cent. 

 The following is the result of a comparison of the rural popula- 

 tion in 1880 and 1890 of the 141 counties as a whole : 



Rural population 1880 2,582,620 



Rural population 1890 2,402,876 



Decrease 1'79,T44 



The percentage of decrease of rural population in this rich, fertile, 

 and comparatively lately settled section of the country is G'96, 

 or about one fifth less than in New York. The decrease is espe- 

 cially general in the counties immediately bordering on the Mis- 

 sissippi River. For example, every Mississippi River county in 

 Iowa has lost rural population. Of the sixteen counties on the 

 west bank from Dakota County, Minnesota, to Clark County, 

 Missouri, inclusive, there is not one which had more rural inhabit- 

 ants in 1890 than in 1880 ; and of the seventeen on the east bank, 

 lying between the northern boundary of Crawford County, Wis- 

 consin, and the southern boundary of Randolph County, Illinois, 

 there was but one. Speaking generally, southern and eastern 

 Iowa lost rural population during the decade, while northern and 

 western Iowa, still in 1880 comparatively thinly settled, have 

 gained, and in some sections largely. In the State as a whole, 

 however, there has been a decrease of such population in no less 

 than forty-three out of its ninety-nine counties. Such a showing 

 in a trans-Mississippi State not yet half a century in the Union 

 is one well calculated to arrest attention. 



Whether the prohibition laws, which have been in force dur- 

 ing the greater part of the decade, have been unfavorable to the 

 growth of this State or not, it is certain that their existence has 

 not been the chief cause of the decrease just mentioned, for, if 

 in prohibition Iowa 43 out of 99 counties have a diminished rural 

 population, in Illinois, in which prohibition does not exist, the 

 same fate has overtaken 60 out of its 102 counties, a still larger 

 proportion of the whole. And Illinois is the principal farming 

 State in the Union. Almost all the northwestern part of the last- 

 named State has fewer rural inhabitants than in 1880. In some 

 of its northern and central portions, the area in which there has 

 been a decrease of rural population in the decade extends entirely 

 across the State, from the Mississippi River to the Indiana border. 

 If the southern boundary of Iroquois County, Illinois, lay five 

 miles south, or the northern boundary of Warren County, Indi- 

 ana, the same distance north of its actual position, the great 



