THE DECREASE OF RURAL POPULATION. 631 



in the Central and Eastern States, there has of course been in the 

 trans-Missouri States no decrease of rural population in the proper 

 sense of the term. 



East of the Missouri and north of the cotton States, nearly all 

 the well-settled agricultural neighborhoods have fewer inhabit- 

 ants than they had ten years ago. It is possible to travel from 

 the Bay of Fundy to the southern bend of the Tennessee River, a 

 distance of fifteen hundred miles, and not pass through a single 

 county in which the rural population is not less than it was ten 

 years ago ; or go all the way from Boston to western Iowa, except 

 for the space of about five miles, through counties with less rural 

 population than they had in 1880. 



The better adapted for farming a community east of the Mis- 

 souri may be, the greater the apparent probability that it lost 

 rural population during the last ten years. As a rule, in the older 

 States it was only the mountain sections, and other regions con- 

 taining mineral wealth or resources other than purely agricultural 

 ones, which showed a gain of extra-urban population. Districts 

 situated near great cities, and well adapted for early vegetables 

 and fruits, have in some instances gained, but, as a rule, commu- 

 nities which depend upon farming as distinguished from trucking 

 have fewer inhabitants than they had in 1880. 



In that great section of country comprising New England, 

 New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, the District of 

 Columbia, Virgina east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Ohio, 

 Indiana, Michigan south of the forty-third parallel, Illinois, Wis- 

 consin south of the forty-fourth parallel, Iowa east of the nine- 

 ty-fourth meridian, and the southeast corner of Minnesota, there 

 are some 726 counties, and of these no less than 450 have lost 

 population since the tenth census was taken. Each of the New 

 England States, New York, Maryland, Ohio, and Illinois had 

 fewer rural inhabitants than it had in 1880. Pennsylvania is 

 the only one of the older Northern States to show any substan- 

 tial increase of extra-urban population, the gain during the de- 

 cade being at the rate of about 7*29 per cent. In this State the 

 growth has doubtless been due to other causes than the increase 

 of classes directly dependent upon agriculture. 



The general tendency to a loss of rural population is manifest 

 in regions which differ in the character of their soil as widely as 

 does a rocky and sterile hill town in New England from a rich 

 prairie county in Illinois or Iowa, and whose climatic conditions 

 are as unlike as are those of the Mississippi in the latitude of St. 

 Paul and of the James at Richmond, Virginia, or as those of 

 Vermont and Alabama. In some of the districts in which the 

 loss is marked, hay and rye are the staple crops, in others wheat, 

 in others maize, and in others tobacco. In the decreasing dis- 



