634 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



rates of growth, of the cities of the same class are likely to be 

 greater in the smaller cities than in the larger. Among the 

 smaller places, and especially among those with less than 4,000 

 inhabitants, instances of an actual decrease in population during 

 the decade are not unusual. The contrary is true for the larger 

 cities. During the decade, every one of the 101 cities which in 

 1880 had upward of 20,000 inhabitants, gained in population more 

 or less rapidly. Of the 82 cities which in 1880 had between 12,000 

 and 20,000 inhabitants each, only three, and of the 110 having in 

 1880 from 8,000 to 12,000 inhabitants only six, have less population 

 than they had ten years ago. But out of the 333 places which in 

 1880 had a population of from 4,000 to 8,000 each, no less than 40 

 suffered during the decade a net loss of inhabitants, and among 

 the still smaller places the proportion of those whose popula- 

 tion decreased was still greater. Taking all the cities together, 

 however, their increase was so great and so general that only 

 in the Dakotas, Idaho, Arizona, and Louisiana does the rural 

 population constitute a larger percentage of the entire popula- 

 tion than it did in 1880. In all but the last of these the total 

 population in 1880 was very small, and during the decade the 

 greater portion of the immigrants to them have not sought the 

 cities. 



For some reason the cities and towns of Louisiana have grown 

 very slowly during the decade, but even in this State the propor- 

 tion of urban to the total population has fallen but one tenth of 

 one per cent. 



Although four of the five States and Territories in which the 

 urban population constituted in 1890 a less proportion of the ag- 

 gregate number of inhabitants than in 1880 lie wholly or partially 

 west of the Missouri, in some of the trans-Missouri States the 

 growth of the cities has been phenomenally rapid. Thus, in 

 "Washington the urban population in 1880 was but 14,474, while 

 in 1890 it was 152,033, or more than ten times as great. In 1880 

 Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane Falls had but 4,981 inhabitants, and 

 ten years later 98,7G5, or nearly twenty times as many. It is 

 significant of the altered conditions of modern life that a larger 

 proportion of the population of Washington — the serious settle- 

 ment of which dates back but a little over forty years, which 

 spreads over more than eight times the area of Massachusetts, 

 and which is not yet a manufacturing State — resides in cities of 

 over 8,000 inhabitants, than was the case in Massachusetts as late 

 as 1840, nearly two centuries and a quarter after the Plymouth 

 landing, and when it had long been the principal manufacturing 

 State in the Union. 



In the three Pacific States as a whole very nearly one half of 

 the entire population reside in cities, the urban population num- 



