THE DECREASE OF RURAL POPULATION. 635 



bering 901,644, as against a rural population of 969,643. In this, 

 as in some other respects, the conditions of life in California sug- 

 gest resemblances to those existing in the Australian colonies. 

 Australia, together with New Zealand and Tasmania, had in 1891 

 a population slightly less than that of the United States in 1790. 

 This population is scattered over an area several times more ex- 

 tensive than was that of this country before Napoleon sold us 

 Louisiana ; and yet in Australia a larger proportion of the entire 

 population resides in cities of 8,000 inhabitants or upward than 

 is the case in the United States even to-day. 



The ratio of urban to rural population is increasing rapidly 

 over almost all the civilized world. In many countries large areas 

 have recently experienced an absolute loss of rural inhabitants. 

 The census of 1891 shows that the population of the urban sani- 

 tary districts of England increased since 1881 about fifteen per 

 cent, as against an increase in the rural districts of less than four 

 per cent. Some of the more purely rural counties of England 

 show an actual decrease of aggregate population, as do no less 

 than nine of the twelve counties of "Wales and sixteen out of the 

 thirty-three counties of Scotland. In the last-mentioned country 

 the rural population of the entire kingdom is a fraction less than 

 it was ten years ago. In Ireland the contrast is still greater. Out 

 of its thirty-two counties there are only two which have not less 

 population than in 1881. These two are Dublin and Antrim, con- 

 taining the cities of Dublin and Belfast respectively. The sixteen 

 Irish cities and towns with 10,000 inhabitants or over have in- 

 creased on the average at the rate of something over six per 

 cent, while the rest of the country has suffered a loss of nearly 

 twelve per cent. In France the increase of total population in 

 the five years from 1886 to 1891 was but 124,289, while the gain 

 in the population of the fifty-six cities having over 30,000 in- 

 habitants was 340,396. Outside of these cities there was an 

 actual decrease of 216,107. In Germany two thirds of the 

 total increase of population between 1885 and 1890 was in the 150 

 places having over 20,000 inhabitants each, although these places 

 contain not more than one fifth of the entire population of the 

 empire. 



Something over a century ago Jefferson, in his Notes on Vir- 

 ginia, arguing against the establishment of manufactures in this 

 country, declared that, " generally speaking, the proportion which 

 the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any State to 

 that of its husbandmen is the proportion of its unsound to its 

 healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to meas- 

 ure its degree of corruption/' Popular feeling almost everywhere 

 seems to view with something of Jefferson's apprehension that 

 change in the proportion of urban to rural population now so 



