THE DECREASE OF BUBAL POPULATION. 637 



States, or perhaps because the conservatism which is so marked a 

 trait of agricultural populations makes it exceedingly difficult to 

 bring about any radical change in agricultural methods, higher 

 farming has not made much progress. It must also be remem- 

 bered that both in Europe and the United States the birth-rate is 

 diminishing. One of the results of this diminution is that the 

 children constitute a smaller proportion of the entire population 

 than formerly, and consequently a total population of the same 

 aggregate number contains more workers. 



Another cause of decrease in the aggregate population of rural 

 communities, and one perhaps as potent as either of those already 

 mentioned, is the ever-increasing competition of factory-made 

 goods with the products of the handicrafts. There must be fewer 

 and fewer country tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, carpenters, 

 and other artisans who can earn their living in competition with 

 the machine-made goods which the steadily decreasing cost of 

 railroad transportation enables the great factories in the manu- 

 facturing cities and towns to send into every neighborhood and 

 sell more cheaply than the isolated mechanic working with his 

 own hands or with simple and inexpensive machinery possibly can. 

 Those who are forced to give up the attempt to earn their bread 

 by working at their trade in their old homes among their neigh- 

 bors must seek employment in the cities. The whole tendency of 

 the factory system, combined with the cheapening of transporta- 

 tion rates, is to draw away from the country districts almost all 

 the population not directly engaged in tilling the soil. The social 

 and intellectual attractions of city life, especially for the brighter 

 and more active-minded of the country youth, are unquestionably 

 powerful factors in building up the cities at the expense of the 

 country districts. The two last-named causes — namely, the dimi- 

 nution of the number of rural handicraftsmen in all localities 

 easily accessible by railroad from large cities, and the attractive- 

 ness of city life to portions of the country population, when city 

 life is brought within the range of their observation — are doubtless 

 chiefly responsible for the fact that the decrease of the rural popu- 

 lation has been most general in precisely those portions of the 

 country in which cities and towns are most numerous and in which 

 the railroad facilities are the best. 



In this country it is possible that the actual decrease in rural 

 population during the decade was not so great as the census would 

 indicate. To properly fill up the schedules of the eleventh census 

 required so much work upon the part of the enumerators that the 

 fees allowed them in country districts were in many, if not in most 

 cases, utterly inadequate to give them a reasonable compensation 

 for their work. Baltimore County, Maryland, is a very thickly 

 settled agricultural region, and yet in this county a number of in- 



