524 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Their peculiar but perfectly intelligible speech began a degrada- 

 tion into a puzzling jargon. African superstitions, little if any 

 trace of which remained among their kindred in Virginia and Ken- 

 tucky, regained their hold. Marriage and a respect therefor, which 

 had been tolerably well affirmed, tended to disappear. All trace 

 of good thus vanished from the system. 



Although the great plantation, of the Mississippi type, was a 

 relatively novel feature in American slaveholding, it was evidently 

 the only largely profitable method of using slave labor. In the 

 household system the care of the children, the aged, and the infirm, 

 the unbusinesslike management of the labor, and the tendency to 

 slipshod methods which with negroes can only be corrected by strict 

 discipline, made ordinary farming unremunerative. It is evident 

 that the profit, other than that in mere money, which the institu- 

 tion in the earlier state had brought to master and slave was rap- 

 idly diminishing, and that any further maintenance of it would 

 have been calamitous. Though we may regret that it was ended 

 by the civil war, it is difficult to see any other way in which it 

 could have been terminated, or any profit which could have been 

 gained by postponing the crisis. 



MODERN CITY ROADWAYS. 



By nelson p. LEWIS, 



ENGINEER OF IIIGHWAYS, BOROUGH OF BROOKLYN. 



ONE of the conspicuous results of cheapened transportation and 

 the facility with which the products of field, forest, mine, 

 and factory can be transferred to the consumer has been the rapid 

 increase in population of all our cities. In 1890 over forty-five 

 per cent of the population of New York State (nearly six millions) 

 was concentrated in four cities, while it is estimated that the greater 

 city of New York contains at present not less and probably more 

 than fifty per cent of the State's population. Nor is this tendency 

 characteristic only of American cities, though the general impres- 

 sion seems to be that it is more conspicuous with us. In fact, 

 many European cities (notably those of Germany) have outstripped 

 ours in growth. In 1870 Berlin had about 150,000 less people than 

 A^ew York; in 1890 it had over 73,000 more. In 1875 Hamburg 

 exceeded Boston in population by but 6,000, while in 1890 the Ger- 

 man city was more than 121,000 ahead. 



^leanwhile the rural population the world over has increased 

 very slowly, or has positively decreased. The massing together 

 of large numbers of people, without proper regard to sanitary con- 



