30 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



understand, has also become to some extent a fruit raising region. Mr. 

 Butterfield, to whom I am indebted for suggestions regarding this point, 

 thinks that the increase in Monroe county may be due to the growth of 

 the dairy in that quarter. 



Possibly all of these cases of rural increase in the southern part of the 

 peninsula may be ascribed to one general cause, namely, the beginning of 

 a more intensive agriculture. 



Of the twenty-two counties in this region whose country population 

 diminished during the last decade ten show a total diminution, that is a 

 diminution that remains after the towns are reckoned in, while twelve 

 are saved from this by the growth of their towns. Monroe county is a 

 case, unique in the well settled part of Michigan, where the rural popula- 

 tion has increased Avhile the towns — Monroe and Dundee — have fallen off. 



If now we turn to the counties north of the row containing Kent we 

 find that Montcalm lost in rural population during the last decade as 

 it did during the one preceding, and that several other counties are added 

 to the list, namely, Mecosta, Newaygo and Lake, Oscoda, Crawford and 

 Roscommon. Probably two sorts of causes are at work here. Mecosta 

 and Newaygo are agricultural counties and their loss may be due chiefly 

 to the same forces as are at work farther south. But Lake, Crawford, 

 Oscoda and Roscommon are sparsely settled, and it seems more likely 

 that the people who have left them were dependent in some way upon 

 the declining lumber industry, and not properly a farming population. 



In the northern part of the State we also find a number of counties 

 in Avhich the decline of the lumber manufacture, accompanied by the 

 increase of agriculture, has apparently caused the towns to lose in popula- 

 tion while the country gained. Tawas, Oscoda, St. Ignace, Ludington, 

 Muskegon and even Saginaw, have lost somewhat, while their counties — 

 Iosco, Mackinac, Mason, Muskegon and Saginaw — have nevertheless 

 increased. 



The question of the tendency to growth or decline of small rural vil- 

 lages containing less than 1,000 persons is one of some interest which I do 

 not think has ever been brought out in census reports. I find that of 

 165 incorporated places in this State having a population of less than 

 1,000 in 1890, 101 gained population during the last decade while 63 

 fell off and one remained unchanged. It would appear, then, that while 

 the growth of these places is by no means universal they do not, on the 

 whole, show that tendency to an actual diminution exhibited by the 

 strictly rural population. 



In order to get a little nearer view of the matter I have made a more 

 detailed study of the movement of rural population in Washtenaw 

 county. This was one of the first counties to be settled and its conditions 

 are perhaps in a general way typical of those of the older agricultural 

 districts of the State. It contains one flourishing city of about 15,000 

 inhabitants which gained more than 50 per cent during the last decade, 

 one city of about 7,000 not quite so flourishing, which gained 20 per cent, 

 and five villages of from 500 to 2,000 Avhich gained in the aggregate about 

 8 per cent. Only one of these showed a decrease. 



The county has twelve townships that are exclusively rural, that is they 

 contain no villages of any sort. I have prepared a table showing the 

 movement of population in these from 1850, at which date they were fairly 

 well settled, down to 1900;. and it seems to me of some interest. 



