443 RURAL MICHIGAN 



tion increased 21.4 per cent in the decade; in Ingham, 

 whose rural increase was 9.7 per cent; and Oakland, 

 with a rural increase of lfi.7 per cent of population. 



The census of 1930 enumerates 196,647 farms in 

 Michigan, of which the fifteen counties of the Upper 

 Peninsula had 12,317. In the well-developed agri- 

 cultural counties of the south are the largest number 

 of farms. Kent County had 5,605; Lenawee, 5,083; 

 Berrien, 5,444; Saginaw, 5,143; Allegan with 5,734 

 stood at the top of the column ; while Menominee led 

 in the Upper Peninsula with its 2,106, followed by 

 Houghton with 1,741. Many of these counties hav- 

 ing a large number of farms are of relatively small 

 area. Allegan's area is 833 square miles; Lenawee's 

 743 ; and Berrien's 569. This contrasts with the 

 situation in ' Marquette County, the largest in the 

 State, whose area of 1,870 square miles contained 

 only 846 farms, and Mackinac's area of 1,044 square 

 miles had 479 farms. Counties in the northern por- 

 tion of the southern peninsula also show relatively 

 few farms. Thus Eoscommon, in 1920, had 267 

 farms; Ogemaw, 1,281; Montmorency, 421; Oscoda, 

 278; and Crawford, 212. 



The Fourteenth Census (1920) ascertained that 

 there were in Michigan in 1920 an aggregate of 

 196,447 farms out of 6,448,366 farms in the entire 

 United States, which placed Michigan in the fif- 

 teenth place under this head. The number of acres 

 in Michigan farms wfrs 19,034,204, the rank being 

 twenty-third. The number of acres of improved 

 land was 12,926,241, while 3,217,100 acres were in 



