RHODE ISLAND 



4996 



RHODE ISLAND 



planation being that it is based upon a fancied 

 resemblance between the large island in Nar- 

 ragansett Bay and the Isle of Rhodes. The 

 state flower is the violet. 



Size and Location. Lying between Massachu- 

 setts and Connecticut, on the Atlantic coast, 

 this little state, with an extreme length of forty- 

 eight miles and a width of thirty-seven miles, 

 has a gross area of only 1,248 square miles, 

 about one-fourth that of the state of Con- 

 necticut and only a little over three times that 

 of the city of New York. The water area, 

 most of which is included in Narragansett Bay 

 and its estuaries, covers 181 square miles. 



The 'People. Ranking thirty-eighth among 

 the states in population, Rhode Island, with 

 the exception of the District of Columbia, is 

 the most thickly-inhabited division of the 

 Union. In 1910, when its population was 542,- 

 610, its average number of inhabitants per 

 square mile was 5085, as compared with 30.9 

 for the United States as a whole. The manu- 

 facturing industries offer employment to many 

 foreigners, and about one-third of the inhabit- 

 ants are of foreign birth, chiefly French-Cana- 

 dians, Irish, English and Italians. The com- 

 parative unimportance of agriculture is seen in 

 the fact that 96.7 per cent of the population 

 are inhabitants of cities or towns. The largest 

 of the thirty-eight cities and towns of the state 

 is Providence, the capital, which in 1916 had an 

 estimated population of 254,960. Pawtucket, 

 Woonsocket, Newport, Warwick, Cranston, 

 Central Falls and East Providence are other 

 important cities. The population of the state 

 on January 1, 1917, was estimated to be 620,- 

 090 by the Federal Census Bureau. 



The first Baptist Church in America was 

 founded at Providence, but only about one- 

 twentieth of the population of the state belong 

 to that denomination. Owing to the large 

 number of French-Canadians and Irish, the 

 Roman Catholic body is by far the largest, fol- 

 lowed by the Episcopal, Congregational, Meth- 

 odist, Friends and Presbyterian churches. 



Education. Rhode Island has a highly-devel- 

 oped system of public schools, supported by 

 local and state taxation. The present school 

 organization was established in 1828 and is ad- 

 ministered by a commissioner of education, 

 appointed by the governor and senate, and a 

 board of education consisting of the governor, 

 lieutenant-governor and six other members 

 elected by the general assembly. There is a 

 compulsory-education law, and sixty-one per 

 cent of the school population is in school. 



There are high schools in all of the cities, 

 and those towns having no secondary schools 

 are required to give their young people edu- 

 cational privileges in towns where high schools 

 are maintained. A normal school at Provi- 

 dence (with thirty affiliated training schools 

 in different parts of the state) and an agri- 

 cultural college at Kingston are maintained by 

 the state. Other prominent institutions are 

 Brown University at Providence, one of the 

 best-known and oldest of Eastern universities; 

 the Rhode Island State College, at Kingston; 

 the Rhode Island School of Design, at Provi- 

 dence; and the Moses Brown School, also at 

 Providence. 



The Land. The state is generally hilly, and 

 has a mean elevation of 200 feet. East of Nar- 

 ragansett Bay the grassy hills are low and 

 rounded. West of the bay, the slopes, cov- 

 ered with a growth of Small trees, are more 

 rugged, but nowhere are there mountains. The 



OUTLINE MAP OF RHODE ISLAND 

 Showing boundaries, water areas, principal cit- 

 ies and rivers, and the highest point of land in the 

 state. 



highest point is in the northwest at Durfee 

 Hill, which has an elevation of .805 feet. 



The south coast is bordered by sand beaches 

 and shallow land-locked inlets or ponds, but 

 east of Point Judith the shore often rises to 

 high, rocky cliffs, divided by beaches of sand. 



