190 PERILS. — THE CITY. 



is capable of sustaining that number. And it looks as 

 if the larger pro]:)ortion of it would be urban. There 

 can be no indefinite increase of our agricultural popula- 

 tion. Its growth must needs be slow after the farms 

 are all taken, and it is necessarily limited ; but the cities 

 may go on doubling and doubling again. Even if the 

 growth of population should be very greatly and unex- 

 pectedly retarded, there are many now living who will 

 see 150,000,000 inhabitants in the United States, and 

 more than a quarter of that number living in cities of 

 8,000 and upward. And the city of the future will be 

 more crowded than that of to-day, because the elevator 

 makes it possible to build, as it were, one city above 

 another. Thus is our civilization multiplying and focal- 

 izing the elements of anarchy and destruction. Nearly 

 forty years ago De Tocqueville wrote : "I look upon the 

 size of certain American cities, and especiallj^ upon the 

 nature of their population, as a real danger which 

 threatens the security of the democratic republics of the 

 New World." That danger grows more real and immi- 

 nent every year. 



And this peril, like the others which have been dis- 

 cussed, peculiarly threatens the West. The time will 

 doubtless come when a majority of the great cities of 

 the country will be west of the Mississippi. This will 

 result naturally from the greater eventual population of 

 the West : but, in addition to this fact, what has been 

 pointed out must not be forgotten, that agriculture will 

 occupy a much smaller place relatively in the industries 

 of the West than in those of the East, because a much 

 smaller proportion of the land is arable. The vast region 

 of the Rocky Mountains will be inhabited chiefly by a 

 mining and manufacturing population, and such popula- 

 tions live in cities. 



1. In gathering up the results of the foregoing discus- 

 sion of these several perils, it should be remarked that 

 to preserve republican institutions requires a higher 

 average intelligence and virtue among large populations 

 than among small. The government of 5,000,000 people 



