61] ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA 6 1 



Hampshire and Vermont, instead of ranking far below 

 them. l 



Nevertheless it may still seem as though density were in 

 some way connected with literary fecundity. In order to 

 investigate further the relation of the two phenomena, a 

 separate study of various aspects of the local environment, 

 the third of the nine environmental influences, was made 

 (Tables XIII to XV). Table XIII shows the men of letters 

 classified as born in a state or provincial capital, the chief 

 city of a state or province, a county seat, or elsewhere! 

 From this table it appears that the capitals produced 11.2 

 per cent of the literati, the chief cities 20.8 per cent more, 

 and the county seats added another 18.3 per cent. Thus it 

 may be said that half (50.3 per cent) of all American men 

 of letters were born in places which were relatively metro- 

 politan, even though their actual population may not have 

 been large. 



Further calculations showed that although, during the 

 period studied, the capitals and chief cities of the several 

 states had never contained over nine per cent of the total 

 population of the United States, they had been the birth- 

 place of approximately thirty-two per cent of the men of 

 letters. 2 Thus it appears that in proportion to population 

 cities have been very rich in men of letters. 



1 Cf. Ward, Applied Sociology, pp. 169 et seq., and Davies, loc. cit., 

 p. 232. 



2 County seats were not included because their population figures 

 were not readily available. 



The population of 1850 for the cities under consideration was found 

 by adding together their respective populations, as given in the Com- 

 pendium of the Seventh Census, pp. 338 et seq. The total population 

 for these cities constituted nine per cent of the total population of the 

 United States. Since the urban population of the nation had increased 

 from the founding of the Republic, this proportion was a maximum 

 for the entire period considered. In this phase of the study the Can- 



