94 Negro Migration 



slightly greater than among the Negroes since the white 

 urban population increased from 13.6 per cent in 1890 to 

 21.9 per cent in 1910. 



These percentages may be misinterpreted if the actual 

 numbers upon which they are based are not kept in mind. 

 The percentage of increase indicates that an increasingly 

 greater portion of the people are living in cities, but it does 

 not indicate that the number of people in the country is 

 decreasing. The rural population is growing, but the city 

 population is growing faster. The first three columns of 

 Table 13 show that city and country both are increasing in 

 Georgia, and that the cities merely receive a part of the nat- 

 ural increment of the country districts, a part remaining to 

 swell the numbers of rural inhabitants. An examination 

 of the numerical increases in the table bring this out 

 more clearly. While the percentage of Negroes living in 

 rural communities decreased from 85.6 in 1890 to 80.9 in 

 1910, the number increased from 734,953 to 952,161, a nu- 

 merical increase of 78,409 and a rate of increase of 9 per 

 cent. On the other hand the cities increased at a faster 

 rate, because of the fact that their population was in the 

 beginning much smaller than that of the country districts. 

 The cities increased from 123,862 in 1890 to 224,826 in 

 1910, a percentage increase of 39.6 and a numerical in- 

 crease of 63,765. 



When it is considered that some of the increase in city 

 population is due to the extension of ^boundaries &nd 

 some to the growth of new towns to such a size that they 

 are included in the urban area, it is seen that the urban 

 increase is by no means so significant as that in rural dis- 

 tricts. In fact, about 15,000 of the urban increase was due 

 to the growth of towns which were less than 2,500 in popu- 

 lation in 1900 and greater than 2,500 in 1910. That is to 

 say 14 incorporated places which were villages of less than 

 2,500 in 1900 were for that reason enumerated as "rural," 



