704 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



American farmer, is unwarranted. Whatever may be the condi- 

 tion of agriculture, the relatively greater increase of urban than 

 of rural population cannot be assigned as decisive proof that it 

 is in process of economic decline. 



II. AN EXPLANATION OF THE RELATIVE INCREASE OF 

 RURAL AND URBAN WEALTH 



The wonderful rapidity with which wealth has been produced 

 and accumulated in the United States has attracted the attention 

 of publicists and economists of nearly every land. Notwithstand- 

 ing the appalling loss inflicted by the Civil War, and in spite of 

 the periodical occurrence of panics and commercial depressions, 

 tne nation has gone forward in the conquest of wealth with un- 

 precedented and almost incredible celerity. The following figures 

 are sufficient testimony to the correctness of this statement : 



i860 

 1880 

 1890 



Wealth of the United 

 States 



Ji 6,1 60,000,000 

 43,642,000,000 

 65,037,000,000 



Dollars per 

 Inhabitant 



870 

 1036 



So readily have material things been brought into existence 

 and with such facility are they fashioned to suit the most fastid- 

 ious of tastes that questions of production are no longer the 

 burning issues of the hour. The machinery of production has 

 been so far perfected that there is no longer any fear of its in- 

 adequacy to satisfy the needs of all. The questions that have 

 come to concern nineteenth-century society relate rather to dis- 

 tribution than to production. Let us therefore inquire as to the 

 distribution of the wealth which the above figures exhibit. The 

 table on the next page classifies the wealth between the two great 

 groups of American producers. The figures indicate that during 

 the last forty years rural wealth has quadrupled, while that of the 

 cities has increased sixteenfold. The prevalent opinion, therefore, 

 that the cities are outstripping the rural districts in the accumula- 

 tion of wealth appears to rest upon a solid foundation of fact. 



