702 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



York City in 1870, it now leads that city in population. During 

 the past twenty years it has added twice as much to its population 

 as Philadelphia and as many actual new residents as Chicago. 

 Hamburg has added more to its population since 1875 than Bos- 

 ton or Baltimore ; Leipzig more than St. Louis ; Munich more 

 than Cincinnati. Scarcely less remarkable is the recent growth 

 of urban populations in France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Scotland, 

 and England. In fact, it appears that there is not a single instance 

 of the rapid expansion of city populations in the United States 

 that cannot be duplicated in Great Britain or on the Continent. 



There can be no doubt that increased efficiency of agriculture 

 throughout a large part of the world has been the fundamental 

 condition of this growth of cities. " When Malthus wrote, the 

 labor of a person sufficed to raise food for 10 persons : at present 

 in the United States a male adult can raise food for 120 persons." 

 Better methods of husbandry, the use of superior implements, 

 specialization of agricultural production and vastly improved trans- 

 portation facilities, whereby large areas of new lands have been 

 brought undej cultivation, have been indispensable to this increase 

 in productive efficiency, in consequence of which a relatively 

 smaller part of the world's population is required to produce the 

 food supply. " In each succeeding decade since 1850 there has 

 been in all countries a marked tendency of rural population to 

 emigrate to the towns ; and although the rural ratio of inhabitants 

 has seriously diminished, there has been an increase of tillage in 

 consequence of machinery displacing labor." Although the ratio 

 of rural population has declined in both Europe and America, 

 while the total population has increased but 34 per cent, the 

 area under tillage has risen 55 per cent. 



Moreover, the agriculture of those countries having the smallest 

 urban population is generally in a most unproductive condition. 

 " All nations in which more than half the laborers are in agri- 

 culture are comparatively poor, and their rural processes are primi- 

 tive, their implements rude, their rate of production low." In 

 India, for example, eighty per cent of the whole population is 

 closely connected with the land, and yet agriculture is there con- 

 ducted so ineffectively that the masses of the people never know 



