Rural Economy in New England 



387 



rate was any higher here. In fact, the conditions were far more favorable for 

 the survival of children than on the frontier. If we may assume that the popu- 

 lation of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut did increase by 145.6 

 per cent in the years 1790-1820, then, had there been no emigration, the census 

 of 1820 would have shown a total for the three states of 1,681,673 persons. 

 As a matter of fact this total was only 881,594. Consequently according to 

 this computation the loss by emigration in the thirty years must have been 

 800,000 persons. 



Economic Aspects of Emigration — Agricvltural Regions Lost Most Heavily. 



For the purposes of this essay our interest in this movement of population is 

 centered in its relations to the economic conditions prevailing in the country 

 towns. Is there any evidence to show that the purely agricultural inland regions 

 were affected more or less than those on the rivers and on the coast? If so, what 

 light do these differences shed on the causes of emigration? 



There is an abundance of evidence to prove that the counties and towns on 

 the rivers and the coast lost far less by emigration than the inland country. Tak- 

 ing three inland counties in Connecticut, Litchfield, Windham and Tolland; we 

 find that their total population amounted in 1790 to 80,782. Twenty years later, ^ 

 it was 81,285, an increase of 503 persons or y% of one per cent. In the same 

 period two coast counties and one river county, Fairfield, New Haven and Hart- 

 ford, increased from 105,109 to 122,747, or 16.8 per cent. 



Table III. 

 Population Growth in Inland and Coast Counties. 



* I have limited the inquiry to the two decades because of the influence which 

 the growth of manufactures was already beginning to exert in the decade 1810- 

 1820. In the case of Tolland and Windham cotmties there were some changes 

 in boundary lines between 1790 and 1810; the figures given are for the areas as 

 of 1790. 



